He was once the model of the “knight without fear and without reproach”, one of the rare aristocratic figures of the Ancien Régime whom the republican school of Lavisse had agreed to recognize among the heroes of the “national novel”, with Du Guesclin and some others.
Since then, the knight Pierre de Bayard, hero of the Italian wars, has fallen into oblivion, and one can wonder if the 700 pages of the historian Thierry Lassabatère are not a lot for today's reader.
However, this fascinating biography (sometimes too talkative) has the merit of dusting off the old works on the knight, an exemplary figure of “warrior humanism”, which certain friends of “order” and “progress” hated, such as Gaullist Alexandre Sanguinetti, who wrote a very dull pamphlet against Bayard.
To discover
Crosswords, Sudoku, 7 Letters... Keep your mind alert with Le Figaro Games
Lassabatère sweeps away these bad works and emphasizes the cultural dimension of the character, by revisiting this nobility imagination in the light of literature, of valiant knights...
This article is reserved for subscribers.
You have 78% left to discover.
Flash sale
€4.49/month for 12 months
I ENJOY IT
Already subscribed?
Log in