LANCE

lance, a form of spear used by cavalry (see spear). the use of the lance, dying away on the decay of chivalry and the introduction of pistol-armed cavalry, was revived by the polish and cossack cavalry who fought against charles xii. and frederick the great. it was not until napoleon's time, however, that lancer regiments appeared in any great numbers on european battlefields. the effective use of the weapon--long before called by montecucculi the "queen of weapons"--by napoleon's lancers at waterloo led to its introduction into the british service, and except for a short period after the south african war, in which it was condemned as an anachronism, it has shared, or rather contested, with the sword the premier place amongst cavalry arms. in great britain and other countries lances are carried by the front rank of cavalry, except light cavalry, regiments, as well as by lancer regiments. in germany, since 1889, the _whole_ of the cavalry has been armed with the lance. in russia, on the other hand, line cavalry being, until recently, considered as a sort of mounted infantry or dragoons, the lance was restricted to the cossacks, and in austria it enjoys less favour than in germany. altogether there are few questions of armament or military detail more freely disputed, in the present day as in the past, than this of sword _versus_ lance. the lances used in the british service are of two kinds, those with ash and those with bamboo staves. the latter are much preferred and are generally used, the "male" bamboo being peculiarly tough and elastic. the lance is provided with a sling, through which the trooper passes his right arm when the lance is carried slung, the point of the steel shoe fitting into a bucket attached to the right stirrup. a small "dee" loop is also provided, by which the lance can be attached to the saddle when the trooper dismounts. the small flag is removed on service. the head is of the best steel. the germans, doubtless owing to difficulty in obtaining bamboos, or ash in large quantity straight enough in the grain over a considerable length, for lance staves, have adopted a stave of steel tubing as well as one of pine (figs. 2, 3 and 4). [illustration: types of british and german lances. fig. 1 is the british bamboo lance; figs. 2 and 3 the german steel tubular lance, and fig. 4 the german pine-wood lance. the full length of the german lance is 11 ft. 9 in., that of the cossacks 9 ft. 10 in., that of the austrian lancers 8 ft. 8 in., and the french lance 11 ft. the british lance is 9 ft. long. the weight of a lance varies but slightly. the steel-staved lance weighs 4 lb, the bamboo 41⁄2.] as to the question of the relative efficiency of the lance and the sword as the principal arm for cavalry, it is alleged that the former is heavy and fatiguing to carry, conspicuous, and much in the way when reconnoitring in close country, working through woods and the like; that, when unslung ready for the charge, it is awkward to handle, and may be positively dangerous if a horse becomes restive and the rider has to use both hands on the reins; that unless the thrust be delivered at full speed, it is easily parried; and, lastly, that in the _melee_, when the trooper has not room to use his lance, he will be helpless until he either throws it away or slings it, and can draw his sword. while admitting the last-mentioned objection, those who favour the lance contend that success in the first shock of contact is all-important, and that this success the lancer will certainly obtain, owing to his long reach enabling him to deliver a blow before the swordsman can retaliate, while, when the _melee_ commences, the rear rank will come to the assistance of the front rank. further, it is claimed that the power of delivering the first blow gives confidence to the young soldier; that the appearance of a lancer regiment, preceded as it were by a hedge of steel, has an immense moral effect; that in single combat a lancer, with room to turn, can always defeat an opponent armed with a sword; and, lastly, that in pursuit a lancer is terrible to an enemy, whether the latter be mounted or on foot. as in the case of the perennial argument whether a sword should be designed mainly for cutting or thrusting, it is unlikely that the dispute as to the merits of the lance over the sword will ever be definitely settled, since so many other factors--horsemanship, the training of the horse, the skill and courage of the adversary--determine the trooper's success quite as much as the weapon he happens to wield. the following passage from _cavalry: its history and tactics_ (london, 1853), by captain nolan, explains how the lance gained popularity in austria:--"in the last hungarian war (1848-49) the hungarian hussars were ... generally successful against the austrian heavy cavalry--cuirassiers and dragoons; but when they met the polish lancers, the finest regiments of light horse in the austrian service, distinguished for their discipline, good riding, and, above all, for their _esprit de corps_ and gallantry in action, against those the hungarians were not successful, and at once attributed this to the lances of their opponents. the austrians then extolled the lance above the sword, and armed all their light cavalry regiments with it." the lancer regiments in the british service are the 5th, the 9th, the 12th, the 16th, the 17th and the 21st. all these were converted at different dates from hussars and light dragoons, the last-named in 1896. the typical lancer uniform is a light-fitting short-skirted tunic with a double-breasted front, called the plastron, of a different colour, a girdle, and a flat-topped lancer "cap," adapted from the polish czapka (see uniforms: _naval and military_). the british lancers, with the exception of the 16th, who wear scarlet with blue facings, are clad in blue, the 5th, 9th and 12th having scarlet facings and green, black and red plumes respectively, the 17th (famous as the "death or glory boys" and wearing a skull and crossbones badge) white facings and white plume, and the 21st light-blue facings and plume. lancelot (lancelot du lac, or lancelot of the lake), a famous figure in the arthurian cycle of romances. to the great majority of english readers the name of no knight of king arthur's court is so familiar as is that of sir lancelot. the mention of arthur and the round table at once brings him to mind as the most valiant member of that brotherhood and the secret lover of the queen. lancelot, however, is not an original member of the cycle, and the development of his story is still a source of considerable perplexity to the critic. briefly summarized, the outline of his career, as given in the german _lanzelet_ and the french prose _lancelot_, is as follows: lancelot was the only child of king ban of benoic and his queen helaine. while yet an infant, his father was driven from his kingdom, either by a revolt of his subjects, caused by his own harshness (_lanzelet_), or by the action of his enemy claudas de la deserte (_lancelot_). king and queen fly, carrying the child with them, and while the wife is tending her husband, who dies of a broken heart on his flight, the infant is carried off by a friendly water-fairy, the lady of the lake, who brings the boy up in her mysterious kingdom. in the german poem this is a veritable "isle of maidens," where no man ever enters, and where it is perpetual spring. in the prose _lancelot_, on the other hand, the lake is but a mirage, and the lady's court does not lack its complement of gallant knights; moreover the boy has the companionship of his cousins, lionel and bohort, who, like himself, have been driven from their kingdom by claudas. when he reaches the customary age (which appears to be fifteen), the young lancelot, suitably equipped, is sent out into the world. in both versions his name and parentage are concealed, in the _lanzelet_ he is genuinely ignorant of both; here too his lack of all knightly accomplishments (not unnatural when we remember he has here been brought up entirely by women) and his inability to handle a steed are insisted upon. here he rides forth in search of what adventure may bring. in the prose _lancelot_ his education is complete, he knows his name and parentage, though for some unexplained reason he keeps both secret, and he goes with a fitting escort and equipment to arthur's court to demand knighthood. the subsequent adventures differ widely: in the _lanzelet_ he ultimately reconquers his kingdom, and, with his wife iblis, reigns over it in peace, both living to see their children's children, and dying on the same day, in good old fairy-tale fashion. in fact, the whole of the _lanzelet_ has much more the character of a fairy or folk-tale than that of a knightly romance. in the prose version, lancelot, from his first appearance at court, conceives a passion for the queen, who is very considerably his senior, his birth taking place some time after her marriage to arthur. this infatuation colours all his later career. he frees her from imprisonment in the castle of meleagant, who has carried her off against her will--(a similar adventure is related in _lanzelet_, where the abductor is valerin, and lanzelet is not the rescuer)--and, although he recovers his kingdom from claudas, he prefers to remain a simple knight of arthur's court, bestowing the lands on his cousins and half-brother hector. tricked into a liaison with the fisher king's daughter elaine, he becomes the father of galahad, the grail winner, and, as a result of the queen's jealous anger at his relations with the lady, goes mad, and remains an exile from the court for some years. he takes part, fruitlessly, in the grail quest, only being vouchsafed a fleeting glimpse of the sacred vessel, which, however, is sufficient to cast him into unconsciousness, in which he remains for as many days as he has spent years in sin. finally, his relations with guenevere are revealed to arthur by the sons of king lot, gawain, however, taking no part in the disclosure. surprised together, lancelot escapes, and the queen is condemned to be burnt alive. as the sentence is about to be carried into execution lancelot and his kinsmen come to her rescue, but in the fight that ensues many of arthur's knights, including three of gawain's brothers, are slain. thus converted into an enemy, gawain urges his uncle to make war on lancelot, and there follows a desperate struggle between arthur and the race of ban. this is interrupted by the tidings of mordred's treachery, and lancelot, taking no part in the last fatal conflict, outlives both king and queen, and the downfall of the round table. finally, retiring to a hermitage, he ends his days in the odour of sanctity. the process whereby the independent hero of the _lanzelet_ (who, though his mother is arthur's sister, has but the slightest connexion with the british king), the faithful husband of iblis, became converted into the principal ornament of arthur's court, and the devoted lover of the queen, is by no means easy to follow, nor do other works of the cycle explain the transformation. in the pseudo-chronicles, the _historia_ of geoffrey and the translations by wace and layamon, lancelot does not appear at all; the queen's lover, whose guilty passion is fully returned, is mordred. chretien de troyes' treatment of him is contradictory; in the _erec_, his earliest extant poem, lancelot's name appears as third on the list of the knights of arthur's court. (it is well, however, to bear in mind the possibility of later addition or alteration in such lists.) in _cliges_ he again ranks as third, being overthrown by the hero of the poem. in _le chevalier de la charrette_, however, which followed _cliges_, we find lancelot alike as leading knight of the court and lover of the queen, in fact, precisely in the position he occupies in the prose romance, where, indeed, the section dealing with this adventure is, as gaston paris clearly proved, an almost literal adaptation of chretien's poem. the subject of the poem is the rescue of the queen from her abductor meleagant; and what makes the matter more perplexing is that chretien handles the situation as one with which his hearers are already familiar; it is lancelot, and not arthur or another, to whom the office of rescuer naturally belongs. after this it is surprising to find that in his next poem, _le chevalier au lion_, lancelot is once, and only once, casually referred to, and that in a passing reference to his rescue of the queen. in the _perceval_, chretien's last work, he does not appear at all, and yet much of the action passes at arthur's court. in the continuations added at various times to chretien's unfinished work the role assigned to lancelot is equally modest. among the fifteen knights selected by arthur to accompany him to chastel orguellous he only ranks ninth. in the version of the _luite tristran_ inserted by gerbert in his _perceval_, he is publicly overthrown and shamed by tristan. nowhere is he treated with anything approaching the importance assigned to him in the prose versions. welsh tradition does not know him; early italian records, which have preserved the names of arthur and gawain, have no reference to lancelot; among the group of arthurian knights figured on the architrave of the north doorway of modena cathedral (a work of the 12th century) he finds no place; the real cause for his apparently sudden and triumphant rise to popularity is extremely difficult to determine. what appears the most probable solution is that which regards lancelot as the hero of an independent and widely diffused folk-tale, which, owing to certain special circumstances, was brought into contact with, and incorporated in, the arthurian tradition. this much has been proved certain of the adventures recounted in the _lanzelet_; the theft of an infant by a water-fairy; the appearance of the hero three consecutive days, in three different disguises, at a tournament; the rescue of a queen, or princess, from an other-world prison, all belong to one well-known and widely-spread folk-tale, variants of which are found in almost every land, and of which numerous examples have been collected alike by m. cosquin in his _contes lorrains_, and by mr j. f. campbell in his _tales of the west highlands_. the story of the loves of lancelot and guenevere, as related by chretien, has about it nothing spontaneous and genuine; in no way can it be compared with the story of tristan and iseult. it is the exposition of a relation governed by artificial and arbitrary rules, to which the principal actors in the drama must perforce conform. chretien states that he composed the poem (which he left to be completed by godefroi de leigni) at the request of the countess marie of champagne, who provided him with _matiere et san_. marie was the daughter of louis vii. of france and of eleanor of aquitaine, subsequently wife of henry ii. of anjou and england. it is a matter of history that both mother and daughter were active agents in fostering that view of the social relations of the sexes which found its most famous expression in the "courts of love," and which was responsible for the dictum that love between husband and wife was impossible. the logical conclusion appears to be that the _charrette_ poem is a "_tendenz-schrift_," composed under certain special conditions, in response to a special demand. the story of _tristan and iseult_, immensely popular as it was, was too genuine--(shall we say too crude?)--to satisfy the taste of the court for which chretien was writing. moreover, the arthurian story was the popular story of the day, and tristan did not belong to the magic circle, though he was ultimately introduced, somewhat clumsily, it must be admitted, within its bounds. the arthurian cycle must have its own love-tale; guenevere, the leading lady of that cycle, could not be behind the courtly ladies of the day and lack a lover; one had to be found for her. lancelot, already popular hero of a tale in which an adventure parallel to that of the _charrette_ figured prominently, was pressed into the service, modred, guenevere's earlier lover, being too unsympathetic a character; moreover, modred was required for the final role of traitor. but to whom is the story to be assigned? here we must distinguish between the _lancelot_ proper and the _lancelot-guenevere_ versions; so far as the latter are concerned, we cannot get behind the version of chretien,--nowhere, prior to the composition of the _chevalier de la charrette_ is there any evidence of the existence of such a story. yet chretien does not claim to have invented the situation. did it spring from the fertile brain of some court lady, marie, or another? the authorship of the _lancelot_ proper, on the other hand, is invariably ascribed to walter map (see map), the chancellor of henry ii., but so also are the majority of the arthurian prose romances. the trend of modern critical opinion is towards accepting map as the author of a _lancelot_ romance, which formed the basis for later developments, and there is a growing tendency to identify this hypothetical original _lancelot_ with the source of the german _lanzelet_. the author, ulrich von zatzikhoven, tells us that he translated his poem from a french (_welsches_) book in the possession of hugo de morville, one of the english hostages, who, in 1194, replaced richard coeur de lion in the prison of leopold of austria. further evidence on the point is, unfortunately, not at present forthcoming. to the student of the original texts lancelot is an infinitely less interesting hero than gawain, perceval or tristan, each of whom possesses a well-marked personality, and is the centre of what we may call individual adventures. saving and excepting the incident of his being stolen and brought up by a water-fairy (from a _lai_ relating which adventure the whole story probably started), there is absolutely nothing in lancelot's character or career to distinguish him from any other romantic hero of the period. the language of the prose _lancelot_ is good, easy and graceful, but the adventures lack originality and interest, and the situations repeat themselves in a most wearisome manner. english readers, who know the story only through the medium of malory's noble prose and tennyson's melodious verse, carry away an impression entirely foreign to that produced by a study of the original literature. the _lancelot_ story, in its rise and development, belongs exclusively to the later stage of arthurian romance; it was a story for the court, not for the folk, and it lacks alike the dramatic force and human appeal of the genuine "popular" tale. the prose _lancelot_ was frequently printed; j. c. brunet chronicles editions of 1488, 1494, 1513, 1520 and 1533--of this last date there are two, one published by jehan petit, the other by philippe lenoire, this last by far the better, being printed from a much fuller manuscript. there is no critical edition, and the only version available for the general reader is the modernized and abridged text published by paulin paris in vols. iii. to v. of _romans de la table ronde_. a dutch verse translation of the 13th century was published by m. w. j. a. jonckbloet in 1850, under the title of _roman van lanceloet_. this only begins with what paulin paris terms the _agravain_ section, all the part previous to guenevere's rescue from meleagant having been lost; but the text is an excellent one, agreeing closely with the lenoire edition of 1533. the books devoted by malory to lancelot are also drawn from this latter section of the romance; there is no sign that the english translator had any of the earlier part before him. malory's version of the _charrette_ adventure differs in many respects from any other extant form, and the source of this special section of his work is still a question of debate among scholars. the text at his disposal, especially in the _queste_ section, must have been closely akin to that used by the dutch translator and the compiler of lenoire, 1533. unfortunately, dr sommer, in his study on the _sources of malory_, omitted to consult these texts, with the result that the sections dealing with _lancelot_ and _queste_ urgently require revision. bibliography.--_lanzelet_ (ed. hahn, 1845, out of print and extremely difficult to obtain). chretien's poem has been published by professor wendelin foerster, in his edition of the works of that poet, _der karrenritter_ (1899). a dutch version of a short episodic poem, _lancelot et le cerf au pied blanc_ will be found in m. jonckbloet's volume, and a discussion of this and other _lancelot_ poems, by gaston paris, is contained in vol. xxx. of _histoire litteraire de la france_. for critical studies on the subject cf. gaston paris's articles in _romania_, vols. x. and xii.; wechssler, _die verschiedenen redaktionen des graal-lancelot cyklus_; j. l. weston, _the legend of sir lancelot du lac_ (grimm library, vol. xii.); and _the three days' tournament_ (grimm library, vol. xv.) an appendix to the previous vol. (j. l. w.) lancet (from fr. _lancette_, dim. of _lance_, lance), the name given to a surgical instrument, with a narrow two-edged blade and a lance-shaped point, used for opening abscesses, &c. the term is applied, in architecture, to a form of the pointed arch, and to a window of which the head is a lancet-arch.