excesses committed by the soldiery in Soissons: married women violated before their husbands; young damsels in the presence of their parents and relatives; holy nuns, gentlewomen of all ranks, of whom there were many in the town; all, or the greater part, were violated against their wills by divers nobles and others, who after having satiated their own brutal passions, delivered them over without mercy to their servants: and there is no remembrance of such disorder and havoc being done by christians, considering the many persons of high rank that were present, and who made no efforts to check them. There were also many gentlemen in the king's army who had relations in the town, as well secular as churchmen; but the disorder was not the less on that account."—Vol. iv. p. 31. What a national contrast is there between the manner in which the English and French have conducted their civil wars! Even in the wars of the Fronde, when all parties were alike thoroughly unprincipled, cruelties were committed on both sides which it might have been thought nothing but the strong feelings of a perverted religious principle could have given birth to. Page 15. line 433. — Yet hangs and pulls for food. Holinshed says, speaking of the siege of Roan, “If I should rehearse how deerelie dogs, rats, mice, and cats were sold within the towne, and how greedilie they were by the poore people eaten and devoured, and how the people dailie died for fault of food, and young infants laie sucking in the streets on their mother's breasts, being dead starved for hunger, the reader might lament their extreme miseries.”—p. 566. Page 16. line 446. The sceptre of the wicked? "Do not the tears run down the widow's cheek? and is not her cry against him that causeth them to fall? "The Lord will not be slack till he have smitten in sunder the loins of the unmerciful, till he have taken away the multitude of the proud, and broken the sceptre of the unrighteous." -Ecclesiasticus. Page 17. line 491.-The fountain of the Fairies. In the Journal of Paris in the reigns of Charles VI. and VII. it is asserted that the Maid of Orleans, in answer to an interrogatory of the doctors, whether she had ever assisted at the assemblies held at the Fountain of the Faries near Domprein, round which the evil spirits dance, confessed that she had often repaired to a beautiful fountain in the country of Lorraine, which she named the good Fountain of the Fairies of our Lord. From the notes to the English version of Le Grand's Fabliaux Page 18. line 499.-They love to lie and rock upon its leaves. Being asked whether she had ever seen any fairies, she answered no; but that one of her god-mothers pretended to have seen some at the Fairy-tree, near the village of Dompre. -Rapin. Page 19. line 530.—Memory, thought, were gone. "In this representation which I made to place myself near to Christ (says St. Teresa), there would come suddenly upon me, without either expectation or any preparation on my part, such an evident feeling of the presence of God, as that I could by no means doubt, but that either he was within me, or else I all engulfed in him. This was not in the manner of a vision, but I think they call it Mistical Theology; and it suspends the soul in such sort, that she seems to be wholly out of herself. The Will is in act of loving, the Memory seems to be in a manner lost, the understanding, in my opinion, discourses not; and although it be not lost, yet it works not as I was saying, but remains as it were amazed to consider how much it understands."-Life of St. Teresa written by herself. Teresa was well acquainted with the feelings of enthusiasm. I had, however, described the sensations of the Maid of Orleans before I had met with the life of the saint. Page 29. line 543. and they shall perish who oppress. "Raise up indignation, and pour out wrath, and let them perish who oppress the people!"- Ecclesiasticus, xxxvi. Page 20. line 8. -The hoarse grasshoppers their evening song The ephithets shrill and hoarse will not appear incongruous to one who has attended to the grasshopper's chirp. Gazæus has characterised the sound by a word certainly accurate, in his tale of a grasshopper who perched upon St. Francis's finger, and sung the praise of God and the wonders of his own body in his vernacular tongue, St. Francis and all the grasshoppers listening with equal edification. Cicada Canebat (ut sic efferam) cicadicè. Pia Hilaria Angelini Gazæi. Perhaps he remembered two lines in the Zanitonella of the Macaronic poet, Sentis an quantæ cicigant Cigalæ, Quæ mihi rumpunt cicigando testam. The marginal note says, Cicigare, vox cicadæ vel cigala. St. Francis laboured much in the conversion of animals. In the fine series of pictures representing his life, lately painted for the new Franciscan convent at Madrid, I recollect seeing him preach to a congregation of birds. Gazæus has a poem upon his instructing a ewe. His advice to her is somewhat curious: Vide ne arietes, neve in obvios ruas ; There is another upon his converting two lambs, whose prayers were more acceptable to God, Marot! says he, than your If the nun, who took care of them in his absence, was inclined to lie a-bed psalms. Frater Agnus hanc bee bee suo Devotus excitabat. O agne jam non agne sed doctor bone! Page 22. line 59.—The memory of his prison'd years. — The Maid declared upon her trial, that God loved the duke of Orleans, and that she had received more revelations concerning him, than any person living, except the king. — Rapin. Orleans, during his long captivity," had learnt to court the fair ladies of England in their native strains." Among the Harleian MSS. is a collection of " love poems, roundels and songs," composed by the French prince during his confine ment. Page 23. line 80. - The prisoners of that shameful day outsumm'd Their conquerors! According to Hollinshed the English army consisted of only 15,000 men, harassed with a tedious march of a month, in very bad weather, through an enemy's country, and for the most part sick of a flux. He states the number of French at 60,000, of whom 10,000 were slain, and 1500 of the higher order taken prisoners. Some historians make the disproportion in numbers still greater. Goodwin says, that among the slain there were one archbishop, three dukes, six earls, ninety barons, fifteen hundred knights, and seven thousand esquires or gentlemen. Page 23. line 88. - From his hersed bowmen how the arrows flew. This was the usual method of marshalling the bowmen. At Cressy" the archers stood in manner of an herse, about two hundred in front and but forty in depth, which is undoubtedly the best way of embattelling archers, especially when the enemy is very numerous, as at this time: for by the breadth of the front the extension of the enemies front is matched; and by reason of the thinness in flank, the arrows do more certain execution, being more likely to reach home."- Barnes. The victory at Poictiers is chiefly attributed to the herse of archers. After mentioning the conduct and courage of the English leaders in that battle, Barnes says, "but all this courage had been thrown away to no purpose, had it not been seconded by the extraordinary gallantry of the English archers, who behaved themselves that day with wonderful constancy, alacrity, and resolution. So that by their means, in a manner, all the French battails received their first foil, being by the barbed arrows so galled and terrified, that they were easily opened to the men of arms." "Without all question, the guns which are used now-a-days are neither so terrible in battle, nor do such execution, nor work such confusion as arrows can do: for bullets being not seen only hurt when they hit, but arrows enrage the horse, and break the array, and terrify all that behold them in the bodies of their neighbours. Not to say that every archer can shoot thrice to a gunner's once, and that whole squadrons of bows may let fly at one time, when only one or two files of musqueteers can discharge at one once. Also, that whereas guns are useless when your pikes join, because they only do execution point blank, the arrows which will kill at random, may do good service even behind your men of arms. And it is notorious, that at the famous battle of Lepanto, the Turkish bows did more mischief than the Christian artillery. Besides it is not the least observable, that whereas the weakest may use guns as well as the strongest, in those days your lusty and tall yeomen were chosen for the bow, whose hose being fastened with one point, and their jackets long and easy to shoot in, they had their limbs at full liberty, so that they might easily draw bows of great strength, and shoot arrows of a yard long beside the head."- Joshua Barnes. |