XV.—PRINCE ARTHUR.
Dickens.
At two-and-thirty years of age, in the year 1199, John became king of England. His pretty little nephew, Arthur, had the best claim to the throne; but John seized the treasure, and made fine promises to the nobility, and got himself crowned at Westminster within a few weeks after his brother Richard’s death. I doubt whether the crown could possibly have been put upon the head of a meaner coward, or a more detestable villain, if the country had been searched from end to end to find him out.
The French king, Philip, refused to acknowledge the right of John to his new dignity, and declared in favor of Arthur. You must not suppose that he had any generosity of feeling for the fatherless boy; it merely suited his ambitious schemes to oppose the king of England. So John and the French king went to war about Arthur.
He was a handsome boy, at that time only twelve years old. He was not born when his father, Geoffrey, had his brains trampled out at the tournament; and, besides the misfortune of never having known a father’s guidance and protection, he had the additional misfortune to have a foolish mother (Constance by name), lately married to her third husband. She took Arthur, upon John’s accession, to the French king, who pretended to be very much his friend, and made him a knight, and promised him his daughter in marriage; but who cared so little about him in reality, that, finding it his interest to make peace with King John for a time, he did so without the least consideration for the poor little prince, and heartlessly sacrificed all his interests.
Young Arthur, for two years afterwards, lived quietly, and in the course of that time his mother died. But the French king, then finding it his interest to quarrel with King John again, made Arthur his pretence, and invited the orphan boy to court. “You know your rights, prince,” said the French king, “and you would like to be a king. Is it not so?” “Truly,” said Prince Arthur, “I should greatly like to be a king!” “Then,” said Philip, “you shall have two hundred gentlemen who are knights of mine, and with them you shall go to win back the provinces belonging to you, of which your uncle, the usurping king of England, has taken possession. I myself, meanwhile, will head a force against him in Normandy.”
Prince Arthur went to attack the town of Mirebeau, because his grandmother, Eleanor, was living there, and because his knights said, “Prince, if you can take her prisoner, you will be able to bring the king your uncle to terms!” But she was not to be easily taken. She was old enough by this time—eighty; but she was as full of stratagem as she was full of years and wickedness. Receiving intelligence of young Arthur’s approach, she shut herself up in a high tower, and encouraged her soldiers to defend it like men. Prince Arthur with his little army besieged the high tower. King John, hearing how matters stood, came up to the rescue with his army. So here was a strange family party! The boy-prince besieging his grandmother, and his uncle besieging him!
This position of affairs did not last long. One summer night, King John, by treachery, got his men into the town, surprised Prince Arthur’s force, took two hundred of his knights, and seized the prince himself in his bed. The knights were put in heavy irons, and driven away in open carts, drawn by bullocks, to various dungeons, where they were most inhumanly treated, and where some of them were starved to death. Prince Arthur was sent to the Castle of Falaise.