第67章 ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE THIRD(2)

Gaining a great sea-fight in the harbour of Sluys.This success,however,was very shortlived,for the Flemings took fright at the siege of Saint Omer and ran away,leaving their weapons and baggage behind them.Philip,the French King,coming up with his army,and Edward being very anxious to decide the war,proposed to settle the difference by single combat with him,or by a fight of one hundred knights on each side.The French King said,he thanked him;but being very well as he was,he would rather not.So,after some skirmishing and talking,a short peace was made.

It was soon broken by King Edward's favouring the cause of John,Earl of Montford;a French nobleman,who asserted a claim of his own against the French King,and offered to do homage to England for the Crown of France,if he could obtain it through England's help.This French lord,himself,was soon defeated by the French King's son,and shut up in a tower in Paris;but his wife,a courageous and beautiful woman,who is said to have had the courage of a man,and the heart of a lion,assembled the people of Brittany,where she then was;and,showing them her infant son,made many pathetic entreaties to them not to desert her and their young Lord.They took fire at this appeal,and rallied round her in the strong castle of Hennebon.Here she was not only besieged without by the French under Charles de Blois,but was endangered within by a dreary old bishop,who was always representing to the people what horrors they must undergo if they were faithful-first from famine,and afterwards from fire and sword.But this noble lady,whose heart never failed her,encouraged her soldiers by her own example;went from post to post like a great general;even mounted on horseback fully armed,and,issuing from the castle by a by-path,fell upon the French camp,set fire to the tents,and threw the whole force into disorder.This done,she got safely back to Hennebon again,and was received with loud shouts of joy by the defenders of the castle,who had given her up for lost.As they were now very short of provisions,however,and as they could not dine off enthusiasm,and as the old bishop was always saying,'I told you what it would come to!'they began to lose heart,and to talk of yielding the castle up.The brave Countess retiring to an upper room and looking with great grief out to sea,where she expected relief from England,saw,at this very time,the English ships in the distance,and was relieved and rescued!Sir Walter Manning,the English commander,so admired her courage,that,being come into the castle with the English knights,and having made a feast there,he assaulted the French by way of dessert,and beat them off triumphantly.Then he and the knights came back to the castle with great joy;and the Countess who had watched them from a high tower,thanked them with all her heart,and kissed them every one.

This noble lady distinguished herself afterwards in a sea-fight with the French off Guernsey,when she was on her way to England to ask for more troops.Her great spirit roused another lady,the wife of another French lord (whom the French King very barbarously murdered),to distinguish herself scarcely less.The time was fast coming,however,when Edward,Prince of Wales,was to be the great star of this French and English war.

It was in the month of July,in the year one thousand three hundred and forty-six,when the King embarked at Southampton for France,with an army of about thirty thousand men in all,attended by the Prince of Wales and by several of the chief nobles.He landed at La Hogue in Normandy;and,burning and destroying as he went,according to custom,advanced up the left bank of the River Seine,and fired the small towns even close to Paris;but,being watched from the right bank of the river by the French King and all his army,it came to this at last,that Edward found himself,on Saturday the twenty-sixth of August,one thousand three hundred and forty-six,on a rising ground behind the little French village of Crecy,face to face with the French King's force.And,although the French King had an enormous army-in number more than eight times his-he there resolved to beat him or be beaten.

The young Prince,assisted by the Earl of Oxford and the Earl of Warwick,led the first division of the English army;two other great Earls led the second;and the King,the third.When the morning dawned,the King received the sacrament,and heard prayers,and then,mounted on horseback with a white wand in his hand,rode from company to company,and rank to rank,cheering and encouraging both officers and men.Then the whole army breakfasted,each man sitting on the ground where he had stood;and then they remained quietly on the ground with their weapons ready.

Up came the French King with all his great force.It was dark and angry weather;there was an eclipse of the sun;there was a thunder-storm,accompanied with tremendous rain;the frightened birds flew screaming above the soldiers'heads.A certain captain in the French army advised the French King,who was by no means cheerful,not to begin the battle until the morrow.The King,taking this advice,gave the word to halt.But,those behind not understanding it,or desiring to be foremost with the rest,came pressing on.The roads for a great distance were covered with this immense army,and with the common people from the villages,who were flourishing their rude weapons,and making a great noise.

Owing to these circumstances,the French army advanced in the greatest confusion;every French lord doing what he liked with his own men,and putting out the men of every other French lord.