chevalier

le chevalier (FR N-M) knight, literally »horseman,« in feudal times, soldier with a horse and armor, usually a free man and a landholder; member of an order of horsemen; ranked above a baron. For six centuries the medieval knight dominated the battlefields and stirred the imagination of the Western world. Born out of the chaos of the Middle Ages, armored, mounted warriors revolutionized warfare and became the keystone of the new political structure of feudalism. Alarmed by their excesses, the…