Le Maneige Royal Or, L'instruction Du Roy: En L'exercice De Monter a Cheval

By ANTOINE DE PLUVINEL, Crispijn van de Passe II and Hilda Nelson

Unquestionably one of the most important books ever written about the art of horsemanship, de Pluvinel's treatise is complete with the celebrated illustrations by Crispin de Pas. Translated from the 1926 edition, this is the foundation stone of any collection of equestrian literature.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9780933316843

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This facsimile, first published by J. A. Allen in 1969

without the English translation,

is based on an edition published in 1626

by Gottfried Müller in Braunschweig, Germany

Design: Maria Scholz

© 1989 English Translation

J. A. Allen & Co. Ltd. London

© 2015 English Translation

Xenophon Press LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this translation may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior consent of the Copyright owner.

Print ISBN-13 9780933316164

eBook ISBN- 9780933316843

Contents

Publisher’s Foreword

Preface

Introduction

Professor Hilda Nelson

Glossary

To the King

Antoine de Pluvinel

To the King on His Portrait

P. Petit Bourbon

On the Maneige Royal of Monsieur de Pluvinel

D’ Audigvier

To de Pas on His Book on Horsemanship by Monsieur Antoine de Pluvinel

P. Petit Bourbon

On the Maneige Royal of Monsieur de Pluvinel Chief Écuyer to the King

P. Petit Bourbon

Tomb of Monsieur de Pluvinel

P. DE RECLUS, Procurator to the King

Notice to the Reader

I.D. Peyrol

To the King

Crispin de Pas

PART I

THE KING ASKS MONSIEUR DE PLUVINEL

what one must do in order to become a perfect Horseman.

PART II

THE KING BEGINS TO RIDE

His Majesty Tilts at the Ring

How to Break the Lance in the Lists During a Triumph

Tilting at the Quintaine

Bits and Mouthpieces

Xenophon Press Library

About the Author

PUBLISHER’S FOREWORD

The 16th and 17th centuries, containing as they did the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment that followed, were an age of considerable intellectual furor and intense human endeavor in many fields. Royal princes patronized painters, musicians, scholars, architects and the practitioners of many other skills such as engineering. A prince ought to be master of a vast range of accomplishments, according to the ideals of the age; equitation belonged to these as one of the most indispensable, in peace and in war alike. Riding as a fine art emanated from Italy, from the Naples region in particular, yet it was the great courts of France and Austria that provided the grandeur and set the stage for the magnificent mounted carousels where this refined equitation would be perfected and produced before large and fashionable audiences.

Antoine de Pluvinel lived from 1555 to 1620. Of gentle birth, he was a courtier to three kings of France: Henry III, Henry IV, and Louis XIII. He studied equitation from an early age, and spent six years as a pupil of the great Giovanni Battista Pignatelli near Naples (southern Italy). When de Pluvinel returned to France, he opened an academy for young gentlemen at the Faubourg St. Honoré, where the subjects of music, literature, painting, mathematics, and riding were taught. Monsieur de Pluvinel’s reputation for honesty and his clarity of method in teaching were such that he was appointed governor to the Dauphin (the future Louis XIII). The fact that de Pluvinel’s pupils understood him so well and were people of importance, helped spread his fame abroad and caused people to accept his methods. Thus, de Pluvinel forged a definite link between the Neapolitan school of riding and the French school of riding. Pignatelli, through his student, was instrumental in initiating the French ‘Golden Age of Equitation,’ an era of exploration of training as a high art, funded by the royal coffers that would last for two hundred years, until that aristocratic focus was ended by the French Revolution.

L’instruction du Roy en l’exercice de monter à cheval (Le Maneige Royal) takes the form of a dialogue between master and pupil. The Master, de Pluvinel, and the pupil, the Dauphin. This work describes not only the progress of the royal pupil but also de Pluvinel’s desire to develop a more humane approach to training horses. His bits and spurs are considerably modified when compared to those of his predecessors. In this respect, the influence of de Pluvinel is most clearly reflected, in terms of English masters, in the difference between the last considerable master before his day, Thomas Blundeville, and the first after him, The Duke of Newcastle. Much barbarity had been eliminated by de Pluvinel’s advocacy for gentle training. Among other things, de Pluvinel was the first riding master to describe all of the High School movements and aids, and is believed to have been the first to use pillars for training horses.

The original publication of the work was not without incident. During a visit to Holland, de Pluvinel met a certain Crispin de Pas, an artist whom he engaged as drawing-master for his academy. He then asked de Pas to make the engravings for his manuscript, L’instruction du Roy en l’exercice de monter à cheval. However, before the book could be published, de Pluvinel died. He had been engaged in revising it at the time of his death. After de Pluvinel’s death, de Pas obtained an unrevised copy of the manuscript from a servant named Peyrol. Then in 1623, de Pas published this unrevised and unfinished manuscript with his own engravings, entitled Le Maneige Royal. All of this was done without the consent of de Pluvinel’s literary executor, René Menou de Charnizay, who had official custody of the revised manuscript. After many difficulties, René Menou de Charnizay rewrote the text under the originally intended title of L’instruction du Roy en l’exercice de monter à cheval in 1625 and later obtained the plates of the de Pas engravings—which incidentally are wonderful examples not only of a horse’s position but also of the fashions of the day. Thus, in 1626, the book was produced in its present form. L’instruction du Roy en l’exercice de monter à cheval is an extremely important equestrian classic, which is also of vast artistic and historical interest and merit. For the sake of clarity, Xenophon Press has entitled the work: The Maneige Royal or L’instruction du Roy en l’exercice de monter à cheval, since it has come to be known under both the authorized and unauthorized and earlier published title, The Maneige Royal. We are pleased to make this work available once more to the English-speaking world.

Richard F. Williams

Publisher

Xenophon Press

PREFACE

The edition of Maneige Royal used in this translation is a facsimile of an edition published in 1626 in Braunschweig by Gottfried Muller. This facsimile was published in 1969 by the University of Leipzig and includes an introduction by Alois Podhajsky. The 1626 edition is similar to the 1623 edition; a comparison of the two editions reveals that the two texts are identical and contain even the same typographical errors. The 1623 edition was a purloined edition published without the permission of Pluvinel’s disciple and literary executor, Rene de Menou, Seigneur de Charnizay. It seems that the publisher, Crispin de Pas, the elder, at the time in financial trouble, had asked J.D. Peyrol, who had been in the employ of Pluvinel, to appropriate the manuscript for his use. The title page, however, states that Peyrol was the publisher; it also states that it was published at the expense of de Pas and that the text had been reviewed and corrected by the author. The engravings were made by Crispin de Pas, the younger. Another similar edition, also entitled Maneige Royal, was published in 1624. It repeats the title page of 1623 and has a new title page dated 1624 with an engraving of Louis XIII also bearing the date 1624.

In 1625, a new version of Maneige Royal appeared entitled L’Instruction du Roy, En L’Exercice de Monter à cheval, par Messire Antoine de Pluvinel. This new version was published by Rene de Menou de Charnizay and states that it is the first edition conforming to the manuscript of the author. Subsequent editions continue to use the new title. Nevertheless, historians, horsemen, et al continue to use the title Maneige Royal, albeit with some confusion, when referring to the work of Pluvinel. This 1625 edition, as well as the subsequent ones, include the original engravings.

The 1625 version contains a dedication to the King by Menou de Charnizay. In it he expresses his displeasure at having to pick up his pen to write a dedication under his own name because of the death of his mentor Pluvinel. He explains that a few months before the departure of Pluvinel to a better life, he had shown him that which he had begun to set down in writing and which had been commanded to him by Your Majesty, namely the principal rules pertaining to his method of bringing horses to the perfect obedience of man. Menou explains that he had tried to put some order in the work since Pluvinel had intended to revise it and that the earlier texts were still the first outlines of his (Pluvinel’s) creation; he then adds that Pluvinel had asked him to show these early drafts to no one. Menou states that he had kept his promise, namely, to keep from the public a work that the author had considered imperfect. However, since the publication of an unauthorized edition had come to light, Menou felt the need to break this promise. The good name and memory of his friend was at stake; equally important was the misuse of the name of the King as evidenced by the dedication to him and his alleged permission to publish the work. That is why, SIRE, I offer to You that which I received from him and in the same state that he had placed it into my hands. This, continues Menou, is especially important, since Pluvinel was "the most excellent of all those who had ever