Edward being engaged in fighting with the Scots, the Black Prince took command of the army in France. Near the town of Poitiers he believed that the French king lay somewhere in readiness to give battle; but the English could not find out where he was.
The prince gave orders that the French peasants were to be made to tell him where their king lay encamped; but these poor people were so loyal that neither money nor threats could make them give any information.
Prince Edward was in great perplexity, for his army was now reduced to about ten thousand men; and if the King of France had a larger force, the prince felt that it might be more prudent for him to retire.
One day, quite unexpectedly, the English came in view of the French army, encamped near the town of Poitiers. The whole country, far and near, seemed to be occupied by the force which was to oppose the Prince"s little body of ten thousand men.
"There was all the flower of France," says the historian, "for there was none durst abide at home without he were shamed for ever."
"G.o.d help us," said the Black Prince; "we must make the best of it."
He posted his army very strongly upon a hill, while the French king marshalled his forces upon the plain below.
That night the two armies lay, strongly guarded, within sight of each other.
In the morning the battle was about to begin when a cardinal came riding in haste to the French king, and implored him to give him leave to try to save the small body of English from rushing upon certain destruction.
"Sire," he said, "you have here all the flower of your realm against a handful of people, for so the English are as compared to your company.
I pray you that you will allow me to ride to the prince and show him what danger you have him in."
The king gave permission, and the cardinal came riding over to the Black Prince, who received him courteously.
"Save my honour," he said, when the cardinal offered to try to arrange terms for him, "and the honour of my army, and I will make any reasonable terms."
He offered to give up all the towns and castles he had taken, and to make a truce with the French king for seven years; and the cardinal rode back to his own side with this message.
After an interval of suspense he came riding to the English camp again.
"The King of France consents to make peace," said the cardinal, "on condition that you will yield yourself up a prisoner, with a hundred of your knights."
The prince"s face darkened.
Here would be shameful news to send to his father and the people of England!
As the King of France refused to make peace upon any other conditions, Prince Edward broke off the treaty and turned to his army, saying quietly, "G.o.d defend the right; we shall fight to-morrow."
All that day the English worked hard to make their position more secure. The sides of the hill were covered with woods and vineyards, and the princ.i.p.al approach was by means of a lane with hedges on either side, behind which a number of archers posted themselves. All the weaker places were strengthened by means of palisades.
On the following morning, when all was in order of battle, the prince addressed his men.
"Sirs," he said, "although we be but a small company compared with our enemies, we must not lose courage. If it is to be our good fortune to win the day, we shall be the most honoured people in all the world; and if we die in our right quarrel, I have the king my father and my brothers, and you have good friends and kinsmen, and they will avenge our deaths. I beg that each of you will do your duty to-day, and if G.o.d be pleased and St. George, this day you will see me a true knight."
After this the battle began.
The French cavalry charged up the lane, hoping to break the lines of archers, but the men who were posted behind the hedges received them with such a volley of arrows that the horses refused to advance, and some of them fell, blocking up the way.
Then a body of English knights, galloping down the hill, threw the foremost of the French lines into confusion.
Lord James Audley, who during the first part of the battle had been by the side of the prince, now said to him, "Sir, I have always truly served my lord your father and yourself also, and I shall do so as long as I live. I once made a vow that in the first battle that your father or any of his children should be in, I should be the first setter-on and the best combatant, or else die; therefore I beg of you that you will allow me to leave you in order that I may accomplish my vow."
The prince took him by the hand and said, "Sir James, G.o.d give you this day the grace to be the first knight of all"; and Lord James rode away into the battle and fought until he had to be carried, sorely wounded, from the field.
In the meantime the battle raged with great fury upon all sides, and many French and English knights were engaged in deadly combat.
An English knight, Sir John Chandos, who had never left the prince, said to his master, "Ride forward, n.o.ble prince, and the day is yours; let us get to the French king, for truly he is so valiant a gentleman that I think he will not fly, but may be taken prisoner; and, sir, I heard you say that this day I should see you a good knight."
"John," said the prince, "let us go forth; you shall not see me turn back this day, but I will ever be with the foremost"; then the prince and his friend rode into the thickest of the fight.
Where the battle raged most fiercely the French king, with his young son Philip by his side, was laying about him with his battle-axe. When the n.o.bles around him were slain or had fled, the brave lad refused to leave his father, who made his last stand with the blood streaming down from a wound in the face.
At last the king was forced to yield, and he gave his glove to a banished French knight, Sir Denis de Marbeke, in token of surrender.
When the French were fleeing from the field, the Black Prince had become so exhausted with fighting that Sir John Chandos persuaded him to retire to his tent and take some rest.
Presently the news came to the royal tent that the king had been taken prisoner, and was on his way to the English camp. The prince immediately sent two of his lords to meet him, and had him brought to his own tent, where he received his brave enemy with the greatest respect.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The French King brought prisoner to the Black Prince after Poitiers.]
After the king had rested and refreshed himself, the prince invited him and the other captive n.o.bles to a supper in his tent, and Prince Edward himself waited upon King John, saying that he was not worthy to sit at table with so great a prince and so valiant a man.
Soon after this the English returned to their own country, bringing with them the French king and many other prisoners.
The victorious army was received with the greatest joy; and on the day when the Black Prince entered London, the people crowded by thousands into the streets to see him pa.s.s as he rode on a little pony by the side of his prisoner, King John of France, whom he had mounted upon his own magnificent cream-coloured charger.
King John was kept, an honourable prisoner, until a peace was made with France. Then he was allowed to return to his own country upon condition that the French should pay, within six years, a sum of money for his ransom.
Until the ransom should be paid, the French king"s three sons agreed to remain as hostages in the town of Calais, which belonged to the English. They were allowed to ride into French territory as often as they pleased, provided that they gave their word of honour not to remain away longer than four days at a time. King Edward and his son, knowing how honourable their father was, trusted in the honour of these young princes.
One day, however, one of the princes yielded to temptation, rode away, and never came back to Calais at all. Upon hearing the news the French king was so shocked that he returned to England and yielded himself up a prisoner once more.
"If honour is to be found nowhere else," he said, "it should find a refuge in the breast of kings."
King Edward gave him a palace to live in, and he and his people did all they could to show the imprisoned king how much they loved and admired him for his n.o.ble conduct.
But King John never returned to his own country. Three months after his arrival in England he died, his end hastened by sorrow at the base and thoughtless conduct of his son.
CHAPTER VI
SINGEING THE KING OF SPAIN"S BEARD
Queen Elizabeth was seated in her private apartment, her white forehead puckered in anxious lines.
The trouble between herself and her great rival the King of Spain had reached its height.
Throughout her reign English and Spaniards had been contending for the mastery of the new countries which had been discovered on the other side of the ocean, and for supremacy upon the seas. In South America the Spanish king possessed rich mines of silver and precious stones: and Queen Elizabeth"s adventurers, half explorers, half pirates, gloried in making descents upon the coast towns, waiting there until the convoys came down from the mountains, and then seizing the treasure, burning the town, and departing.