Bête

Bête, la Bête (French: Jeu de la Bête), Beste or la Beste (Jeu de la Beste), originally known as Homme or l'Homme (Jeu de l'Homme), was an old, French, trick-taking card game, usually for three to five players. It was a derivative of Triomphe created by introducing the concept of bidding. Its earlier name gives away its descent from the 16th-century Spanish game of Ombre. It is the "earliest recorded multi-player version of Triomphe".

During the 17th century, the Ombre concept of bidding was incorporated into Triomphe resulting in the game initially called l'Homme ("Man") and, later, la Beste or la Bête (German Labet, Dutch LaBate, English Beast). La Bête, or just Bête or Beast in English, later gave rise to the variants of Mouche and Mistigri, the latter still being played today. It may also have been antecedent to the games of the Rams family although it does not share their characteristic of allowing players to drop out of the current deal if they consider their hand to be too poor.

Bête was a gambling game, often played for small stakes, but was also played as a social and family game. It is named after the bête, a term that referred to the penalty for failing to take the required number of tricks or for various infringements. The term, bête, came to be used in both French and German in various other card games as the name for the stake on a game, the penalty for losing and the loser himself.

At first called Homme, the game appears as early as 1619 in French literature and originated from the Spanish game of Ombre, the name of which also means "man" although, unlike Homme, it did not allow players to contre the initial bid to play, and its more immediate antecedent was the game of Triomphe as attested by other sources.^{[citation needed]} The expression faire la bête ("make the bête" - see below) gave rise to the game's second name, 'Bête' or 'Beste'. The 1690 edition of Dictionaire Universel calls it "jeu de la Beste" and states that virevole or dévole was a term used in the game to refer to a player who undertook to win every trick, but failed to win any and had to pay a penalty to the other players.

By the mid-17th century, the game had spread to Germany, where it was known as la Bäte, la Bête, Labeth or Labetspiel and to Italy where it was referred to as bestia or l'asino. By the 18th century, it had reached England, where it was called Beast (see below), and Austria-Hungary, where it was known as Labet or Zwickerspiel and banned as a gambling game.

Bête subsequently evolved into the games known Mouche or Lenturlu (see also the English game of Lanterloo) - which featured bluffing, 'robbing' (i.e. exchanging with) the talon and winning outright if a player was dealt an eponymous, five-card flush - and Mistigri or Pamphile, which additionally promoted the Jack of Clubs to the top trump. As Bête, the rules are last recorded in 1888. The English game Lanterloo resembles the latter, but may have crossed the channel at an earlier stage of development and evolved in parallel to its eventual form.

The rules for Bête remained substantially the same for about two centuries, but by 1828, the name seems to have merely become a synonym for the game of Mouche, a game which differed in allowing players to drop out of a deal with a poor hand and to win the game if they were dealt a flush.

The following rules are based on Le Gras (1739), except where stated.