"And when he had pursued him the space of a league, the said John turned again, and laid his sword in rest instead of a spear, and so came running toward the Lord Berkeley, who lift up his sword to have stricken the Squire. But when he saw the stroke come, he turned from it, so that the Englishman lost his stroke; and John struck him as he passed on the arm, that the Lord Berkeley's sword fell into the field."
This is enough to show how close the martial passes and exchanges in the story keep to the picture seen by Froissart.
One of the drawbacks of the story as a piece of history, as something more than a picture, is that it does not make us realise the daring—the merciless, impressive personal effect of the Prince; or the tragedy then of the last illness pursuing this man of force all through the final campaign; for his end in this book is a casual matter, treated in a postscript or little more than that. But the romance carries us through an extraordinary and overwhelming series of events, and serves to stimulate—although Edgar's manner is staid comparatively with other romancers of history—a new delight in the heroic and chivalric colours of the time.
Sir John Chandos and the Cardinal of Perigord, as they pass through Edgar's story, do not leave you at all satisfied to know them only there. It is of the nature of good romance to suggest and not to complete, offering an oblique reflection of great affairs and huge figures; and if Edgar's mirror in this is a fainter one than Scott's, one is still grateful to him for holding it up to the fourteenth century as he did. Read him with Froissart in reserve, and you have a very good idea of that fighting time which was at once so valiant and so meagre, so adventurous and so mortal for the soldiers and captains, and often so terrible for the poor folk—men, women, and children, who, like those of Caen, were massacred because their masters were pleased to be militant.
One other point remains, which has perplexed the historians and is of extreme interest in romance, and that has to do with the Black Prince's proverbial colour. Was it his armour, or the terror he caused, that made men call him "Black"? Froissart never uses the label at all; but there is evidence of his black armour, and romance dare not now change his coat.
THE FOLLOWING ARE THE PUBLISHED WORKS OF
JOHN GEORGE EDGAR
1834—1864
Biography for Boys, 1853.
The Boyhood of Great Men, 1853.
History for Boys, 1855.
Boy Princes, 1857.
The Heroes of England, 1858.
The Wars of the Roses, 1859.
The Crusades and the Crusaders, 1860.
Cavaliers and Roundheads, 1861.
Sea Kings and Naval Heroes, 1861.
Memorable Events of Modern History, 1862.
Danes, Saxons, and Normans, 1863.
Cressy and Poictiers (in Beeton's Boys' Own Magazine, 1863), 1865.
Historical Anecdotes of Animals, 1865.
Runnymede and Lincoln Fair, 1866.