Juan, King of Portugal, is greatly to be admired, when before the Battle of Aljubarrota in 1385 he placed in the van of his army the sixty warriors whom he had just created knights, and thus dismissed them proudly:
“Beaux Seigneurs,” he said, “I send you into the first shock of the battle. Do all you can in honor, otherwise your gold spurs may not sit very comfortably on you!”
León Gautier, Chivalry, trans. Henry Frith (London: George Routledge and Sons, Ltd., 1891), 220.
Short Stories on Honor, Chivalry, and the World of Nobility—no. 696
