And now, while all England is singing his praises and he is at the very summit of his fame, let us peep into the future and see what fate has in store for him. Again and again he will harry the fair land of France; and, greedy of warfare, will ally himself with Pedro the Cruel, and win a victory for that bloodthirsty tyrant in distant Spain. And when the victory is won he will beseech Pedro to spare the lives of the conquered. Before long, however, the Spanish king will refuse to pay him the price agreed upon, and will send him on wild-goose errands, until he sees his men fall around him stricken by pestilence, and scarce one in five of them will return with him across the Pyrenees. He, too, will be seized with a painful sickness from which he will never recover.
But still he will go on fighting, and every year his heart will harden within him, until one day he will stain his fair fame by a deed of pitiless cruelty. In his rage at the long defence of Limoges he will order no quarter to be given to the gallant defenders. Piteous appeals will be made to him for mercy; but he will not hearken, and three thousand defenceless men, women, and children will be massacred in the streets. “Pity ’tis, ’tis true.”
His sickness will increase, and he will return home to die, but not before he does something for the people of England in a peaceful and more useful sphere. He will drive from his father’s court the greedy, unscrupulous men who are oppressing the land, and he will strive to better the condition of the people in many ways. Knowing his end is nigh, he will give himself to prayer and good works; his sickness will rack him sore, but he will bear his sufferings patiently and will make “a very noble end, remembering God his Creator in his heart,” and bidding his people pray for him. He will die in his forty-sixth year, to the unbounded grief of the nation. And so he passes, a man of war from his youth up, not untainted by cruelty, not unsullied by martial pride, but, in spite of all, the very mirror of the knighthood of his day.
The Black Prince being made a Knight of the Garter.
(From the picture by C. W. Cope, R.A., in Westminster Palace.)
