In the Sixth Book of the same poem, it is related how the English King, on his way to Acre, put in at Cyprus and sent messengers to the Emperor, and how that monarch "began to rage", threw a knife at one of them, and followed this up by peremptorily ordering them out of his presence, with the words:—
"Out, 'taylards', of my paleys! Now go and say your 'tayled' King That I owe him no thing."[298]
When the Emperor's steward ventured to represent to his master that such treatment of honourable knights who came to him in the character of ambassadors was not justifiable, the furious but apocryphal potentate
"Carved off his nose by the grusle, And said: Traytour, thief, steward, Go, playne to English 'taylarde'."[299]
There is a further account of Richard's journey to the Holy Land in a poem by a writer of whom we know that his name was Ambrose, and that he witnessed various historical events between 1188 and 1196. It would also appear from his narrative that he actually accompanied the Crusaders on the expedition which he records. He, too, refers to the hostile attitude assumed by the inhabitants of Messina towards the English King's followers, and states that they jeered at the foreigners and called them "foul dogs", an epithet which, in the light of the parallel texts, may be looked upon as an allusion to the tails which the English were commonly believed to bear.[300]
At the beginning of the thirteenth century, there is an instance of the use of the offensive gibe which shows to what purpose it was beginning to be turned by the literate class of the day. During the minority of Henry III, Louis VIII, continuing the aggressive policy inaugurated by his father, Philip Augustus, against the incapable administration of King John, made a vigorous effort to wrest Poitou from the English. Amongst the most noteworthy achievements of this campaign, was the capture of La Rochelle, in 1224. In celebration of this event, a poetaster of the day wrote some doggerel verses, which the Chronicle of Lanercost[301] has preserved:—
'Tis our own native King, 'tis a stranger no more, Who reigns in Rochelle, by the fortune of war; And the fear of the English no longer prevails, For he's made them all harmless by breaking their tails.[302]
On the other side, however, it was not forgotten that, a few years earlier, in 1217, the same Louis, after being deserted by the discontented barons who had called him over, had suffered a crushing defeat at Lincoln. This supplied fair material for a retort in the same style:—
We have dragged our French foes, Strung like larks in long rows, And made fast to our tails with a rope;
That it really was so, Why, there's Lincoln to show, And that won't be questioned, I hope.[303]