In 1570, a French citizen was arrested for smuggling clandestine correspondence between France and England.
An included comment on his interrogation document reveals that he was also carrying a leather bag “containing three or four dozen wool balls to play tennis.”
The French designation for sport was palm game (literally, “Palm game” in French). He was thrown with his palm, often with glove instead of the racket.
The game has developed until it became the sport that in English is commonly called “real sneakers” (unlike the grass -thrown sneakers in Wimbledon).
The interrogator believed that cheap commodity was simply a stratagem to the true purpose of that man, who was to communicate with the Huguenots in exile.
Based on this interrogation document, I wrote a book called Huguenot Networks (“Hugenotes Networks”, which will be published later this year by Cambridge University Press.
But as a historian, I was intrigued by the quantity and discrimination of the goods he was carrying. After all, the wool, if it were firmly packed, would certainly have made those balls bouncing.
I happened to find similar objects on a small display at Palazzo Te in Mantua, Italy.
Those balls were apparently recovered from the palace ceiling and several others came from a nearby church. They were made of leather, fabric and cords instead of wool, probably upholstered with earth or animal hair.
Like the “real sneakers” artisanal sneakers today, they were harder and their size was more variable than ordinary tennis balls. And usually they were not so colorful, although sometimes they had a simple design painted on the outside.
Currently, “Real Tennis” is known as the “sports of kings”, praised for testing the agility and sports dexterity of its practitioners.
England’s most famous court is in Hampton Court, but many others survive in the UK. There is, for example, a block going down the street where I work at the University of Warwick, in Morell Morell, in Warwickshire County (England).
High -risk sports
In the 16th century, the royal sneakers attracted gamblers, which made it a target of the Puritans.
Ana Bolena (c.1501-1536) was said to make a bet on a game she watched on the day of her arrest. And Henry 8 ° (1509-1547), conveniently, would have played a match on Queen Consort’s execution day.
And if there was any doubt about how dangerous tennis could be, several royalty deaths in France are attributed to the game.
King Louis 10 of France (1289-1316) was an avid player of the palm game. He was the first ruler to order the construction of internal courts, which would be popular throughout Europe.
In June 1316, after a particularly strenuous match, Louis 10 ° would have taken a large amount of cold wine and died shortly thereafter. Death was probably caused by pleurisy despite suspected poisoning.
Likewise, in August 1536, the death of the 18-year-old French heir prince, the eldest son of King Francis 1 (1494-1547), was attributed to his Italian secretary, the Count of Montecuccoli. He had brought to the prince a glass of cold water after a match.
The Count was executed, although a post-mortem examination indicated that the prince’s death was due to natural causes.
In the 16th century, there were two blocks in the Louvre and many others in the French capital, Paris, as well as other real residences.
Ambassador reports describe frequent matches between top courtiers and the king. These games could sometimes result in injuries, especially if participants were hit by the hard balls of the time.
That man who carried so many tennis balls in 1570 had probably identified a lucrative opportunity created by the growing demand. After all, the French game was increasingly popular in the Tudor England.
During the Tudor era, no European court of respect dismissed their own tennis courts, constructed specifically for this purpose. In them, the monarchs and their surroundings tested their dexterity and skills.
They used to play before the ambassadors, who reported events to their own rulers, turning the game into a truly competitive international sport.
Fortunately, the game today has much less dangers. There is no longer a risk of being hit by a ball full of land, nor of suffering deadly retaliation after overcoming an exhausted important opponent.
Penny Roberts is a professor of modern European history at Warwick University in the United Kingdom.
This article was originally published on the academic news site The Conversation and republished under Creative Commons license. Leia Here the original version (in English).
