“This is in very deed the hand of God,” said Tiphaine, solemnly. “Five years since, on the Eve of St. John, I beheld in a dream one in thy likeness, and methought a voice from heaven bade me crown him as the deliverer of our oppressed land from all her foes. Hail to thee, champion of France! Let thy war-cry henceforth be as it hath been this day, ‘Notre Dame!’ in proof that thou art truly the soldier of heaven; and let this sacred rosary, brought by a holy pilgrim from Mount Carmel, hang on thy neck from this day in token that God is with thee for the deliverance of France, for alas! she standeth in sore need of it.”
CHAPTER X
The Wages of Judas
Too truly said the prophet-lady of Raguenel, that France stood then in sore need of a deliverer. For now burst on the ill-fated land the full fury of that tremendous storm of calamities that was to rage over it for well-nigh a century to come, till its utter desolation and misery antedated the worst horrors poured out upon Germany during the long agony of the Thirty Years’ War; and the terrified monks who watched from their quiet cloisters the flood of ruin and death that seemed to be overwhelming the whole world outside, whispered to each other that the Last Day must be at hand, and quoted tremulously the only words strong enough to describe adequately a period so fearfully disastrous—
“For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not from the beginning of the world unto this time, no, nor ever shall be.”
While the French nobles were quarrelling with each other, and all with the king, and the trampled French peasants were hating and cursing both parties alike, an English army was fighting its way into the heart of France, burning, slaying, and plundering wherever it came; and, profiting by this universal disorder, pirates ravaged every coast, and robber bands wasted every province.
Then came the fatal field of Crecy, where the proudest nobles of France fell like autumn leaves before the shafts of English archers, and the dead left by the conquered outnumbered thrice over the whole army of the conquerors. And then King Edward’s iron grasp closed on Calais, and all the valour of John de Vienne and his brother heroes failed to save from the invader that fairest jewel in the crown of France.
But the brightest crown of that great historical martyrdom was won neither by knight nor by noble, but by a peaceful burgher, Eustache de St. Pierre, who, with five others as brave and devoted as he, went forth to the terrible conqueror with the halters of doom about their necks, and bade him work his will on them, if he would but spare their city and its people. But though the great king’s chivalrous spirit, and the prayers of his gentle and beautiful queen, saved these self-doomed martyrs from death, their town was French no longer; and for more than two centuries the gate of France was in English hands, ever ready to fling it open for the passage of their destroying armies, till, in God’s good time, the ill-gotten spoil was torn from the spoiler, and the sternest and cruellest of English queens died broken-hearted at the news that Calais was a French city once more.
And after this came woe on woe—war, pestilence, famine, robbery, and murder—till the misery of France rose to a height best described in the terrible words of one who had himself seen it—
“In goode sooth, the estate of the whole realme of Fraunce was thenne most miserable; and, looke wheresoever one myghte, there appeared nought save an horrible face of disorder, povertie, desolacioun, solitarinesse, and feare. The lean and bare labourers in the countrie did terrifie even theeves themselves, who founde nought lefte for them to spoyle save the carkasses of these poore starvynge creatures, wandering miserably uppe and downe like unto ghostes drawn foorth of theyr graves. The leaste farmes and hamlets were foortifyde by robbers of alle naciouns, eche one stryvinge to doe his worste; and alle menne of warre were well agreed in this, to despoyle to the utmoste everie husbandman and everie merchaunte; insomuche that the verie cattell in the fieldes, growing used to the sownde of the ’larum-bell (whiche was the signe of an enemie’s comynge) wolde of themselves runne home withouten any guide, by reason of this accustomed miserie.”
On a gloomy evening toward the close of November, 1348, sat at a table littered with parchments, in an upper room of Westminster Palace, a handsome, stately man in the prime of life, with so striking a look of power and command in his large, deep, thoughtful eyes and broad, noble forehead (over which the long dark hair was waxing thin from the constant pressure of his helmet) that few men would have needed to be told that this was King Edward himself.