The Eight - Trois

(Page 169) The Chess Master’s Tale (As recited by Philidor) At the age of nineteen, I left France and journeyed to Holland to accompany upon the hautebois, or oboe, a young pianist, a girl who, as a child prodigy, was to perform there. Unfortunately I arrived to discover the child had died a few days earlier of smallpox. I was stranded in a foreign country with no money and now no hope of an income. To support myself, I went to the coffee houses and played chess. From the age of fourteen, I’d studied chess under the tutelage of the famous Sire de Legal, France’s best player and perhaps the finest in Europe. By eighteen I could beat him with the handicap of a Knight. As a result, as I soon discovered, I could better every player I encountered. In The Hague, during the Battle of Fontenoy, I played against the Price of Waldeck as the battle raged around us. I traveled through England, playing at Slaughter’s Coffee House in London against the best players they had to offer, including Sir Abraham Janssen and Philip Stamma, beating them all. Stamma, a Syrian possibly of Moorish ancestry, had published several books on chess. He showed these to me, as well as books written by La Bourdonnais and Marechal Saxe. Stamma thought that I, with my unique powers of play, should write a book as well. My book, published several years later, was entitled Analyse du Jeu des Eschecs. In it I proposed the theory "The pawns are the soul of chess." In effect, I showed that the pawns were not only objects to be sacrificed, but could be used strategically and positionally against the opposing player. This book created a revolution in chess.