BEFOEE THE DAYS OF THE SOCIETE D'ENCOURAGEMENT 5 



of it, go to show that it had never become firmly and 

 popularly established, as it now is ; and tlint whenever, 

 save in the very earliest times, there was a horse race 

 of note, English grooms, or trainers, or jockej^s, or 

 horses, or practices, and sometimes all these together, 

 were — or were considered — necessary for the accom- 

 plishment of the business. It will appear, perhaps, as 

 the following paragraphs are perused, that but for the 

 Great Eevolution, which interfered witJi so many possi- 

 bilities and probabilities, horse-racing on English prin- 

 ciples might have become naturalised in France before 

 the commencement of the nineteenth century, instead 

 of having to wait for the Eevolution of July 1830, the 

 patronage of the popular Duke d'Orleans, son of Louis 

 Philippe, and the foundation of the French Jockey Club 

 in 1833. 



As early as 1323, under Charles le Bel, or in 1370, 

 in the reign of Charles le Sage, according to other 

 accounts, there was horse-racing, apparently, at Semur, 

 Cote d'Or ; but no ' Ptacing Calendar ' of that date is 

 forthcoming. 



There were ' scratch ' races in Louis XIY.'s time, as 

 will appear from the following accounts. 



Here is an extraordinary extract, taken, it is asserted, 

 from ' the diary of Buisson d'Aubenay : '— 



This day after dinner, March 15, 1651, a match for a wager 

 of a thousand crowns was decided in the Bois de Boulogne 

 between Prince d'Harcourt and the Duke de Joyeuse, both of 

 whom mounted [? ran] horses that had been trained for the 

 occasion in the village of Boulogne, on the Seine, in the same 

 manner as English race horses. They had been fed for three 

 weeks, or thereabouts, on bread made with beans and aniseed, 

 in the place of oats, and two days previous to the contest taking 

 place were each given between two and three hundred fresh 

 eggs. They went the track from the barrier of La Muette, or 



