FIRST BOOK.
THE ELEMENTS OF CHESS.
The game of Chess has a history that at all times has awakened interest but of which very little is known. We know some fables treating of the origin of the game, fables that are true to history only in so far as they lay the place of origin in Asia and the time of origin in a very distant past. Games similar to Chess have been discovered on Egyptian sculptures.
Written documents, a thousand years old, referring to Chess, have been found. The game of Chess of those days was not, however, the game that we now know. No doubt, Chess has undergone many changes and who knows whether Draughts, or, more precisely, a game related to Draughts, was not a forefather of our Chess.
The European career of Chess began a thousand years ago. At that time it was an admired favourite in Spain, the game of the noble and the learned. In feudal castles and at the courts of princes it was cultivated; it was praised in artistic poems. For centuries it remained the aristocratic, noble, royal game, accessible only to a refined taste. Later, it penetrated through Italy and France, and at last it found a home wherever the foot of the white man trod.
Chess, as pointed out, has changed, but in its attire, in its forms only, by no means in its essence, its idea. That has remained unchanged all through the many centuries of its life. To discover this idea is therefore not difficult: at all times Chess has had the will, the intent, the meaning of picturing a war between two parties: a war of extinction, conducted according to rules, laws, in a cultured manner, yet without clemency. This becomes evident from the rules of the game almost at first sight.