CHAPTER XVI
THE CHAPTER CALLED CHALUZ
When King Richard said, without any confirmatory oath, that he should hang Adhémar of Limoges and the Count of Saint-Pol, all who heard him believed it. The Abbot Milo believed it for one. Figuratively, you can see his hands up as you read him. 'To hang two knights of such eminent degree and parts,' he writes, 'were surely a great scandal in any Christian king. Not that the punishment were undeserved or the executioner insufficient, God knoweth! But very often true policy points out the wisdom of the mean; and this is its deliberative, that to hang a bad man when another vengeance is open—such as burning in his castle, killing on his walls, or stabbing by apparent mistake for a common person—to hang him, I say, suggests to the yet unhanged a way of treating his betters. There are more ways of killing a dog than choking him with butter; and so it is with lords and other rebels against kings. In this particular case King Richard only thought to follow his great father (whom at this time he much resembled): what in the end he did was very different from any act of that monarch's that I ever heard tell of, to remember which makes me weep tears of blood. But so he fully purposed at that time, being in his hottest temper of Yea.'
He said Yea to the hanging of Saint-Pol and Limoges, and made ready a host which must infallibly crush Chaluz were it twenty times prepared. But he said Nay to the sacrifice of Jehane on Lebanon, and to that end increased his arms to overawe all the kingdoms of the South which had sanctioned it. Vanguard, battle and rear, he mustered fifteen thousand men. Des Barres led the van, English bowmen, Norman knights. Battle was his, all arms from Anjou, Poictou, and Touraine. Rearguard the Earl of Leicester took, his viceroy in Aquitaine. When the garrison of Chaluz saw the forested spears on the northern heights, the great engines piled against the sky-line, the train of followers, pennons of the knights, Dragon of England, Leopards of Anjou, the single Lion of Normandy, the wise among them were for instant surrender.
'Here is an empery come out against us!' cried Adhémar. 'If I was not right when I told you that I knew King Richard.'
'The filched empery of a thief,' said Saint-Pol. 'Honesty is ours. I fight for my lady Berengère, the glory of two realms, my sovereign mistress till I die.'
'Vastly well,' returned the other; 'but I do not fight for this lady, but for a gold table with gold dolls sitting at it.' Such also was the reflection of Achard, castellan of Chaluz, looking ruefully at his crazy walls.
Two grassy hills rise, like breasts, out of a rolling plain of grass. Each is crowned with a tower; between them are the church and village of Chaluz, which form a straggling street. Wall and ditch pen in these buildings and tie tower to tower: as Richard saw, it was the easiest thing in the world to cut the line in the middle, isolate, then reduce the towers at leisure. Adhémar saw that too, and got no comfort from it, until it occurred to him that if he occupied one tower and left the other to Saint-Pol, he would be free to act at his own discretion, that is, not act at all against the massed power of England and Anjou. Saint-Pol, you see, fought for the life of Richard, and Adhémar for a gold table, which makes a great difference. He effected this separation of garrisons; however, some show of resistance was made by manning the walls and daring the day with banners.
King Richard went softly to work, as he always ways did when actually hand in hand with war. Warfare was an art to him, neither a sport nor a counter-irritant; he was never impetuous over it. For a week he satisfied himself with a close investiture of the town on all sides. No supplies could get in nor fugitives out. Then, when everything was according to his liking, he advanced his engines, brought forward his towers, set sappers to work, and delivered assault in due form and at the weakest point. He succeeded exquisitely. There was no real defence. The two hill-towers were stranded, Chaluz was his.