A Strange Meeting
Rarely has the world beheld, even in that age of ceaseless surprises,
so strange a spectacle as the English invasion of Spain in 1367. The
bravest and most honourable man alive championing the falsest and most
cruel; free Englishmen fighting to bring a gallant nation in bondage to
a tyrant; a handful of heroes cutting their way into an unknown land,
and braving pestilence, famine, and the attacks of an army thrice as
strong as their own, in a quarrel with which they had nothing to do,
and for a faithless despot who was all the while overreaching and
betraying them—such were the startling contradictions produced by the
resolve of a man like the Black Prince to aid a man like Pedro the
Cruel.
But no such thoughts troubled the stout English who followed the prince
through the Pyrenees in that memorable February; for, in a whole
generation of constant war they had acquired, alas! such a love of it
that (as the Wars of the Roses were to prove to the horror of all
Europe a century later) when no foes were to be found, they would fight
each other rather than not fight at all. If no “good wars” were to be
had in France, even an invasion of Spain was better than nothing; and
in after days the few survivors of that ill-fated expedition bitterly
recalled with what boyish, unthinking gaiety they had set out on it.
“Marry, this be a brave sight!” cried Will Wade, in whose untravelled
eyes these glittering snow-peaks were a thing to be remembered for
ever. “How bonnily yon snow glistens; for all the world like sugar on a
Christmas cake! This is better sport than hammering horseshoes at
Deerham—hey, Ned Smith?”
“Yon jackanape whom our lord overcame at sword-play,” replied the
smith, “spake truth for once when he said that a man who hath not seen
the world is nought. Mark me, Will, when we go home to merry Hampshire
when this job is done, we shall have tales to tell that shall make the
Romaunt of Sir Bevis look pale as a half-heated iron.”
“Hark ye, comrade Laneham!” cried Wade to an older man, “thou hast been
in foreign parts before. Know’st thou the name of this valley?”
“Marry, that do I; it is called the Pass of Roncesvalles.”
“Roncesvalles?” echoed Will. “What, the place where the good knight
Messire Roland, the chief of King Charles’s twelve Paladins, was slain
by the Saracens? Well, now, to think that I myself should tread the
very ground where he died! I heard a minstrel sing the tale in our
lord’s hall one Christmas Eve, and I shame me not to own that I let
fall a tear or two when he came to the good knight’s death; but that I
should one day see the very spot with mine own eyes, this could I never
have dreamed!”
“I marvel not the good knight came by the worse, if the heathen dogs
beset him in a place like this!” cried Ned Smith, eyeing wonderingly
the shaggy woods and frowning precipices around him. “But tell me,
Robin Laneham, what is yon thing perched on that high rock before us? A
man, a mountain-goat, or a demon?”
“Belike he hath a spice of all three,” chuckled the old archer; “he is
a Spanish goat-herd.”
“What?” cried Wade, staring at the strange, Robinson-Crusoe form. “Have
the Spaniards that we go to fight, then, skins like to those of goats?”
“Wonderest thou at that? Why, what more natural than that these
mountain-folk, who live among goats day and night, and eat nought but
goats’ flesh, and drink goats’ milk, should come to have a goatish
aspect themselves? I warrant that ere we come this way again, yon
fellow will have not only a goat’s skin, but goat’s horns to boot!”
Honest Ned (to whom such a thing seemed quite possible) accepted the
tale in perfect good faith, and pictured to himself the amazement of
his cronies at home, when he should tell them all this on his return.
“But how say men that this is a land of sunshine?” cried another
recruit, wincing as a gust of icy wind smote him full in the face. “If
it be so, the sun must be frozen like all else here, for the icicles
hang on my beard as thick as ever they hung on the eaves of our cottage
at Deerham!”
“Patience, lad; thou’lt have sun enow ere long, never fear.”
In fact, they had only marched a few miles farther, when they suddenly
emerged from the gloomy gorge, and saw below them, in the full glory of
the midday sun, a wide sweep of green upland sloping down to a vast,
smooth plain, dappled with clustering olive-trees, dainty gardens, dark
orange-groves, pleasant orchards, quaint little red-tiled hamlets, and
white-walled country houses embowered in noble trees, while, far beyond
all, rose the stately ramparts and graceful towers of queenly Pampeluna.
A ringing shout of joy broke from the English host; and the weary men,
forgetting all their fatigues, pressed on as briskly as ever.
But this land of promise proved far other than they thought. As far as
Pampeluna, indeed, the weather was fine; and the warm, dry plain seemed
a paradise to men benumbed with the cold mountain winds. But as soon as
they left the town behind, a storm of wind and rain burst upon them
which lasted several days, completely breaking up the roads (which were
bad enough at best), and sorely impeding their advance. Worse still,
the country-folk had fled before the invaders, carrying with them all
their stores; and the English, already short of supplies, were now
menaced with actual famine!
At this sudden and dismal change, they began to murmur aloud.
“Is this the land of plenty whereof they told us? Why, there is neither
bite nor sup to be had without fighting for it!”
“Plenty, quotha? Rare plenty, in sooth, when I myself saw, this very
day, a loaf of bread (and a small one to boot) sold in our camp for a
silver florin!”
“And see how these storms beset us, even in this land of sunshine! One
would think, lads, there is a curse on our undertaking!”
“Small wonder if there be, when we fight for one like yon Spanish
butcher, whom our Prince is so fond to brother! I saw him yester-eve,
when he rode through the camp with his highness; and I tell ye his is a
face that none would trust—no, not a five-year-old child! Dost mind,
Hal, yon French dog that was chained in the courtyard of our inn at
Bordeaux, which looked so mild and meek when any man came nigh to it,
till, snap! it had him by the leg or ever he was aware? Even such is
Pedro the Cruel, as men call him—a goodly name, in truth, for a
crowned king!”
“Crowned king, quotha? Could I have my way, I’d crown him with a
red-hot trivet, as was done to yon French rogue who headed the peasant
churls against the nobles in the days of the Jacquerie! He deserves no
less, I trow; for what manner of king is he, think ye, at the very
sound of whose coming his subjects fly as from the Evil One himself?”
When they crossed the Ebro at Logrono, the rain was still falling in
torrents; and the soldiers’ growls were louder than ever as they
struggled through ankle-deep mud, wet, weary, half-starved, with the
furious wind buffeting them like a living foe, and the stinging
rain-gusts lashing their faces.
But all murmurs were hushed as there came striding through their ranks
(on foot like themselves) a figure which all knew at a glance. It was a
tall man in full armour, whose gaunt, strongly marked features, hooked
nose, and quick, fierce, restless movements, with the piercing glance
of his one eye, were grimly suggestive of an eagle about to swoop on
its prey. Such was the famous Sir John Chandos, the best knight of
Edward’s host, and rightly called “the flower of English chivalry.”
“How now, lads?” cried he, cheerily; “do ye flag with the goal in
sight? Patience a little, and ye shall have full amends. Yon Spanish
knaves are so malapert as to deem that the bold lads of Merry England
can be daunted by a gust of wind and a shower of rain; but we will
teach them ere long that they have erred—ha?”
The great leader’s stirring words put new life into all who heard; and
forward pressed the toil-worn host as if it had just started.
On the morrow, their eagerness for action was increased tenfold by the
news that Don Tello, Henry of Transtamare’s brother, had fallen with a
large force on an isolated English detachment, and cut off Sir William
Felton, several other knights, and more than two hundred men. But,
though burning to avenge this disaster, the English saw no way of doing
so; for they found the Spanish army so strongly posted at the little
town of Navaretta, that even the Black Prince durst not attack, in such
a position, a force thrice his own; and all that day the opposing hosts
faced each other in sullen inaction.
That evening was the most anxious that the great English leader had
ever spent. Fight he must on the morrow, for not a morsel of food was
left; and he would have to attack, with barely thirty thousand men,
more than one hundred thousand. At Crecy and Poitiers his strong
position had won the day against superior numbers, but now all the
advantages of numbers and position were with the enemy.
The sun was sinking when his watchful eye saw a small group of horsemen
advance a little before the glittering wall of spears and helmets in
the Spanish host. They seemed officers of high rank, if not the actual
commanders—and, in fact, the tall, handsome man in the centre, with a
crown on his helmet, was Henry of Transtamare himself; and the short,
square man in black armour, who was speaking to him so earnestly, was
Bertrand du Guesclin!
The Breton hero’s advice, if taken, would have sealed the doom of the
English, and ended the war ere it had well begun. Warning Henry that
his raw levies, though brave, were no match in open field for Edward’s
veterans, he pointed out that the unprovided English must either starve
or fight at a disadvantage, and that all he had to do was to keep any
supplies from reaching the enemy, and let famine and disease do the
work for him.
But here, as at Auray, the great general’s wise counsel was overborne
by the folly of his hot-headed colleagues. The fiery Henry would hear
of nothing but instant battle, and his brother Don Tello, flushed with
his slight success, vehemently supported him, saying with a sneer—
“Sir Bertrand has not forgotten, belike, how these English made him
prisoner at Auray; perchance he is afraid of the like ill-hap befalling
again.”
“On the morrow,” said Du Guesclin, with a look that made even the
haughty Spaniard quail, “it shall be seen which of us two is the more
afraid.”
When a deserter brought word to the English, an hour later, that the
Spaniards meant to come forth and meet them in the field next morning,
the shout of stern joy that rolled like thunder from rank to rank
startled even their over-confident foes, for then, as in after days,
“it was ever the wont of the English to rejoice greatly when they
beheld the enemy.”
On the morrow the two hosts joined battle, and Bertrand’s words were
amply fulfilled. When Chandos’s column of levelled lances and charging
steeds came crashing into Don Tello’s division, the boaster’s heart
died within him, and he fled with two thousand of his men, leaving bare
the flank of the Spanish centre, on which the Black Prince himself
instantly fell like a thunderbolt. And beside him, with a savage glare
in his pale-blue eyes, his red beard bristling like a lion’s mane, and
his sword reeking with slaughter, rode Pedro the Cruel, athirst for his
brother’s blood.
But here the fight went hard, for Henry himself led the centre, and
around him fought his bravest followers. The untrained Spanish levies
fell like mown grass before men whose whole life had been one long
battle; but new thousands succeeded, and the harvest of death went on,
while Henry, striking right and left with the force of a giant, made
his mighty voice heard above all the din—
“Brave gentlemen, you have made me your king; stand by me now as loyal
men and true!”
Nobly did the doomed men redeem their fatal pledge, fighting on even
when the battle was lost beyond recovery, to protect their king’s
escape. Nor was the heroic self-sacrifice vain; for, just as the last
of the gallant band went down, Henry dashed through the ford of the
Najarra unpursued, to renew the struggle a few months later, with
better fortune.
He might not have got off so well but for a false report of his having
made for Navaretta, which drew away most of the English soldiers, who,
fired with the hope of a king’s ransom, followed the chase so hotly
that they burst pell-mell into the town with the flying Spaniards. The
pursuers made at once for Henry’s quarters, where, though they did not
find him, they found a rich camp-equipage and service of gold plate,
that made every face radiant.
“Here is a bit of glass that sparkles bravely!” cried Wade, pouncing on
a diamond worth thousands of pounds—“and set in gold, too! Mayhap ’tis
worth a crown or so; and anyhow it will be a gay gaud for my Gillian to
wear o’ holidays.”
“This cup for my money!” shouted Ned Smith, seizing a beautifully
carved goblet set with jewels. “Marry, how my gossips in merry
Hampshire will stare when I show ’em a cup that was used by the King of
Castile!”
“I will be content with this,” said old Laneham, clutching a massive
gold dish. “I had hoped to put a king or two to ransom ere this job was
over; but half a loaf is aye better than no bread.”
Meanwhile the Claremont twins, swept toward the river by the rush of
flight and pursuit, heard all at once a well-known war-cry amid a whirl
of struggling figures and clashing weapons, and, flying to the spot,
they found three or four French knights fighting desperately, back to
back, against a throng of English and Gascon soldiers. Foremost was a
short, sturdy form in black armour, wielding a mighty axe, which dealt
death at every blow.
“Slay him! Cut him down!” roared a big Gascon, springing back just in
time from the fatal weapon.
“Nay! Take him alive for ransom!” shouted an Englishman. “He must be a
knight of renown.”
“Yield, noble Du Guesclin!” cried Alured, bursting through the press.
“We have won the day, and thou canst do no more!”
But his kindly words were lost in the hideous din, and Bertrand, seeing
him come rushing on, mistook him for a new foe. The fatal axe flashed
and fell once more, and down went Alured beneath the blow of his old
friend.
But as the falling-off of the broken helmet showed Bertrand whom he had
smitten, the sight seemed to wither his strength, and he let fall his
terrible axe, while his foes, seeing him disarmed, closed fiercely
round him.
“Back, fellows!” cried Hugo, sternly, as he thrust himself between.
“Yield, good Sir Bertrand—yield to Hugo de Claremont.”
“I yield me, rescue or no rescue, sith better may not be,” said
Bertrand, hoarsely. “But thy brother—lives he yet? If I have slain
him, I shall ne’er have the heart to wield weapon more.”
“Vex not thyself, fair sir,” said Alured, faintly, as he tried to raise
his bruised and aching head. “I am but somewhat dazed. Marry, thy blows
are not such as a man can jest with.”
“Now, God be praised my stroke slew thee not,” cried Du Guesclin,
raising him from the earth. “I ever thought we should meet again, but I
deemed not it should be thus.”
But neither the admiration of the whole army, nor the praise of grim
old Chandos himself, nor the thanks and rewards heaped on them by the
Black Prince (who welcomed their prisoner as if Du Guesclin had been
his best friend instead of his most redoubtable foe), could chase from
the brows of the twins the gloomy foreboding that clouded them; and, as
they entered their tent that night, Alured said sadly—
“My mind misgives me, brother, that God is not with us in this work,
and that it will not prosper.”
He spoke but too truly. History has told how their gallant host melted
beneath the blighting breath of pestilence and famine—how its great
leader saw his men perish round him while waiting in vain for the
fulfilment of the promises that his faithless ally had never meant to
keep—how he was forced to drain his own coffers to feed the men whom
the crowned ruffian who owed his throne to them had left to starve and
die—and how he finally repassed the Pyrenees with the wreck of his
splendid army, heavy and sick at heart, bearing with him the seeds of
the fell disease that was to doom him, only a few years later, to an
untimely grave, while the royal cut-throat whom he had championed,
within a twelvemonth of his restoration, lost crown and life.