By C. E. BISHOP.

VI.—A PICTURESQUE HALF-CENTURY.

A picture of the times of Edward III should be one of strong lights and shades. His fifty years were crowded with events remarkable in their nature and of powerful influence on England, then and thereafter. His wars by land and sea revolutionized the military ideas of Europe; the invincible English infantry rose, and the thunder of the first cannon proclaimed the end of chivalry; the organization of the House of Commons and the enlistment of soldiers for stipend introduced in its full effect the safe policy of “control of the sovereign by the control of his purse.” The foundation of Flemish manufactures in England, and the opening of the New Castle coal trade on the one hand, with the labors of Wickliffe and Chaucer on the other, were alone sufficient to make any reign memorable.

It is a matter of wonder that “philosophers of history” have not made more study of the pregnant events of this reign. It is a matter of greater wonder that writers of romance and the drama have not more utilized its highly-colored scenes; the reigns of John and Richard II, which Shakspere seized as food for his pen, seem tame in the comparison—the more so because Froissart’s minute and picturesque “Chronicles” have preserved a wealth of material of these events ready to the modern adapter’s hand. This variety of strong situations should have half a dozen “pictures” instead of one. Perhaps we can “photograph them down” into a group of seven vignettes for our one “Picture.”

First shows us Edward, the boy of ten years, taken by his mother to her brother’s court at Paris and there made the unwitting tool to work the dethronement and death of his father (Edward II). His mother has sold his hand in marriage to the Count of Hainault’s infant daughter for troops to invade England withal. He becomes nominal king at the age of fifteen, but his mother and her brilliantly bad paramour, Mortimer, are the real rulers of England. His luckless Scotch campaign should be seen, in which his army was wasted and used up without a blow being struck, because the Scotch on their Highland ponies, with a bag of oatmeal dough and a pan-cake griddle at their saddles, needed no base of supplies, and just starved out and tired out the richly equipped English army—Isabella and Mortimer plotting the whole thing to ruin the young king’s popularity and avert the catastrophe which their black prophetic souls but too surely anticipated. For there is Nottingham Castle, the home of the two conspirators. The guards are changed every night and the keys kept under the queen’s pillow; and no nobleman is allowed to bring his retinue nearer than five miles from the walls. Good reason have they to be thus careful and suspicious after their five years of riot and usurpation; but their care avails not. The king is twenty years old and the only man in England capable of delivering her. We can see to this day the underground passage beneath the castle walls, where Edward and his few trusted knights went in and burst open Mortimer’s bed-room, where he was himself plotting the death of Edward. Comes the queen rushing in, en dÉshabillÉ, screaming, “Do not hurt my darling Mortimer!” Mortimer goes to the block, nevertheless; and the scene closes with the guilty queen’s agony for the loss of the only love of her unhappy life, her succeeding years of alternate brooding and raving, while all Europe is ringing with the feats of her son and grandson, (the Black Prince), not one ray of which glory penetrated the gloom of her solitary mourning over a lost and guilty passion. Is not this opening picture of the reign sufficiently tragic?

Next we should have the first exhibitions of the equally unholy passion of Edward for foreign conquest. His intrigues in the Netherlands for the invasion of France are a study in early diplomacy. A foremost figure in the scene is the remarkable “Brewer of Ghent,” de Artevelde, whose romantic career and tragic death at the hands of the people he most loved and benefited, because they resented his devotion to Edward, “read like a novel.” Here appear, too, the sturdy burghers of the Netherlands, painted by Motley’s matchless pen:

These burghers took all Edward’s money for fighting and did not fight. From three invasions of France their armies came back with whole skins and full pockets, until Edward was beggared, his crown jewels pawned, his estates mortgaged, and he at last obliged to give hostages to the thrifty Dutchmen for payment of their claims.

But, three things resulted: (1) “The Brewer of Ghent” advising it, Edward laid claim to the throne of France as next in succession by his mother’s prior right, and thus began the Hundred Years’ War, of great portent to both countries. (2) Edward and his queen, Phillippa of Hainault, transplanted colonies of Flemish manufacturers to England, and laid the foundation of her wealth and independence. (3) Edward’s necessity proved England’s opportunity, and every appropriation for his wars was the occasion of new demands for parliamentary privilege and popular rights.

This vignette closes with the great naval battle off Sluys (June 24, 1340), so quaintly described by Froissart; in which we have the strange spectacle of iron-clad French knights fighting on shipboard, sturdy English sailors boarding and incontinently pitching them into the sea, where, like Falstaff, they “have a kind of alacrity in sinking,”—the result being a victory so striking that it “made the Channel an English lake for two hundred years,” and a calamity so complete that no one dared to break the news to the French king, and so they set the court fools to berating in his presence “the cowardly English who dared not jump into the sea as your majesty’s soldiers did.” This victory redeemed Edward’s military renown, and began to stir the slow blood of England at last. The idea of annexing France, which had so long regarded England as only a Norman-French colony, began to take a hold on all classes.

The third scene should open with the little wars in Little Britain, the “wars of the two Janes,” wives of the dead dukes of Brittany, England and France aiding respective sides. Jane de Montfort’s heroic defense of Hennebon; her promise to her despairing garrison to surrender within three days should not the English succor arrive; her discovery of the English fleet in the offing at day-break of the third day; and how she came down from the walls after her allies had beaten and driven off the French and “kissed Sir Walter Manny and all his knights like a noble and valiant dame;” and then her subsequent naval victory in the channel, when she stood on the deck of her flag-ship, in complete armor, and vanquished her assailants—all this was just the thing to “fire the hearts” of English chivalry. It only needed in addition the promise of unlimited booty to raise an army of English yeomen—not of Dutch burghers—for the invasion of France (1346). The Norman spoliation is requited with interest after two hundred and eighty years; booty and prisoners are sent home by the ship load; the very hostlers of Edward’s army wear velvets and fine furs every day. Now we come to the wonderful battle of Cressy—more full of romantic incident than any other of modern times, save possibly that of Poictiers, its companion-piece, in the same reign. On the English side 7,000 jaded, retreating men—on the French, 60,000 of the best and freshest recruits. But this handful of men, untitled and unarmored, shall overthrow that host of steel-clad warriors, with genealogies as long as their lances, and an ancient culture of arms as useless as their metal overcoats before the English yeomen, in their buff and green jerkins. Here the peal of the new bombards—“the thunder of God,” the French called it—also told of a new order of war. The world had moved and the French had not discovered it; while the English had, for they moved it! The picture is full of incident. There stands Edward, on the hill by the windmill, refusing to send reinforcements to the beset Black Prince. “Let the boy win his spurs. This shall be his victory.” Over here is the brave, blind, old king of Bohemia, who has heard the battle is going badly, and he insists on being led into the fray where he may strike one blow for France and honor, and is struck down. Ich dien[F] is blazoned on his crest—a motto which an admiring and commiserating foe is to take up and fulfill in proud humility, a young warrior of sixteen years—

The slaughter of thirty thousand French—Edward had them carefully counted—by this handful of English made French prowess forever after despised in the homes and market-places of England.

The next condensed picture is of the siege of Calais. An English city springs up around the doomed fortress, and for a year the English trade, feast, game and tourney before the starving garrison. Scotland thinks this a good time to strike England. Queen Phillippa is anon in the field with an English army, and at Nevill’s Cross (October, 1346) there is another exhibition of Amazonian chivalry. King David of Scotland is taken prisoner and by a common soldier, plain John Copeland, as if everything must be extraordinary and strange. John hurries his royal prize away to the castle of Ogle, and sturdily refuses to give him up to the queen or to any man but King Edward himself. Just the same John was knighted and rewarded; he would have lost his head in any other country. Phillippa goes happy enough over to Calais to spend Christmas and receive the plaudits of Europe and of her lord, which she thought more of. We must take in Froissart’s fancy sketch of the surrender of Calais. The six wealthy burghers voluntarily march out, barefooted, in their shirts, halters about their necks, to die vicariously for the rest of the Calaisians; at the pitiful sight all the English generals intercede with Edward for mercy, but he will not; the queen goes on her knees and pleads so eloquently that the stoutest warriors drop surreptitious tears; the king, with recollections of Nevill’s Cross and the anticipation of another royal child soon to come, can not withstand this, and he says, rather ungraciously, he wishes the queen had been farther away that day, but he supposes she will have it so; and she gives the six citizens each his life, his liberty, a good suit of clothes and a banquet—the last being esteemed not the least of the gifts after their long diet on dogs and horses. All this dear old Froissart tells, and it does not impair its acceptation in history that he evolved the whole incident from his inner consciousness—any more than does the fact that good parson Weems invented the incident of George Washington and the cherry tree injure that story’s currency. In fact, sober history of those times is more marvelous than anything that even the imaginative Froissart could invent. Calais remained an English stronghold and base of English operations in France for two hundred years.

It is now 1347, and all England gives itself up to months of festivity, and patting its own back for its French feats. There are brilliant tournaments and balls, in which the captive king of Scotland and captive French nobles take part as heartily as if they were victors. The Noble Order of the Garter is established with imposing ritual and brilliant festivities, and St. George becomes England’s titular saint. Now occurs Edward’s attempted intrigue with the Countess of Salisbury, who is as wise, brave and pure as she is beautiful. The noble part she played makes her, in our eyes, a greater heroine than Phillippa and “the two Janes.” She taught Edward such a lesson of propriety that he was able to turn her own confusion at a court ball into a lesson in modesty to the tittering lords and ladies, as he clasped the lost garter on his own knee and said, “Evil be to him who evil thinks.” And so it comes that the highest order of English nobility and the noble motto on her coat of arms commemorates a pure woman’s holding fast to her integrity. Is not this the best of all the vignettes?

But there is an awfully dark background to it. A rude stop was put to all these rejoicings by the Black Death (1348-50). This Chinese epidemic swept desolation over all Europe. One-third of the population of England was carried off; half the people of London died, and it was difficult to find places of burial. The king’s daughter was one of its victims, and her death took place while she was en route to Spain to be married; she was buried in the church she was to have been married in. The loss of laborers and beasts was so great that famine was added to pestilence. But these dreadful dispensations contributed to the overthrow of slavery and hastened the downfall of the Plantagenets. To counteract the effects of the scarcity of help the Statute of Laborers was passed, a law which attempted to fix the price of labor and to prevent villeins leaving their masters. This act was at the bottom of Wat Tyler’s rebellion in the next reign, and that was the beginning of the end of slavery. The revolt of the laboring classes proved a powerful aid to the spread of Lollardism, and that was the beginning of the Reformation. Thus do remote blessings flow from dark and inscrutable causes.

A more resplendent scene follows, by way of contrast again: The wonderful battle of Poictiers (September 19, 1356), in the heart of France, whither the Black Prince has recklessly pushed his maraudings. Here ten thousand English defeated sixty thousand French, and took the French king, John, prisoner. This completed the humiliation of France, and “she found in her desolation a miserable defence against invasion.” King John was borne to London in honor—for the chivalrous prince would not triumph over his captive, and humbly waited on him at table as his superior in rank. Then did his motto, Ich dien, shine brightly.

Another contrast: “Last scene of all that ends this strange, eventful history is second childishness and mere oblivion” to honor and fame on the part of Edward III. Phillippa was dead. The Black Prince had died, his last battle being disgraced by an inhuman slaughter of all his prisoners. The great warrior king in his dotage is the degraded creature of wicked Alice Perrers. Faction and contention rule at court, and discontent is in the land. The old king is on his death-bed. Alice Perrers hastily gathers her wealth, seizes the king’s jewels, even strips the rings from his fingers, and flees. The servants rifle the palace, and the mighty conqueror is left to meet a mightier—alone. Thus a wandering friar finds the apartments deserted, the doors standing open, and a wasted, gray old man dying alone.

The true glory of the reign remains to be told. Wickliffe’s brave revolt against Rome called to life the love of religious liberty there was in English character, and it never went out again even before the fires of persecution; while Chaucer called to life the hidden riches of the old-new English tongue, and the revelation drove the Norman speech, the last relic of England’s subjugation, out of court, school, and Parliament, in a statute formally recognizing the King’s English. The complete organization of the House of Commons adds another land-mark of the world’s progress.

Thus the chief glories of Edward Third’s time were not of his securing or voluntary promoting, and the resulting advantages to the world can hardly be in their fullness ascribed to any direct human agency. To whose, then?

[To be continued.]