Who invented the card game. Who invented playing cards? The appearance of maps in Europe

It would seem that what could be simpler and more familiar than playing cards? I went to any Soyuzpechat kiosk and bought a deck. Usually this will be a deck of not very good quality, but with drawings by Charlemagne (made back in the 19th century!) - satin cards (in the picture below).

Of course, there are still people who prefer to use more expensive decks from world brands designed for poker or bridge. But in any case, a deck of cards is a fairly common item in modern use.

At the same time, a number of myths and simply outright nonsense are associated with playing cards. For example, the myth that cards are the “devil's bible”, or that they originated from the mysterious tarot cards, or that they were invented by gypsies to deceive ordinary people, or by Jews to lead Christians into the temptation of gambling.

And here we can also recall the attempts of various occultists to correlate or link the four suits with the four elements. But I would like to dwell in a little more detail on the myth, according to which the suits are declared symbols of the instruments of Christ’s death on the cross:

• clubs are, of course, the cross itself. Here, by the way, they again slander the Jews, in whose language “club” means “uncleanness,” i.e. something like: “the damned Jews call our Cross unclean!”


• pikes - naturally, the spear with which the centurion Longinus pierced the heart of the Savior.


• tambourines are the nails with which Jesus was nailed to the cross.


• worms - a sponge soaked in vinegar, which was given to Christ.

And so, this short article is designed to dispel these myths and show the reader the main milestones in the history of playing cards.

So, who came up with it? playing cards?

Chinese. Like so many other things.

The Chinese were the first to invent paper, and accordingly, the ability to make gambling devices from paper appeared in China.

Historically, there are several types of playing cards in China. Some Chinese playing cards depict Chinese chess pieces Xiangqi (more precisely, hieroglyphs), others - dominoes, and still others - coins. The last type is called “coin cards”.

Now attention! It was from “coin cards” that European playing cards originated.

So let's look at Chinese coin cards in detail.

A deck of Chinese coin cards looks unusual for you and me. Such a deck has three (or four) suits, each of which has nine (or optionally ten) cards:

1. Coins. Nine cards: from one coin to nine coins.

2. Bundles of coins. Moreover, each bundle contains one hundred coins. Nine cards: from one bundle (100 coins) to nine bundles (900 coins).

What kind of bundles of coins?

The fact is that in China the coins had holes (see picture below):

And the coins were transferred by stringing them on ropes. In our times it was inconvenient, but then it was quite okay. It looked something like this:

3. Tens of thousands of coins. Such quantities of coins are no longer depicted in drawings, but in hieroglyphs. And again there are nine cards: from 10,000 coins to 90,000 coins.

So, in Chinese coin cards, the suits are in a hierarchical relationship, and each subsequent suit is obtained by multiplying the previous suit by 100:

• 1 -> 100 -> 10000


• 2 -> 200 -> 20000



• 9 -> 900 -> 90000

From top to bottom: coins, bundles of coins, tens of thousands of coins.

As you can see, the bundles of coins here look more like some kind of worms, and the cards of the “ten thousand” suit depict funny little people (the dignity of the card is not indicated by them, but by the hieroglyphs on top).

Typically, the denomination and suit designations of Chinese coin cards are even more stylized, and only a player or an expert can understand what is depicted on the card.

Here is not the most complicated drawing yet:

I'll give you a hint: there are coins in the middle, tens of thousands on top, and bundles of coins on the bottom.

In addition to the above picture, you can see the suits of Chinese coin cards in a game such as mahjong. In this game, which looks more like dominoes, but in essence - like the card game rummy, there are also three suits:

• dots (these are coins);


• bamboos (bundles of one hundred coins);


• symbols (tens of thousands of coins).

From top to bottom: dots, bamboos, symbols.

By the way, the peculiarity of coin cards is that each suit in the deck is not one, as in the usual playing cards, but several.

Moreover, in mahjong the situation is the same: there are four sets of dominoes of each suit. Here is a complete set of mahjong "points" for illustration:

In general, in the case of mahjong, we see a kind of reverse movement of the pendulum: before, dominoes were depicted on the cards, but now there are cards on dominoes...

It is also interesting to note that in Europe they can also play not with one, but with several decks at once, for example, when playing the same rummy or when playing solitaire.

Now about the symbolism of the suits and their origin. The ancient European deck had four suits: coins, sticks, cups and swords. I note that these suits are preserved today in Italy and Spain. These are the suits (using threes as an example):

And, as the attentive reader may have noticed, the suit of the “coin” clearly originates from China. And this is indeed true.

The "stick" ("club") suit - also from China - is, so to speak, a European adaptation of the Chinese "bundle of coins" suit.

But where did the “swords” and “cups” come from?

The fact is that playing cards did not come to Europe directly from China.

Europeans adopted maps not from the Chinese, but from the Arabs. Most likely, the so-called Mamluk playing cards, common then in Egypt (it was the Mamluks who ruled there at that time). This happened in the 14th century. In Europe, playing cards were even called originally with Arabic words - naibi, neip.

Mamluk playing cards already had four suits: coins, polo sticks, cups and scimitars.

Perhaps the cups are simply an Arabic interpretation of the Chinese "tens of thousands" suit. But maybe not. “Swords” (scimitars), apparently, were invented by the Arabs.

It was the Arabs who introduced the so-called court cards into the deck - the familiar King, Queen and Jack. The Arabs had these, respectively: Sultan, First Vizier, Second Vizier. In a number of decks there was also a fourth court card - a certain “assistant”.

Of course, you can build all sorts of hypotheses about why the Arabs needed new suits and court cards, about the reason why they decided to remake the Chinese coin cards. You can even drag in all sorts of mysticism here, such as Sufi orders or some Kabbalists who secretly lived among the Arabs. But, in my opinion, the point here is simply that the need for just such a deck was determined by the rules of the card game that developed in Arab culture.

What did Mamluk playing cards look like? Here are schematic images of the court cards of the Mamluk deck:

From top to bottom: coins, polo sticks, bowls, scimitars. From left to right: Sultan, Vizier, Second Vizier.

In reality, the Mamluk maps looked like this:

The picture above shows three court cards in the polo stick suit. From left to right: Sultan, Vizier, Second Vizier.

So, in the 14th century, Mamluk maps came to Europe, which were changed in accordance with European culture. Just as the Arabs once remade Chinese playing cards for themselves, so the Europeans adapted Arabic cards to their own needs.

The suits remained practically unchanged (except that scimitars became swords, and polo sticks became just sticks), but they began to draw cards in a European way (in Europe there was no ban on the depiction of living beings, unlike the Muslim East). The court cards accordingly changed to King, Knight and Page (Squire), plus/minus Queen.

And in the 15th century, tarot cards appeared in Europe (namely, in Italy). They evolved from regular playing cards by adding trumps (usually 21 trumps) and a special card called "Fool".

So it is not that playing cards evolved from tarot cards through simplification, but that tarot cards evolved from ordinary playing cards through complication.

Moreover, tarot cards were created specifically for play, and not at all for fortune telling or transmitting some kind of occult wisdom. They played a game called Triumphs using tarot cards. These cards themselves were originally called triumphs (the word “tarot” arose much later).

By the way, here is an interesting point that shows that similar elements in different cultures can develop in a similar way: in addition to point cards in the tarot, there are also trump cards. On these trump cards we see various allegorical images, including virtues.

Here are three virtues from the so-called “Marseilles” tarot (other types of tarot decks may have different sets of virtues):

And in mahjong, in addition to the “spectacle dominoes” (dots, bamboos and symbols), there are dominoes with allegories of virtues:

• red dragon - moderation;


• green dragon - prosperity;


• white dragon - benevolence, sincerity and filial piety.

And here is their more traditional image (hieroglyphic):

How did the familiar suit symbols appear - diamonds, clubs, hearts and spades? Such suits, by the way, are usually called French.

In general, it is not difficult to guess that French suits are nothing more than a simplification and stylization of the original suits (Italo-Spanish, in Italy and Spain, let me remind you, they are still used today). Thus:

• the coins turned into diamonds;


• sticks - into clubs;


• cups - into hearts;


• swords - in spades.

• coins - bells - tambourines;


• sticks - acorns - clubs;


• cups - hearts - hearts;


• swords - leaves - spades.

Obviously, the conclusion about the origin of French suits from German ones is quite logical, given that German suits are simpler than Italian-Spanish ones, but are still full-fledged designs, and not simplified signs.

So let's summarize:

1. Playing cards were invented in China.


2. The Arabs adopted them from the Chinese. Arabs have Europeans.


3. The symbols of the suits (Italian-Spanish, German, French) have nothing to do with the occult or any kind of devilry.


4. Tarot cards are special shape playing cards, which is created on the basis of ordinary playing cards.

Once again a deck of cards flashed before my eyes and I wondered, who even drew the cards we usually play? Nowadays there are many different cards, but since the times Soviet Union the deck was approximately the same, like the one in the top picture.

Those maps that we are accustomed to since childhood came to us at the beginning of the 17th century through Poland and Germany from France. The “Russian deck” of 36 cards is a stripped-down (i.e. starting with sixes) 54-card “French deck”. But let's start from the beginning...

The invention of this entertainment, an inexhaustible source of joys and sorrows, is attributed to the cunning Egyptians, the fatalistic Indians, and the cheerful Greeks in the person of Palamedes. However, during excavations, if gambling “tools” were found, it was mainly in the form of hexagonal-shaped dice-cubes.

It is generally accepted that the first maps appeared later, in the 12th century in China. Masters of filling their leisure time, the court aristocrats, initially discovered aesthetic fun in drawing small pictures with allegorical signs of animals, birds and plants. Then - a convenient way of transmitting secret information in the matter of palace and love affairs. And later - the possibility of risky games with the all-powerful Fatum.

But the Egyptian version of the origin of the cards, replicated by modern occultists, is much more popular. They claimed that in ancient times, Egyptian priests wrote down all the wisdom of the world on 78 golden tablets, which were also depicted in the symbolic form of cards. 56 of them are “ Minor Arcana" - became ordinary playing cards, and the remaining 22 "Major Arcana" became part of the mysterious Tarot deck used for fortune telling. This version was first published in 1785 by the French occultist Etteila, and his successors, the French Eliphas Levi and Dr. Papus and the English Mathers and Crowley, created their own systems for interpreting Tarot cards. The name supposedly comes from the Egyptian “ta rosh” (“the path of kings”), and the maps themselves were brought to Europe either by Arabs or gypsies, who were often considered to have come from Egypt.

True, scientists were unable to find any evidence of such an early existence of the Tarot deck.

According to the third version (European version), ordinary maps appeared on the European continent no later than the 14th century. Back in 1367, card games were banned in the city of Bern, and ten years later, a shocked papal envoy watched in horror as the monks enthusiastically played cards near the walls of their monastery. In 1392, Jacquemin Gringonner, the jester of the mentally ill French King Charles VI, drew a deck of cards for the amusement of his master. The deck of that time differed from the current one in one detail: it had only 32 cards. There were four ladies missing, whose presence seemed unnecessary at the time. Only in the next century did Italian artists begin to depict Madonnas not only in paintings, but also on maps.

Just at this time, Europe began to carry out large military expeditions to the East - the Crusades (1096-1270), and for the first time Europeans discovered a new and already highly developed culture. Returning home, the crusaders did not forget to take with them the exotic things that amazed them: light porcelain, the finest silk, painted fans and, of course, charming miniatures on thick rice paper for tricks and fortune telling.

However, a lot of time passed before card games became widespread. In any case, the first mention in the chronicles of the Saracen game “naib” (Arabic “naib” - cards) dates back to the last quarter of the 14th century. It is characteristic that, in full accordance with the Arabic sound, the word “cards” in Italian is “naibi”; in Spanish "naipes"; in Portuguese “naipe” (this was associated with brisk trade with Arab countries and close contact with local merchants, known for their passion for paying for goods “by chance,” i.e. according to the principle of the unforgettable Nozdryov).

In other European countries, a different root word has been firmly established: in France - “carte”, in Germany - “Karten, SpielKarten”, in Denmark - “Kort, SpelKort”, in Holland - “Kaarten, SpeelKarten”, in England - “card” "

At the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries, maps were made directly by the artist and to individual orders. Naturally, its productivity was low, and only with the invention of engraving did map printing take on a large scale.

Three main types of playing cards are stacked at the same time: Italian, French and German. All of them had differences both in suits and in the figures themselves.

The Italian type of cards arose with the invention of the game "tarok". These maps, made as copper engravings, were very unique. In a normal, or “Venetian” tarok, the deck consisted of 78 cards, the suits were divided into cups, denarii, swords and clubs. Each suit contained 14 cards: king, queen, knight, jack, point cards from ten to six, ace of swords, point cards from five to two. The remaining 21 cards, starting from the Figurate and ending with the card called Light, were trump cards, or Triumphs. Finally, there was another card called the Fool (by the way, a prototype of the future Joker). In Florence, 98 cards were issued, where graces, elements and 12 constellations were added to the usual Triumphs.

There is an assumption that a deck is not a random collection of cards. 52 cards are the number of weeks in a year, four suits are the four seasons. Green suit is a symbol of energy and vitality, spring, west, water. In medieval cards, the sign of the suit was depicted using a rod, staff, or stick with green leaves, which were simplified to black spades when printing cards. The red color symbolized beauty, north, spirituality. The card of this suit depicted cups, bowls, hearts, and books. The yellow suit is a symbol of intelligence, fire, south, and business success. The playing card depicted a coin, a rhombus, a lit torch, the sun, fire, and a golden bell. Blue suit is a symbol of simplicity and decency. The sign of this suit was an acorn, crossed swords, swords.

Cards at that time were 22 centimeters long, which made them extremely inconvenient to play.

There was no uniformity in card suits. In early Italian decks they were called "swords", "cups", "denarii" (coins) and "wands". It seems, as in India, it was associated with classes: the nobility, clergy and merchant class, while the rod symbolized the one standing above them royal power. In the French version, swords became “spades”, cups became “hearts”, denarii became “diamonds”, and “wands” became “crosses” or “clubs” (the latter word means “clover leaf” in French). . These names still sound different in different languages; for example, in England and Germany these are “shovels”, “hearts”, “diamonds” and “bludgeons”, and in Italy they are “spears”, “hearts”, “squares” and “flowers”. On German cards you can still find the old names of the suits: “acorns”, “hearts”, “bells” and “leaves”. As for the Russian word “hearts,” it comes from the word “chervonny” (“red”): it is clear that “hearts” originally referred to the red suit.

Mamluk maps. Ten of Cups, Three of Cups, First Advisor of Cups, Second Advisor of Cups

The Hofämterspiel deck reflects the political situation in Central Europe in the mid-15th century. Instead of suits, the coats of arms of the four most influential kingdoms of that time were taken: France, Germany, Bohemia and Hungary. The single-headed eagle represents the "regnum teutonicum" kingdom of Germany (as opposed to the double-headed eagle representing the Holy Roman Empire).

Read more about her HERE.

Early card games were quite complex, because in addition to 56 standard cards, they used 22 “Major Arcana” plus another 20 trump cards, named after the signs of the Zodiac and the elements. IN different countries these cards were called differently and the rules were so confused that it became simply impossible to play. In addition, the cards were hand-colored and were so expensive that only the rich could purchase them. In the 16th century, the cards were radically simplified - almost all the pictures disappeared from them, with the exception of the four “high suits” and the jester (joker).

Cards of the Italian type appeared in France at the end of the 14th century, and already under Charles VII (1403-1461) cards with their own national suits appeared: heart, sickle of the moon, trefoil and spade. And at the end of the 15th century, the type of suits that are still used today was finally established in French cards: hearts (coeur), diamonds (carreau), clubs (trefle) and spades (pique). Since this time, French cards have acquired a stable type, which is characterized by the following figures: David - king of spades, Alexander - king of clubs, Caesar - king of diamonds, Charles - king of hearts, Pallas - queen of spades, Argina - queen of clubs, Rachel - queen of diamonds , Judith is the queen of hearts, Hector is the jack of diamonds, Ogier is the jack of spades, Lancelot is the jack of clubs and Lagir is the jack of hearts. This type of map reached the French Revolution of 1789-1894.

The new republican government entrusts not just anyone, but the most famous painter at that time, J.L. David (the author of the famous painting “The Death of Marat”) to create new drawings of cards. Instead of kings, David depicted the geniuses of war, trade, peace and the arts, replaced the ladies with allegories of freedom of religion, the press, marriage and trades, and instead of jacks he painted figures symbolizing the equality of fortunes, rights, duties and races. It was in France that forms of four colors originally appeared: ivy leaves, acorns, bells, hearts. It is a very plausible assumption that the French suits are symbols of knightly use: a lance is a spear, a club is a sword, a diamond is a coat of arms or oriflamme (banner, standard), and hearts are a shield.

On these cards from the French "deck on feet" (1648), the images are labeled with their names.

It is also necessary to say that for many centuries maps were “single-headed,” i.e. the figures on them were depicted in full height. The first maps without a “top” and “bottom”, “two-headed”, were produced by Italy at the end of the 17th century. At this time, these cards were not widely used. Then a similar attempt was made in Belgium, and at the beginning of the 19th century France began to produce such maps.

Traditional deck. Germany

Traditional deck. Switzerland

By the way, the tradition of magnificently decorating the Ace of Spades came from the fact that during the reign of King James I of England (1566-1625), a decree was issued according to which information about the manufacturer and its logo had to be printed on the Ace of Spades (since this card is the first in the deck). . A special stamp was placed on the same ace, indicating the payment of a special tax on cards.

In addition to these basic types of maps, so-called “thematic” maps were issued in various European countries. There were “pedagogical” decks that taught players geography, history or grammar. Illustration cards for the dramas of Shakespeare, Schiller, and Moliere enjoyed success. “Toys for adults” reflected heraldry, palmistry and even fashion. For example, in the middle of the last century, cards were printed in France on which the clothes of kings, queens and jacks represented the latest models of the season...

By the 13th century, maps were already known and popular throughout Europe. From this moment on, the history of the development of cards becomes clearer, but rather monotonous. In the Middle Ages, both fortune telling and gambling were considered sinful. In addition, cards have become the most popular game during the working day - a terrible sin, according to employers of all times. Therefore, from the middle of the 13th century, the history of the development of cards turns into the history of prohibitions associated with them.

For example, in France in the 17th century, householders in whose apartments played gambling card games paid a fine and lost civil rights and were expelled from the city. Card debts were not recognized by law, and parents could recover a large sum from the person who won money from their child. After the French Revolution, indirect taxes on the game were abolished, which stimulated its development. The “pictures” themselves also changed - since the kings were in disgrace, it was customary to draw geniuses instead, ladies now symbolized virtues - in other words, a new social structure came into card symbolism. True, already in 1813, jacks, queens and kings returned to the cards. The indirect tax on game cards was only abolished in France in 1945.

Maps appeared in Russia at the beginning of the 17th century. The largest Russian critic and art historian V.V. Stasov believed that the cards got to Slavic peoples from the Germans, without denying, however, that Poland played the role of the main mediator in this matter. But no matter how playing cards got into Little Russia or Muscovy, they spread extremely quickly. Of the legislative monuments, the Code of 1649 is the first to mention maps and their undeniable harmfulness to society. For more than a century, card games were persecuted by law in Russia, and players caught in the act were subjected to various punishments, until in 1761 it was established that games were divided into prohibited - gambling and permitted - commercial.

A decree of 1696 under Peter I ordered that everyone suspected of wanting to play cards be searched, “... and anyone whose cards are taken out should be beaten with a whip.” These punitive sanctions and similar ones that followed were due to the costs associated with the spread of gambling card games. Along with them, there were the so-called commercial card games, as well as the use of cards for performing tricks and playing solitaire.

The development of “innocent” forms of using cards was facilitated by Elizabeth Petrovna’s decree of 1761 dividing the use of cards into what was prohibited for gambling and what was permitted for commercial games. The route of penetration of cards into Russia is not entirely clear. Most likely, they became widespread in connection with the Polish-Swedish intervention during the Time of Troubles at the beginning of the 18th century.

Card games, which found a warm welcome in boyar houses and palace chambers, were certainly prohibited for the common people. In 1648, shortly after the accession of Alexei Mikhailovich, a royal decree was issued aimed at eradicating harmful customs and beliefs that still persisted among the urban and especially rural population. The decree listed in detail numerous sins that required immediate eradication:

“...Many people, male and female, come together at the dawns, and in the night they cast spells, from the first sunrise they watch the days of the moon, and during a loud crash (in a thunderstorm) on rivers and lakes they buy, hope for their health from this, and wash themselves with silver, and bears lead, and dogs dance, and cards, and chess, and play with ankles, and disorderly jumping and splashing, and sing demonic songs; and on Holy Week, wives and girls are jumping on boards (on swings), and on the Nativity of Christ and before the Epiphany, many people, male and female, come together in a demonic host due to demonic charm, many demonic actions are played in all sorts of demonic games ... ".

It should be noted that along with gambling card games, such completely innocent fun as riding on a swing was also prohibited!

The decree of 1648 introduced a whole range of measures to combat card games and other “disorders”. It was ordered to be read out “many times” at the auction, lists from it “word for word” were sent to the largest villages and volosts, so that “this strong order of ours would be known to all people” and no one could then excuse it by ignorance.

Buffoon clothes, haris and masks, musical instruments, chess boards and decks of cards were ordered to be taken away and burned, and in relation to people noticed in violation of the decree, the governors were ordered “where such outrage appears, or who will say such outrage against whom, and you would order them to be beaten; and which people will not give up on such outrages, but will take out such godly card games and others, and you would order those disobedient ones to be beaten by batogs; and those people who do not give up on this, but show up in such guilt for the third and fourth time, and those, according to our decree, were ordered to be exiled to the Ukrainian (i.e., border) cities for disgrace.” And the governors themselves, so that they would not skimp on the implementation of the decree, were given a strict instruction: “But you will not act according to this decree of ours, and you will be in great disgrace from us (Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich).”

It must be assumed that initially the decree was carried out with all its inherent harshness, and more than one gambler had his back stripped with whips or sticks at the auction. But according to the saying “the cruelty of laws in Rus' is mitigated by the possibility of their non-execution,” the effect of this decree gradually faded away - mainly due to the physical impossibility of its implementation.

The next and very noticeable blow to playing cards was dealt the following year, 1649. The compilers of the famous “Code” of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich classified card playing and its consequences as crimes of extreme criminality, cruelly punishable by injury and death. In the 1649 edition of the Code, an article related to the “card game” is placed in the chapter “on robberies and Tatin affairs.”

“And those thieves,” it is said in this article, “in Moscow and in the cities they steal, play cards and grains, and, losing, steal, walking along the streets, cutting people, tearing off hats and robbing ...”, then such should have been, after interrogation with torture, “make the decree (sentence) the same as written above about tatekh (robbers), that is, put in prison, confiscate property, beat with a whip, cut off ears (in the subsequent edition of the Code - fingers and hands) and execute by death "

The classification of card games as a serious crime had a great impact on the trading of playing cards. The surviving customs books show that after 1649 the import of cards, for example, to Veliky Ustyug, was halved compared to previous years, and after 1652 it stopped altogether. But has the card game stopped?

Special personalized royal decrees of 1668 and 1670 introduced special treatment in the Kremlin: people of various ranks - from the steward and below - were strictly forbidden to enter the Kremlin on horseback, to gamble during the Tsar's appearances in cathedral churches; when the Tsar appeared, they were ordered to stand without hats "peacefully and serenely."

Significant government spending to conduct military operations required a constant search for new sources of income. An interesting document has been preserved dating back to the end of the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich and indicating that among the Moscow administration, probably convinced of the ineradicability of the card game, a happy idea arose to turn it into a source of state income. The Moscow government has repeatedly acted in this way ingeniously before, replacing the brutal persecution of the use of vodka and tobacco with a monopoly state-owned trade in these goods, to a greater increase in the treasury.

The mentioned document is a charter given to the Turin governor Alexei Beklemishev in Siberia in 1675. It turned out that from Tobolsk to Moscow before that “voivode Pyotr Godunov and clerk Mikhailo Postnikov wrote that they (it is unknown on what basis) gave away grain and cards in Tobolsk to the farmer,” in other words, they allowed the opening of gambling houses at the expense of the treasury and under its cover Houses. (Let us note in parentheses that along with the cards, the enterprising governor also farmed out “married wives for fornication” - and all for the benefit of the treasury!)

Many other cities of the “Tobolsk category” wanted to follow the seductive initiative of Godunov and Postnikov. Voivodes from Verkhoturye and Surgut wrote, “that grain and cards should be farmed out to them for the same reason.” The great sovereign pointed out these simple-minded writings: in Tobolsk and other cities, “set aside the grain and cards and pay off the grain and cards from the salary.” The letter ordered the governor of the Turin fort, Beklemishev, to do the same, even if, following the example of Tobolsk and according to Godunov’s “unsubscribes,” he had already farmed out the grain and cards. Knowing the customs of local administrators, who easily found loopholes in decrees, the tsar’s letter especially indicated: “the tax farmer himself, he will suddenly be sent from Tobolsk, and not the Turin tenant, and he will be expelled from Turinsk, and henceforth a strong order will be made.”

The persecution of card games was not limited to prohibitory decrees. In 1672, by order of Alexei Mikhailovich, Lutheran pastor Johann Gottfried Gregory built a new theater church in Preobrazhenskoye, and in November the first performance was given before the Tsar - the comedy “Artxer’s Action”. This was followed by new productions of a comedic and moralizing nature. The play “The History or Action of the Gospel Parable of the Prodigal Son,” composed by Simeon of Polotsk, became famous. This production is remarkable in that a kind of theatrical “programme” was published for it, in which scenes from the action were shown in the drawings, accompanied by explanations. In the story, the prodigal son, having received part of the estate from his father, leaves home and begins a wild life. He hires many servants, plays with grain and cards, gets involved with mistresses and, finally, squanders his entire estate.

In one of the pictures of this “program” the prodigal son is shown playing cards and grains at a table, surrounded by players. This is the earliest depiction of a card game in Russia.

After the death of Alexei Mikhailovich in 1676, the persecution against gamblers softened significantly. In the royal decrees sent to localities, there was no longer the previous intimidation of players with injuries and executions for the very fact of playing cards; the whole threat is limited to a vague expression - “the order to repair strong.” The import of playing cards into Russia resumed and even increased significantly; 17,136 decks of them were brought to Veliky Ustyug alone in 1676-1680.

Soon after the permission of card games, Russia began its own production of playing cards. Already in 1765, the government of Catherine II established a tax on both imported playing cards and domestically produced cards, and the duty on foreign cards was twice as high. The printing of playing cards in Russia was farmed out, i.e. was in private hands and brought decent incomes to tax farmers, who sold an average of about one million decks a year. The money received as a result of taxes went to the benefit of Orphanages. And on the lands of the family estate of the Vyazemsky princes (P.A. Vyazemsky - one of the descendants of this ancient family - was a close friend of A.S. Pushkin), near the village of Aleksandrovo near St. Petersburg, Abbot Ossovsky, having received financial assistance from the government, built in 1798 year of the building of the Alexander Manufactory, which at the beginning of the 19th century became one of the largest enterprises in Russia. After a year of work, the manufactory was transferred to the treasury and was donated by Paul I to the Orphanage. In 1817, the manager of the manufactory A.Ya. Wilson proposed to the Board of Trustees to open a card factory at the manufactory. A note was drawn up, which was approved by Alexander I on October 12, 1817. The government was going to make huge profits, because a factory with a monopoly on the production of cards eliminated any outside competition. The decision not to give farm-outs, which expired in 1819, and the ban on the import of cards from abroad gave the treasury the opportunity to set any selling price for the cards.

In 1819, the factory produced its first products. During this year, 240 thousand decks were produced, which began to be sold throughout Russian Empire(in 1820, card production increased to 1,380 thousand decks).

The new map sketches that were created did not have their own names. The concept of “satin” in the mid-19th century referred to the technology of their manufacture. Satin is a special type of smooth, glossy, shiny silk fabric. The paper on which they were printed was first rubbed with talcum powder on special rolling machines.

Let's return to our question about maps of the Pushkin era (“The Queen of Spades” was written in 1833). At this time and until 1860, on the back of the cards there was an image of a pelican feeding two children with the meat of its own heart. This allegorical sign was explained by the inscription: “Without sparing himself, he feeds the chicks.” The ironic phrase of one of the characters in N.S.’s story becomes clear. Leskova “Interesting Men”: “In order not to get bored, we sat down under the evening bells to “cut”, or, as they say, “to work for the benefit of the imperial orphanage.” But there was benefit. In 1835, a dozen decks cost 12 rubles, and were sold for 24. By the mid-50s, cards were produced three times more than those produced by farmers in 1818, while profits increased 4.5 times and amounted to 500 thousand rubles per year .

The maps of this time that interest us had the character of folk popular prints (professional artists had not yet been involved in the activities of the factory). They depicted funny German knights on horses the size of ponies, and big-headed, clumsy ladies. For example, the Queen of Spades, if she wanted, could not scare the player crazy, as happened with the impressionable Hermann. But the more obvious is the brilliant idea of ​​Pushkin, who built the intrigue of the story on the external discrepancy between the funny card characters and their hidden fatal role.

The elegant drawings of cards without top and bottom that we are familiar with today were born thanks to the talent of academician of painting A.I. Charlemagne. In 1860, the factory's assortment expanded incredibly: cards of reduced sizes, solitaire, travel, children's, educational and fortune-telling cards began to be produced. But the more intensively production developed, the more “archaic” the drawings on the cards looked in the taste of folk primitiveness.

Being a historical painter and battle painter, A.I. Charlemagne tries himself in different areas of art. He makes illustrations for the works of A.S. Pushkin and other famous writers, makes sketches for the Imperial Porcelain Factory and, in addition, creates originals for playing cards. The merit of the artist lies in the fact that he, a talented draftsman and an expert on history, managed to find the right tone in solving the figurative structure of all the cards. Thanks to him, playing cards began to be distinguished by their unique style and integrity of image-symbols.

The factory's products were successfully demonstrated at the World Industrial Exhibitions in Paris in 1867 and 1878. In 1893, playing cards with Charlemagne's designs were presented at the Chicago World's Fair and received a bronze medal and an honorary diploma.

The new map sketches that were created did not have their own name and were not called Atlas. The very concept of “satin” in the mid-19th century did not refer to the design or special style of cards, but to the technology of their production. The word itself called satin then, and even now, it refers to a special type of smooth, glossy, shiny silk fabric. The paper from which maps were then made was rough, with spots and stains, poorly glued, and often had different thicknesses in the sheet. To give the cards an improved appearance, the paper on which they were printed was first rubbed with talcum powder on special rolling machines, the operation of which was extremely harmful to health. Cards made on satin paper were not afraid of moisture, glided well when shuffled and were more expensive. In 1855, a dozen decks of satin cards cost 5 rubles 40 kopecks, on par with gold-edged cards made by hand for the imperial court.

A.I. Charlemagne. Solitaire playing cards.1862.

Charlemagne's drawings were used in the production of satin maps, first and second grade maps, as well as "Extra" maps already in the 30s of the 20th century. Gradually, all card products began to be produced on satin paper, and the name Satin was firmly attached to Charlemagne cards. In the “Price Courant of Retail Prices for 1935” of the State Card Monopoly, which was administered by the People’s Commissariat of Finance, a deck of “Satin” cards of 52-53 cards cost 6 rubles.

An interesting question - who was the prototype of the card characters? Russian card figures are anonymous, but the French cards that served as the basis for Charlemagne's work have their exact names, which were and are still written directly on the cards. Charlemagne, king of the Franks, led the suit of hearts; shepherd, singer and Hebrew king David - peak; Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great were given the suit of diamonds and clubs. The queen of hearts was the heroine of the biblical legend Judith, and the especially famous queen of spades in Russia was the Greek goddess of wisdom and war, Pallas Athena. The suit of diamonds has traditionally been associated with wealth; the symbol of the suit of diamonds itself, which we are accustomed to seeing in the form of a rhombus, is still called “diamond” - diamond.

Travel playing cards. 1870s Based on the originals by A.I. Charlemagne St. Petersburg. Card factory at the Imperial Orphanage. Collection of A.S. Perelman

In the 16th century, the lady of the tambourine was given the features of Rachel, the heroine of the biblical legend about the life of Jacob. According to legend, she was a greedy woman, which was quite consistent with her new card position. The image of the queen of clubs has become collective. She began to be depicted as saying modern language, a sex bomb, to which the nickname Argina, the regal one, has firmly stuck. This word became so popular that all the queens, as well as the favorites and mistresses of the French kings, were called by this name behind their backs. In the form of jacks, Etienne de Vignelles, a knight from the time of Charles VII (hearts), the noble Ogier of Denmark (spades), one of the knights of the Round Table, Hector de Mare (diamonds), and finally Sir Lancelot himself, the senior knight of the Round Table (clubs), went down in history. During the time of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, Russian players also called cards by name. The poet V.I. Maikov in the poem “The Ombre Player” boldly throws Ogier, a jack of spades, onto the table.

From the end of the 18th century, a real card boom began, sweeping the entire Russian culture. For example, in his youth, Derzhavin lived mainly on money won at cards, and Pushkin in police reports was listed not as a poet, but as “a well-known banker in Moscow.” Gambling Nekrasov and Dostoevsky often lost their last kopecks, but the cautious Turgenev preferred playing “for fun.” In the secular society of that time, especially provincial ones, almost the only entertainment was cards and the scandals associated with them.

A.E. Beideman Playing cards. Paper, watercolor, ink, pen

Gradually, card games were divided into commercial ones, based on clear mathematical calculations, and gambling games, where chance ruled everything. If the first (vint, whist, preference, bridge, poker) established themselves among educated people, then the second (seka, “point”, shtoss and hundreds of others, right down to the harmless “throw-up fool”) reigned supreme among the common people.

Traditional deck. Italy

In the West, “mental” card games that train logical thinking have even been included in the school curriculum. However, cards began to be used for completely non-intellectual activities. If they depict naked girls, there is no time for bridge. But this is a completely different game.

It must be said that over the centuries there have been many people who want to modernize card images, replacing them with animals, birds, and household items. For political purposes, decks were produced where Napoleon or the German Emperor Wilhelm acted as kings. And in the USSR, during the NEP years, there were attempts to depict workers with peasants on maps and even introduce new suits - “sickles”, “hammers” and “stars”. True, such amateur activity was quickly stopped, and maps were stopped printing for a long time as “attributes of bourgeois decay.”
So, what cards do we usually play now?

A.I. Charlemagne. Playing cards. Cardboard, ink, pen, watercolor, gouache. Collection of A.S. Perelman

1875 Atlas maps made according to the sketch of A. Charlemagne

Drawings of card figures with Charlemagne's monogram are made in the full size of a card deck. Created by order of a card factory in the 1860s - 1870s and still remain the most famous and popular card designs in Russia.

Rare modern man did not hold playing cards in his hands.

There are several versions of their appearance, and researchers have not yet come to a consensus on this matter.
Cards have an ancient and very dramatic history. It has long been believed that cards were invented in France to amuse the mentally ill King Charles VI the Mad, but this is just a legend. After all, already in Ancient Egypt played with cuttings with numbers marked on them, in India - with ivory plates or shells; In China, maps similar to modern ones have been known since the 12th century.

There are several versions of the origin of the cards:

The first is Chinese, although many still do not want to believe in it.
Chinese and Japanese cards are too unusual for us both in appearance and in the nature of the game, which is more like dominoes.
However, there is no doubt that already in the 8th century in China, first sticks and then strips of paper with the designations of various symbols were used for games.
These distant ancestors of cards were also used instead of money, so they had three suits: a coin, two coins and many coins.
And in India, playing cards depicted the figure of a four-armed Shiva holding a cup, a sword, a coin and a staff.
Some believe that these symbols of the four Indian classes gave rise to modern card suits.

But the Egyptian version of the origin of the cards, replicated by modern occultists, is much more popular.
They claimed that in ancient times, Egyptian priests wrote down all the wisdom of the world on 78 golden tablets, which were also depicted in the symbolic form of cards. 56 of them - the "Minor Arcana" - became ordinary playing cards, and the remaining 22 "Major Arcana" became part of the mysterious Tarot deck used for fortune telling.
This version was first published in 1785 by the French occultist Etteila, and his successors, the French Eliphas Levi and Dr. Papus and the English Mathers and Crowley, created their own systems for interpreting Tarot cards.
This name supposedly comes from the Egyptian “ta rosh” (“the path of kings”), and the maps themselves were brought to Europe either by Arabs or gypsies, who were often considered to have come from Egypt.
True, scientists were unable to find any evidence of such an early existence of the Tarot deck.

According to the third version (European version), ordinary maps appeared on the European continent no later than the 14th century.
Back in 1367, card games were banned in the city of Bern, and ten years later, a shocked papal envoy watched in horror as the monks enthusiastically played cards near the walls of their monastery.
In 1392, Jacquemin Gringonner, the jester of the mentally ill French King Charles VI, drew a deck of cards for the amusement of his master.
The deck of that time differed from the current one in one detail: it had only 32 cards.
There were four ladies missing, whose presence seemed unnecessary at the time.
Only in the next century did Italian artists begin to depict Madonnas not only in paintings, but also on maps.

There is an assumption that a deck is not a random collection of cards.
52 cards are the number of weeks in a year, four suits are the four seasons.
Green suit is a symbol of energy and vitality, spring, west, water.
In medieval cards, the sign of the suit was depicted using a rod, staff, or stick with green leaves, which were simplified to black spades when printing cards.
The red color symbolized beauty, north, spirituality. The card of this suit depicted cups, bowls, hearts, and books.
The yellow suit is a symbol of intelligence, fire, south, and business success.
The playing card depicted a coin, a rhombus, a lit torch, the sun, fire, and a golden bell. Blue suit is a symbol of simplicity and decency. The sign of this suit was an acorn, crossed swords, swords. Cards at that time were 22 centimeters long, which made them extremely inconvenient to play.

There was no uniformity in card suits.
In early Italian decks they were called "swords", "cups", "denarii" (coins) and "wands".
It seems, as in India, to be associated with classes: the nobility, clergy and merchant class, while the rod symbolized the royal power that stood over them.
In the French version, swords became “spades”, cups became “hearts”, denarii became “diamonds”, and “wands” became “crosses” or “clubs” (the latter word means “clover leaf” in French). . These names still sound different in different languages; for example, in England and Germany these are “shovels”, “hearts”, “diamonds” and “bludgeons”, and in Italy they are “spears”, “hearts”, “squares” and “flowers”.
On German cards you can still find the old names of the suits: “acorns”, “hearts”, “bells” and “leaves”.
As for the Russian word "hearts", it comes from the word "chervonny" ("red"): it is clear that "hearts" originally referred to the red suit.

Early card games were quite complex, because in addition to 56 standard cards, they used 22 “Major Arcana” plus another 20 trump cards, named after the signs of the Zodiac and the elements.
In different countries these cards were called differently and the rules were so confused that it became simply impossible to play.
In addition, the cards were hand-colored and were so expensive that only the rich could purchase them. In the 16th century, the cards were radically simplified - almost all the pictures disappeared from them, with the exception of the four “high suits” and the jester (joker).

Interestingly, all card images had real or legendary prototypes. For example, the Four Kings are the greatest monarchs of antiquity: Charlemagne (hearts), the biblical King David (spades), Julius Caesar (diamonds) and Alexander the Great (clubs).
There was no such unanimity regarding the ladies - for example, the Queen of Hearts was either Judith, Helen of Troy, or Dido.
The Queen of Spades has traditionally been depicted as the goddess of war - Athena, Minerva and even Joan of Arc.
After much debate, the biblical Rachel began to be portrayed as the queen of spades: she was ideally suited for the role of the “queen of money”, since she robbed her own father.
Finally, the Queen of Clubs, who appeared on early Italian cards as the virtuous Lucretia, turned into Argina, an allegory of vanity and vanity.

By the 13th century, maps were already known and popular throughout Europe.
From this moment on, the history of the development of cards becomes clearer, but rather monotonous. In the Middle Ages, both fortune telling and gambling were considered sinful.
In addition, cards have become the most popular game during the working day - a terrible sin, according to employers of all times.
Therefore, from the middle of the 13th century, the history of the development of cards turns into the history of prohibitions associated with them.
For example, in France in the 17th century, householders in whose apartments played gambling card games paid a fine, were deprived of their civil rights and were expelled from the city.
Card debts were not recognized by law, and parents could recover a large sum from the person who won money from their child.
After the French Revolution, indirect taxes on the game were abolished, which stimulated its development.
The “pictures” themselves also changed - since the kings were in disgrace, it was customary to draw geniuses instead, ladies now symbolized virtues - in other words, a new social structure came to card symbolism.
True, already in 1813, jacks, queens and kings returned to the cards.
The indirect tax on game cards was only abolished in France in 1945.

Maps appeared in Russia at the beginning of the 17th century.
By the middle of this century, they had already gained popularity as a “path” to crimes and inciting passions. In the “Code” of 1649 under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, it was prescribed to deal with players “as it is written about the tatas,” that is, to beat them with a whip and deprive them of fingers and hands by cutting off.
A decree of 1696 under Peter I ordered that anyone suspected of wanting to play cards be searched, "... and anyone whose cards are taken out should be beaten with a whip." These punitive sanctions and similar ones that followed were due to the costs associated with the spread of gambling card games.
Along with them, there were the so-called commercial card games, as well as the use of cards for performing tricks and playing solitaire.
The development of “innocent” forms of using cards was facilitated by Elizabeth Petrovna’s decree of 1761 dividing the use of cards into what was prohibited for gambling and what was permitted for commercial games.
The route of penetration of cards into Russia is not entirely clear.
Most likely, they became widespread in connection with the Polish-Swedish intervention during the Time of Troubles at the beginning of the 18th century.
In the 19th century The development of new designs for playing cards began.
Academicians of painting Adolf Iosifovich Charlemagne and Alexander Egorovich Beideman studied it.
It is worth noting that their sketches are currently stored in the State Russian Museum and the Peterhof Card Museum.
However, the drawings of Academician Adolf Iosifovich Charlemagne, which we now know as Atlas Maps, were put into production.
A.I. Charlemagne did not create a fundamentally new card style.
The drawings on the Atlas cards were based on the so-called “North German picture”, which also came from a very ancient folk French card deck.
The new map sketches that were created did not have their own names.
The concept of “satin” in the mid-19th century referred to the technology of their manufacture.
Satin is a special type of smooth, glossy, shiny silk fabric.
The paper on which they were printed was first rubbed with talcum powder on special rolling machines.
In 1855, a dozen decks of satin cards cost 5 rubles 40 kopecks.

From the end of the 18th century, a real card boom began, sweeping the entire Russian culture.
For example, in his youth Derzhavin lived mainly on money won at cards, and Pushkin in police reports was listed not as a poet, but as “a well-known banker in Moscow.”
Gambling Nekrasov and Dostoevsky often lost their last kopecks, while the cautious Turgenev preferred playing “for fun.”
In the secular society of that time, especially provincial ones, almost the only entertainment was cards and the scandals associated with them.
Gradually, card games were divided into commercial ones, based on clear mathematical calculations, and gambling games, where chance ruled everything.
If the first (vint, whist, preference, bridge, poker) established themselves among educated people, then the second (sec, "point", shtoss and hundreds of others, right down to the harmless "throwing fool") reigned supreme among the common people.
In the West, “mental” card games that train logical thinking have even been included in the school curriculum.
However, cards began to be used for completely non-intellectual activities.
If they depict naked girls, there is no time for bridge.
But this is a completely different game.
It must be said that over the centuries there have been many people who want to modernize card images, replacing them with animals, birds, and household items.
For political purposes, decks were produced where Napoleon or the German Emperor Wilhelm acted as kings.
And in the USSR, during the NEP years, there were attempts to depict workers with peasants on maps and even introduce new colors - “sickles”, “hammers” and “stars”.
True, such amateur activity was quickly stopped, and maps were stopped printing for a long time as “attributes of bourgeois decay.”

Playing cards are known all over the world. But no one knows where and when they appeared. Some medieval theologians considered them a “devilish invention” that Satan invented to multiply human sins. More sensible people argued that this could not happen, because cards were originally used for fortune telling and other magical rituals, that is, to know the will of God.

Very interesting evidence was cited as evidence, which will certainly be of interest to everyone who has ever picked up a satin deck. According to one version, the invention of cards was attributed to the ancient Egyptian god Thoth, the founder of writing, counting and the calendar. With the help of cards, he told people about the four components of the universe - fire, water, air and earth, which represent the four card suits. Much later, already in the Middle Ages, Jewish Kabbalists fleshed out this ancient message. According to them, the suits embody four classes of elemental spirits: diamonds fire spirits of the salamanders, worms lords of the air elements sylphs, clubs undine spirits of water and spades lords of the underworld of the gnomes.

Other medieval mystics believed that the cards symbolized the four "chief aspects of human nature": the suit of hearts represents love; clubs the desire for knowledge; diamonds are a passion for money, and spades warn of death. The extraordinary variety of card games, the complex logic of relationships and subordination, the alternation of ups and downs, sudden failures and amazing luck reflects our life in all its complexity and unpredictability. This is where the bewitching power of excitement lies within them, to the great indignation of the puritans and bigots of all times and peoples; in this sense, neither chess, nor dominoes, or indeed any other games can compare with cards.

However, no less interesting is the version according to which the cards supposedly reflect... time. In fact, red and black colors are consonant with the ideas of day and night. 52 sheets correspond to the number of weeks in a year, and the joker, which is not clear to everyone, also symbolizes leap year. The four suits are quite consistent with spring, summer, autumn and winter. If each jack is valued at 11 points (it comes immediately after the ten), the queen at 12, the king at 13, and the ace is taken as one, then the sum of points in the deck will be 364. By adding a “one” joker, we get the number of days in the year . Well, the number of lunar months 13 corresponds to the number of cards of each suit.

If we descend from the cloudy, foggy heights of mysticism to the soil of reality, then two versions of the origin of the cards seem most likely. According to the first, they were created by Indian Brahmins around 800 AD. Another version says that maps appeared in China in the 8th century during the reign of the Tang dynasty. The fact is that paper money served the subjects of the Celestial Empire not only for payments, but also for gambling. In addition to digital nominations, the banknotes depicted emperors, their wives, and provincial governors, which indicated the dignity of a particular banknote. And since players did not always have a sufficient number of banknotes, they instead used duplicates drawn on pieces of paper, which eventually drove real money out of games.

The time of the appearance of maps in Europe is equally uncertain, although most historians agree that participants most likely brought them with them. crusades in the XI-XIII centuries. True, it is possible that this object of excitement appeared on our continent as a result of the invasion of Italy in the 10th century by the Saracens, as the Arabs were then called, from whom the locals borrowed cards. In any case, in 1254, Saint Louis issued an edict prohibiting card games in France under penalty of whipping.

In Europe, the Arabic original underwent significant revision, since the Koran forbade the faithful to draw images of people. Presumably, the birthplace of cards with figures of kings, queens and squires/jacks was France, where at the turn of the 13th-14th centuries the artist Gragonner painted cardboard sheets for Charles VI.

The earliest known European Tarot card deck (Sometimes the names Tarot or Tarok are found - editor's note) was made in the 14th century in Lombardy. It contained four suits, depicted in the form of bowls, swords, money and wands or clubs. Each suit consisted of ten cards with numbers and four pictures: king, queen, knight and squire. In addition to these 56 cards, it included another 22 trump cards with numbers from 0 to 21, bearing the following names: jester, magician, nun, empress, emperor, monk, lover, chariot, justice, hermit, fate, strength, executioner, death, moderation, devil, inn, star, moon, sun, world and judgment.

As card games grew in popularity in Europe throughout the 14th century, all trump cards and the four knights gradually disappeared from the Tarot deck. True, the jester remained, renamed in our days to the “joker”. Full decks were preserved only for fortune telling.

There were several reasons for this. Firstly, the desire to separate the world of excitement from the mysteries of the occult and magic. Then, the rules of games with so many cards were too difficult to remember. And finally, before the invention of the printing press, maps were marked and colored by hand, and therefore they were very expensive. Therefore, in order to save money, the deck “thinned out” to the current 52 cards.

As for the designation of suits, from the original Italian system with its swords an analogue of future spades, clubs clubs, cups hearts and coins diamonds, three later emerged: Swiss with acorns, roses, leaves and coat of arms; German with acorns, leaves, hearts and bells, and French with clubs, spades, hearts and diamonds. The most stable was the French system of depicting suits, which after the Thirty Years' War (1618 - 1648) supplanted the rest of the symbolism and is now in use almost everywhere.

Over the next 300 years, more than one artist tried to introduce new card symbols into use. From time to time, decks appeared in which the four suits appeared in the form of animals, plants, birds, fish, household items, and dishes. At the very beginning of this process in Germany, the suits were depicted in the form of caskets for church donations, a comb, bellows and a crown. In France, allegorical figures of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity and Health appeared. Later, adherents of socialism even tried to issue cards with images of presidents, commissars, industrialists and workers. However, all these “inventions” turned out to be too artificial and therefore never took root. But with picture cards, things turned out differently.

Today, few players are interested in the biographies of long-vanished characters in card figures, and the drawings on picture cards in modern decks bear little resemblance to real-life personalities. This is nothing more than a stylization of stylizations, infinitely far from the original originals. Meanwhile, initially, for example, the four kings symbolized the legendary heroic rulers of antiquity, whom Europeans could admire in the Middle Ages: Charlemagne, the king of the Franks, led the suit of hearts, the shepherd and singer David the spades, since thanks to his exploits he became the legendary Hebrew king; Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great were respectively given the suit of diamonds and clubs.

True, in some decks the King of Hearts was alternately depicted as the hairy Esau, Constantine, Charles I, Victor Hugo, or the French general Boulanger. And yet, in the dispute for possession of the crown, Charlemagne won a bloodless victory. Modern cards lovingly, almost unchanged, preserve the heroic features of this illustrious husband in the form of a wise old man, wrapped in an ermine robe - a symbol of wealth. In his left hand he holds a sword - a symbol of courage and power.

The image of David was originally decorated with a harp as a reminder of the musical talent of the legendary king of Judah. During the Napoleonic Wars, the king of spades was briefly depicted as Napoleon Bonaparte in France and the Duke of Wellington in Prussia. But then justice triumphed and David again took his rightful place among card royalty.

Although Julius Caesar was never a king, he also entered the crowned Areopagus. He was usually depicted in profile, and on some ancient French and Italian maps Caesar was depicted with his arm outstretched, as if he was about to grab something. This was supposed to indicate that the suit of diamonds was traditionally identified with money and wealth.

Alexander the Great is the only card king in whose hand the orb, a symbol of the monarchy, was placed. True, on modern maps it is often replaced by a sword as evidence of his military talents. Unfortunately, the appearance of the King of Clubs became a victim of ruthless fashion and from a courageous hero with a fierce look, he turned into a pampered courtier with a dandy beard and an elegant mustache.

The first queen of hearts was Helen of Troy. In addition to her, Elissa, the founder of Carthage, acted as contenders for this throne in Roman mythology Dido, Joan of Arc, Elizabeth I of England, Roxana, Rachel and Fausta. However, the long-lived heroine of the biblical legend Judith, whose image has wandered from decks to decks.

As for the Queen of Spades, it was customary to depict her as the Greek goddess of wisdom and war, Pallas Athena. True, the Teutons and Scandinavians preferred their own mythological characters who personified war.

In the 14th-15th centuries, artists could not agree on who to choose as the prototype of the lady of the tambourine. The only exception was France, where it became the queen of the Amazons, in Greek mythology Panphyselia. In the 16th century, someone gave the lady of the tambourine the features of Rachel, the heroine of the biblical legend about the life of Jacob. Since, according to legend, she was a greedy woman, her role as the “Queen of Money” appealed to the general public, and she established herself on this throne.

For a long time, none of the mythological or historical heroines claimed the role of the queen of clubs. Sometimes the decks showed figures of the ruler of Troy, Hecuba or Florimela, personifications of feminine charm created by the talent of the English poet Spenser. But they failed to establish themselves in this role. In the end, the French came up with the idea to depict the queen of clubs in the form of a sort of, as they now say, sex bomb and call her Argina (from the Latin word “regina” “royal”). The idea turned out to be so successful that it took root and became a tradition. Moreover, all the queens, the next favorites and mistresses of the French monarchs, the heroines of evil lampoons and frivolous witticisms, began to bear the name Argina.

Initially, four nameless knights played the role of jacks. Although the name of this card is translated rather as “servant, lackey,” and players have traditionally identified this figure with an adventurer who does not always respect the law, but is alien to low deceit. This interpretation of the word “jack” fits perfectly with the image of the jack of hearts. Trying to choose a worthy image for him, the French chose the famous historical character Etienne de Vignelles, who served in the troops of Charles VII. He was a valiant warrior, brave, generous, ruthless and sarcastic. For some time he served as an adviser to Joan of Arc and was preserved in the memory of posterity as a hero of folklore, like Till Eulenspiegel, William Tell and Robin Hood. Perhaps that is why, without any objections from other nations, Etienne de Vignelles firmly took the place of the jack of hearts.

The prototype of the jack of spades was Ogier of Denmark. According to historical chronicles, in numerous battles his weapon was two Toledo steel blades, which were usually drawn on this map. In numerous legends, this hero performed numerous feats: he defeated giants, returned their possessions to bewitched princes, and he himself enjoyed the patronage of the fairy Morgana, the sister of the fairy-tale King Arthur, who, having become engaged to Gier, granted him eternal youth.

The first jack of diamonds was Roland, the legendary nephew of Charlemagne. However, later, for no apparent reason, he was replaced by Hector de Marais, one of the Knights of the Round Table and half-brother of Sir Lancelot. At least, it is this hero that is today associated with the jack of diamonds, although the famous nobility of the knight de Marais does not fit well with the notoriety attributed to this jack.

The card masters chose Sir Lancelot himself, the eldest of the knights of the Round Table, as the jack of clubs. He was originally the brightest of the jacks. But gradually the manner of drawing changed, and the jack of clubs lost his luxurious camisole, although in his hands he still had a bow, a symbol of his unsurpassed skill as an archer. However, in the modern jack of clubs it is difficult to recognize that mighty warrior who, having been wounded in the thigh by an arrow, nevertheless managed to defeat thirty knights...
This is the gallery of family portraits, which none of the players suspects when they pick up the satin deck.