Chapter I: Front Matter

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Everyman's Library

Edited by Ernest Rhys

Fiction

CRESSY AND POICTIERS

With an Introduction by Ernest Rhys

* * * * * *

THE PUBLISHERS OF _EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY_ WILL BE PLEASED TO SEND FREELY TO ALL APPLICANTS A LIST OF THE PUBLISHED AND PROJECTED VOLUMES TO BE COMPRISED UNDER THE FOLLOWING TWELVE HEADINGS:

TRAVEL * SCIENCE * FICTION

THEOLOGY & PHILOSOPHY

HISTORY * CLASSICAL

CHILDREN'S BOOKS

ESSAYS * ORATORY

POETRY & DRAMA

BIOGRAPHY

ROMANCE

IN TWO STYLES OF BINDING, CLOTH FLAT BACK COLOURED TOP AND LEATHER ROUND CORNERS GILT TOP.

LONDON: J. M. DENT & CO.

* * * * * *

A TALE
WHICH
HOLDETH
CHILDREN
FROM PLAY
& OLD MEN
FROM THE
CHIMNEY
CORNER

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

* * * * * *

CRESSY & POICTIERS

The Story of the Black Prince's Page

by

J. G. EDGAR

London: Published by J. M. Dent & Co And In New York by E. P. Dutton & Co

First Edition February 1906 Reprinted April 1906

Plymouth: William Brendon and Son, Ltd. Printers

Introduction.

"Ivanhoe," picturing the days of Richard Coeur de Lion, leapt over all but a couple of centuries to draw upon Froissart. The present romance of Edward the Black Prince's time is well within the barriers of the best of all the romantic chroniclers, and perhaps its chief merit is that it is both historically and romantically an avowed Froissart book. Its author, J. G. Edgar, who was of course not a Walter Scott, wrote and was content to write for "Beeton's Boys' Own Magazine" in its palmy days, between forty and fifty years ago, when its editor had a very distinct idea of bringing English history into holiday range. Edgar was one of his chief contributors, and wrote some capital stories and histories, of which three or four are still in favour, and this story of "Cressy and Poictiers" is the best of them.

Edgar, being a minor and not a major romancer, gave less rein to his fantasy than Scott, and kept closer to his originals. He conceived in this story the happy idea of accommodating the Black Prince with an adventurous and vain-glorious page, whom he calls Arthur Winram, who is, as a necessity of fiction, bound to be of nobler birth than that name would seem to say, and to be subject to the wicked designs of those who would keep him from his birthright. Through the eyes of this page are viewed the martial events and pageantry in the career of the Black Prince, leading up to the fields of Creçy and Poictiers, and so to the Prince's death. Thus there are three chief fortunes at stake: that of the page and hero, that of the Black Prince, and that of England herself.

If you turn from the romance to the actual story of the Black Prince, as it is told by the historians, you will find the details in which Edgar differs from them are either those that are necessarily fictitious, or those that are not very essential. And if you compare his book with Froissart, you will find that once he has got on common ground with the fourteenth-century chronicler, he keeps pretty well on terms with him in the succession of events.

Edgar takes 1328 as the year of his page and hero's birth; and that was a year to "precipitate affairs," as the chroniclers of a later date than Froissart's used to say. In that year Charles of France died, and Philip of Valois was elected by the peers and barons of France to the realm, and so put out the Queen of England, Isabel, daughter of Philip le Beau, who was the next heir.

"Thus," says Froissart, "passed this realm of France out of her right lineage, as it hath been deemed by many." And thus came many wars and dire calamities. And "this is the very foundation of this history, to recount the great enterprises and feats of arms that have fallen: for since the time of Charlemagne there never befell so great adventures."

In the same year--that is, 1328--King Edward married Philippa of Hainault. "The English chronicle saith this marriage and coronation of the queen was done at York with much honour." In the year following, their first-born child, Edward, afterwards called the Black Prince, blessed this union.

This gives us the year of 1344 (when the Black Prince was fifteen, and his future page a year older) as the natural one for this boyish tale of adventure to open. It was the year when Philip of Valois murdered twelve Breton hostages, and Edward vowed revenge; and this was the time, too, of the revolt in Flanders. In 1345, Jacob von Arteveldt was the victim of the mob. "Poor men first set him high, and evil men slew him," says Froissart. One may compare the romance with the chronicle here to the advantage of the latter. In the eleventh chapter of the story we are at Caen; and Froissart's chronicles give us one or two inimitable story-teller's cues of which hardly sufficient account is made. That little tower at the foot of the bridge, seen at the end of the street, and the one-eyed knight Sir Thomas, who saved the lives of many dames and damosels and cloisterers, as he rode through the town, make one of those medieval pictures, lifelike and minute, which are like little windows into actual history.

Many such episodes fill in the story before we come to the big battle-piece of Creçy. In the preamble, good use is made of the guide, Gobin Agace, who guides the English in the passage of the Somme, at the passage called Blanche Paque. There is no better account anywhere in history and romance than that Froissart gives of Cressy at its most striking moments. It may seem here and there that something of the confusion of the field itself obscures his story; but his strokes are sure and tell-tale as can be desired when the climax comes; and wonderfully he uses the natural effects--the storm, the great rain, the thunder and lightning; and then the ominous flight of crows over both battles; and the sudden bright emergence of the sun, to dazzle the Frenchmen's eyes, and warm the stout backs of the English; and finally the arrow-shot of the English archers, so thick and so concerted, that "it seemed to be snow!" The disastrous failure of the Genoese crossbows in reply we find both in Froissart and in Edgar's pages; and the detail of the King's post, "on a little windmill hill," where he hears that his son, the Prince, is hard pressed, and says: "Let them suffer him this day to win his spurs!" is another famous incident on which the chronicler and the novelist draw alike.

One or two circumstances of the battle are slightly changed in Edgar's page. The strength of the English position on the high ground, upon the right bank of the river, is hardly made so clear as might be. The English are seated on a large plain when first seen by Philip, in the romance. Edgar would have gained by comparing Froissart with other records in picturing this scene. Again, he does not speak of the small cannon that were used at Creçy, though at the siege of Calais they are remembered in his account. Froissart says expressly, however, that small cannon were posted between the archers; and Edward certainly took cannon with him from England. The cannon used in the siege of Calais threw balls of three or four ounces weight.

The Black Prince's page is made a prisoner after Creçy; and the succeeding chain of events is again not quite given its proportionate effect in the romance. However, we have some compensation--the battle of Neville's Cross, which Froissart, by the way, reports to have taken place only three miles from Newcastle-on-Tyne and calls after that famous old town accordingly. Then succeeds the siege of Calais, and its surrender on the 3rd August, 1347. One passage here from Froissart that is not in Edgar is too good for either romance or history to forget. It is where the French herald Sir John returns into the beleaguered town with the message of the English King:

"Then Sir John went unto the market place, and sounded the common bell: then, all incontinent, men and women assembled there, and the captain made report of all he had done, and said, 'Sirs, it will be none otherwise, therefore now take advice, and make a short answer.' Then all the people began to weep and make such sorrow, that there was not so hard a heart, if they had seen them, but that would have had great pity of them; the captain himself wept piteously."

At this surrender of Calais, the question whether the six townsmen came forth with halters round their necks or with ropes in their hands need not disturb the reader. Tradition favours the former, and plain history the latter.

It is at the battle of Poictiers that the real value of Edgar's story as a tributary current leading into the broad stream of history is best to be discovered. One more illustration from Froissart may be given here, because it has to do with an incident which gave Edgar one of his clues. It is that of the scene where the Squire of Picardy, Johan de Helenes, takes the Lord Berkeley, who had been pursuing him.

"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.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Introduction 1

II. The Falcon in Gracechurch 2

III. Winning the Peacock 6

IV. At my Grandsire's Homestead 10

V. Jack Fletcher 14

VI. War with France 19

VII. Windsor Castle 25

VIII. Edward the Black Prince 29

IX. King Edward's Defiance 36

X. The Voyage 40

XI. March of the Invaders 43

XII. A Snare 45

XIII. The Broken Bridges 49

XIV. A Rush for Liberty 50

XV. Hunting a King 55

XVI. Gobin Agace 58

XVII. How we Forded the Somme 61

XVIII. The Eve of Battle 64

XIX. The Battle of Cressy 66

XX. My Adventures at Cressy 72

XXI. At La Broyes 79

XXII. The Siege of Calais 83

XXIII. My Release 87

XXIV. The Falcon Revisited 90

XXV. The Crisis 98

XXVI. The Eve of Battle 102

XXVII. Face to Face 106

XXVIII. Neville's Cross 109

XXIX. Royalty in a Rage 113

XXX. At Calais 118

XXXI. The Luck of John Copeland 121

XXXII. Arrivals 126

XXXIII. No Road 131

XXXIV. Surrender of Calais 135

XXXV. A Runaway Bridegroom 140

XXXVI. How Calais was Repeopled 142

XXXVII. A Mysterious Visit 146

XXXVIII. Calais in Peril 150

XXXIX. The Lords De Ov 154

XL. Too Late 159

XLI. How Calais was Saved 162

XLII. A Princess in Peril 168

XLIII. The Plague of Florence 173

XLIV. John, King of France 176

XLV. Renewal of the War 180

XLVI. A Town Lost and Won 184

XLVII. "A Douglas!" 189

XLVIII. Burnt Candlemas 194

XLIX. Our Captivity 197

L. Chased by Bloodhounds 204

LI. At Bordeaux 211

LII. The Prince in Black Armour 214

LIII. The Incursion 217

LIV. The Coming Foe 221

LV. An Unwelcome Discovery 224

LVI. Poictiers 227

LVII. Sunday Morning 229

LVIII. The Peace-maker 233

LIX. Chandos and Clermont 236

LX. The Array of the English 239

LXI. Rout of the Marshals 242

LXII. The Prince in the Battle 244

LXIII. Adventures in the Field 248

LXIV. A Royal Captive 251

LXV. How I Rescued my worst Enemy 254

LXVI. The Scots at Poictiers 256

LXVII. The Victors and the Vanquished 259

LXVIII. The March to Bordeaux 261

LXIX. The Prince and his Captive 264

LXX. Death of Queen Isabel 268

LXXI. What Befell Lord De Ov 272

LXXII. Marriage of the Black Prince 274

LXXIII. The Challenge 278

LXXIV. Trial by Battle 281

LXXV. Glory and the Grave 283

CRESSY AND POICTIERS