TOURNAMENT, a well-known mili tary sport of the middle ages, which with out doubt arose from the exercises of military training. A joust or just is, properly speaking, the encounter of two knights in this.species of exercise ; the tournament, an assembly held for the purpose of exhibiting such justs, or the encounter of several knights on a side. The earlier tournaments were highly dangerous and sanguinary sports. They were performed with the ordinary weap ons of warfare, the lance and the sword ; and the combatants had only the strength of their armor to rely on for their defence. It was a recognized custom, that whoever slew or disabled an adversary in the tournament was indenmilie 1 against all consequences. The account of the tour nament given by the Count of Chablais, in Savoy, to Edward 1. on his return from Palestine to England, as given by Thomas de Walsingham, represents a sort of violent mfilee, in which knights, esquires, and archers were engaged on both sides, endeavoring to unhorse their riders and overthrow the footmen by every possible means. But in the course of time this chivalric amusement became the subject of minute regulations, which in some de gree diminished the danger and insured the fairness of the sport. In tournaments, when under the strict regulation of knightly usage, two sorts of arms were employed : those expressly made for the purpose, viz., lances with blunt heads of iron ; and the ordinary arms of warfare, termed, " armes a outrance," which were only employed by such champions as were desirous to signalize themselves in a more than ordinary degree, and frequent ly were not permitted by the judges of the tournament. Every knight attending
was required to show his noble birth and rank, as a title to admission. These were at first proclaimed by the heralds with sound of trumpet; and hence the word blazonry, which signifies the correct de ciphering of the heraldic symbols on a coat-of-arms, is derived by some from the German blasen, to blow. Afteiivards, when armorial bearings became general, the shield of the knight gave token of his rank and family. The attendance of la dies at the tournaments, their distribu tion of prizes to those who had borne themselves best, arming and unarming the knights, are various romantic circumstances well known to the reader of chivalric legends ; but they must not be supposed to have been the necessary, or even usual accompaniments of these knightly sports, at least until a later age, when the taste for gallantry, combining with that for show and spectacle, turned these military exhibitions of skill into lit tle more than gorgeous pageants. The re vival of the tournament was recently at tempted in the west of Scotland by the Earl of Eglin ton ; but we scarcely suppose that the success of that attempt was either commensurate with its deserts, or was such as to induce any party to renew it. At the court of Wurtemberg tournaments are not unfrequently exhibited at this day.