Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/132

120 self is innocent, and his youth demands our friendship and protection." Those Lords felt tenderly towards the little boy, remembering their own young children; and they bowed their heads, and said, "Long live King Henry the Third!"

Next, a great council met at Bristol, revised Magna Charta, and made Lord Pembroke Regent or Protector of England, as the King was too young to reign alone. The next thing to be done, was, to get rid of Prince Louis of France, and to win over those English Barons who were still ranged under his banner. He was strong mmany parts of England, and in London itself; and he held, among other places, a certain Castle called the Castle of Mount Sorel, in Leicestershire. To this fortress, after some skirmishing and truce-making, Lord Pembroke laid siege. Louis despatched an army of six hundred knights and twenty thousand soldiers to relieve it. Lord Pembroke, who was not strong enough for such a force, retired with all his men. The army of the French Prince, which had marched there with fire and plunder, marched away with fire and plunder, and came, in a boastful swaggering manner, to Lincoln. The town submitted; but the Castle in the town, held by a brave widow lady, named (whose property it was), made such a sturdy resistance, that the French Count in command of the Army of the French Prince, found it necessary to besiege this Castle. While he was thus engaged, word was brought to him that Lord Pembroke, with four hundred knights, two hundred and fifty men with cross-bows, and a stout force both of horse and foot, was marching towards him. "What care I?" said the French Count. "The Englishman is not so mad as to attack me and my great army in a walled town!" But the Englishman did it for all that, and did it—not so madly but so wisely, that he decoyed the great army into the narrow ill-paved lanes and by-ways of Lincoln, where its horse-soldiers could not ride in any strong body; and there he made such havoc with them, that the whole force surrendered themselves prisoners, except the Count: who said that he would never yield to any English traitor alive, and accordingly got killed. The end of this victory, which the English called, for a joke, the fair of Lincoln, was the usual one in those times—the common men