In the Days of Chivalry: A Tale of the Times of the Black Prince

by Evelyn Everett-Green

The Prince's greeting was warm and hearty. He felt towards Raymond all that goodwill which naturally follows an act of generous interference on behalf of an injured person. He made him sit beside him in his tent at supper time, and tell him all his history; and the promise made to Gaston with reference to the tyrant Lord of Saut was ratified anew as the wine circulated at table. The chosen comrades of the Prince, who had most of them known the twin brothers for many years, vowed themselves to the enterprise with hearty goodwill; and had the Lord of Navailles been there to hear, he might well have trembled for his safety, despite the strong walls and deep moat that environed Saut.

"Let his walls be never so strong, I trow we can starve or smoke the old fox out!" quoth young Edward, laughing. "There be many strong citadels, many a fortified town, that will ere long open their gates at the summons of England's Prince. How say ye, my gallant comrades? Shall the old Tower of Saut defy English arms? Shall we own ourselves beaten by any Sieur de Navailles?"

The shout with which these words were answered was answer sufficient. The English and Gascon lords, assembled together under the banner of the Prince, were bent on a career of glory and plunder. The inaction of the long truce, with its perpetual sources of irritation and friction, had been exasperating in the extreme. It was an immense relief to them to feel that war had at last been declared, and that they could unfurl their banners and march forth against their old enemy, and enrich themselves for life at his expense.

With the march of the Prince through south France we have little concern in this history. It was one long triumphal progress, not over and above glorious from a military standpoint; for there were no real battles, and the accumulation of plunder and the infliction of grievous damage upon the French King's possessions seemed the chief object of the expedition. Had there been any concerted resistance to the Prince's march, doubtless he might have shown something of his great military talents in directing his forces in battle; but as it was, the country appeared paralyzed at his approach: place after place fell before him, or bought him off by a heavy price; and though there were several citadels in the vanquished towns which held out for France, the Prince seldom stayed to subdue them, but contented himself with plundering and burning the town. Not a very glorious style of warfare for those days of vaunted chivalry, yet one, nevertheless, characteristic enough of the times. Every undertaking, however small, gave scope for deeds of individual gallantry and the exercise of individual acts of courtliness and chivalry; and even the battles were often little more than a countless number of hand-to-hand conflicts carried on by the individual members of the opposing armies. The Prince and his chosen comrades, always on the watch for opportunities of showing their prowess and of exercising their knightly chivalry towards any miserable person falling in their own way, were doubtless somewhat blinded to the ignoble side of such a campaign.

However that may be, Raymond often felt a sinking at heart as he saw their path marked out by blazing villages and wasted fields; and almost all his own energies were concentrated in striving to do what one man could achieve to mitigate the horrors of war for some of its helpless victims.

Narbonne, on the Gulf of Lions, was the last place attacked and taken by the Prince, who then decided to return with his spoil to Bordeaux, and pass the remainder of the winter in the capture of certain places that would be useful to the English.

Nothing had all this time been spoken as to Saut, which lay out of the line of their march in the heart of friendly Gascony. But the project had by no means been abandoned, and the Prince was but waiting a favourable opportunity to carry it into effect.

The Sieur de Navailles had not attempted to join the Prince's standard, as so many of the Gascon nobles had done, but had held sullenly aloof, probably watching and waiting to see the result of this expedition, but by no means prepared to adventure his person into the hands of a feudal lord against whom his own sword had more than once been drawn. He was well aware, no doubt, that there were pages in his past history with regard to his relations with France that would not bear inspection by English eyes, and perhaps he trusted to the remoteness and obscurity of his two castles to save him from the notice of the Prince.

The terror inspired by the English arms in France is a thing that must always excite the wonder and curiosity of the readers of history. It was displayed on and after the Battle of Crecy, when Edward's army, if numbers counted for anything, ought to have been simply annihilated by the vast musters of the French, who were in their own land surrounded by friends, whilst the English were a small band in the midst of a hostile and infuriated population. This same thing was seen again in the march of the Prince of Wales, soon to be called the Black Prince, when city after city bought him off, hopeless of resisting his progress; and when the army mustered by the Count of Armagnac to oppose the retreat of the English to Bordeaux with their spoil was seized with a panic after the merest skirmish, and fled, leaving the Prince to pursue his way unmolested.

If the conduct of the English army was somewhat inglorious, certainly the behaviour of their foes was still more so. The English were always ready to fight if they could find an enemy to meet them. Possibly the doubtful character of the Prince's first campaign was less his fault than that of his pusillanimous enemies.