 CHAPTER 18 THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR During fourteen years, from 1314 to 1328, three sons of Philip IV reigned in rapid succession. But with the death of the last, the main line of the House of Capot came to an end, and the crown passed to his nephew and namesake, Philip of Valois. The latter declared that his claims were based on a clause of the old Salek Law forbidding a woman to inherit landed property, because, as it happened, Philip IV had left a daughter, Isabel, who had married Edward II of England, and their son, Edward III, loudly protested that his right to the throne of France was stronger than that of the Valois. The Salek Law, Edward maintained, might prevent a woman from succeeding to the throne, but there was nothing in this restriction to forbid the inheritance passing to her male heirs. The question of the Salek Law is important, because its different interpretations were the immediate excuse for opening hostilities between England and France in that long and weary struggle called the Hundred Years' War. There were, of course, other and far deeper reasons. One of these reasons was that English kings had never forgotten or forgiven John's expulsion from Normandy. They wanted to avenge his ignominious defeat, and also Philip IV's encroachments in the Duchy of Guine that, united to his policy of supporting the Scottish chieftains in their War of Independence, had been a steady source of disaster to England since the beginning of the fourteenth century. Because of his failure in Scotland and the revolts of his turbulent barons, Edward II was murdered. And Edward III, taking warning from his father's fate, welcomed the war with France, not merely in the hope of revenge and glory, but still more, in order to find an occupation for the hot English blood that might otherwise, in the course of its embittered feuds, murder him. He rode forth to battle, the hero of his court and of chivalry of England, but no less has it happened the champion of her middle classes, who cheerfully put their hands in their pockets to pay for his first campaigns. The reason of their enthusiasm for this war was that Philip of Valois, in order to annoy his rival, had commanded his Flemish subjects to trade no longer with the English. Now English sheep were the best in Europe, so valuable that their export was forbidden lest another nation should obtain the breed. English wool was the raw material of all others on which Flanders depended for the wealth and prosperity gained by her looms and factories. Before this time, English kings had encouraged Flemish trade, establishing staple markets in certain towns under their protection, where merchants of both countries could meet and bargain over their wares. Wishing to retaliate on Philip VI, however, Edward III stopped the export of wool, though at the same time he offered good terms and advantages to any of the manufacturers of bruise and gint who might care to settle in Norfolk or on the east coast and set up factories there as English subjects. Such a suggestion could not satisfy the Flemish national spirit, and in the large towns discontent with the French king grew daily. At last one of the popular leaders, Jacob van Artevelde, the brewer of gint, began to rouse his countrymen by inflammatory speeches. He showed them, says a chronicler, that they could not live without the king of England. His many commercial arguments he strengthened with others intended to win those who might hesitate to break their oath of allegiance, assuring them that Edward III was in truth by right of birth the king of France. Rebellion sprang up on all sides in response, and when, in 1338, Edward III actually embarked on the war, he had behind him not only the English wool farmers, but also the majority of Flemish merchants and artisans alike convinced that his victory would open Flemish markets to trade across the channel. The Hundred Years' War falls into two distinct periods. The first, the contest waged by the Angevin Edward III against the House of Valois, a struggle that lasted until 1375, and the second, a similar effort begun by the Lancastrian kings of England in 1415, after a time of almost suspended hostilities under Richard II. In each period there is the same switchback course to the campaigns, as they rise toward a high water mark of English successes, only to sink away to final French achievement. The first of the great English victories was fittingly a naval battle designed to avenge long years during which French raiders had harried the south coast, penetrated up the Solent, and even set fire to large towns like Southampton. In June 1340, near the entrance to the port of Sluise, some two hundred English vessels of all makes and sizes came upon the French fleet, drawn up in four lines closely chained together, so as to form a kind of bow-work to the harbor. On the decks of the tall ships, the turrets of which were piled with stones and other missiles, were hundreds of Genoese archers. But the English bowmen at this time had no match in Europe for long-distance accuracy and steadiness, and the whistling fire of their arrows soon drove their hired rivals into hiding and enabled the English men-at-arms to board the vessels opposite them, almost unopposed. From this moment, panics sent in along the French lines, and the greater number of ships, unable to escape because of the chains that bound them together, were sunk at anchor, with, according to the chroniclers, twenty-five thousand of their crews in fighting material. The English were now masters of the Channel, and Edward III was enabled to transplant an army to Flanders, but no triumph in any way corresponding to the victory of Sluise rewarded his effort in this field of warfare. The campaign became a tedious affair of sieges, and the Fleming's, cooling from their first sympathies, came to dislike the English and to accuse Jacob Van Artevelde of supplying Edward III with money merely in order to forward his personal ambitions. This charged the Fleming's leader stoutly denied. But when, hearing the people of Gantt hooting him in the street outside his house, he stepped out on the balcony and tried to clear himself. The mob surged forward and, refusing to listen to a word, broke in through the barred doors and murdered him. This was ill news for Edward III, but angry though he was at the fate of his ally, he had neither sufficient men nor money to exact vengeance. Instead, he himself determined to try a new theater of war, for, as well as his army in Flanders, he had other forces fighting the French in Normandy and Guyenne. Edward landed in Normandy, and at Cressy, to the north of the Somme, as he marched toward Calais, he was overtaken by Philip of Valois in command of a very large but undisciplined force. "'You must know,' says Frostart, the famous chronicler in the first period of the Hundred Years' War, that the French troops did not advance in any particular order, and that as soon as their king came in sight of the English, his blood began to boil, and when he cried out to his marshals, ordered the Genoese forward and began the battle in the name of God and St. Denis. These Genoese were archers who had already marched on foot so far and at such a pace that they were exhausted, and when, against their will, they sullenly advanced, their bows that were wet from a thunderstorm proved slack and untrue. The sun, also, that had just emerged from behind a cloud, shone in their eyes and dazzled them. Silently the English bowman waited as they grew near, shouting hoarsely, and then, of a sudden, poured into the weary rank such a multitude of arrows that it seemed as though it snowed. The Genoese, utterly disheartened, broke and fled, at which the French king, choking with rage, cried, Kill me this rabble that combers our road without any reason. But the English fire never ceased, and the French knights and men at arms that came to take the place of the Genoese and rode them under foot fell in their turn with shafts piercing through the joints of their heavy armor. Again, at Cressy, it was made evident to Europe that the old feudal order of battle was passing away. Victory fell not to the knight armoured with his horse like a slowly moving turret, but to the clear-eyed, leather-clad bowman, or the foot-soldier, quick with his knife or spear. The French fought gallantly at Cressy, and none more fiercely than Philip of Valois, whose horse was killed beneath him. But courage cannot wipe out bad generalship, and when at last he consented to retreat he left eleven princes of the blood-royal and over a thousand of his knights stretched on the battlefield. The defeat of Cressy took from Calais any hope of French succour, and in the following year, after a prolonged siege, it surrendered to the English and became the most cherished of all their possessions across the seas. The commons of England wrote Frosart, love Calais more than any town in the world, for they say that as long as they are masters of Calais, they hold the keys of France at their girdle. Death, at the battle of Cressy, decked in all the panoply of medieval warfare, had taken its toll of the chivalry of France and England. Now, in an open and ghastly form, indifferent alike to race or creed, it stocked across Europe, visiting palaces and castles, but sweeping with still more ruthless side the slum and the hovel. Somewhere in the Far East, the Black Death, as it was later called, had its origin, and wherever it passed, moving westward, villages, and even towns, disappeared. More than thirteen billion people are said to have perished in China, India was almost depopulated, and at last, in 1347, Europe also was smitten. Very swift was the blow, for many victims of the plague died in a few hours, the majority within five days, and contemporary writers tell us of ships that left an eastern harbor with their full complement of crew, found drifting in the Mediterranean a few weeks later, without a living soul on board to take the helm. Of towns where the dead were so many, that there was none to bury them. Of villages where the peasants fell like cattle in the fields, and by the wayside, unnoticed. In Italy, in France, in England, there is the same record of misery and terror. Boccaccio, the Italian writer, describes in his book The Decameron how the wealthy nobles and maidens of Florence fled from the plague-stricken town to a villa without the walls, there to pass their days in telling one another tales. These tales have made Boccaccio famous as the first great European novelist, but in reality, not many even of the wealthy could keep beyond the range of infection, and Boccaccio himself says elsewhere, those who first set the example of forsaking others languished where there was no one to take pity on them. Neither courage nor devotion nor selfishness could avail against the dread scourge, though like all diseases, its ravages were most virulent where small dwellings were crowded together or where dirt and insanitary conditions prevailed. They fell sick by thousands, says Boccaccio of the poor classes, and having no one whatever to attend them, most of them died. According to a doctor in the south of France, the number of those swept away was greater than those left alive. In the once thriving port of Marseille, so many died that it remained like an uninhabited place. Another French writer, speaking of Paris, says, there was so great a mortality of people of both sexes that they could hardly be buried. There was no city, nor town, nor hamlet, writes an Englishman of his own country, nor even save in rare instances any house in which the plague did not carry off the whole or the greater portion of the inhabitants. One immediate result to the Black Death was to put a temporary stop to the war between England and France, for armies were reduced to a fraction of their former strength, and rival kings forgot words like glory or conquest and terrified contemplation of an enemy against whom all their weapons were powerless. Other and more lasting effects were experienced everywhere. For town and village life was completely disorganized. Magistrates, city officials, priests, and doctors had perished in such numbers that it was difficult to replace them. Criminals plundered deserted houses unchecked. The usually law-abiding, deprived of the guidance to which they had been accustomed, gave themselves up to a disillute life trying to drown all thought of the past and future in any enjoyment they could find in the present. Work almost ceased. The looms stood idle. The ships remained without cargoes. The fields were neither reaped of the one harvest nor sown for the next. The peasants, when reproached, declared that the plague had been a sign of the end of the world and that, therefore, to labor was a waste of time. All things were dearest as a Frenchman. Furniture, food, and merchandise of all sorts doubled in price. Servants would only work for higher wages. In the years following the Black Death, the laboring classes of Europe discovered, for the first time, their value. They were the necessary foundation to the scheme of medieval life, the base of the feudal pyramid, and since they were now few in number, masters began to compete for their services. Thus they were able to demand a better wage for their work in improved conditions. But here the governments of the day that ruled in the interests of the nobles and middle classes stepped in for bad wages to be raised or villains and serfs to leave their homes and seek better terms in another neighborhood. The discontent of these held down with an iron hand, yet half awake to the possibilities of greater freedom, seethe toward revolution. A few medieval kings chose to look below the surface of national life, and in the case of England Edward III was certainly not enough of a statesman to do so. In 1355 he renewed the war with France, hoping that by victories he would be able to fill his own purse from French ransoms and pillage as well as to drug the disordered popular mind at home with showy triumphs. His eldest son Edward the Black Prince, who had gained his spurs at Cressy, landed at Bordeaux and marched through Guine, the English armies like the French army being mainly composed of companies, that is, of hired troops under military captains, the terror of friends and foes alike. For with impartial ruthlessness they trampled down corn and vineyards as they passed, pillaged towns, and burned farms and villages. The hope of Valois was dead, but his son, John the Good, had succeeded him and earned his title, it must be supposed, by his punctilious regard for the laws of medieval chivalry. His reckless daring, extravagance, and rash generalship made him, at any rate, a very bad ruler according to modern standards. Frussart says that on the field of Poitiers where the two armies met, King John, on his part, proved himself a good night, indeed, if the fourth of his people had behaved as well, the day would have been his own. This is extremely doubtful, for the French, though far the larger force, were outmaneuvered from the first. The Black Prince had the gift of generalship and disposed his army so that it was hidden amid the slopes of a thick vineyard, laying in ambush of skilled archers behind the shelter of a hedge. As King John's cavalry charged toward the only gap, in order to clear a road for their main army, they were moaned down by a merciless fire at short range from the ambush, while in the ensuing confusion English knights swept around on the French flank and put the foot soldiers to flight. The Black Prince's victory was complete, for King John and his principal nobles were surrounded and taken prisoners after a fierce conflict, in which for a long time they refused to surrender. They behaved themselves so loyalty, says Frosard, that their errors to this day are honored for their sake. And Prince Edward, waiting on his royal captive that night at dinner, awarded him the prize and garland of gallantry above all other combatants. Evil days followed in France, where her King's chivalry could not pay as enormous ransom nor those of his distinguished fellow prisoners. For this money merchants must sweat and save in the peasant's toil longer hours on starvation rations, while the companies, absolved by a truce from regular warfare, exacted their daily bread at the sword-point when and where they chose. Famous captains, who were really infamous brigands, took their toll of sheep and corn and grapes, and those farmers and laborers who refused or could not give them what they required. They flung alive onto bonfires, while they tortured and mutilated their wives and families. Against such wickedness there was no protection, either from the government or overlords. Indeed, the latter were as cruel as the brigand chiefs, extorting the very means of livelihood from their tenants and serfs to pay for the distractions of a court never more extravagant and pleasure-seeking than in this hour of national disaster. Jacques Bonhomme, the French noble would say, mockingly of the peasant, has a broad back. He will pull out his purse fast enough if he is beaten. The day came, however, when Jacques Bonhomme grown rexless in his misery, pulled out his knife instead and, in the words of François-Arte, became like a mad dog. He had neither leaders nor any hope of reform, nothing but a seething desire for revenge. And in the Jacquerie, as the peasant rebellion of this date was called, he inflicted on the nobles and their families all the horrors that he himself, standing by helpless, had seen perpetrated on his own belongings. Castles were burned, their furniture and treasures looted, destroyed, their owners were roasted at slow fires, their wives and daughters violated, their children tortured and massacred. This is one of the most hideous scenes in French history. The darker, because France and her blindness learned no lesson from it. The nobles, who soon gained the upper hand against these wild undisciplined hordes, exacted a vengeance in proportion to the crimes committed, and fixed a yoke of serfdom more surely than ever on the shoulders of Jacques Bonhomme. This was the only way, in their conception, to deal with such a mad dog. Jacques Bonhomme was in reality an outraged human being of flesh and blood like those who loathed and despised him, and during centuries of tyranny his anger grew in force and bitterness until in the Revolution of 1789 it burst forth with a violence against both guilty and innocent that no power in France was strong enough to stem. The outrages of the Jacquerie unfortunately discredited real efforts at reform that had been initiated in Paris by the leader of the middle classes, the provost of merchants Etienne Marcelle. This Marcelle had demanded that the state's general should be called regularly twice a year, that the Dauphin Charles, eldest son of King John who was acting as regent during his father's imprisonment, should send away his favorites, and that instead of these fraudulent ministers a standing council of elected representatives should be set up to advise the Crown. To these and many other reforms the Dauphin pretended to yield under the pressure of public opinion, but he soon broke all his promises and began to rule again as he chose. Marcelle roused to indignation, summoned his citizen levies and, breaking into the Princess Palace, ordered his men at arms to seize two of the most hated ministers and drag them to the royal presence. Do that quickly for which you were brought, he said to the soldiers, whereupon they slew the favorites as they crouched at Charles' feet, their fingers clinging to his robe. This act of violence won for Etienne Marcelle the undying hatred of the Dauphin and his court, and from this time the decline of his influence may be traced. In order to maintain his power the popular leader was driven to condone the excesses of the peasants in their rebellion that had shocked the whole of France, and to ally himself with Charles the Bad, King of Navarre, to whom he promised to deliver the keys of Paris in return for his support against the Dauphin. This was a fatal move for Charles the Bad did not care at all for the interests of the middle classes. He only wished to gain some secret or advantage worth selling, and it once betrayed Etienne to his foes as soon as the Dauphin paid him a sufficient price. Then a trap was arranged and Marcelle killed in the gateway of Paris as he was about to open its strong bars to his treacherous ally. With his death all attempts at securing a more liberal and responsible government failed. The country indeed had sunk into the apathy of exhaustion, and two years later the Treaty of Bretigny that represents the high watermark of English power in France was thankfully signed. In return for Edward III's surrender of his claim to the French throne, his right to the Duchy of Guine, as well as Calais and the country immediately around its walls, was recognized without any of the futile obligations that had been such a fruitful source of trouble in old days. Peace now seemed possible for an indefinite period, but in truth so long as two hostile nations divided France there was always the likelihood of fresh discord, and the Dauphin, who had succeeded his father King John, gently fanned the flames whenever he thought that the political wind blew to his advantage. From a timid, peevish youth, one of the first to fly in terror from the field of Poitiers, he had developed into an astute politician whose successful efforts to regain the lost territories of France earned him the title of Wise. King Edward III and his son professed to despise this prince, who knew not how to wield a lance to any purpose. But Charles, though feeble in body and a student rather than a soldier at heart, knew how to choose good captains to serve him in the field. And one of these, the famous Bertrand de Guisclin, said to have been the ugliest knight in the best fighter of his time, became the hero of many a battle against the English. First of all in France, and later in Spain. It was owing to the war in Spain that the English hold over the south of France was first shaken. For the black prince, who had been created Duke of Guyane, unwisely listened to the exiled king of Castile, Pedro the Cruel, who came to Bordeaux begging his assistance against the usurper of his throne. This was his illegitimate brother, Henry of Trastamara. The English prince at once declared that chivalry demanded that he should help the rightful king. Perhaps he remembered the strong bond that there had been between England and Castile ever since his great-grandfather, Edward I, had married the Spanish Eleanor. Perhaps it was a promise of large sums of money that Pedro declared would reward the victorious troops. It is more likely, however, that the fiery soldier was moved by the news that Henry of Trastamara had gained his throne through French assistance and by the deeds of arms of the renowned Duke Westlin. In 1367 the English prince crossed the Pyrenees, and at Navarrete near the river Ebro his English archers and good generalship proved to match once more for his foes. Although the Spaniards were in vastly superior numbers, they were moaned down as they rashly charged to the attack, and Henry of Trastamara was driven from the field, leaving Duke Westlin a prisoner and his brother Pedro once more able to assert his kingship. The real victors of Navarrete now had cause to repit their alliance. Sickness, due to the heat of the climate and strange food, had thinned their ranks even more than the actual warfare. The money promised by Pedro the Cruel was not forthcoming. Indeed, that wily scoundrel, after atrocities committed against his helpless prisoners that fully bore out his nickname, had slipped away to secure his throne while a black prince was in no position to pursue him and could gain little satisfaction by correspondence. Sullen and weary with a fever already lowering his vitality that was finally to cut short his life, Edward of Wales arrived in Bordeaux with his almost starving companies, because he had no money to pay them he set them free to ravage southern France while in order to fill his exchequer he imposed attacks on every hearth in Guyane. These measures proved him no statesman, whatever his generalship. In the early days of the Hundred Years' War, Guyane had looked coldly on Paris and appreciated a distant ruler who had secured her liberty of action. Now, a victim of a policy of mingled pillage and exactions, she soon came to regard her English rulers as foreign tyrants. Thus an appeal was made by the men of Guyane to Charles V, and he, in defiance of the terms of the Treaty of Bretigny, summoned Prince Edward to Paris, as though he were his vassal, to answer the charges made against him. Gladly we will answer our summons, replied the Prince when he heard, we will go as the King of France has ordered us, but with helm on head and sixty thousand men. They were bold words, but the haughty spirit that dictated them spoke from the mouth of a dying man, and the Black Prince never lived to fulfill his boast. His place in France was taken by his younger brother, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, who proved himself an indifferent general. In 1373 Duke John marched from Calais into the heart of France, his army burning villages as it went. But though he pressed deeper and ever deeper into the enemy's country, he met no open foes or towns that he could take without a siege. Let them be, said Charles the Wise, when his indignant nobles pleaded for leave to fight a pitched battle. By burnings they shall not seize our heritage, though a storm and tempest rage together over the land they disperse themselves, so it will be with these English. Ever since the Treaty of Bretigny, Charles had been planning profitable alliance with foreign rulers that would leave the English friendless. Well, like Henry the Fowler of Germany, he had fortified his cities against invasion. With the advent of winter, Lancaster and his men could find no food nor sucker for many local barons, and when at last the remnant of his once proud army reached Bordeaux, it was without a single horse and leaving a track of sick and dying to be cut off by guerrilla bands. He had not lost a single battle, but he was nonetheless defeated and had imperiled the English cause in France. The truce of 1375 that practically closed the first period of the Hundred Years' War, left to Edward III and his successors no more than the coast towns of Calais, Sherburne, Brest, Bayonne and Bordeaux. When in 1415 Henry V of England formally claimed the throne of France, and by so doing renewed the war that had languished since 1375, he had no satisfactory argument save his sword to uphold his demands. Grandson of John of Gaunt and son of the royal usurper Henry IV, who had deposed and killed his cousin Richard II, Henry V hoped by successful campaign to establish the popularity of the Lancasterian dynasty. He wished also, like most medieval rulers, to find a battleground for his barons in any territory except his own. It is only fair to add that of the modern belief that the one possible excuse for shedding human blood is a righteous cause, he had not the faintest conception. War for war's sake might have been the motto of this most medieval of all English sovereigns, but if his purpose is indefensible today in its selfish callousness, he at any rate chose an admirable time in which to put it into execution. For France, that had begun to recover assemblance of nationality under the rule of Charles the Wise, had degenerated into anarchy under his son Charles the Mad. First as a minor, for he was only eleven at the time of his accession, and later when he developed frequent attacks of insanity, Charles VI was destined to be someone else's tool, while round his person raged those factions for which Louis the Eighth had short-sightedly prepared when he set the example of creating apanages. First one, Prince of the Lilies, and then another, strove to control the court and government in their own interests, but the most formidable rivals at the beginning of the fifteenth century were the Houses of Burgundy and Armanach. The latter centered in the person of the young Charles, Duke of Orléans, the king's nephew and a son-in-law of Count Bernard of Armanach, who gave his name to the party. The other was his cousin, John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, who was also by inheritance from his mother Count of Flanders, and therefore ruler of that great middle province lying between France and the Empire. The king himself, in his moments of sanity, inclined to the side of Charles of Orléans and the Armanachs. And it happened that just at the time when Henry the Fifth of England landed in Normandy and laid siege to Harfleur, the Armanachs controlled Paris. It was their faction, therefore, that raised an army and sent it northward to oppose the invaders, while John of Burgundy stood aloof. For besides being unwilling to help the Armanachs, he was reluctant to embroil himself in a war with England on whose wool trade the commercial fortunes of his Flemish towns depended. At Agincourt, Henry V, who had taken Harfleur and was marching toward Calais, came upon his foes drawn up across the road that he must follow in such vastly superior numbers that they seemed overwhelming. The battle that followed, however, showed that the French had learned no military lesson from previous disasters. The heavily armed, undisciplined noble on horseback was still their main hope, and on this dark October day he floundered helplessly in the mud, unable to charge, scarcely able to extricate himself, an easy victim for his enemy's shafts. The slaughter was tremendous, for Henry, receiving a false report that a new French army was appearing on the horizon, commanded his prisoners to be killed, and numbers had perished before the mistake was discovered and the order could be reversed. When the news of the defeat and massacre at Agincourt reached Paris that had always hated the Armonocs, the indignant populace broke into rebellion, crying burgundy and peace. But the movement was suppressed, and it was not till 1418 that John the Fearless succeeded in entering the capital. By this time Henry V, who had returned to England after his victory, was once more back in France conquering Normandy, and French indignation was roused to white heat when it was known that Rouen, the old capital of the Duchy, had been forced to surrender to his victorious arms. Even the Duke of Burgundy, who still disliked war with England, felt that he must take some steps to prevent further encroachments, and after negotiations with the enemy had failed owing to their arrogant demands, he suggested an agreement with the Armonocs in order that France, if she must fight, should at least present a united front to her foes. Here was the moment for France's regeneration. For the head of the Armonocs faction at this date was the Dauphin Charles, son of Charles the Mad, and, in response to his rival's olive branch, he consented to meet him on the bridge of Montereau in order that the old rift might be cemented. In token of submission and goodwill, John of Burgundy knelt to kiss the Prince's hand, but, as he did so, an Armonoc still burning with party hate sprang forward and plunged his dagger into his side. A shout of horror and rage arose from the Burgundians, and as they carried away the body of John the Fearless, they swore that this murder had been arranged from the beginning and that they would never pay allegiance again to the false Dauphin. In the Treaty of Troyes that was forthwith negotiated with the English, they ratified this vow, for Henry V of England received the hand of the Mad King's daughter Catherine in marriage and was recognized as his heir to the throne of France. Two years later died both Henry V and Charles VI, leaving France divided into two camps, one lying mainly in the north and east that acknowledged this ruler, the infant Henry VI, son of Henry V and Catherine, and the other in the south and southwest that obeyed the valois Charles VII. The Treaty of Troyes marks the high water mark of English power in France during the second period of the Hundred Years' War, for though the banners that Henry V had carried so triumphantly at Agincourt were pushed steadily southward into Arminoc territory after this date, yet the influence of the invaders was already on the wane. The agreement that gave France to a foreigner and a national enemy had been made only with a section of the French nation, and some of those who in the heat of their anger against the Arminocs had consented to its terms were soon secretly ashamed of their strange alliance. When Charles the Dauphin became Charles VII, he ceased to appear merely the leader of a party discredited by its murder of the Duke of Burgundy. He became a national figure, and though his enemies might call him in derision King of Borgias because he dared not come to Paris but ruled only from a town in central France, yet he remained in spite of all their ridicule a king and a Frenchman. Had he been less timid and selfish, more ready to run risks and exert himself rather than to idle away his time with unworthy favorites, there is no doubt that he could have hastened the English collapse. Instead, he allowed those who fostered his indolence and hatred of public affairs in order to increase their own power to hinder a reconciliation with the Burgundians that might have been the salvation of France. Philip the Good, son of John the Fearless, disliked the Dauphin as his father's murderer, but he had little love for his English allies. By marriage and skillful diplomacy he had absorbed a great part of modern Holland into his already vast inheritance and could assume the state and importance of an independent sovereign. With England he felt that he could treat as an equal and now regarded with dismay the idea that she might permanently control both sides of the channel. So long as John, Duke of Bedford, brother of Henry V, acted as regent for his young nephew with statesmen like moderation, an outward semblance of friendship was maintained. But Bedford could but with difficulty keep in order his quarrelsome, irresponsible younger brother Humphrey, Duke of Clouster, who ruled in England, and with still greater difficulty quelled a sullen discontent to the people of Paris, who, suffering from starvation as a result of a prolonged war, professed to regard a foreign king as the source of all their troubles. Only the prestige of English arms retained the loyalty of northern France. Two hundred English could drive five hundred French before them, says a chronicler of the day. But salvation was to come to France from an unexpected quarter and enabled a same-writer to add proudly, now two hundred French could chase and beat four hundred English. In the village of Don Remy, on the upper muse there lived at the beginning of the fifteenth century, a peasant maid, Jean de Arc, who was, according to the description of a fellow villager, modest, simple devout, went gladly to church and sacred places, worked, sowed, hoe'd in the fields, and did what was needful about the house. Not till the age of thirteen Jean had been like other light-hearted girls, but it was then that a change came into her life. Voices seemed to draw her away from her companions and to speak to her from behind a brilliant cloud, and later she had visions of St. Catherine and St. Michael, whose painted effigy she knew in church. I saw them with my bodily eyes as clearly as I see you, she said, when questioned as to these appearances, and admitted that at first she was afraid, but that afterwards they brought her comfort. Always they came with the same message in her own words, that she must change her course of life and do marvelous deeds, for the king of heaven had chosen her to aid the king of France. Jean de Arc was no historical visionary. She had always a fund of common sense and knew how ridiculous the idea that she, an uneducated peasant girl, was called to save France would seem to the world. For some time she tried to forget the message that her voice has told her. But at last it was borne in upon her that God had given her a mission, and from this time neither her indignant father nor timid friends could turn her from her purpose. Of all the difficulties and checks that she encountered before at last at the age of seventeen she was allowed to have an audience with Charles the Seventh. There is no space to tell here. News of her persistence had spread abroad, and a torch-lit hall of the castle into which Jean was shown was packed with gaily clad courtiers, and, standing amongst them, the king in no way distinguished from the others by his dress or any outward pomp. Everyone believed that the peasant maid would be dazzled. But she, who had seen no portrait of the king and lived all her life in the quiet little village of Dom Remy, showed no confusion at the hundreds of eyes fixed on her. Recognizing at once the man with whom her mission was concerned, she went straight to him and said, My noble lord, I come from God to help you in your realm. There must have been something arresting in Jean's simplicity and frankness contrasted with that corrupt atmosphere. Even the feeble king was moved, and when she had been questioned and approved by his bishops, he allowed her to ride forth, as she wished, with the armies of France to save for him the important town of Orléans that was closely besieged by the English. She went in armor with a sword in hand and a banner, and those who rode with her felt her absolute belief in victory, and into their hearts stole the magic influence of her own gay courage and hope. We have often spoken of chivalry, the ideal of good conduct in the Middle Ages. The kings, princes, and knights whose prowess has made the chronicles of Fossart famous, were to their journalist veritable heroes of chivalry, exponents of courage, courtesy, and breeding. Yet, to modernize, these qualities seem often tarnished, since the heroes who flaunted them were in no way ashamed of vices like cruelty, selfishness, or snobbery. A king John of France would die in a foreign prison rather than break his parole, but he would disdainfully ride down a rabble of archers whom his negligence had left too tired to fight his battles. The black prince would wait like a servant on a royal prisoner, but except as a brother-in-arms to be suckered a human devil like Pedro the Cruel, or put a town to the sword as he did at Limoges, old men, women, and children, because it had dared to set him at defiance. There is nothing of this tarnish in the chivalry of the peasant maid who saved France. Pure gold were her nightly deeds, yet achieved without a trace of the prig or the boaster. Gendarque was always human, and therefore lovable, quick and her anger at fraud, yet easily appeased, friendly to king and soldier alike, yet never losing the simple dignity that was her safeguard in court and camp. Of all medieval warriors of whom we read, she was the bravest, for she knew what fear was and would often pray not to fall into the hands of her enemies alive. Yet she never shirked a battle or went into danger with a downcast face. A slim figure, with her close crop, dark hair, and shining eyes, she rode wherever the fight was thickest, always in the words of a modern biography, gay and gaily clad, quick to see her opportunities and follow them up, joyful in victory, generous to her foes, pitiful to the wounded and prisoners. The sight of her awoke new courage in her countrymen and dismay as hath the supernatural in her enemies, who dubbed her a witch and vowed to burn her. Only she turned at base, as a contemporary account of one of her battles, and as few as were the men with her, she faced the English and advanced on them swiftly with standard displayed, then fled the English shamefully, and the French came back and chased them into their works. Early on was relieved and entered, their reluctant, still half downing Charles led to Reims, and there in the ancient capital of France crowned, that all Frenchmen might know who was their true king. The maid urged that the ceremony should be followed by a rapid march on Paris, but favorites who dreaded her influence whispered other councils into the royal ear, and Charles dallyed and hesitated. When at last he advanced it was defined that the bridges over the Sain had been cut, not by the retreating English, but by French treachery. This was ripe for rebellion, and, at the sight of the maid, would have murdered her foreign garrison and opened her gates. Bedford was in the north suppressing a revolt, yet Charles, clutching at the excuse of the broken bridges, retreated southward, disbanding his army and leaving his defender to her fate. Her voice is now worn, John, of impending capture and death, but her mission was to save France. And hearing that the Duke of Burgundy planned to take the important town of Compiègne, she rode to its defense with a small force. Under the walls in the course of a sortie she was captured, refusing to surrender. I have sworn and given my faith to another than you, and I will keep my oath, she declared, and through the months that followed, caged and fettered in a dark cell of the castle of Rouen, exposed to the insults of the rough English archers, she maintained her allegiance, saying to her foes of the prince who had failed her so pettably, my king is the most noble of all Christians. Frenchmen, some of them bishops, canons, and lawyers of the University of Paris, as well as Englishmen, were amongst those who, after the mockery of a trial, sent Jean to be burned as a heretic in the marketplace of Rouen. Bravely as she had lived she died, calling on her saints, begging the forgiveness of her enemies, pardoning the evil they had done her. That the world, says a modern writer, might have no relic of her whom the world was not worthy. The English threw her ashes into the Sain. France that had betrayed Jean d'Arc needed no relic to keep her memory alive. Today, men and women call her saint, and one miracle she certainly wrought, for she restored to her country that through the years of anarchy had almost lost belief in itself the undying sense of its own nationality. As to peace with the English, she had said, the only peace possible is for them to return to their own land. Within a little more than twenty years from her death the mission on which she had ridden forth from Dame Remy had been accomplished, and Calais, of all their French possessions, alone remained to the enemies of France. In summary of the Hundred Years War it may be said that from the beginning the English fought in a lost cause. Fortune, military genius, and dogged courage gave to their conquests a fictitious endurance, but nationality is a foe invincible because it has discovered the elixir of life, and when the tide of fortune turned with the coming of the Maid, the ebb of English discomforture was very swift. In 1435 died the Duke of Bedford, and in the same year Charles VII moved from his sluggishness concluded at Arras a treaty with Philip of Burgundy that secured his entry into Paris. By good fortune his young rival in the ensuing campaigns the English king Henry VI had inherited not the energy and valor of his father, but an anemic vision of his French grandfather's insanity. Even before his first lapse into melancholia he was the weak puppet of first one set of influences, then another, and the factions that strove to govern for their own interests in his name lost him first Normandy and then Guyen. Finally they carried their feuds back across the channel to work out what seemed an almost divine vengeance for the anarchy they had caused in France in the troubled wars of the Roses. Under Charles VII, well-named le bien survey, France, as she gradually freed herself from a foreign yoke, developed from a medieval into a semblance of a modern state. Wise ministers, whom in his later years the king had had the sense to substitute for his early workless favorites, build up the power of the monarchy, restored its financial credit, and established in the place of the disorderly companies a standing army recruited and controlled by the crowd. These things were not done without opposition, and the rebellion of the progary in which were implicated nearly all the leading nobles of France, including the king's own son, the Dolphin Louis, was a desperate attempt on the part of the aristocrity to shake off the growing pressure of royal control. It failed because the nation, as a whole, saw in submission to an absolute monarch a means—imperfect, perhaps, but yet the only means available at the moment—of securing the regeneration of France. It is significant that when Louis XI succeeded Charles VII, he inevitably followed in his father's footsteps, forsaking the interests of the class, with which he had first allied himself, in order to rule as an autocrat and fulfill the ideal of kinship in his day. CHAPTER XIX Spain in the Middle Ages Spain has been rightly described as one of the most cut-up portions of the Earth's surface. A glance at her map will show the numerous mountain ranges that pierce into the heart of the country, dividing her into districts utterly unlike both in climate and soil. Even rivers that elsewhere in Europe, as in the case of the Rhine and the Danube, act as roads of friendship and commerce, are, in Spain, for the most part, unnavigable, running in wild torrents between precipitous banks so as to form an additional hindrance to intercourse. She thus came to play a very great part in the history of medieval Spain. Though overrun by Romans, Vandals, Visigoths, and Saracens, no conquest should ever be quite complete since he invaded could always find inaccessible refuges amongst the mountains. A spirit of provincial independence was also fostered as in Italy. In learning to say first, not, I am a Spaniard, but I am of Burgos, or of Andalusia, or of Barcelona, according to their neighborhood. When the Saracens defeated King Rodrigo and his Christian army at the Battle of Guadalete, we have seen that they found the subjugation of southern and central Spain an easy matter. Rich towns and districts passed into their hands almost without a blow. The Gothic nobles and their families who should have defended them weakened by tribal dissensions fled away northward to the mountains of Leon and Asturias, while the downtrodden masses that they left behind soon welcomed their new masters. It was the policy of the Moors to grant a slave his freedom on his open acknowledgment of Allah as the one God and Muhammad as his prophet, while they allowed those Christians and Jews who refused to surrender their faith to live in peace on the payment of a poll tax not required from Muslims. The capital of the Saracen Kingdom, or Caliphate, that was destined to survive practically unlisted for some 300 years, was the town of Cordova, whose capture the Moors believed had been divinely inspired by Allah, since, as their army under cover of darkness swept up to the walls, a terrific hail storm descended that deadened the clatter of approaching hooves. From a treacherous shepherd, one of the captains learned of a part of the fortification easy to scale, and, climbing up undetected by means of a fig tree, he let down his long turban to assist his fellows until a sufficient number had mounted to overpower the guards and open the gates to the main army. To the Spaniards, thus defeated almost in their sleep, Cordova was a fallen city, disgraced by the presence of infidels, yet these same infidels were to make her luxury and brilliance rival the almost fabulous glories of Baghdad, and to win for her culture the grudging admiration of Christian Europe. As we read of her palace of pleasures, ornamented with gold and precious stones, of her woods of pomegranate and sweet almond, of her gardens and perfumed fountains, of her luxurious rest houses for travelers without the walls, we are back in the atmosphere of some eastern fairy tale that clings also around the history of her caliphs, tinging with romance, their loves, their hatreds, and their rivalries. There are other aspects of Mauriz Spain, hardly less wonderful when contrasted with a haphazard national development at the rest of Europe. Here were agriculture and industry deliberately stimulated by a close and practical study of such branches of knowledge as science and botany, algebra, and arithmetic. Arid soil that under ordinary midi you will neglect would have been left a desert, became, through canals and irrigation, a fertile plain, the garden of rice, sugar, cotton, or oranges. Mathematics applied to everyday needs produced the mariners compass, scientific brains and intelligent workmen, the steel blades of Toledo and Seville, the woven soap fabrics of Granada, and the pottery and velvets of Valencia. Yet, though knowledge was consciously applied for commercial purposes, the Moors did not set up utility as an idol for their scholars and tell them that only information that brought material wealth in its training was worth having. Philosophy and literature, as well as science, had their lecture halls. Greece and the East were searched by the caliphs' orders for manuscripts to fill their libraries, and so world famous became Cordovan professors that in the 12th century Christian students hastened to sit at their feet. And the translations of Aristotle by the Arabic professor Avaroas became one of the chief sources of authority for the most orthodox schoolmen. In their search after knowledge for its own sake, the Moors accorded toleration to the best brains of all races. Elsewhere in Europe the Jews were held accursed, protected by Christian rulers so long as their money bags could be squeezed like a sponge, but exposed to insult, torture, and death whenever popular fury aroused by a crusade or an epidemic demanded an easy outlet for zeal and burning and pillaging houses. Christian fanaticism had closed nearly every avenue of life to the Jew, save that of money lender in which he found few competitors since the law of the church forbade usury. It then proceeded to condemn him as a bloodsucker because of the high rate of interest that his precarious position induced him to charge for his loans. Thus, spiced, hated, and feared, persecution helped to breed in the average Jew the very vices for which he was blamed, namely the determination to sweat as Christian neighbors and an arrogant absorption in his own race to the exclusion of all others. In the cities of the Moors alone the Jew could rise to the public eminence as in Cordova, where teachers of the race were especially noted for their researches in medicine and surgery. Many Spanish Israelites indeed became doctors and proved themselves so unmistakably superior in knowledge and skill to the ordinary quacks that rulers of Christian states were thankful to employ them when their health was in danger. It would seem at first sight as if this happy kingdom of the Moors were culture, comfort, and toleration reigned must in time succeed in spreading its civilizing influence over Europe. But there was another and darker side to Muslim Spain. The caliphate of Cordova, like other Muslim states, was the victim of a form of government whose sole bond was the religion of Islam. Its ruler was a tyrant independent of any popular control and could send even his grand vizier or chief minister to death by a word. Such an exalted position had its penalties and the caliph must keep continual watch lest he should find enemies ready to slay him, not merely amongst his servants, but even more amongst his sons or brothers. Since polygamy prevailed in nearly every family there were children of rival mothers who learned from their cradles to hate and fear each other. It depended only as it seemed on a little luck or cunning who would succeed to the royal title and few scrupled to use dagger or poison to ensure themselves the coveted honor. Out of the feuds and plots of the Moorish court and the rise and fall of Amirs and Sultans and the provinces, Moorish Spain prepared its own downfall during the three centuries that it dominated southern and central Spain. Away in the north, in Asturias, the cradle of the Spanish race, where every peasant considers himself any Dalgo or noble. In the kingdoms of León and Havar, in the counties of Castile and Barcelona, the descendants of the once enfeebled gods were meanwhile developing into a race of warriors. Though ardent in his devotion to Christianity, weaving supernatural aid around every victory, the Spaniard did not, in what might be called the first period of the Reconquest, show any acute dislike of the Moor. His early struggles were not for religion, but for independence, and often a prince or count would join with some friendly Amir to overthrow Christian rival. All kings are alike to me so long as they pay my price. These words of Rodrigo Ruiz Diaz, the greatest of Spanish heroes, were typical of his race in the age in which he lived. This Ruiz Diaz, El Campeador, or the Challenger, as the Christians named him, but more popularly called by his Arabic title Al Said, or the Sid, meaning the chief, was brave, generous, boastful, and treacherous. A Castilian by race, he held his allegiance to the king of León, whose wars he sometimes descended to wage, as in no way sacred. But when banished by that monarch, who had well-founded suspicions of his loyalty, proceeded unabashed to fight on behalf of his late master's enemy, the Moorish Sultan of Saragossa. It is evident from the old chronicles and ballads that the Sid himself could rouse and keep the affection of those who served him, when he sent for his relations and friends to tell him that he had been banished by the king of León and asked who would go with him into exile, we are told that Alvar Fáñez, who was his cousin, answered, Sid, we will all go with you through desert and through people country and never fail you. In your service, we will spend our mules and horses, our wealth and our garments, and ever while we live, be unto you loyal friends and vassals. And they all confirmed what Alvar Fáñez had said. Medieval Spain was always ready to admire a warrior, and a great part of the Sid's charm lay, no doubt, in his prowess on the battlefield. When, charging with his good sword to Zona in hand, none could withstand the onslaught. To this admiration was added the deeper feeling of fellowship, their hero might spill the blood of hundreds to attain his ambitions, but he was yet no noble after the medieval French type despising those of inferior rank, but rather a full-blooded Spaniard, keen in his sympathy with all other Spaniards. As he rode from the town of Burgos on his way to exile, the Sid called Alvar Fáñez to his side and said, cousin, the poor have no part in the wrong which the king hath done us. See now that no wrong be done unto them along our road. And an old woman who was standing at her door said, go in a lucky minute and make spoil of whatever you wish. The Sid's luck, or perhaps it would be truer to say his admirable discretion, carried him triumphantly through many campaigns, at times reconciled with the Christian king in fighting under his banner, at others laying waste to his lands as a Moorish ally. At length he reached the summit of his fortunes and carved himself a principality out of the Moorish province of Valencia. And, as a ruler of this state, made little pretense of being anyone's vassal, but boasted that he, a Rodrigo, would free Andalusia as another Rodrigo had let her fall into bondage. This kingly achievement was denied him for even heroes fail, so that a time came when he fell ill and the Moors invaded his land and because he could no longer fight against them, he turned his face to the wall and died. Yet his last victory was still to come, for his followers, who had served him so faithfully, embalmed his body and then they set him on his war horse and bound Tizona in his hand and so they let him out of the city against his foes. Instead of weeping and lamentations, the Sid's widow had ordered the church bells to be rung and war trumpets to be blown so that the Moors did not know their great enemy was dead. But imagining that he charged amongst them, terrible in his wrath as of old, they broke and fled. In spite of this victory, Valencia fell back under the rule of the Moors, but she never forgot Rue Diaz and is proud this day to be called Valencia of the Sid. The second period of the reconquest of Spain by the Christians may be called the crusading period. It continued until the fall of Granada in 1492. It began not at any fixed date, but in the gradual realization by the Christian states during the 12th century that their war with the Moors was something quite distinct and ever so much more important than their almost fraternal feuds with one another. This dawning conviction was intensified into a faith when the Moorish kingdom that owing to the feebleness and corruption of its government had almost ceased to be a kingdom and split up into a number of warring states was toward the end of the 12th century, overrun and temporarily welded together by a fierce Berber tribe from North Africa, the Almohades. The Almohades, like earlier followers of Muhammad, were definitely hostile to both Christians and Jews and so the feeling of religious bitterness grew and the war that at first was a series of victories for the infidel developed its character of a crusade. Other crusades we have seen gained public support and at the beginning of the 13th century, Pope Innocent III, no less alive to his responsibility towards Spain than towards the Holy Land sent a recruiting appeal to all the countries of Europe. This was answered by the arrival of bands of Templars, hospitalers and other young warriors anxious to win their spurs against the heathen. Spain herself founded several military orders of which the most famous was the Order of Santiago, that is, of Saint James, called after the national saint whose tomb at Compostea in the North was one of the favorite shrines visited by pilgrims. At the head of the Christian host, when it rode across the mountains to the plain of Las Navas de Pelosa where it was destined to fight one of the most decisive of Spanish battles was Alfonso VIII, the good of Castile who had warred against the Moors ever since his coronation as a lad of 15. With him went his allies, the king of Navarra, commanding right wing and Pedro II, king of Aragon, commanding the left. All day long the battle raged and the Christian kings and their knights fought like heroes. But in spite of their efforts, they were pressed back and the feet seemed almost certain. Here we must die, exclaimed Alfonso bitterly, determined to sell his life at a high price. But Rodrigo Jimenez, the fiery archbishop of Toledo, replied, not so, señor, here we shall conquer. And with his cross-bearer, he charged so resolutely against the foe that the Christians, rallying to save their sacred standard, drove the Moors headlong from the field. So overwhelming was the victory that the advance of the Almohades was completely checked and the Christian states became the dominating power in the peninsula. At first in their battles amongst themselves, it had been Navarra that took the lead amongst the Christian states. But later this little mountain kingdom that lay across the Pyrenees like a saddle and was half French and her sympathies and outlook lost her supremacy. Spanish interest ceased to be centered in France and focused itself instead in the lands that were slowly being recovered from the Moors. Portugal declared itself an independent kingdom. Castile broke off the yoke of Navarra and united with Lyon. Aragon absorbed the important province of Catalonia with its thriving seaport Barcelona. One of the most famous of Aragonese heroes in the 13th century was James the Conqueror, son of Pedro II of Aragon, who during the Albigensian Crusade had died fighting on behalf of his brother in Vassal, the Count of Provence, against Simon de Montfort. James, who was only six at the time, was taken prisoner by the Cruel Count, but innocent three insisted that he should be handed back to his own people, and these gave him to the Templars to educate. It was natural that in such a military environment the boy should grow up a soldier, but he was to prove himself a statesman as well and a lover of literature, writing in the Catalan dialect a straightforward, manly chronicle of his reign and encouraging his Catalan subjects in their devotion to poetry that they had shared from early days with their Provencal neighbors. According to contemporary accounts, the young king was handsome beyond all ordinary standards, nearly seven feet tall and well built in proportion. Unfortunately, he was so attractive that he became thoroughly spoiled and was disillute in his way of life and uncontrolled in his temper. When in one of his rages he was capable of any crime, though ordinarily so generous and tenderhearted that he hated to sign a death warrant. In his chronicle he tells us how, on one of his campaigns, he found a swallow had built her nest by the roundel of his tent. So I ordered the men not to take it down, he says, until the swallow had flown away with their young since she had come trusting to my protection. The combination of good looks, brains and chivalry found in James I, appealed to the imagination of the Aragonese, but still more did his fighting qualities that were typically Spanish. It has ever been the fate of my race, he wrote, to conquer or die in battle, and when quite a small boy he made up his mind that he would become a crusader. For many years after he was declared old enough to reign for himself, King James was forced to spend his time and energy in subduing the nobles, who, during his long minority, had been allowed to become a law unto themselves. This vindication of his authority accomplished, he led his armies against the Moors and under his conquering banner, Valencia of the Sid, passed finally into Christian hands. The Moorish kingdom was now reduced to Granada in the south and the dependent province of Mercia to the northeast that was claimed by the Castilians, though Alfonso the learned of Castile was quite unable to make himself master of it. Hearing of the Aragonese victories in Valencia, Alfonso, who was the conqueror's son-in-law, asked King James if he would help him by invading Mercia, a project that first aroused the anger of the Aragonese because it seemed to them that they were expected to do the hard work in order that someone else might reap the spoils. King James was more far-seeing than his subjects and held a different view. The Moors were weak at the moment, but owing to the influx of fresh warriors from North Africa, they had always been able to rally their power in the past and might do so again. If the king of Castile happens to lose his land, I shall hardly be safe in mine, was his shrewd summary of the case. And with this, he invaded and overran Mercia, which he gave to his son-in-law in 1262. This date, 1262, though it marked no fresh acquisition of territory for Aragon, was nevertheless an epoch in her history. Hitherto, her main interest had been identical with Castile's, namely the freedom of Spain from the Infidel. But now, owing to the conquest of Mercia, she was surrounded by Christian neighbors and what remained of the Crusade had become the business of Castile alone. Early in his reign also, King James had closed another chapter in Aragonese history when, as a result of his father's defeat and death, he had been forced to cede all Catalonian claims to Provence and thus had put away forever the prospect of absorbing France that had dazzled his ancestors. Where then should Aragon turn or victorious arms? King James, a true Aragonese, had already answered this question when in 1229 he began the conquest of the Balearic Islands. Thus, clearly recognizing that his country's natural outlook for expansion was neither north nor south, but eastwards. Already, Catalan fishermen and the merchants of Barcelona were disputing the commercial overlordship for the Mediterranean with their fellows of Marseille and the Italian republics, and thence forward, Aragonese kings were to take a hand in the game, supporting commerce with diplomacy and the sword. James the Conqueror did not die in battle harness as he had predicted, but in the robe of a Cistercian monk expiating in the seclusion of a monastery the sins of his tempestuous, pleasure-loving youth. His tradition as a warrior descended to his son Pedro III under whose rule Aragon entered honor campaign of Italian conquests. Both the excuse for this undertaking and the occasion had been noticed elsewhere in another connection. The excuse was the execution of Conradin, the last legitimate descendant of the Neapolitan Hohenstaufen. As he stood on the scaffold, calmly awaiting his death, the boy, for he was little more, had flung his gauntlet amongst the crowd. The action spoke for itself the one bitter word revenge, and a partisan who witnessed it, kneeling swiftly, picked up the glove and bore it away to Spain. Here he presented it to Pedro III to whose wife Constance, the daughter of an illegitimate son of Frederick II, the claims of the Italian Hohenstaufen had descended. Pedro did not forget the glove or its message, and when the Sicilians, rising and wrathed at the Easter Vespers, massacred their Angevan tyrants, it was Aragonese ships that brought them sucker, and Pedro who defied the anathemas of the Pope and the power of France to drive him from his new throne. All the failures and victories of the years that followed, when Aragonese and Angevan claimants deluge the kingdom in adjoining islands with blood, are more a matter of Italian than Spanish history, and it is with Castile that the interests of the peninsula become mainly concerned. Castile in later medieval times consisted of some two thirds of the whole area of Spain, stretching from the Bay of Biscay in the north to the confines of the Moorish kingdom of Granada in the south. As her name suggests, she was a land of castles built originally, not like the strongholds of Stephen's Lawless Barons in England to maintain a tyranny over the countryside, but as military outposts in each fresh stage of the reconquest from Islam. Naturally, those who lived in such outposts and might be awakened at any night to take part in a border foray or to withstand a surprise attack, expected to receive special privileges and compensation. This was as it should be and grateful kings of Castile, in order to encourage traders as well as knights and princes to settle on their dangerous southern border, offered concessions in the form of charters and revenues with a reckless prodigality at which other European monarchs would have shuttered. Trouble began when, with a steady advance of the crusading armies, outposts ceased to be outposts, and yet their inhabitants, naturally enough again, saw no reason why they should be deprived of the privileges and riches that they had won in the past. Had they known how to use their independence when danger from the moors diminished in securing a government conscious of national needs and aspirations, Spain might have become the political leader of Europe. Unfortunately, the average Castilian felt only a selfish sense of the advantages that liberty might afford, without realizing in the least that their possession entailed heavy responsibilities. Thus, he allowed his country to degenerate into anarchy. War seemed the natural atmosphere of life to the Castilian of pure blood, whose ancestors had all been crusaders. Unable to compete in agriculture or industry with the thrifty Muslims or Jews who remained behind on the lands that he reconquered, he decided that labor, except with a sword, was the hallmark of slaves, and this unfortunate fallacy, widely adopted, became the ultimate ruin of Spain. It turned her from the true road of national prosperity, which can be gained only by solid work, while it prevented nobles in town representatives from understanding one another and so rendered them incapable of common action in the Cortes or national parliament. The fallacy went farther, for it made war between the noble and noble semen natural outlet for martial zeal when no Muslim force was handy on which to wet Christian swords. The part played by the kings in this land of independent crusaders and aristocratic cutthroats was difficult and precarious, though not so legally bound by the concessions he had been forced to make as an Aragon, where no king might pass a law without the consent of his Cortes, and where the Justacar, a popular minister, disputed his supreme right at justice. Medieval Castilian monarchs were in practice very much at the mercy of their subjects. Henry II of England had been able to burn down his barrens castles and hang some of their owners, thus paving the way of royal supremacy. But kings of Castile could scarcely adopt such drastic measures against subjects usually more wealthy than themselves, whose castles were required as national fortresses and whose retainers formed the main part of Christian armies against the Moors. Instead, custom and circumstances seemed ever forcing the rulers of Castile to grant new liberties and to alienate their lands and revenues in constant rewards and bribes. This was one of the failings of Alfonso the Learned who, in spite of his boast, had I been present at the creation I would have arranged the world better, was certainly not the wise, as he is sometimes called. Alfonso was a great reader and a scientist in advance of his day. But the best work that he ever did for his kingdom was the publication of the Siete Partidas, Seven Divisions, a compilation of all the previous laws of Spain, both Roman and Gothic, drawn up and arranged in a single code. For the rest, apart from his somewhat academic cleverness, he was vain, irresolute, and superficial. On one occasion he divorced his wife, and then when the new wife he had chosen, a Norwegian princess, had already arrived at a Spanish port, he decided to send her away and retain the old. This capriciousness was of a piece with the rest of his actions. During the great interregnum, Alfonso was one of the claimants for the imperial crown, but had neither money nor sufficient popularity to carry through this foolish project, for which he heavily overtaxed his people. He also planned an invasion of Africa in grand crusading style, but had to turn his attention instead to struggling against unruly sons. He died with little accomplished, save his reputation for wisdom. The reign of Alfonso X was a prelude to a century and a half of anarchy and castile, a period when few of her kings could claim to be either wise or learned, and when four of them, by ill fortune, ascended the throne in childhood and so presented their nobles with extra opportunities for seeking their own ambitions at the Royal Expeds. On one struggle during this century and a half, we have already touched the bitter feud between Pedro the Cruel, the Nero of Spain, and his half-brother, Henry of Trastamara. There is no end to the list of crimes with which this monster has been accused, from strangling his rival's mother and calmly watching while as half-brother, a twin of Henry of Trastamara, was pursued and cut down unarmed by the royal guard, to ordering that the young bride with whom he had refused to live should be given poisonous herbs that she might dye. Stain indeed must the black prince have felt his honor when he discovered what a brother-in-arms he had crossed the Pyrenees to aid, one who would massacre prisoners for sheer love of butchery, burn a priest for prophesying his death, and murder an archbishop in a fit of savagery. It is probably true to describe this worst of the Spanish kings as mad. Many of his atrocities were so meaningless, such obvious steps to his own downfall, because they alienated those who tried to remain loyal to his cause. His end, when it came, rejoiced the popular heart in imagination. For Pedro, according to tradition, was at last entrapped by the crafty Duguesclin, lately released from imprisonment by the black prince, and once more in the service of Henry of Trastamara. King Pedro believed that every man had a price, and Duguesclin's pretense that he might be bought over stole secretly one night to the Frenchman's tent. Here he found his hated brother with some of his courtiers who cried aloud, "'Look, senor, it is your enemy. "'I am, I am,' screamed Pedro furiously, seeing he was betrayed, and flung himself on his brother, while the latter struck at him with his dagger. Over and over they rolled in the half-light of a tallow candle until Pedro, who had gained the upper hand fumbled for his poignard with which to strike a fatal blow. Then, according to the old ballad, Duguesclin interfered. I neither make king nor mar king, but I serve my master, he said, and turned Pedro over on his back, enabling those who were standing by to dispatch him with their knives. The tale, if creditable to Duguesclin's loyalty, is hardly so to his love of fair play, but the murdered king had lived like a wild animal, and it is difficult to feel any regret that he died like one instead of in a battle as a knight. The House of Trastamara was now established on the Castilian throne by the triumphant Henry II. Some years later it gave also a king to its eastern neighbor when the royal house of Aragon had become extinct in the male line. This was the Infante Ferdinand, a man of mature judgment who had already won golden opinions for his honesty and statesmanship when acting as guardian for his young nephew, John II of Castile. Both kingdoms, but more especially Castile, were to remain victims of civil wars in the frequent periods of anarchy for another half century. John II, deprived of his uncle's wise guidance, devoted his time to composing love songs and surrendered his weak will to a royal favorite, Alvaro de Luna, without whose consent, tradition says, he dared not even go to bed. The result was incessant turbulence, for the nobles hated the arrogant and all-powerful upstart, who managed the court as he pleased and steadily added to his own estates and revenues. Yet, having brought about his downfall and death, they had no better government with which to replace his tyranny. Under John's son and successor, Castile fared even worse, for Henry IV was not merely weak, but vicious, so he rolled the crown in the mire of scandal and degradation. Government of any sort was now at an end. Our swords, wrote a contemporary Castilian, recalling this time of nightmare, were employed not to defend the boundaries of Christendom, but to rip up the entrails of our country. He was most esteemed among us who was strongest in violence. Justice and peace were far removed. In their efforts to save something of their lives and fortunes from this wreck, towns and villages formed hermandades or brotherhoods, that is, troops of armed men who pursued and punished criminals. But these leagues, without support from the crown, were not strong enough to deal with the worst offenders, the wealthy nobles, who could cover their misdeeds with lavish bribery or threats. At this moment in Castile's history, when she had sunk to a depth from which she could not save herself, Henry IV died and was succeeded on the throne by his sister, Isabel, a girl in years but already a statesman in outlook and discretion. Henry IV had attempted to secure personal advantages in his lifetime by arranging various marriages for Isabel, first with the French Prince, then with the King of Portugal, and finally with one of his own worthless favorites, and his sister had won his dislike by her steady refusal to agree to any of these alliances. Secretly, indeed, she had married her cousin Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Aragon, a youth already distinguished for his military abilities and shrewd common sense. As joint rulers of Castile and Aragon, Isabel and Ferdinand dominated Spain and were able to impose their will even on the most powerful of their rebellious subjects, taking back the crown lands that had been recklessly given away, organizing a Santa Armandade or Holy Brotherhood on the model of previous local efforts to ensure order and themselves holding supreme tribunals to judge important cases of robbery and murder. In this display of authority, the land not merely acquiesced but rejoiced, utterly weary of an independence the misuse of which had produced license instead of freedom. Thus it was that a strong monarchy, such as Louis XI was able to establish in France at the end of the Hundred Years War, and the Tudors in England after the Wars of the Roses, was also organized and maintained in Spain. Under its despotic sway, many popular liberties were lost, but peace was gained at home and glory and honor abroad above all expectations. The perpetual crusade against the Moors had always touched the imagination of Europe. Now its crowning achievement, the conquest of Granada, dazzled their eyes with all the pageantry and pomp of victory so dear to medieval minds. Hardly was this wonder told when news came that a Genoese adventurer had discovered in the name of Isabel and Ferdinand a Spanish empire of almost fabulous wealth beyond the Atlantic. To these triumphs were added conquests in Italy, fruits of Ferdinand's Eragonese ambitions. The glory of Spain belongs to modern, not to medieval history, but just as a man or a woman is a development of the child, so this, the first nation in Europe as she became in the 16th century, proved the outcome of the qualities and vices of an earlier age. Above all things she became, as we should expect, a nation of warriors inspired with ardor for the Catholic faith, arrogant and ambitious. To her strength was added a fatal weakness, bread of conceit and a narrow outlook, that is, the intolerance that admired Ferdinand and Isabel's ruthless inquisition and rejoiced in the expulsion of thousands of thrifty Jews and Moors. Spain was a born conqueror among nations, but what she conquered, she had learned neither the sympathy nor adaptability to govern. Thus the empire won by her courage and endurance was destined to slip from her grasp. End of chapter 19.