IRRITABILITY OF THE FRENCH: INTERMINABLE DISSENSION, ASSISTED BY THE
PLAGUE, CONTINUES REDUCING THE POPULATION.
It is a little odd, but it is true, that Edward III. was crowned at
fourteen and married at fifteen years of age. Princes in those days were
affianced as soon as they were weighed, and married before they got
their eyes open, though even yet there are many people who do not get
their eyes opened until after marriage. Edward married Philippa,
daughter of the Count of Hainault, to whom he had been engaged while
teething.
In 1328 Mortimer mixed up matters with the Scots, by which he
relinquished his claim to Scotch homage. Being still the gentleman
friend of Isabella, the regent, he had great influence. He assumed, on
the ratification of the above treaty by Parliament, the title of Earl of
March.
The young prince rose to the occasion, and directed several of his
nobles to forcibly drag the Earl of March from the apartments of the
guilty pair, and in 1330 he became the Earl of Double-Quick March--a
sort of forced March--towards the gibbet, where he was last seen trying
to stand on the English climate. The queen was kept in close confinement
during the rest of her life, and the morning papers of that time
contained nothing of a social nature regarding her doings.
[Illustration: IN 1330 MORTIMER BECAME THE EARL OF DOUBLE-QUICK MARCH.]
The Scots, under David Bruce, were defeated at Halidon Hill in 1333, and
Bruce fled to France. Thus again under a vassal of the English king,
Edward Baliol by name, the Scotch crooked the reluctant hinges of the
knee.
Edward now claimed to be a more direct heir through Queen Isabella than
Philip, the cousin of Charles IV., who occupied the throne, so he
proceeded to vindicate himself against King Philip in the usual way. He
destroyed the French fleet in 1340, defeated Philip, though with
inferior numbers, at Crécy, and demonstrated for the first time that
cannon could be used with injurious results on the enemy.
[Illustration: EDWARD DEMONSTRATED AT THE BATTLE OF CRÉCY THAT CANNON
COULD BE USED WITH VIGOROUS RESULTS.]
In 1346 the Black Prince, as Edward was called, on account of the color
of the Russia iron used in making his mackintosh, may be said to have
commenced his brilliant military career. He captured Calais,--the key to
France,--and made it a flourishing English city and a market for wool,
leather, tin, and lead. It so continued for two hundred years.
The Scotch considered this a good time to regain their independence,
and David Bruce took charge of the enterprise, but was defeated at
Neville's Cross, in 1346, and taken prisoner.
Philippa here distinguished herself during the absence of the king, by
encouraging the troops and making a telling equestrian speech to them
before the battle. After the capture of Bruce, too, she repaired to
Calais, where she prevented the king's disgraceful execution of six
respectable citizens who had been sent to surrender the city.
[Illustration: A CLOSE CALL FOR THE SIX CITIZENS OF CALAIS.]
During a truce between the English and French, England was visited by
the Black Death, a plague that came from Asia and bade fair to
depopulate the country. London lost fifty thousand people, and at times
there were hardly enough people left to bury the dead or till the
fields. This contagion occurred in 1349, and even attacked the domestic
animals.
[Illustration: NO MONARCH OF SPIRIT CARES TO HAVE HIS THRONE PULLED FROM
UNDER HIM JUST AS HE IS ABOUT TO OCCUPY IT.]
John having succeeded Philip in France, in 1350 Edward made another
effort to recover the French throne; but no monarch of spirit cares to
have his throne pulled from beneath him just as he is about to occupy
it, and so, when the Black Prince began to burn and plunder southern
France, his father made a similar excursion from Calais, in 1355.
The next year the Black Prince sent twelve thousand men into the heart
of France, where they met an army of sixty thousand, and the English
general offered all his conquests cheerfully to John for the privilege
of returning to England; but John overstepped himself by demanding an
unconditional surrender, and a battle followed in which the French were
whipped out of their boots and the king captured. We should learn from
this to know when we have enough.
This battle was memorable because the English loss was mostly confined
to the common soldiery, while among the French it was peculiarly fatal
to the nobility. Two dukes, nineteen counts, five thousand men-at-arms,
and eight thousand infantry were killed, and a bobtail flush royal was
found to have been bagged as prisoners.
For four years John was a prisoner, but well treated. He was then
allowed to resume his renovated throne; but failing to keep good his
promises to the English, he came back to London by request, and died
there in 1364.
The war continued under Charles, the new French monarch; and though
Edward was an able and courteous foe, in 1370 he became so irritated
because of the revolt of Limoges, notwithstanding his former kindness to
its people, that he caused three thousand of her citizens to be put to
the sword.
The Black Prince fought no more, but after six years of illness died,
in 1376, with a good record for courage and statecraft. His father, the
king, survived him only a year, expiring in the sixty-fifth year of his
age, 1377.
English literature was encouraged during his reign, and John Wickliffe,
Gower, Chaucer, and other men whose genius greatly outstripped their
orthography were seen to flourish some.
[Illustration: A STRIKING ILLUSTRATION OF WAT TYLER'S CONTROVERSY WITH
THE TAX RECEIVER.]
Edward III. was succeeded by his grandson, Richard, and war with France
was maintained, though Charles the Wise held his own, with the aid of
the Scotch under Robert II., the first of the Stuarts.
A heavy war-tax was levied _per capita_ at the rate of three groats on
male and female above the age of fifteen, and those who know the value
of a groat will admit that it was too much. A damsel named Tyler,
daughter of Wat the Tyler, was so badly treated by the assessor that her
father struck the officer dead with his hammer, in 1381, and placed
himself at the head of a revolt, numbering one hundred thousand people,
who collected on Blackheath. Jack Straw and Rev. John Ball also aided in
the convention. The latter objected to the gentlemen on general
principles, claiming that Adam was no gentleman, and that Eve had still
less claim in that direction.[A]
[Footnote A: Rev. John Ball chose as a war-cry and transparency these
words:
"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Where was then the gentleman?"
Those who have tried it in modern times say that to be a gentleman is no
sinecure, and the well-bred author falls in with this sentiment, though
still regarding it as a great boon.--HISTORIAN.]
In this outbreak, and during the same year, the rebels broke into the
city of London, burned the palaces, plundered the warehouses, and killed
off the gentlemen wherever an _alibi_ could not be established, winding
up with the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
During a conference with Tyler, the king was so rudely addressed by Wat,
that Walworth, mayor of London, struck the rebel with his sword, and
others despatched him before he knew exactly Wat was Wat.
Richard, to quiet this storm, acceded to the rebel demands until he
could get his forces together, when he ignored his promises in a right
royal manner in the same year. One of these concessions was the
abolition of slavery and the novel use of wages for farm work. By his
failure to keep this promise, serfdom continued in England four hundred
years afterwards.
Richard now became unpopular, and showed signs of worthlessness. He
banished his cousin Henry, and dispossessed him of his estates. This, of
course, irritated Henry, who entered England while the king was in
Ireland, and his forces were soon joined by sixty thousand malecontents.
Poor Richard wandered away to Wales, where he was in constant danger of
falling off, and after living on chestnuts knocked from the high trees
by means of his sceptre, he returned disgusted and took up his quarters
in the Tower, where he died of starvation in 1400.
Nothing can be more pathetic than the picture of a king crying for
bread, yet willing to compromise on tarts. A friendless king sitting on
the hard stone floor of the Tower, after years spent on board of an
elastic throne with rockers under it, would move even the hardened
historian to tears. (A brief intermission is here offered for unavailing
tears.)
[Illustration: A FRIENDLESS KING SITTING ON THE HARD STONE FLOOR OF THE
TOWER.]