And weep not; but they are not bitter tears,... "I remember as her bier "Then my soul awoke, And much my cares avail'd, and much her son's, An ardent youth, who with the kindest care "It chanced as once Beside the fire of Elinor I sat, The night was comfortless, the loud blast howl'd, We heard the rain beat hard. Driven by the storm I too could be content to dwell in peace, "Theodore replied, 'Success go with thee! Something we have known Of war, and tasted its calamity; And I am well content to dwell in peace, Stalk through her fiaming towns? Live thou in peace, That I did tremble as I listen'd to him. "But is there not some duty due to those "Hard is it,' Conrade cried, Ay, hard indeed, to part from those we love; And I have suffer'd that severest pang. I have left an aged mother; I have left "So saying from his belt he took "He answer'd me, "Maiden, thou sayest well. I could not strike If I did let one weak and pitiful feeling irruens iste optimus, magnâ comitante caterva, pretium ingens redemptionis exigeret, ac si non protinus solveret colonus, istum miserum in magna arca protrudens, venustæ ac teneræ uxori suæ (super ipsam arcam prostratæ) vim vir nobilis adferret ; voce exclamans horrenda, Audine Rustice! jamjam, super hanc arcam constupratur dilecta tua sponsa!' atque peracto hoc scelere nefando relinqueretur (horresco referens) suffocatione expirans maritus, nisi magno pretio sponsa nuper vitiata liberationem ejus redimeret.”—J. de Paris. Let us add to this the detestable history of a great commander under Charles VII. of France, the bastard of Bour As you are human, as you hope to live For help, and see her dragg'd, and hear her scream bon, who (after having committed the most execrable crimes during a series of years with impunity), was drowned in 1441, by the constable Richemont (a treacherous assassin himself, but a mirror of justice when compared to some of his contemporaries), on its being proved against him "Quod super ipsum maritum vi prostratum, uxori, frustra repugnanti, vim adtulerat. Ensuite il avoit fait battre et découper le mari, tant que c'étoit pitie à voir."- Mém. de Richemont. I translate the following anecdote of the Black Prince from Froissart: " The Prince of Wales was about a month, and not longer, before the city of Lymoges, and he did not assault it, but always continued mining. When the miners of the prince had finished their work, they said to him, Sir, we will throw down a great part of the wall into the moat whenever it shall please you, so that you may enter into the city at your ease, without danger.' These words greatly pleased the prince, who said to them, I chuse that your work should be manifested to-morrow at the hour of day-break.' Then the miners set fire to their mines the next morning as the prince had commanded, and overthrew a great pane of the wall, which filled the moat where it had fallen. The English saw all this very willingly, and they were there all armed and ready to enter into the town; those who were on foot could enter at their ease, and they entered and ran to the gate, and beat it to the earth, and all the barriers also; for there was no defence, and all this was done so suddenly, that the people of the town were not upon their guard. And then you might have seen the prince, the duke of Lancaster, the count of Canterbury, the count of Pembroke, Messire Guischart Dangle, and all the other chiefs and their people who entered in; and ruffians on foot who were prepared to do mischief, and to run through the town, and to kill men and women and children, and so they had been commanded to do. There was a full pitiful sight, for men and women and children cast themselves on their knees before the prince and cried mercy!' but he was so enflamed with so great rage, that he heard them not; neither man nor woman would he hear, but they were all put to the sword wherever they were found, and these people had not been guilty. I know not how they could have no pity upon poor people, who had never been powerful enough to do any treason. There was no heart so hard in the city of Lymoges which had any remembrance of God, that did not lament the great mischief that was there; for more than three thousand men and women and children were put to death that day; God has their souls, for indeed they were martyred. In entering the town a party of the English went to the palace of the bishop and found him there, and took him and led him before the prince, who looked at him with a murderous look (felonneusement), and the best word that he could say to him was that his head should be cut off, and then he made him be taken from his presence." - 1. 235. The crime which the people of Lymoges had committed was that of surrendering when they had been besieged by the duke of Berry, and in consequence turning French. And this crime was thus punished at a period when no versatility of conduct was thought dishonourable. The phrases tourner Anglois - tourner François - retourner Anglois, occur repeatedly in Froissart. I should add, that of all the heroes of this period the Black Prince was the most generous and the most humane. Some famish'd babe on his dead mother's breast Yet hangs and pulls for food! .. Woe be to those By whom the evil comes ! And woe to him, .. For little less his guilt, . . who dwells in peace, When every arm is needed for the strife!' "When we had all betaken us to rest, Sleepless I lay, and in my mind revolved The high-soul'd warrior's speech. Then Madelon Rose in remembrance; over her the grave After the English had taken the town of Montereau, the seigneur de Guitery, who commanded there, retired to the castle; and Henry V. threatened, unless he surrendered, to hang eleven gentlemen, taken in the town. These poor men intreated the governor to comply, for the sake of saving their lives, letting him at the same time know how impossible it was that his defence could be of any avail. He was not to be persuaded; and when they saw this, and knew that they must die, some of them requested that they might first see their wives and their friends. This was allowed: là y eut de piteur regrets au prendre conge, says Pierre de Fanin, and on the following morning they were executed as Henry had threatened. The governor held out for fifteen days, and then yielded by a capitulation which secured himself. - (Coll. des Mémoires. t. v. p. 456.) In the whole history of these dreadful times I remember but one man whom the cruelty of the age had not contaminated, and that was the Portuguese hero Nuno Alvares Pereira, a man who appears to me to have been a perfect example of patriotism, heroism, and every noble and lovely quality above all others of any age or country. Atrocious, however, as these instances are, they seem as nothing when compared to the atrocities which the French exercised upon each other. When Soissons was captured by Charles VI. (1414) in person, “in regard to the destruction committed by the king's army (says Monstrellet), it cannot be estimated; for after they had plundered all the inhabitants, and their dwellings, they despoiled the churches and monasteries. They even took and robbed the most part of the sacred shrines of many bodies of saints, which they stripped of all the precious stones, gold and silver, together with many other jewels and holy things appertaining to the aforesaid churches. There is not a Christian but would have shuddered at the atrocious 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. 2 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. Had closed; her sorrows were not register'd Sit at their feast, and plan the work of death. Was deepest, there on mightiest deeds to brood "There is a fountain in the forest call'd Reproaching Heaven,. . lo! from the clouds an arm Fancy had cast a spell upon the place As of the avenging angel was put forth, And from his hand a sword, like lightning, fell. "From that night I could feel my burthen'd soul Heaving beneath incumbent Deity. I sate in silence, musing on the days To come, unheeding and unseeing all And the mind alone is wakeful. I have heard "At length I heard of Orleans, by the foe "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. 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 Fairies near Domprein, round which the evil spirits dance, confessed that she had often repaired to a beautiful fountain in the county 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 Fabliauz. 3 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. Which made it holy; and the villagers Unpunish'd there. The strange and fearful pleasure Deeper delight, and more mysterious awe. "A blessed spot! Oh how my soul enjoy'd And there I sat, and mark'd the deep red clouds 4" 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 engulphed 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. All sense of self annihilate, I seem'd "At length a light Approach'd the spring; I saw my Uncle Claude; His grey locks dripping with the midnight storm, He came, and caught me in his arms, and cried, My God! my child is safe!' "I felt his words Pierce in my heart; my soul was overcharged; I fell upon his neck and told him all; "Ay, Chieftain! and the world Shall soon believe my mission; for the LORD Will raise up indignation and pour on't His wrath, and they shall perish who oppress." "1 JOAN OF ARC. THE SECOND BOOK. AND now beneath the horizon westering slow 1 "Raise up indignation, and pour out wrath, and let them perish who oppress the people!"- Ecclesiasticus, xxxvi. 2 The epithets 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 Spread out his homely board, and fill'd the bowl "Strangers, your fare is homely," said their Host, "But such it is as we poor countrymen Earn with our toil, in faith ye are welcome to it! I too have borne a lance in younger days; And would that I were young again to meet These haughty English in the field of fight; Such as I was when on the fatal plain Of Agincourt I met them." "Wert thou then A sharer in that dreadful day's defeat?" "Know him?" cried the veteran, "I saw him ere the bloody fight began Riding from rank to rank, his beaver up, The long lance quivering in his mighty grasp. But for his countrymen it had a smile "No tongue but speaketh honour of that name!" Exclaim'd Dunois. "Strangers and countrymen Alike revered the good and gallant Chief. His vassals like a father loved their Lord; His gates stood open to the traveller; The pilgrim when he saw his towers rejoiced, For he had heard in other lands the fame Of Orleans. . .And he lives a prisoner still! Losing all hope because my arm so long Hath fail'd to win his liberty!" He turn'd His head away, hiding the burning shame seeing him preach to a congregation of birds. Gazæus has a poem upon his instructing a ewe. His advice to her is some. what 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 psalms. If the nun, who took care of them in his absence, was inclined to lie a-bed Frater Agnus hanc beé beê suo O agne jam non agne sed doctor bone! 3 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 Shall heighten all his joys, and his grey hairs Go to the grave in peace. "I would fain live To see that day," replied their aged host: "How would my heart leap to behold again The gallant generous chieftain! I fought by him, When all our hopes of victory were lost, And down his batter'd arms the blood stream'd fast "Fatal was that day to France," Harleian MSS. is a collection of "love poems, roundels and songs," composed by the French prince during his confine ment. 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. 2 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 Fought for revenge, not hoping victory, "Yet believe not," Bertram cried, "That cowardice disgraced thy countrymen ! They by their leaders' arrogance led on With heedless fury, found all numbers vain, All effort fruitless there; and hadst thou seen, Skilful as brave, how Henry's ready eye Lost not a thicket, not a hillock's aid; "But when the field in, they had their 'imbs 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. 3 During the heat of the combat, when the English had gained the upper hand, and made several prisoners, news was brought to king Henry that the French were attacking his rear, and had already captured the greater part of his baggage and sumpter-horses. This was indeed true, for Robinet de Bournonville, Rifflart de Clamasse, Ysambart d'Azincourt, and some other men at arms, with about six hundred peasants, had fallen upon and taken great part of the king's baggage, and a number of horses, while the guard was occupied in the battle. This distressed the king very much, for he saw that though the French army had been routed, they were collecting on different parts of the plain in large bodies, and he was afraid they would resume the battle: he therefore caused instant proclamation to be made by sound of trumpet, that every one should put his prisoners to death, to prevent them from aiding the enemy, should the combat be renewed. This caused an instantaneous and general massacre of the French prisoners, occasioned by the disgraceful conduct of Robinet de Bournonville, Ysambart d'Azincourt, and the others, who were afterwards punished for it, and imprisoned a very long time by duke John of Burgundy, notwithstanding they had made a present to the count de Charolois of a most precious sword, ornamented with diamonds, that had belonged to the king of England. They had taken this sword, with other rich jewels, from king Henry's baggage, and had made this present, that in case they should at any time be called to an account for what they had done, the count might stand their friend.— Monstrelet, vol. iv. p. 180. When the king of England had on this Saturday begun his march towards Calais, many of the French returned to the field of battle, where the bodies had been turned over more than once, some to seek for their lords, and carry them to their own countries for burial, others to pillage what the English had left. King Henry's army had only taken gold, silver, rich dresses, helmets, and what was of value, for which reason the greater part of the armour was untouched, and on the dead bodies; but it did not long remain thus, for it was very soon stripped off, and even the shirts and all other parts of their dress were carried away by the peasants of the adjoining villages. The bodies were left exposed as naked as when they came into the world. On the Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, the corpses of many princes were well washed and raised, namely, the dukes of Brabant, Bar, and Alençon, the counts de Nevers, de Blaumont, de Vaudemont, de Faulquemberge, the lord de Dampierre, admiral sir Charles d'Albreth, constable, and buried in the church of the Friars Minors |