Chivalry
SOLDAT SANS PEUR
ET SANS REPROCHE
TOMBE SUR LE CHAMP D'HONNEUR
CAPTAIN HAROLD BURKE MC
On his inscription, Captain Burke's family associate his name with two of France's most respected soldiers.
The "soldat sans peur et sans reproche" - soldier without fear and beyond reproach, or the fearless and faultless knight - was the description given by contemporary chroniclers to Pierre du Terrail (1476-1524), the Chevalier Bayard. As he lay dying, mortally wounded in battle, his one time friend and now enemy, Charles duc de Bourbon, expressed his sorrow but was told by Terrail:
"Sir, there is no need to pity me. I die as a man of honour ought, doing my duty; but I pity you, because you are fighting against your king, your country, and your oath."
The second soldier is Theophile Malo (1743-1800) who served with the 46th Regiment and for his renowned bravery and modesty - he refused the promotion to high rank that he deserved - was named by Napoleon the "first grenadier of France". Killed in action at Neuburg, when the roll was called after the battle another grenadier stepped forward and said, "Tombe sur le champs d'honneur", fallen on the field of battle. On Napoleon's orders, his name continued to be called with the same response, a custom that was observed for at least 100 years after his death - and is still observed whenever the 46th's colour is paraded.
During the First World War the phrase was used for French soldiers killed in battle.
Harold Burke enlisted as a private in August 1914. He served throughout the Gallipoli campaign rising rapidly through the ranks until he was commissioned Second Lieutenant in September 1915. Promoted captain in August 1916, he won the Military Cross for his "sound judgment and good leadership" at Ypres on 20 September 1917. On 23 August 1918, just before the Australians were withdrawn from the front, he was killed outright when a shell fired by his own side landed short and exploded beside him.
SANS PEUR ET SANS REPROCHE
SERJEANT JOHN STONE HEPWORTH MM
The phrase may translate simply as fearless and faultless but it resonates with associations to the Age of Chivalry. 'Chevalier sans peur et sans reproche' was the tribute attached to Pierre Terrail (1473-1524), the Chevalier Bayard, who, according to the chroniclers, was the epitome of chivalry: a brave and skillful commander and a fair and honourable foe. Association with Bayard implied piety, generosity, honour, independence, truthfulness, loyalty, courtesy, modesty, humanity and respect for women, as enumerated by Kenelm Digby in his 'Broad-Stone of Honour or Rules for the Gentlemen of England', published in 1822. The story of Bayard was given a further boost with the publication in 1911 of Christopher Hare's 'The Good Knight Without Fear Without Reproach', the title incorporating the description Bayard himself preferred. The association was a great compliment whether one was the English general Sir James Outram, hero of the Indian Mutiny, buried in Westminster Abbey under a slab inscribed with the words 'The Bayard of India', or John Hepworth, a serjeant in the Duke of Westminster's West Riding Regiment killed in the First World War.
A PURE KNIGHT OF GOD
SECOND LIEUTENANT GEORGE GORDON WATTS
It was Sir Galahad who was the perfect knight, who in Tennyson's poem could boast:
My good blade carves the casques of men,
My tough lance thrusteth sure,
My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure.
It was because he was the perfect knight that he was permitted to achieve the grail quest. And it was as a pure knight that he died having achieved it.
Lieutenant Watts' father specifically uses the term 'knight' to describe his son, but the inscription definitely has resonances of Christ's teaching at the Sermon on the Mount:
Blest are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
Matthew 5:8
George Watts is commemorated on his parents' headstone in Payneham Cemetery, Adelaide with the inscription: 'A true knight of God'.
ONE OF NATURE'S GENTLEMEN
PRIVATE FREDERICK HENRY EDWARDS
What or who is a gentleman? It was a question that much preoccupied earlier generations. To the American president Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), a gentleman's qualities were best summarised by Psalm 15:
He that walketh uprightly and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart.
He that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbour, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour,
In whose eyes a vile person is contemned; but he honoureth them that fear the Lord. He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not.
He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent. He that doeth these things shall never be moved.
The Victorian author Samuel Smiles (1812-1904), in his immensely popular book 'Self-Help: with illustrations of character and conduct' (1859), devoted a whole chapter to the definition of the true gentleman. To Smiles his qualities did not depend on fashion or manners but on moral worth, not on personal possessions but on personal qualities. Smiles agreed with Jefferson that a gentleman was one "that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart."
Gentlemen were always assumed to have acquired their 'superior' manners and general demeanour from generations of 'good' breeding, something those born to a more lowly station in life could therefore never emulate. But Smiles was adamant:
Riches and rank have no necessary connection with genuine gentlemanly qualities. The poor man may be a true gentleman, - in spirit and in daily life. He may be honest, truthful, upright, polite, temperate, courageous, self-respecting, and self-helping, - that is, be a true gentleman'.
Self-Help Chapter XIII.28
Such a man would be 'one of nature's gentlemen', someone who although he'd had none of the gentleman's advantages of birth had all his qualities: honesty, integrity, good manners etc. Mrs Dinah Mulock Craik's 'John Halifax, Gentleman', published in 1856, was one such person. Halifax, an orphan, made his way in life through honesty, initiative and hard work. The Scotsman's review described him as 'one of nature's own nobility'. Halifax says of himself, 'If there was one point I was anxious over in my youth, it was to keep up through life a name like the Chevalier Bayard - how folk would smile to hear of a tradesman emulating Bayard - 'Sans peur et sans reproche!' (Without fear and without blame).
Frederick Henry Edwards is difficult to find in the census record, only appearing in 1891 as a six-year-old scholar living with his grandparents in Garston, Liverpool, where his grandfather was a dock labourer.