Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/413

Rh head of 30,000 of these desperadoes. The King of France gave them 200,000 francs; and, assembling at Chalons, on the river Marne, they marched towards Avignon. The Pope, who then resided there, alarmed at the approach of such a force, sent a cardinal to learn their object in coming that way. Du Guesclin answered that as they were bound on a crusade against the enemies of the Church, they sought the Pope's blessing, and the small sum of 200,000 florins to help them on their way. His holiness readily promised the blessing and absolution of all their sins—an awful score! But Du Guesclin replied that his followers were of that description that they would, if necessary, dispense with the absolution, but not with the money. The Pope then proposed to levy the sum of 100,000 florins on the inhabitants, but Du Guesclin said they were not come to oppress the innocent people, but would expect the money out of the Pope's own coffers. His holiness thought it well to comply with a request backed by such arguments as 30,000 notorious banditti, and the bold beggars marched on. They very soon drove the tyrant from his throne and kingdom, who fled, with his two daughters, into Guienne, and put himself under the protection of the Black Prince.

In all the wars of Edward III. against Scotland and France, he had shown an utter disregard of right; and in this respect he was fully seconded by the Black Prince; but of all their undertakings there was none so flagrantly outraging every principle of justice, humanity, and chivalry as their abetting this demon in human shape, Don Pedro of Castile. Here was a man steeped in the blood of his own family and of his own wife; who had oppressed and plundered his subjects till they hated him with a mortal hatred, and had joined in chasing him from the country. Edward, as a professed champion of chivalry, was bound to defend and redress the grievances of ladies; yet here did he at once undertake to restore the murderer of his wife to his ensanguined throne, and to force him again on a people whom he had driven to desperation by his ferocious tyrannies. It has been attempted to vindicate this action by representing Don Pedro as the legitimate sovereign, whom, therefore, the prince, as an upholder of legitimate authority, was bound to support. But the fact is, that Edward and his father had all their lives been engaged in endeavouring, by all the force of their talents and the resources of their kingdom, to destroy legitimacy in the person of the King of France. It has been again urged that the King of France sanctioning the expedition to dethrone Don Pedro naturally aroused the rivalry of the Black Prince, who would probably, say these authors, never have succoured the infamous Pedro had not the King of France taken the other side. But the worst of it is, that the King of France was on the right side, the just and honourable one—that of punishing a murderer of his own relative, and of assisting an oppressed people. The Prince of Wales was on the wrong side—the odious one of abetting as foul a monster as ever disgraced humanity; and his proceeding was as impolitic as it was unjust, for it raised a new enemy, the reigning King of Castile, Don Enrique, and threw him into the alliance of France. The conduct of the Black Prince in this affair proved that, with all his personal virtues, he was destitute of that high moral sense—that percoption of what is intrinsically great and noble—which stamps the true hero; and the hand of Providence appears speedily and unequivocally to have displayed itself against him and his father, who sanctioned his fatal enterprise. All his wisest and most faithful counsellors urged him to reflect on the crimes and blood-stained character of Don Pedro; to remember that such men were as ungrateful as they were base; and also that the expedition must be attended by severe charges on the province of Gascony, already loudly complaining of its burthens.

These just admonitions were all lost on the prince. He assembled a force, recalling his officers from the bands of the Companions, 12,000 of whom, on learning that he was about to take the field, left Du Guesclin, headed by Sir Hugh Calverley and Sir Robert Knowles, and followed his banners, believing in the ascendancy of his fortune, and careless of every other motive. The Prince of Wales came into action with the troops of Don Enrique and Du Guesclin at Najara, routed them with a loss of 20,000 men, and easily reinstated the tyrant upon the throne. But there the success of the Black Prince ceased. He could not make the monster Pedro anything but a monster; and Pedro immediately displayed his diabolical disposition by proposing to the prince to murder all their prisoners in cold blood, which the prince indignantly refused.

And now the punishment of the Prince of Wales for this unhappy deed—a foul blot for ever on his brilliant escutcheon—came fast and heavily upon him; so fast, so heavily, so palpably, that the writers of the time plainly ascribed it to the displeasure of a righteous Providence. The tyrant, once restored, gave him immediate proof of the miserable work he had done, by refusing to fulfil a single stipulation that he had made. He left the prince's army without the pay so liberally promised, and without provisions. The prince was exposed to the murmurs of his deluded soldiers. The heat of the climate and strange and unwholesome food began to sweep them off in great numbers, whilst his own health gave way, never to be restored. He made his way back to Bordeaux as well as he could, where he arrived in July, 1367, with a ruined constitution, and covered with debts, incurred on behalf of the ungrateful tyrant. To discharge the debt due to his troops, he laid a tax on hearths, not unknown in England, but new to the Gascons, which was calculated to produce 1,200,000 francs a year. But the inhabitants resented this tax on their chimneys, or fouage, as they called it, excessively. It was the climax to a host of grievances of which they began vehemently to complain—as, of all offices and honours being conferred on foreigners; of harsh treatment, like that of a conquered people; and, as the Black Prince did not pay any attention to their complaints, the Counts of Armagnac, Comminge, Perigord, and d'Albret carried them to the King of France, as their ancient lord paramount.

While the Prince of Wales was thus about to be embroiled with France, on account of his ill-fated restoration of Don Pedro, he had the mortification to learn that that savage had only regained his throne to wreak the most diabolical cruelties on his subjects, whom he now regarded as rebels. Du Guesclin, having obtained his ransom, once more joined Enrique de Transtamara to expel the despot. He defended himself with desperate