right in the Frenchmen's eyes and on the Englishmen's backs. When the Genoese were assembled together, and began to approach, they made a great leap and cry to abash the Englishmen, but they stood still, and stirred not for all that. Then the Genoese again the second time made another leap, and a fell cry, and stept forward a little, and the Englishmen removed not one foot; thirdly, again they leaped and cried, and went forth till they came within shot, then they shot fiercely with their cross-bows. Then the English archers stept forth one pass (pace), and let fly their arrows so wholly, and so thick, that it seemed snow. When the Genoese felt the arrows pressing through heads, arms, and breasts, many of them cast down their cross-bows, and did cut their strings, and returned discomfited. When the French king saw them flee away, he said, "Kill me these rascals; for they shall lett (hinder) and trouble us without reason.” Then ye should have seen the men-of-arms dash in among them, and kill a great number of them; and ever still the Englishmen shot whereas they saw thickest press; the sharp arrows ran into the men-of-arms and into their horses, and many fell, horse and men, among the Genoese; and when they were down, they could not relyne again, the press was so thick that one overthrew another. And also among the Englishmen there were certain rascals that went on foot, with great knives, and they went in among the men-of-arms, and slew and murdered many as they lay on the ground, both earls, barons, knights, and squires, whereof the king of England was after displeased, for he had rather they had been taken prisoners.

The valiant king of Bohemia, called Charles of Luxenbourg, son to the noble Emperor Henry of Luxenbourg, for all that he was nigh blind, when he understood the order of the battle, he said to them about him, "Where is the Lord Charles, my son?" His men said, "Sir, we cannot tell, we think he be fighting." Then he said, “Sirs, ye are my men,

my companions and friends in this journey; I require you bring me so forward that I may strike one stroke with my sword." They said they would do his commandment; and to the intent that they might not lose him in the press, they tied all the reins of their bridles each to other, and set the king before to accomplish his desire, and so they went on their enemies. The Lord Charles of Bohemia, his son, who wrote himself king of Bohemia, and bare the arms, he came in good order to the battle; but when he saw that the matter went awry on their party, he departed, I cannot tell you which way. The king, his father, was so far forward, that he struck a stroke with his sword, yea, and more than four, and fought valiantly, and so did his company, and they adventured themselves so forward that they were all slain, and the next day they were found in the place about the king, and all their horses tied to each other.

The prince's battalion at one period was very hard pressed; and they with the prince sent a messenger to the king, who was on a little windmill-hill; then the knight said to the king, "Sir, the earl of Warwick, and the earl of Oxford, Sir Reynold Cobham, and others, such as be about the prince, your son, are fiercely fought withal, and are sore handled, wherefore they desire you that you and your battle will come and aid them, for if the Frenchmen increase, as they doubt they will, your son and they will have much ado." Then the king said, "Is my son dead or hurt, or on the earth felled?" "No, sir," quote the knight, "but he is hardly matched, wherefore he hath need of your aid." "Well," said the king, "return to him and to them that sent you hither, and say to them, that they send no more to me for any adventure that faileth, as long as my son is alive; and also say to them, that they suffer him this day to win his spurs, for if God be pleased, I will this journey be his, and the honor thereof, and to them that be about him." Then the knight returned again to them, and showed the king's words,

the which greatly encouraged them, and they repined in that they had sent to the king as they did. The king of France stayed till the last. It was not. until the evening that he could be induced to acknowledge that all was lost. Then, when he had left about him no more than a threescore persons, one and other, whereof Sir John of Heynault was one, who had remounted once the king-for his horse was slain with an arrow-then he said to the king, "Sir, depart hence, for it is time; lose not yourself willfully; if ye have loss this time, ye shall recover it again another season;" and so he took the king's horse by the bridle and led him away in a manner per force. Then the king rode till he came to the castle of La Broyes; the gate was closed, because it was by that time dark; then the king called the captain, who came to the walls, and said, "Open your gate quickly, for this is the fortune of France." The captain knew then it was the king, and opened the gate and let down the bridge; then the king entered, and he had with him but five barons, Sir John of Heynault and four others. The unhappy king, however, could not rest there, but drank and departed thence about midnight.

XXIII.

THE BLACK DEATH.-WARBURTON.

[The great pestilence which swept over England in 1348–49 was by far the most important event of Edward III.'s reign. It destroyed nearly half of the population, and raged most fiercely among the working classes. It more than doubled the rate of wages, in spite of the stringent laws enacted to keep the price of labor at its former standard. It led to the rising of the peasants in the next reign, to the re-organization of the agricultural system of the time, and ultimately to the emancipation of the peasant class from serfdom or villeinage.]

IN the interval between the capture of Calais and this attempt to recover it, a visitation occurred which turned all the gay prosperity of England into mourning, and brought the French nation to the very brink of ruin. The outbreak of the Plague, or the "Black Death," as it was then called, has been left comparatively in the background by contemporary historians; but it is undoubtedly the central fact of the reign of Edward III. and of the fourteenth century, and, in the opinion of some writers, the most important economic fact in modern history. Among its consequences may be reckoned an immense advance in the social condition of the working classes, owing to the scarcity of labor, and consequent increase in its value as a commodity; the substitution of what we should call tenant-farming for landlord occupation; and a "strike" of fifty years' duration, which culminated in the rebellion of Wat Tyler in the following reign, and, though then cruelly and treacherously put down, resulted at last in the emancipation of the English peasantry.

The local origin of the Plague is mysterious, and it has, therefore, perhaps, been traced to Cathay, the land of mystery; but it is an ascertained fact that all the most devastating epidemics which have visited Europe have had their cradle in the far East. Tidings of the Plague's ravages in

Central Asia had reached England as far back as the year 1333; but the western peoples thought little of it as long as it was talked of only as one of the many scourges of imperfectly known and half-barbarous nations. Constantinople was then, as now, the great frontier city between European civilization and the far East, and through it flowed one of the three principal tides of Oriental traffic. Thither, in 1347, the destroyer came, along with the caravans laden with Asiatic produce, and followed the westward course of commerce by easy stages along the shores and islands of the Mediterranean, sometimes pausing, sometimes doubling back, but always gaining ground, till it reached the uttermost north-western boundary of Europe, not sparing Iceland, and even leaping over to Greenland-where it probably extirpated the European colony-and returning by Norway and Sweden, through Russia, in 1351.

In Provence the chief cities were almost depopulated. At Avignon, where Pope Clement VI. held the most extravagant and dissolute court in Europe, three fourths of the people died. The pope shut himself up a close prisoner in his palace-fortress, and kept huge fires burning day and night.

In Cypress, Sicily, and Florence the Plague was felt with extraordinary severity. In the last place only it would seem that some efforts, though ineffectual, were made by the authorities to check the spread of the disease, among the victims of which was Petrarch's "Laura." During its ravages in that city a number of ladies and gentlemen withdrew together from all communication with the outer world, diverting themselves with music and dancing and other in-door entertainments, eating and drinking of the best, and never listening to or thinking about any thing which might check their good spirits or disturb their serenity. Stories by which they are supposed to have amused each other have been preserved, or invented, in the "Decameron" of Boccaccio, the effect of