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Everyman's Library
Edited by Ernest Rhys
Fiction
CRESSY AND POICTIERS
With an Introduction by Ernest Rhys
* * * * * *
THE PUBLISHERS OF _EVERYMAN'S
LIBRARY_ WILL BE PLEASED TO SEND
FREELY TO ALL APPLICANTS A LIST
OF THE PUBLISHED AND PROJECTED
VOLUMES TO BE COMPRISED UNDER
THE FOLLOWING TWELVE HEADINGS:
TRAVEL * SCIENCE * FICTION
THEOLOGY & PHILOSOPHY
HISTORY * CLASSICAL
CHILDREN'S BOOKS
ESSAYS * ORATORY
POETRY & DRAMA
BIOGRAPHY
ROMANCE
[Illustration]
IN TWO STYLES OF BINDING, CLOTH
FLAT BACK COLOURED TOP AND
LEATHER ROUND CORNERS GILT TOP.
LONDON: J. M. DENT & CO.
* * * * * *
[Illustration]
A TALE
WHICH
HOLDETH
CHILDREN
FROM PLAY
& OLD MEN
FROM THE
CHIMNEY
CORNER
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
* * * * * *
[Illustration]
CRESSY & POICTIERS
The Story of the Black Prince's Page
by
J. G. EDGAR
London: Published
by J. M. Dent & Co
And In New York
by E. P. Dutton & Co
First Edition February 1906
Reprinted April 1906
Plymouth: William Brendon and Son, Ltd.
Printers
Introduction.
"Ivanhoe," picturing the days of Richard Coeur de Lion, leapt over
all but a couple of centuries to draw upon Froissart. The present
romance of Edward the Black Prince's time is well within the barriers
of the best of all the romantic chroniclers, and perhaps its chief
merit is that it is both historically and romantically an avowed
Froissart book. Its author, J. G. Edgar, who was of course not a Walter
Scott, wrote and was content to write for "Beeton's Boys' Own Magazine"
in its palmy days, between forty and fifty years ago, when its editor
had a very distinct idea of bringing English history into holiday
range. Edgar was one of his chief contributors, and wrote some capital
stories and histories, of which three or four are still in favour, and
this story of "Cressy and Poictiers" is the best of them.
Edgar, being a minor and not a major romancer, gave less rein to his
fantasy than Scott, and kept closer to his originals. He conceived
in this story the happy idea of accommodating the Black Prince with
an adventurous and vain-glorious page, whom he calls Arthur Winram,
who is, as a necessity of fiction, bound to be of nobler birth than
that name would seem to say, and to be subject to the wicked designs
of those who would keep him from his birthright. Through the eyes of
this page are viewed the martial events and pageantry in the career
of the Black Prince, leading up to the fields of Creçy and Poictiers,
and so to the Prince's death. Thus there are three chief fortunes at
stake: that of the page and hero, that of the Black Prince, and that of
England herself.
If you turn from the romance to the actual story of the Black Prince,
as it is told by the historians, you will find the details in which
Edgar differs from them are either those that are necessarily
fictitious, or those that are not very essential. And if you compare
his book with Froissart, you will find that once he has got on common
ground with the fourteenth-century chronicler, he keeps pretty well on
terms with him in the succession of events.
Edgar takes 1328 as the year of his page and hero's birth; and that was
a year to "precipitate affairs," as the chroniclers of a later date
than Froissart's used to say. In that year Charles of France died, and
Philip of Valois was elected by the peers and barons of France to the
realm, and so put out the Queen of England, Isabel, daughter of Philip
le Beau, who was the next heir.
"Thus," says Froissart, "passed this realm of France out of her right
lineage, as it hath been deemed by many." And thus came many wars and
dire calamities. And "this is the very foundation of this history, to
recount the great enterprises and feats of arms that have fallen: for
since the time of Charlemagne there never befell so great adventures."
In the same year--that is, 1328--King Edward married Philippa of
Hainault. "The English chronicle saith this marriage and coronation of
the queen was done at York with much honour." In the year following,
their first-born child, Edward, afterwards called the Black Prince,
blessed this union.
This gives us the year of 1344 (when the Black Prince was fifteen, and
his future page a year older) as the natural one for this boyish tale
of adventure to open. It was the year when Philip of Valois murdered
twelve Breton hostages, and Edward vowed revenge; and this was the
time, too, of the revolt in Flanders. In 1345, Jacob von Arteveldt was
the victim of the mob. "Poor men first set him high, and evil men slew
him," says Froissart. One may compare the romance with the chronicle
here to the advantage of the latter. In the eleventh chapter of the
story we are at Caen; and Froissart's chronicles give us one or two
inimitable story-teller's cues of which hardly sufficient account is
made. That little tower at the foot of the bridge, seen at the end of
the street, and the one-eyed knight Sir Thomas, who saved the lives of
many dames and damosels and cloisterers, as he rode through the town,
make one of those medieval pictures, lifelike and minute, which are
like little windows into actual history.
Many such episodes fill in the story before we come to the big
battle-piece of Creçy. In the preamble, good use is made of the guide,
Gobin Agace, who guides the English in the passage of the Somme, at
the passage called Blanche Paque. There is no better account anywhere
in history and romance than that Froissart gives of Cressy at its
most striking moments. It may seem here and there that something of
the confusion of the field itself obscures his story; but his strokes
are sure and tell-tale as can be desired when the climax comes; and
wonderfully he uses the natural effects--the storm, the great rain,
the thunder and lightning; and then the ominous flight of crows over
both battles; and the sudden bright emergence of the sun, to dazzle the
Frenchmen's eyes, and warm the stout backs of the English; and finally
the arrow-shot of the English archers, so thick and so concerted, that
"it seemed to be snow!" The disastrous failure of the Genoese crossbows
in reply we find both in Froissart and in Edgar's pages; and the detail
of the King's post, "on a little windmill hill," where he hears that
his son, the Prince, is hard pressed, and says: "Let them suffer him
this day to win his spurs!" is another famous incident on which the
chronicler and the novelist draw alike.
One or two circumstances of the battle are slightly changed in Edgar's
page. The strength of the English position on the high ground, upon
the right bank of the river, is hardly made so clear as might be. The
English are seated on a large plain when first seen by Philip, in the
romance. Edgar would have gained by comparing Froissart with other
records in picturing this scene. Again, he does not speak of the small
cannon that were used at Creçy, though at the siege of Calais they are
remembered in his account. Froissart says expressly, however, that
small cannon were posted between the archers; and Edward certainly took
cannon with him from England. The cannon used in the siege of Calais
threw balls of three or four ounces weight.
The Black Prince's page is made a prisoner after Creçy; and the
succeeding chain of events is again not quite given its proportionate
effect in the romance. However, we have some compensation--the battle
of Neville's Cross, which Froissart, by the way, reports to have taken
place only three miles from Newcastle-on-Tyne and calls after that
famous old town accordingly. Then succeeds the siege of Calais, and
its surrender on the 3rd August, 1347. One passage here from Froissart
that is not in Edgar is too good for either romance or history to
forget. It is where the French herald Sir John returns into the
beleaguered town with the message of the English King:
"Then Sir John went unto the market place, and sounded the common bell:
then, all incontinent, men and women assembled there, and the captain
made report of all he had done, and said, 'Sirs, it will be none
otherwise, therefore now take advice, and make a short answer.' Then
all the people began to weep and make such sorrow, that there was not
so hard a heart, if they had seen them, but that would have had great
pity of them; the captain himself wept piteously."
At this surrender of Calais, the question whether the six townsmen came
forth with halters round their necks or with ropes in their hands need
not disturb the reader. Tradition favours the former, and plain history
the latter.
It is at the battle of Poictiers that the real value of Edgar's story
as a tributary current leading into the broad stream of history is best
to be discovered. One more illustration from Froissart may be given
here, because it has to do with an incident which gave Edgar one of his
clues. It is that of the scene where the Squire of Picardy, Johan de
Helenes, takes the Lord Berkeley, who had been pursuing him.
"And when he had pursued him the space of a league, the said John
turned again, and laid his sword in rest instead of a spear, and so
came running toward the Lord Berkeley, who lift up his sword to have
stricken the Squire. But when he saw the stroke come, he turned from
it, so that the Englishman lost his stroke; and John struck him as he
passed on the arm, that the Lord Berkeley's sword fell into the field."
This is enough to show how close the martial passes and exchanges in
the story keep to the picture seen by Froissart.
One of the drawbacks of the story as a piece of history, as something
more than a picture, is that it does not make us realise the
daring--the merciless, impressive personal effect of the Prince; or the
tragedy then of the last illness pursuing this man of force all through
the final campaign; for his end in this book is a casual matter,
treated in a postscript or little more than that. But the romance
carries us through an extraordinary and overwhelming series of events,
and serves to stimulate--although Edgar's manner is staid comparatively
with other romancers of history--a new delight in the heroic and
chivalric colours of the time.
Sir John Chandos and the Cardinal of Perigord, as they pass through
Edgar's story, do not leave you at all satisfied to know them only
there. It is of the nature of good romance to suggest and not to
complete, offering an oblique reflection of great affairs and huge
figures; and if Edgar's mirror in this is a fainter one than Scott's,
one is still grateful to him for holding it up to the fourteenth
century as he did. Read him with Froissart in reserve, and you have a
very good idea of that fighting time which was at once so valiant and
so meagre, so adventurous and so mortal for the soldiers and captains,
and often so terrible for the poor folk--men, women, and children, who,
like those of Caen, were massacred because their masters were pleased
to be militant.
One other point remains, which has perplexed the historians and is of
extreme interest in romance, and that has to do with the Black Prince's
proverbial colour. Was it his armour, or the terror he caused, that
made men call him "Black"? Froissart never uses the label at all; but
there is evidence of his black armour, and romance dare not now change
his coat.
THE FOLLOWING ARE THE PUBLISHED WORKS OF JOHN GEORGE EDGAR
1834-1864
_Biography for Boys_, 1853.
_The Boyhood of Great Men_, 1853.
_History for Boys_, 1855.
_Boy Princes_, 1857.
_The Heroes of England_, 1858.
_The Wars of the Roses_, 1859.
_The Crusades and the Crusaders_, 1860.
_Cavaliers and Roundheads_, 1861.
_Sea Kings and Naval Heroes_, 1861.
_Memorable Events of Modern History_, 1862.
_Danes, Saxons, and Normans_, 1863.
_Cressy and Poictiers_ (in Beeton's _Boys' Own Magazine_, 1863), 1865.
_Historical Anecdotes of Animals_, 1865.
_Runnymede and Lincoln Fair_, 1866.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Introduction 1
II. The Falcon in Gracechurch 2
III. Winning the Peacock 6
IV. At my Grandsire's Homestead 10
V. Jack Fletcher 14
VI. War with France 19
VII. Windsor Castle 25
VIII. Edward the Black Prince 29
IX. King Edward's Defiance 36
X. The Voyage 40
XI. March of the Invaders 43
XII. A Snare 45
XIII. The Broken Bridges 49
XIV. A Rush for Liberty 50
XV. Hunting a King 55
XVI. Gobin Agace 58
XVII. How we Forded the Somme 61
XVIII. The Eve of Battle 64
XIX. The Battle of Cressy 66
XX. My Adventures at Cressy 72
XXI. At La Broyes 79
XXII. The Siege of Calais 83
XXIII. My Release 87
XXIV. The Falcon Revisited 90
XXV. The Crisis 98
XXVI. The Eve of Battle 102
XXVII. Face to Face 106
XXVIII. Neville's Cross 109
XXIX. Royalty in a Rage 113
XXX. At Calais 118
XXXI. The Luck of John Copeland 121
XXXII. Arrivals 126
XXXIII. No Road 131
XXXIV. Surrender of Calais 135
XXXV. A Runaway Bridegroom 140
XXXVI. How Calais was Repeopled 142
XXXVII. A Mysterious Visit 146
XXXVIII. Calais in Peril 150
XXXIX. The Lords De Ov 154
XL. Too Late 159
XLI. How Calais was Saved 162
XLII. A Princess in Peril 168
XLIII. The Plague of Florence 173
XLIV. John, King of France 176
XLV. Renewal of the War 180
XLVI. A Town Lost and Won 184
XLVII. "A Douglas!" 189
XLVIII. Burnt Candlemas 194
XLIX. Our Captivity 197
L. Chased by Bloodhounds 204
LI. At Bordeaux 211
LII. The Prince in Black Armour 214
LIII. The Incursion 217
LIV. The Coming Foe 221
LV. An Unwelcome Discovery 224
LVI. Poictiers 227
LVII. Sunday Morning 229
LVIII. The Peace-maker 233
LIX. Chandos and Clermont 236
LX. The Array of the English 239
LXI. Rout of the Marshals 242
LXII. The Prince in the Battle 244
LXIII. Adventures in the Field 248
LXIV. A Royal Captive 251
LXV. How I Rescued my worst Enemy 254
LXVI. The Scots at Poictiers 256
LXVII. The Victors and the Vanquished 259
LXVIII. The March to Bordeaux 261
LXIX. The Prince and his Captive 264
LXX. Death of Queen Isabel 268
LXXI. What Befell Lord De Ov 272
LXXII. Marriage of the Black Prince 274
LXXIII. The Challenge 278
LXXIV. Trial by Battle 281
LXXV. Glory and the Grave 283
CRESSY AND POICTIERS
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
In the fourteenth century, when the population of England was estimated
at two millions--when our railways were bridle-roads and our cornfields
forests, and when the capital was a little town enclosed by an old
Roman fortified wall, with towers and turrets--no festival, save
Christmas and May Day, was regarded with more interest than Midsummer
Eve, or the vigil of St. John the Baptist.
Great was the commotion, much the ceremony, in London on such
occasions; and as the shades of evening fell, young and old, high
and low, rich and poor, participated in the excitement of the hour.
The houses were decorated with branches of green birch, long fennel,
St. John's rush, and orpine; and as night closed over the city the
inhabitants illuminated their dwellings with clusters of lamps, and
made the streets resound with merriment and song.
At the same time, the ceremony of "setting the watch"--a body of armed
guards, instituted in the reign of the third Henry to keep the peace,
and prevent robberies and outrages--was performed with much show and
splendour. On this ceremony, indeed, large sums of money were expended,
and the watchmen, arrayed "in bright harness," marched in procession,
accompanied by the Lord Mayor and aldermen, the city officers, a crowd
of minstrels, giants, and morris-dancers; while blazing cressets and
huge torches, borne on men's shoulders, threw a flood of light over the
scene, and raised the wonder of the thronging populace.
Meanwhile, a large fire was kindled in the street, and stirred to a
blaze, which was intended to typify the patron saint of the day. Around
this fire lads and lasses danced and disported themselves merrily to
the sound of music. Many and gay were the capers they cut as the flames
rose and fell. Sometimes they leaped over the fire amid many shouts,
and at others they looked through garlands at the flame, believing
that, by so doing, they freed themselves from various pains and
diseases, present and prospective.
Not till midnight--sometimes not till dawn--did the dancing cease; and
as soon as day broke, while the dew was still on the grass and flowers,
the young women went forth to practise certain rites, by which they
believed they could assure themselves of the constancy or inconstancy
of their wooers. Collecting garlands of flowers, the nymphs bound them
on their heads, and according as the dew remained a longer or shorter
time on the flowers, they augured more or less favourably of the
fidelity of their lovers. Moreover, they secured a snow-white wether,
decorated it with garlands, and, enclosing it in a hut of heath, danced
and sang around. She who wished to test her fortune stood by the door,
and if the wether remained quiet she considered the omen good; but if
he pushed his horns through the door of the hut, she concluded that her
suitor was to prove false.
Such was the great medieval festival that was being celebrated at the
time when our chronicle opens, when Edward III. was King of England,
and on the point of undertaking the war with France, which resulted
in mighty victories won and splendid conquests achieved against great
odds; and when the hero of this story entered upon the remarkable
adventures which associated his name with that of the young conqueror
of Cressy and Poictiers--Edward, Prince of Wales, popularly known as
"the Black Prince."