And this was the sport that the Burgundians had in hare-hunting.
This Battle of the Hares was the merriest passage of arms for our party, and bourdes were made on it, and songs sung, as by the English on that other Battle of the Herrings. Now, moreover, I might be called rich, what with ransoms, what with my share of the plunder in horses, rings, chains of gold, jewels, silver dishes, and rich cloths, out of the baggage of the enemy. Verily lack of wealth could no more sunder Elliot and me! For Pothon was as open of hand as he was high of heart, and was no greedy captain, wherefore men followed him the more gladly.
CHAPTER XXIX—SHOWETH HOW VERY NOBLE WAS THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY
All this was well, but we were no nearer Rouen, and the freeing of the Maid, on this twentieth of November, than we had been when the siege of Compiègne broke up, on the twenty-sixth of October.
The Duke of Burgundy, we learned, was like a man mad when he heard of the Battle of the Hares. Nothing would serve him that day but to lead all his host to Guermigny from Peronne, whence he would have got little comfort of vengeance, for we were in a place of safety. But Jean de Luxembourg told him that he must not venture his nobility among routiers like us, wherein he pleased the Duke, but spoke foolishly. For no man, be he duke or prince, can be of better blood than we of the House of Rothes, not to speak of Xaintrailles and many other gentlemen of our company.
The Duke, then, put not his noble person in any jeopardy, but, more wisely, he sent messengers after my Lord of Huntingdon that he should bring up the English to aid the Burgundian hare-hunters. But Huntingdon had departed to Rouen, where then lay Henry, King of England, a boy on whom and on whose House God has avenged the Maid with terrible judgments, and will yet the more avenge her, blessed be His name!
The Duke of Burgundy comforted himself after his kind, for when he did pluck up heart to go against Guermigny, he, finding us departed, sacked the place, and razed it to the very ground, and so withdrew to Roye, and there waited for what help England would send him. Now Roye is some sixteen leagues due north of Compiègne.
So the days went by, for Messire Lefebvre Saint-Remy, the pursuivant, was hunting for my Lord of Huntingdon, all up and down Normandy, and at last came to Rouen, and to the presence of the Duke of Bedford, the uncle of the English King. All this I myself heard from Messire Saint-Remy, who is still a pursuivant, and a learned man, and a maker of books.
Bedford then, who was busy hounding that devil, Cauchon, sometime Bishop of Beauvais, against the Maid, sent the Comte de Perche and Messire Loys Robsart, to bid the Duke of Burgundy be of what courage he might, for succour of England he should have. Wherein Bedford was no true prophet.
Of all this we, in Compiègne, knew so much as that it was wiser to strike the Duke at Roye, before he could add English talbots to his Burgundian harriers. Therefore all the captains of companies, as Boussac, Xaintrailles, Alain Giron, Amadée de Vignolles, and Loys de Naucourt, mustered their several companies, to the number of some five thousand men-at-arms. We had news of six hundred English marching to join the Duke, and on them we fell at Couty, hard by Amiens, and there slew Loys Robsart, a good knight, of the Order of the Garter, and drove the English that fled into the castle of Couty, and we took all their horses, leaving them shamed, for they kept no guard.