Volume II Part 3 (2/2)
Before the Frenchmen and Bretons had arranged their plan of a.s.sault, they heard the trampling of Chandos's war-horses, and turning round they saw his dreadful banner displayed. He approached within three furlongs of the bridge and had a parley with them. He reproached them for their robberies and acts of violence in the country whereof he was seneschal.
”It is more than a year and a half,” he continued, ”that I have set all my aim to find and encounter you, and now, I thank G.o.d, I see you and speak to you. It shall soon be known who is prowest, you or I. You have often vaunted your desire to meet me; now you may see me before you.--I am John Chandos: regard me well,” he thundered in their ears, his countenance darkening as he spoke.
At that moment an English squire was struck to the earth by the lance of a Breton. The generous nature of Chandos was rouzed at this ungallant act; and, in a tone of mingled expostulation and reproof, he cried to his own company, ”Sirs, how is it that you suffer this squire thus to be slain? A foot, a foot!”
He dismounted, and so did all his band, and they advanced against the French. His banner, with the escutcheon above his arms, was carried before him, and some of his men-at-arms surrounded it. Chandos missed his steps, for the ground was slippery from the h.o.a.r-frost of the morning, and in his impatience for battle he entangled his feet in the folds of his surcoat.
He fell just as he reached his enemy; and as he was rising, the lance of a French squire entered his flesh, under the left eye, between the nose and the forehead. Chandos could not see to ward off the stroke; for, some years before, he had lost the sight of that eye, while hunting the hart in the country round Bourdeaux: unhappily, too, his helmet was without the defence of its vizor.
He fell upon the earth, and rolled over two or three times, from the pain of the wound, but he never spoke again.
The French endeavoured to seize him; but his uncle, Sir Edward Clifford, bestrode the body, and defended it so valorously, that soon none dared to approach him.
[Sidenote: Grief at his death.]
The barons and knights of Poictou were conquerors, and when the confusion was hushed, they flocked round their outstretched friend and seneschal.
They wept, they wrung their hands, they tore their hair, and gave way to every violent expression of grief. They called him the flower of chivalry, and lamented the hour when the lance was forged which had brought him into peril of death.
He heard and understood them well, but was unable to reply. His servants then unarmed him; and, laying him upon a pavesse, or large s.h.i.+eld, they bore him gently to the neighbouring fortress of Mortimer.
He died on the following day; and a cavalier more courteous, and more worthily adorned with n.o.ble virtues and high qualities, never adorned the English chivalry. He was, in sooth, as gallant a knight as ever laid lance in rest.
The Prince of Wales, the Earl of Cambridge, the Earl of Pembroke, and, indeed, all the English barons and knights then in Guienne, lamented his fate, as the loss of all the English dominions in France; and many right n.o.ble and valiant knights of France mourned the death of a generous foe, and they wished he had been made prisoner; for they said he was so sage and imaginative that he would have planned a peace between the two nations.[56]
Chandos was never married. All the estates which he had won by his valour went to his three sisters.
CHAP. II.
PROGRESS OF CHIVALRY IN GREAT BRITAIN,
FROM THE REIGN OF RICHARD II. TO THAT OF HENRY VIII.
_Complaints of the unchivalric State of Richard's Court ... Influence of Chivalry on the national Character ... Scottish Chivalry ...
Chivalric Kindness of Robert Bruce ... Mutual Chivalry between the Scotch and English Courts ... French Knights' Opinions of Scottish Chivalry ... Courtesies between English and Scottish Knights ...
Chivalric Battle of Otterbourn ... Hotspur and the Douglas ... A cavaleresque Story ... Reign of Henry IV. ... Chivalric Parley between him and the Duke of Orleans ... Henry's unchivalric Conduct at Shrewsbury ... Henry V. ... Knights of the Bath ... Henry's Love of chivalric Books ... His chivalric Bearing ... Commencement of the Decline of Chivalry ... The Civil Wars injured Chivalry ... Caxton's Lamentation ... He exaggerates the Evil ... Many gallant English Knights ... Character of Henry VIII. with Reference to Chivalry ...
Tournaments in his Reign ... Field of the Cloth of Gold ...
Introduction of Italian Literature favoured Romance ... Popularity of Chivalric Literature ... English Knights continued to break Lances for Ladies' Love ... State of Scottish Chivalry at this Period ... James IV. ... Chivalric Circ.u.mstances at Flodden Field._
In the reign of Richard II. the splendor of England's chivalry was clouded. That monarch had neither spirit nor ambition to recover the possessions which had been wrested from the crown during the illness of his father, the Black Prince, and the imbecility of his grandfather, Edward III.; for though the war with France nominally continued, yet he gave few occasions for his knights to break their lances with the French.
Not that England enjoyed a state of perfect peace, but the wars in France and Portugal had no brilliant results, for the English knights were no longer guided by the sageness of Chandos, or the gallantry of Prince Edward.
[Sidenote: Complaints of the unchivalric state of Richard's court.]
England was menaced with invasion by Charles VI. of France; but the project died away, and nothing gave greater offence to the people than the want of spirit in the court, in not revenging itself for the insult. A comparison was immediately inst.i.tuted between the present and the preceding reign. Where were those great enterprises, it was asked, which distinguished the days of King Edward III.? where could be found the valiant men who had fought with the Prince, his son? In those days England was feared, and was reputed as possessing the flower of Christian chivalry; but now no man speaks of her, now there are no wars but such as are made on poor men's purses, and thereto every one is inclined.[57]
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