A.D. 1346-1347. CALAIS TAKEN. 181 Bohemia were left on the field of battle. The fate of the King of Bohemia was remarkable. He was blind from age, but, being resolved to hazard his person and set an example to others, he ordered the reins of his bridle to be tied on each side to two gentlemen of his train; and his dead body, and those of his attendants, were afterward found among the slain, with their horses standing by them in that situation. It is said that the crest of the King of Bohemia was three ostrich feathers, and his motto Ich dien, I serve, which the Prince of Wales and his successors adopted in memorial of this great victory.* The action may seem no less remarkable for the small loss sustained by the English than for the great slaughter of the French; there were killed in it only one esquire and three knights, and very few of inferior rank. The king, not elated by his present prosperity so far as to expect the total conquest of France, or even that of any considerable provinces, limited his ambition to the conquest of Calais, which would secure an easy entrance into France; and after the interval of a few days, which he employed in interring the slain, he marched with his victorious army, and presented himself before that place. § 8. While Edward was engaged in this siege, which employed him nearly a twelvemonth, there passed in different places many other events; and all to the honor of the English arms. The Earl of Derby, who commanded the English forces in Guienne, carried his incursions to the banks of the Loire, and filled all the southern provinces of France with horror and devastation. The Scots, under the command of their king, David Bruce, entered Northumberland, but were completely defeated by Earl Percy, at Neville's Cross, near Durham (Oct. 12, 1346); and the king himself was taken prisoner, with many of the nobility. David Bruce was detained in captivity till 1357, when he was liberated for a ransom of 100,000 marks. The town of Calais had been defended with remarkable vigilance, constancy, and bravery by the townsmen, during a siege of unusual length; and Philip had made a vain attempt to relieve it. At length, after enduring all the extremities of famine, John de Vienne, the governor, surrendered unconditionally, Aug. 4, 1347. The story runs that Edward had at first resolved to put all the garrison to death; but that at last he only insisted that six of the most considerable citizens should be sent to him, to be disposed of as he thought proper; that they should come to his camp, carrying the keys of the city in their hands, bareheaded and barefooted, with ropes about their necks; and on these conditions he promised to spare the lives of all the remainder. When this in. * There is, however, great doubt respecting the truth of this tradition. See the essay by Sir H. Nicolas in the Archæologia, vol. xxxii. telligence was conveyed to Calais it struck the inhabitants with consternation; and they found themselves incapable of coming to any resolution in so cruel and distressful a situation. At last one of the principal inhabitants, called Eustace de St. Pierre, stepped forth and declared himself willing to encounter death for the safety of his friends and companions; another, animated by his example, made a like generous offer; a third and a fourth presented themselves to the same fate; and the whole number was soon completed. These six heroic burgesses appeared before Edward in the guise of malefactors, laid at his feet the keys of their city, and A.D. 1347-1349. INSTITUTION OF THE GARTER. 183 were ordered to be led to execution. It is surprising that so generous a prince should ever have entertained such a barbarous purpose against such men; and still more that he should seriously persist in the resolution of executing it. But the entreaties of his queen saved his memory from that infamy; she threw herself on her knees before him, and, with tears in her eyes, begged the lives of these citizens. Having obtained her request, she carried them into her tent, ordered a repast to be set before them, and, after making them a present of money and clothes, dismissed them in safety. The king, after taking possession of Calais, ordered all the inhabitants to evacuate the town, and peopled it anew with English; a policy which probably preserved so long to his successors the dominion of that important fortress. He made it the staple of wool, leather, tin, and lead; the four chief, if not the sole, commodities of the kingdom for which there was any considerable demand in foreign markets. Through the mediation of the Pope's legates Edward concluded a truce with France; but, even during this cessation of arms, an attempt was made to deprive him of Calais (1348). Edward, however, being informed of the plot, proceeded to Calais with 1000 men; and when the French presented themselves to take possession of the town, according to the stipulation, he rushed forth with cries of battle and victory (Jan. 1, 1349). The king, who fought as a private man, distinguished himself in single combat with a French knight named Ribaumont, by whom he was twice struck to the ground, but whom he at last made prisoner. The French officers who had fallen into the hands of the English were admitted to sup with the Prince of Wales and the English nobility; and after supper the king himself came into the apartment, and went about conversing familiarly with one or other of his prisoners. He openly bestowed the highest encomiums on Ribaumont; called him the most valorous knight that he had ever been acquainted with; confessed that he himself had at no time been in so great danger as when engaged in combat with him; and presented him with a string of pearls which he wore about his own head. § 9. It was about the same time (1349) that the king instituted the order of the Garter. Its origin is lost in obscurity, but, according to the received story, was as follows: At a court-ball, Edward's mistress, commonly supposed to be the Countess of Salisbury, dropped her garter; and the king, taking it up, observed some of the courtiers to smile, as if they thought that he had not obtained this favor merely by accident, upon which he *This dramatic and interesting story is narrated by Froissart alone, and is open to much suspicion. called out, Honi soit qui mal y pense, Evil to him that evil thinks; and gave these words as the motto of the order. A grievous calamity, more than the pacific dispositions of the princes, served to maintain and prolong the truce between France and England. A destructive pestilence invaded England as well as the rest of Europe; and is computed to have swept away near a third of the inhabitants in every country which it attacked. Above 50,000 souls are said to have perished by it in London alone. This malady first discovered itself in the north of Asia, was spread over all that country, made its progress from one end of Europe to the other, and sensibly depopulated every state through which it passed. The truce between the two kingdoms, which had always been ill-observed on both sides, expired in 1355. John had succeeded to the French throne on the death of his father, Philip de Valois, in 1350; and France was dis tracted by the factions excited by Charles, King of Navarre. John had succeeded, indeed, in seizing and imprisoning that monarch; but his brother Philip and Geoffrey d'Harcourt took up and continued his designs, and had recourse to the protection of England. Edward, well pleased that the factions in France had at length gained him some partisans in that kingdom, which his pretensions to the crown had never been able to accomplish, purposed to attack his enemy both on the side of Guienne, under the command of the Prince of Wales, and on that of Calais, in his own person. Young Edward arrived in the Garonne with his army, overran Languedoc, advanced even to Narbonne, laying every place waste around him; and, after an incursion of six weeks, returned with a vast booty and many prisoners to Guienne, where he took up his winter-quarters. The King of England's incursion from Calais was of the same nature, and attended with the same issue. After plundering and ravaging the open country he retired to Calais, and thence went over to England, in order to defend that kingdom against a threatened invasion of the Scots, who, taking advantage of the king's absence, had surprised Berwick. But on the approach of Edward they abandoned that place, which was not tenable while the castle was in the hands of the English; and retiring to their mountains, gave the enemy full liberty of burning and destroying the whole country from Berwick to Edinburgh. In the following year (1356) the Prince of Wales, encouraged by the success of the preceding campaign, took the field with an army of 12,000 men, of which not a third were English; and with this small body he ventured to penetrate into the heart of France. His intentions were to march into Normandy, and to join his forces with those of the Earl of Lancaster and the partisans of the King of Navarre; but finding all the bridges on A.D. 1349-1356. BATTLE OF POITIERS. 185 the Loire broken down, and every pass carefully guarded, he was obliged to think of making his retreat into Guienne. The King of France, provoked at the insult offered him by this incursion, and entertaining hopes of success from the young prince's temerity, collected a great army of above 60,000 men, and advanced by hasty marches to intercept his enemy. They came within sight at Maupertuis near POITIERS; and Edward, sensible that his retreat was now become impracticable, prepared for battle with all the courage of a young hero, and with all the prudence of the oldest and most experienced commander. John, at the instance of the Cardinal of Perigord, lost a day in negotiation. The Prince of Wales had leisure during the night to strengthen, by new intrenchments, the post which he had before so judiciously chosen ; and he contrived an ambush of 300 men at arms and as many archers, whom he ordered to make a circuit, that they might fall on the flank or rear of the French army during the engagement. The van of his army was commanded by the Earl of Warwick, the rear by the Earls of Salisbury and Suffolk, the main body by the prince himself. John also arranged his forces in three divisions. There was no reaching the English army but through a narrow lane, and a body of English archers who lined the hedges plied the advancing enemy on each side with their arrows, and slaughtered them with impunity. The French detachment, much discouraged by the unequal combat and diminished in their number, arrived at the end of the lane, where they met on the open ground the Prince of Wales himself, at the head of a chosen body, ready for their reception. They were discomfited and overthrown, and, recoiling upon their own army, put every thing into disorder. In that critical moment the men placed in ambush unexpectedly appeared and attacked in flank the dauphin's line, which fell into some confusion. The Duke of Orleans, and several other French commanders, fled with their divisions; but King John made the utmost efforts to retrieve by his valor what his imprudence had betrayed; till, spent with fatigue, and overwhelmed by numbers, he and his son yielded themselves prisoners. Young Edward received the captive king with all the marks of regard and sympathy; administered comfort to him amid his misfortunes; paid him the tribute of praise due to his valor; and ascribed his own victory merely to the blind chance of war, or to a superior providence which controls all the efforts of human force and prudence. The behavior of John showed him not unworthy of this courteous treatment; his present abject fortune never made him forget a moment that he was a king. More touched by Edward's generosity than by his own calamities, he confessed that, notwithstanding his defeat and captivity, his honor was still un |