Chaucer and His England Part 13

I saw her dance so comelily, Carol and sing so sweetely, Laugh and play so womanly, And look so debonairely, So goodly speak, and so friendly, That certes, I trow that nevermore Was seen so blissful a tresore.

Here at last the G.o.ddess of his hopes is revealed in the flesh; no longer the vague _Not Impossible She_, but henceforward _She of the Golden Hair_.

The revelation commands the grat.i.tude of a lifetime. Having crystallized upon herself his fluid and floating wors.h.i.+p, she is henceforth conventionally divine; he demands no more than to be allowed to gaze on her, and in gazing he swoons.

As yet, then, she is his idol, his G.o.ddess, on an unapproachable pedestal.

She may be pretty patently the work of his own hands--he has gone about dreaming of love until his dreams have taken sufficient consistency to be visible and tangible--but as yet his wors.h.i.+p must be as far-off as Pygmalion's, and he thirsts in vain for a word or a look. Then comes the second clause of Francesca's creed--_Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona_: true love must needs beget love in return. The statue warms to life; the G.o.ddess steps down from her pedestal; the lover forgets now that he had meant to subsist for life on half a dozen kind looks and kind words; and at this point the matter would end nowadays--or at least would have ended a generation ago--in mere prosaic marriage. But here, in the Middle Ages, it is fifty to one that the fortunes of the pair are not exactly suitable; or he, or she, or both may be married already. Then comes the final clause: _Amor condusse noi ad una morte_. Seldom indeed could the course of true love run smooth in an age of business-marriages; and the poet found his grandest material in the wreckage of tender pa.s.sions and high hopes upon that iron-bound sh.o.r.e.

The large majority of medieval romances, as has long ago been noted, celebrate illicit love. Therefore the first commandment of the code is secrecy, absolute secrecy; and in the songs of the Troubadors and Minnesingers, a personage almost as prominent as the two lovers themselves, is the "envious," the "spier"--the person from whom it is impossible to escape for more than a minute at a time, amid the cheek-by-jowl of castle intercourse--a disappointed rival perhaps, or a mere malicious busybody, but, in any case, a perpetual skeleton at the feast. "Troilus and Criseyde," for instance, is full of such allusions, and perhaps no poem exemplifies more clearly the common divorce between romantic love and marriage in medieval literature. It is a comparatively small thing that the first three books of the poem should contain no hint of matrimony, though Criseyde is a widow, and of n.o.ble blood. It would, after all, have been less of a _mesalliance_ than John of Gaunt's marriage; but of course it was perfectly natural for Chaucer to take the line of least poetical resistance, and make Troilus enjoy her love in secret, without thought of consecration by the rites of the Church. So far, the poem runs parallel with Goethe's "Faust." But when we come to the last two books, the behaviour of the pair is absolutely inexplicable to any one who has not realized the usual conventions of medieval romance.

The Trojan prince Antenor is taken prisoner by the Greeks, who offer to exchange him against Criseyde--a fighting man against a mere woman.

Hector does indeed protest in open Parliament--

But on my part ye may eft-soon them tell We usen here no women for to sell.

But the political utility of the exchange is so obvious that Parliament determines to send the unwilling Criseyde away. What, it may be asked, is Troilus doing all this time? As Priam's son, he would have had a voice in the council second only to Hector's, and he "well-nigh died" to hear the proposition. Yet all through this critical discussion he kept silence, "lest men should his affection espy!" The separation, he knows, will kill him; but among all the measures he debates with Criseyde or Pandarus--even among the desperate acts which he threatens to commit--nothing so desperate as plain marriage seems to occur to any of the three. The first thought of Troilus is "how to save her honour," but only in the technical sense of medieval chivalry, by feigning indifference to her. He sheds floods of tears; he tells Fortune that if only he may keep his lady, he is reckless of all else in the world; but, when for a moment he thinks of begging Criseyde's freedom from the King his father, it is only to thrust the thought aside at once. The step would be not only useless, but necessarily involve "slander to her name."[219] And all this was written for readers who knew very well that the parties had only to swear, first that they had plighted troth before witnesses, and secondly, that they had lived together as man and wife, in order to prove an indissoluble marriage contract. Nor can we ascribe this to any failure in Chaucer's art. In the delineation of feelings, their natural development and their finer shades, he is second to no medieval poet, and these qualities come out especially in the "Troilus." But, while he boldly changed so much in Boccaccio's conception of the poem, he saw no reason to change this particular point, for it was thoroughly in accord with those conventions of his time for which he kept some respect even through his frequent irony.

To show clearly how the fault here is not in the poet but in the false _point d'honneur_ of the chivalric love-code, let us compare it with a romance in real life from the "Paston Letters." Sir John Paston's steward, Richard Calle, fell in love with his master's sister Margery. The Pastons, who not only were great gentlefolk in a small way, but were struggling hard also to become great gentlefolk in a big way, took up the natural position that "he should never have my good will for to make my sister sell candle and mustard in Framlingham." But the pair had already plighted their mutual troth; and, therefore, though not yet absolutely married, they were so far engaged that neither could marry any one else without a Papal dispensation. Calle urged Margery to acknowledge this openly to her family: "I suppose, an ye tell them sadly the truth, they would not d.a.m.n their souls for us." She at last confessed, and the matter came up before the Bishop of Norwich for judgment. In spite of all the bullying of the family, and the flagrant partiality of the Bishop, the girl's mother has to write and tell Sir John how "Your sister ... rehea.r.s.ed what she had said [when she plighted her troth to Calle], and said, if those words made it not sure, she said boldly that she would make that surer ere that she went thence, for she said she thought in her conscience she was bound, whatsoever the words weren. These lewd words grieved me and her grandam as much as all the remnant." The Bishop still delayed judgment on the chance of finding "other things against [Calle] that might cause the letting thereof;" and meanwhile the mother turned Margery out into the street; so that the Bishop himself had to find her a decent lodging while he kept her waiting for his decision. But to annul this plain contract needed grosser methods of injustice than the Pastons had influence to compa.s.s, and Calle not only got his wife at last, but was taken back into the family service.[220] Troilus and Criseyde, having political forces arrayed against them, might indeed have failed tragically of their marriage in the end; but there was at least no reason why they should not fight for it as stoutly as the prosaic Norfolk bailiff did--if only the idea had ever entered into one or other of their heads!

Another tacit a.s.sumption of the chivalric love-code comes out clearly in the Knight's Tale, and even goes some way to explain the Franklin's; though this latter evidently recounts an old Breton lay in which the perspective is as frankly fantastic as the landscape of a miniature. The honest commentator Benvenuto da Imola is at great pains to a.s.sure us that Dante's _amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona_ was not an exhaustive statement of actual fact; and that even the kindest ladies sometimes remained obdurate to the prayers of the most meritorious suitors. What is to happen, then? The hero may, of course, sometimes die; but not always; that would be too monotonous. The solution here, as in so many other cases, lies in a poetic paraphrase of too prosaic facts. The Duc de Berri, who was a great connoisseur and a man of the most refined tastes, bought at an immense sacrifice of money the most delicate little countess in the market: she, of course, had no choice at all in the matter. At an equal sacrifice of blood, first Arcite and then Palamon won the equally pa.s.sive Emelye, who, when Theseus had set her up as a prize to the better fighter, could only pray that she might either avoid them both, or at least fall to him who loved her best in his inmost heart. At a cost of equal suffering, though in a different way, Aurelius won the unwilling Dorigen--for his subsequent generosity is beside the present purpose. The reader's sympathy, in medieval romance, is nearly always enlisted for the pursuing man. If only he can show sufficient valour, or suffer long enough, he must have the prize, and the lady is sure to shake down comfortably enough sooner or later.[221] The idea is not, of course, peculiar to medieval poetry, but the frequency with which it there occurs supplies another answer to the main question of this chapter. Why, if medieval marriages were really so business-like, is medieval love-poetry so transcendental?

It is not, in fact, by any means so transcendental as it seems on the surface; neither Palamon nor Arcite, at the bottom of all his extravagant protestations of humble wors.h.i.+p, feels the least scruple in making Emelye the prize of a series of swas.h.i.+ng blows at best, and possibly of a single lucky prod. The chance of Shakespeare's caskets does at least give Portia to the man whom her heart had already chosen; but the similar chances and counter-chances of the Knight's Tale simply play shuttlec.o.c.k with a helpless and unwilling girl. Under the spell of Chaucer's art, we know quite well that Palamon and Emelye lived very happily ever afterwards; but the Knight's Tale gives us no reason to doubt the overwhelming evidence that, while heroes in poetry conquered their wives with their right arm, plain men in prose openly bargained for them.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE GREAT WAR

"Ce voyons bien, qu'au temps present La guerre si commune eprend, Qu'a peine y a nul labourer Lequel a son metier se prend: Le pretre laist le sacrement, [laisse Et le vilain le charruer, Tous vont aux armes travailler.

Si Dieu ne pense a l'amender, L'on peut douter prochainement Que tout le mond doit reverser."

GOWER, "Mirour," 24097

Of all the causes that tended in Chaucer's time to modify the old ideals of knighthood, none perhaps was more potent than the Hundred Years' War.

Unjust as it was on both sides--for the cause of Philippe de Valois cannot be separated from certain inexcusable manoeuvres of his predecessors on the French throne--it was the first thoroughly national war on so large a scale since the inst.i.tution of chivalry. No longer merely feudal levies, but a whole people on either side is gradually involved in this struggle; and its military lessons antic.i.p.ate, to a certain extent, those of the French Revolutionary Wars. Even in Froissart's narrative, the greatest heroes of Crecy are the English archers; and the Welsh knifemen by their side play a part undreamed of in earlier feudal warfare. "When the Genoese were a.s.sembled together and began to approach, they made a great cry to abash the Englishmen, but they stood still and stirred not for all that; then the Genoese again the second time made another fell cry, and stept forward a little, and the Englishmen removed not one foot; thirdly, again they cried, and went forth till they came within shot; then they shot fiercely with their cross-bows. Then the English archers stept forth one pace and let fly their arrows so wholly together and so thick, that it seemed snow.... 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.... And also among the Englishmen there were certain rascals that went afoot 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."

Those "certain rascals" did not only kill certain knights, they killed also the old idea of Knighthood. From that time forward the art of war, which had so long been practised under the frequent restraint of certain aristocratic conventions, took a great leap in the direction of modern business methods. The people were concerned now; and they had grown, as they are apt to grow, inconveniently in earnest. There is a peculiarly living interest for modern England in the story of that army which at Crecy won the first of a series of victories astounding to all Christendom. Only a few months after Chaucer's unlucky campaign in France, Petrarch had travelled across to Paris, and recorded his impressions in a letter. "The English ... have overthrown the ancient glories of France by victories so numerous and unexpected that this people, which formerly was inferior to the miserable Scots, has now (not to speak of that lamentable and undeserved fall of a great king which I cannot recall without a sigh) so wasted with fire and sword the whole kingdom of France that I, when I last crossed the country on business, could scarce believe it to be the same land which I had seen before."[222] The events which so startled Petrarch were indeed immediately attributable to the business qualities and the ambitions of two English kings; but their ultimate cause lay far deeper. During all the first stages of the war, in which the English superiority was most marked, the conflict was practically between the French feudal forces and the English national levies. While French kings ignored the duty of every man to serve in defence of his own home, or remembered it only as an excuse for extorting money instead of personal service, Edward III. brought the vast latent forces of his whole kingdom, and (what was perhaps even more important) its full business energies, to bear against a chivalry which at its best had been unpractical in its exclusiveness, and was now already decaying. "Edward I. and III. ... (and this makes their reigns a decisive epoch in the history of the Middle Ages, as well as in that of England) were the real creators of modern infantry. We must not, however, ascribe the honour of this creation only to the military genius of the two English Kings; they were driven to it by necessity, the mother of invention. The device which they used is essentially the same which has been employed in every age by countries of small extent and therefore of scanty population, viz. compulsory military service. Although the name of _conscription_ is obviously modern, the thing itself is of ancient use among the very people who know least of it nowadays; and it may be proved conclusively that Edward III., especially, practised it on a great scale. The doc.u.mentary evidence for this fact is so plentiful that to draw up the briefest summary of it would be to write a whole chapter--neither the least interesting nor the least novel, be it said--of English history; and that is no part of my plan here." So wrote Simeon Luce, the greatest French specialist on the period, thirty years ago; but the point which he here makes so clearly has hardly yet been fully grasped by English writers.[223] It may therefore be worth while to bring forward here some specimens of the ma.s.s of evidence to which Luce alludes. Compulsory service is, of course, prehistoric and universal; few nations could have survived in the past unless all their citizens had been ready to fight for them in case of need; and the decadence of imperial Rome began with the time when her populace demanded to be fed at the public expense, and defended by hired troops. In principle, therefore, even 14th-century France recognized the liability of every citizen to serve, while England had not only the principle but the practice. Her old Fyrd, the Anglo-Saxon militia system, was reorganized by Henry II. and again by Edward I. By the latter's "Statute of Winchester" every able-bodied man was bound not only to possess arms on a scale proportionate to his wealth, but also to learn their use. A fresh impulse was given to this military training by Edward I., who learned from his Welsh enemies that the longbow, already a well-known weapon among his own subjects, was far superior in battle to the crossbow. Edward, therefore, gradually set about training a large force of English archers. Falkirk (1298) was the first important battle in which the archery was used in scientific combination with cavalry; Bannockburn (1314) was the last in which the English repeated the old blunder of relying on mounted knights and men-at-arms, and allowing the infantry to act as a more or less disordered ma.s.s. While Philippe de Valois was raising money by the suicidal expedients of taxing bowstrings and ordaining general levies from which every one was expected to redeem himself by a money fine, Edward III. was giving the strictest orders that archery should take precedence of all other sports in England, and that the country should furnish him all the men he needed for his wars.[224] Of all the doc.u.ments to which Luce refers (and which are even more numerous than he could have guessed thirty years ago) let us here glance at two or three which bring the whole system visibly before us. In this matter, as in several others, the clearest evidence is to be found among Mr. Hudson's invaluable gleanings from the Norwich archives.[225] He has printed and a.n.a.lyzed a number of doc.u.ments which show the working of the militia system in the city between 1355 and 1370--that is, at a time when it is generally a.s.serted that we were conducting the French wars on the voluntary system. In these doc.u.ments we find that the Statute of Winchester was being worked quite as strictly as we are ent.i.tled to expect of any medieval statute, and a great deal more strictly than the average. The city did in fact provide, and periodically review, an armed force equal in numbers to rather more than one-tenth of its total population--a somewhat larger proportion, that is, than would be furnished by the modern system of conscription on the Continent. Many of these men, of course, turned out with no more than the minimum club and knife; the next step was to add a sword or an axe to these primitive weapons, and so on through the archers to the numerous "half-armed men," who had in addition to their offensive weapons a plated doublet with visor and iron gauntlets, and finally the "fully-armed," who had in addition a s.h.i.+rt of mail under the doublet, a neck-piece and arm-plates, and whose total equipment must have cost some 30 or 40 of modern money. Mr. Hudson also notes that "it is plain that the Norwich archers were many of them men of good standing."

Moreover, this small amount of compulsion was found in medieval England, as in modern Switzerland, to stimulate rather than to repress the volunteer energies of the nation. Not only did shooting become the favourite national sport, but many of whom we might least have expected such self-sacrifice came forward gladly to fight side by side with their fellow-citizens for hearth and home. In 1346, when the Scots invaded England under the misapprehension that none remained to defend the country but "ploughmen and shepherds and feeble or broken-down chaplains," they found among the powerful militia force which met them many parsons who were neither feeble nor infirm. Crowds of priests were among those who trooped out from Beverley and York, and other northern towns, to a victory of which Englishmen have more real reason to be proud than of any other in our early history. Marching with sword and quiver on their thigh and the good six-foot bow under their arm, they took off shoes and stockings at the town gates and started barefoot, with chants and litanies, upon that righteous campaign. In 1360, again, when there was a scare of invasion and all men from sixteen to sixty were called out, then "bishops, abbots, and priors, rectors, vicars, and chaplains were as ready as the abbots [_sic_]

had been, some to be men-at-arms and some to be archers ... and the beneficed clergy who could not serve in person hired subst.i.tutes." In 1383 priests and monks were fighting even among the so-called crusaders whom Bishop Despenser led against the French in Flanders.[226]

To have so large a proportion of the nation thus trained for home defence was in itself a most important military a.s.set, for it freed the hands of the army which was on foreign service, and enabled it to act without misgivings as to what might be happening at home. This was in fact the militia which, while Edward III. was with his great army at Crecy and Calais, inflicted on the Scottish invaders at Neville's Cross one of the most crus.h.i.+ng defeats in their history, and added one more crowned head to the collection of n.o.ble prisoners in London.[227] But, more than this, it formed a recruiting-field which alone enabled English armies, far from their base, to hold their own against the forces of a country which at that time had an enormous numerical superiority in population. It had always been doubtful how far the militia was bound to serve abroad. Edward III. himself had twice been forced to grant immunity by statute (first and twenty-fifth years), but with the all-important saving clause "except under great urgency." Such great urgency was in fact constantly pleaded, and the cities did not care to contest the point. Several calls were made on Norwich for 120 men at a time, a proportion which, in figures of modern town population, would be roughly equivalent to 1200 from Northampton, 8000 from Birmingham, and 10,000 from Glasgow. In the year before Crecy the less populous town of Lynn was a.s.sessed at 100 men "of the strongest and most vigorous of the said town, each armed with breastplate, helmet, and gauntlets ... for the defence and rescue of Our duchy of Aquitaine."

The drain on London at the same time was enormous, as I have already had occasion to note in Chapter X. The briefest summary of the evidence contained in Dr. Sharpe's Letter-Books will suffice here. On the outbreak of war in 1337, in addition to a considerable tribute of s.h.i.+ps, the city was called upon for a contingent of 500 men--which would be equivalent to the enormous tribute of 50,000 soldiers from modern London. Presently "the king ... took occasion to find fault with the city's dilatoriness in carrying out his orders, and complained of the want of physique in the men that were being supplied. At the request of John de Pulteneye, who was then occupying the Mayoral chair for the fourth time, he consented to accept 200 able-bodied archers at once, and to postpone the selection of the remainder of the force. At the same time he issued letters patent declaring that the aid furnished by the city should not become a precedent. The names of the 200 archers that went to Gascony are set out in the Letter-Book...." But Royal promises are unstable. Another contingent of 100 was sent soon after. In 1338 London was ordered to fit out four s.h.i.+ps with 300 men to join the home defence fleet at Winchelsea; the citizens protested so strongly that this was reduced by a half. In 1340 the King seized all s.h.i.+ps of forty tons' burden and raised 300 more soldiers from London, who took part in the glorious victory of Sluys. In 1342 another levy; in 1344, 400 archers again; in 1346 "the sheriffs of London were called upon to make proclamation for all persons between the ages of sixteen and sixty to take up arms and to be at Portsmouth by March 26th"--a command which, however interpreted with the usual elasticity, must yet have produced several hundred recruits for the army which fought at Crecy. Next year two s.h.i.+ps were demanded with 180 armed men, and two more again later in the year. In 1350 two London s.h.i.+ps with 170 armed men were raised for the battle of Les Espagnols sur Mer. In 1355, again, 520 soldiers were demanded from the city.

While this was going on in the towns, the Berkeley papers give us similar evidence of conscription in the counties, though the doc.u.ments are not here continuous. In 1332 the Sheriff of Gloucester was bidden to raise 100 men for service in Ireland; next year 500 for Scotland. Three years later the country was obliged to send 2500 to Scotland, besides the Gloucester city and Bristol contingents. Then comes the French war. In 1337 and 1338 Lord Berkeley spends most of his time mustering and arraying soldiers for France. In the latter year, and again in 1339, Edward commissions him to array and arm _all the able men_ in the country, as others were doing throughout the kingdom; 563 were thus arrayed in the s.h.i.+re, and Smyth very plausibly conjectures that the small number is due to Lord Berkeley's secret favour for his own county. In 1345, when Edward made the great effort which culminated at Crecy, the county and the town of Bristol had to raise and arm 622 men "to be conducted whither Lord Berkeley should direct." And so on until 1347, when there is a significant addition of plenary powers to punish all refractory and rebellious persons, a riot having apparently broken out on account of these levies.[228] From this time forward the scattered notices never refer to levies for service abroad; but they are still frequent for home defence, and Smyth proudly records in three folio volumes the numbers of trained and disciplined men in his own time (James I.), with their "names and several statures," in the single hundred of Berkeley. The national militia always remained the most valuable recruiting ground, and kept up that love of archery for which the English were famous down to Elizabeth's days and beyond; yet, for purely foreign wars, Edward's frequent drains broke the national patience before the end of his reign. The evidence from London points most plainly in this direction. In 1369 at last we find the tell-tale notice: "It was frequently easier for the City to furnish the King with money than with men. Hence we find it recorded that at the end of August of this year the citizens had agreed to raise a sum of 2000 for the king in lieu of furnis.h.i.+ng him with a military contingent." Already by this time the tide had turned against us in France; not that the few English troops failed to keep up their superiority in the field, but Du Guesclin played a waiting game and wore us steadily out. Castle after castle was surprised; isolated detachments were crushed one by one; reinforcements were difficult to raise; and before Edward's death three seaports alone were left of all his French conquests. He had at one time wielded an army almost like Napoleon's--a ma.s.s of professional soldiers raised from a nation in arms.

But, like Napoleon, he had used it recklessly. Such material could not be supplied _ad infinitum_, and our victories began again only after a period of comparative rest, when France was crippled by the madness of her King and divided by internecine feuds.

Edward's conscription, it will be seen, was somewhat old-fas.h.i.+oned compared with that of modern France and Germany. Men were enrolled for a campaign partly by bargain, partly by force; and, once enrolled, the wars generally made them into professional soldiers for life. No doubt Shakespeare's caricature in the second part of _King Henry IV._ may help us a little here, so long as we make due allowance for his comic purpose and the rustiness of the inst.i.tution in his time. For already in Chaucer's lifetime there was a great change in our system of over-sea service. As the sources of conscription began to dry up, the King fell back more and more upon the expedient of hiring troops: he would get some great captain to contract himself by indenture to bring so many armed men at a given time, and the contractor in his turn entered into a number of sub-contracts with minor leaders to contribute to his contingent. Under this system a very large proportion of aliens came into our armies; but even then we kept the same organization and principles as in those earlier hosts which were really contingents of English militia.

An army thus drawn from a people accustomed to some real measure of self-government inevitably broke through many feudal traditions; and from a very early stage in the war we find important commands given to knights and squires who had fought their way up from the ranks. The most renowned of all these English soldiers of fortune, Sir John Hawkwood, married the sister of Clarence's Violante, with a dowry of a million florins; yet he is recorded to have begun as a common archer. He was probably a younger son of a good Ess.e.x house; but this again simply emphasizes the democratic and business-like organization of the English army compared with its rivals. Du Guesclin, though he was the eldest son of one of the smaller French n.o.bles, found his promotion terribly r.e.t.a.r.ded by his lack of birth and influence. He was probably the most distinguished leader in France before he even received the honour of knighthood. At the date of the battle of Cocherel he had fought with success for more than twenty years, and was by far the most distinguished captain present; yet he owed the command on that day only to the rare good fortune that the greatest n.o.ble present recognized his own comparative incapacity, and that the rest agreed in offering to fight under a man of less social distinction but incomparably greater experience than any of themselves. In the English army there would from the first have been no doubt about the real commander--Hawkwood, perhaps, who was believed to have begun life as a tailor's apprentice, or Knolles, whom this war had taken from the weaver's loom.

Even the magnificent Edward, with all his Round Table and his Order of the Garter, was forced to recognize clearly that war is above all things a business. In the earlier days he did indeed defy Philippe de Valois to single combat; but during the campaign of Crecy he made light of the laws of chivalry. He had penetrated close to Paris; his army was melting away; provisions were scarce; and the French had broken the bridges in his rear. At this point Philip sent him a regular chivalric challenge in form to meet him with his army on a field and a day to be fixed at his own choice, within certain reasonable limits. Edward returned a misleading answer, made a corresponding feint with his troops, rapidly rebuilt the bridge of Poissy, and had crossed to a place of safety before Philip realized that a clever piece of strategy had been executed under his very nose and behind the forms of chivalry. Then only did Edward throw off the mask, and declare his intention of choosing his own place and time for battle. His Royal great-grandson was even more business-like. When the French n.o.bles asked Henry V. to give a great tourney in honour of his marriage, as had always been the custom, he refused in the bluntest and most soldierly fas.h.i.+on. He and his men, he replied, would be engaged for the next few weeks at the siege of Sens; if any gallant Frenchman wished to break a lance or two, he might come and break them there. While this mimic warfare was at its highest favour in France, the three Edwards had always kept jealous control over it in England, and constantly forbidden tournaments without Royal licence. This policy is, no doubt, partly explained by some deference to ecclesiastical prohibitions, and partly by the disorders to which jousts constantly gave rise; but we may pretty safely infer (with Luce) that our kings had little belief in the direct value of the knightly tournament as a school of warfare, and that here, as on so many other points, the practical genius of the race broke even through cla.s.s prejudices.[229]

It is impossible better to sum up the results of English business methods in warfare than in the words which are forced reluctantly from M. Luce's impartial pen. "In my opinion, five or six thousand English archers, thus drilled and equipped, and supported by an equal number of knifemen, would always have beaten even considerably larger forces of the bravest chivalry in the world--at least in a frontal attack and as a matter of sheer hard fighting. Such, moreover, seems to have been the opinion of Bertrand du Guesclin, the most renowned captain of the Middle Ages, who never fought a great pitched battle against a real English army if he could possibly help it. At Cocherel his adversaries were mostly Gascons, and at Pontvallain he crushed Knolles's rear-guard by one of those startling marches of which he had the secret; but he was beaten at Auray and Navarette." Gower might complain without too poetical exaggeration that the vortex of war swept away not only the serf from his plough but the very priest from his altar; yet even Chaucer's Poor Parson may well have conceded that, if we must have an army at all, we might as well have it as efficient and as truly national as possible.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BODIAM CASTLE, KENT

BUILT DURING CHAUCER'S LIFETIME BY SIR EDWARD DALYNGRUDGE, WHO HAD FOUGHT AT CReCY AND POITIERS]

CHAPTER XIX

THE BURDEN OF THE WAR

"[Edward], the first of English nation That ever had right unto the crown of France By succession of blood and generation Of his mother withouten variance, The which me thinketh should be of most substance; For Christ was king by his mother of Judee, Which surer side is ay, as thinketh me."

HARDYNG, "Chronicle," 335

It must, however, be admitted that so terrible a weapon in so rough an age was only too dangerous. When Edward III. found that his cousin of France not only meant to deal treacherously with him in Aquitaine, but had also allied himself with our deadly enemies of Scotland, he found a very colourable excuse for retaliation by raising a claim to the throne of France. But for the Salic law, which forbade inheritance through a female, Edward would undoubtedly be, if not the rightful heir, at least nearer than Philippe de Valois, who now sat on that throne. The Biblical colour which he gave to his claim by pleading the precedent of "Judee" was of course the after-thought of some ingenious theologian; the real strength of Edward's claim lay in his army. To appreciate the strength of Edward's temptations here, we must imagine modern Germany adding to her other armaments a navy capable of commanding the seas, a Kaiser fettered by even less const.i.tutional checks than at present, and sharing with his people even greater incitements to cupidity. Beyond the prospect, always dazzling enough to a statesman, of an enormous indemnity and a substantial increase of territory, medieval warfare offered even to the meanest English soldier only too probable hopes of riot and booty. Froissart, though he seldom feels very deeply for the mere people, describes our first march through the defenceless districts of Normandy in words which make us understand why this unhappy, unprepared country could only mark time for the next hundred years, while we, in spite of all our faults and follies, went on slowly from strength to strength. England, with her own four or five millions and a little help from Aquitaine, rode roughshod again and again over the disorganized ten millions north of the Loire; while the French--even during those thirty years of union which elapsed between the recovery of Guienne and the murder of the Duke of Orleans--frequently enough burned our southern seaports, but never penetrated more than a few miles inland in the face of our s.h.i.+re-levies.

The contrast is in every way characteristic of Chaucer's England, and Froissart's description is of the deepest significance, not only to the student of political and social history, but even to the literary historian. It has been noted that Chaucer's deepest note of pathos is for the sorrows of the helpless--the irremediable sufferings of those whose frailty has tempted murder or oppression, and to whom the poet himself can offer nothing but a tear on earth and some hope of redress in heaven. Let us remember, then, that Chaucer fought in two French campaigns, identical in kind and not even differing much in degree from the invasion of 1346 which Froissart describes. "They came to a good port and to a good town called Barfleur, the which incontinent was won, for they within gave up for fear of death. Howbeit, for all that the town was robbed, and much gold and silver there found, and rich jewels; there was found so much riches, that the boys and villains of the host set nothing by good furred gowns; they made all the men of the town to issue out and to go into the s.h.i.+ps, because they would not suffer them to be behind them for fear of rebelling again. After the town of Barfleur was thus taken and robbed without brenning, then they spread abroad in the country and did what they list, for there was none to resist them. At last they came to a great and a rich town called Cherbourg; the town they won and robbed it, and brent part thereof, but into the castle they could not come, it was so strong and well furnished with men of war. Then they pa.s.sed forth and came to Montebourg, and took it and robbed and brent it clean. In this manner they brent many other towns in that country and won so much riches, that it was marvel to reckon it. Then they came to a great town well closed called Carentan, where there was also a strong castle and many soldiers within to keep it. Then the lords came out of their s.h.i.+ps and fiercely made a.s.sault; the burgesses of the town were in great fear of their lives, wives and children; they suffered the Englishmen to enter into the town against the will of all the soldiers that were there; they put all their goods to the Englishmen's pleasures, they thought that most advantage. When the soldiers within saw that, they went into the castle; the Englishmen went into the town, and two days together they made sore a.s.saults, so that when they within saw no succour, they yielded up, their lives and goods saved, and so departed. The Englishmen had their pleasure of that good town and castle, and when they saw they might not maintain to keep it, they set fire therein and brent it, and made the burgesses of the town to enter into their s.h.i.+ps, as they had done with them of Barfleur, Cherbourg and Montebourg, and of other towns that they had won on the sea-side.... The lord G.o.dfrey as marshal rode forth with five hundred men of arms, and rode off from the king's battle a six or seven leagues, in brenning and exiling the country, the which was plentiful of everything--the granges full of corn, the houses full of all riches, rich burgesses, carts and chariots, horse, swine, muttons and other beasts; they took what them list and brought into the king's host; but the soldiers made no count to the king nor to none of his officers of the gold and silver that they did get; they kept that to themselves.... Thus by the Englishmen was brent, exiled, robbed, wasted and pilled the good, plentiful country of Normandy.... It was no marvel though they of the country were afraid, for before that time they had never seen men of war, nor they wist not what war or battle meant. They fled away as far as they might hear speaking of the Englishmen, and left their houses well stuffed, and granges full of corn, they wist not how to save and keep it." Hitherto Froissart has only deigned to record the fire and pillage; but the melancholy catalogue now goes on to Coutances, Saint-Lo, and Caen, where at last the citizens fought boldly in defence of their unwalled town, "greater than any city in England except London." In spite of their numbers, and of an obstinate courage which extorted the admiration of their adversaries, the half-armed and untrained citizens were at last hopelessly beaten, and the town given over to the infuriated soldiery; though here Sir Thomas Holland, an old Crusader, who might have sat for Chaucer's Knight, "rode into the streets and saved many lives of ladies, damosels, and cloisterers from defoiling, for the soldiers were without mercy."[230]

At a later stage, when the horrors of civil war were added to those of the English invasion, the Norman chronicler, Thomas Basin, describes the fertile country between Loire, Seine, and Somme as a mere wilderness, half overgrown with brambles and thickets. "Moreover, whatsoever husbandry there was in the aforesaid lands, was only in the neighbourhood and suburbs of cities, towns, or castles, for so far as a watchman's eye from some tower or point of vantage could reach to see robbers coming upon them; then would the watchman sound the alarm ... on a bell or hunting horn, or other bugle. Which alarms and incursions were so common and frequent in very many places, that when the oxen and plough-horses were loosed from the plough, hearing the watchman's signal, they took flight and galloped away forthwith of their own accord, by the force of habit, to their places of refuge; nay, the very sheep and swine had learnt by long use to do the same." The French Bishop Jean-Jouvenel des Ursins, in 1433, speaks of the sufferings of his diocese in language too painful and too direct to be reproduced here.[231]

To realize the full force of these descriptions, it is necessary to compare them with those of the good monk Walsingham, who drily records how Edward "attacked, took, sacked, and burnt Caen, and many other cities after it." It is only when Edward comes back from Calais with his victorious army that Walsingham waxes eloquent. "Then folk thought that a new sun was rising over England, for the abundance of peace, the plenty of possessions, and the glory of victory. For there was no woman of any name, but had somewhat of the spoils of Caen, Calais, and other cities beyond the seas. Furs, feather-beds, or household utensils, tablecloths and necklaces, cups of gold or silver, linen and sheets, were to be seen scattered about England in different houses. Then began the English ladies to wax wanton in the vesture of the French women; and as the latter grieved to have lost their goods, so the former rejoiced to have obtained them."[232] In an age of brute force, when popes hesitated no more than kings to shed rivers of blood for a few square miles of territory, when every sailor was a potential pirate and every baron a potential highwayman[233]--in such an age as this, no nation could have resisted the l.u.s.t of conquest when it had once realized the wealth and supine helplessness of a neighbour. "The English," wrote Froissart, when old age had brought him to ponder less on feats of arms and more on eternity, "The English will never love or honour their king but if he be victorious, and a lover of arms and war against his neighbours, and especially against such as are greater and richer than themselves.... Their land is more fulfilled of riches and all manner of goods when they are at war, than in times of peace; and therein are they born and ingrained, nor could a man make them understand the contrary.... They take delight and solace in battles and in slaughter: covetous and envious are they above measure of other men's wealth."[234] But when exhausted France could no longer yield more than a mere livelihood to the armies which overran her, then at last things found their proper level, and the nation wearied of bloodshed.

"Universal conscription proved then as now the great inculcator of peace.

To the burgher called from the loom and the dyeing pit and the market stall to take down his bow or dagger, war was a hard and ungrateful service, where reward and plunder were dealt out with a n.i.g.g.ardly hand; and men conceived a deep hatred of strife and disorder of which they had measured all the misery."[235]

But, terribly as it might press upon our enemies in those days, when the private soldier had almost an unrestricted right of pillage, the Statute of Winchester was none the less necessary to the full development of our political freedom. Indeed, it is scarcely a paradox to say that those civic and Parliamentary liberties which made such rapid strides during the sixty years of Chaucer's lifetime owed as much to this burden of personal service as to anything else. To begin with, it was a police system also; and, for by far the greater part of the country, the only police system.

When the hue and cry was raised after a robber or a murderer, all were then bound to tumble out of doors and join in the chase with such arms as they had, just as they were bound to turn out and take their share in the national war. When all the disorders of the 14th century have been counted up in England, they are as dust in the balance compared with those of foreign countries. The Peasants' Rising of 1381 astonishes modern historians in nothing so much as in its sudden rise, its sudden end when the King had promised redress, and its comparative orderliness in disorder. But, on second thoughts, does not this seem natural enough among a people accustomed to rough military discipline, and liable any day to be arrayed, as they had laboured, side by side?[236] Lastly, we have the repeated testimony of our most determined enemies to the superiority of English over French discipline. Bishop des Ursins, in a letter written to the French Parliament in 1433, describes the worst horrors of the war as having been committed by French upon French; and he expressly adds, "at present, things are somewhat amended by the coming of the English." This modified compliment he repeats again in a letter to Charles VII., adding, "[the English] did indeed at least keep their a.s.surances once given, and also their safe conducts"; while the French (as he complains) often made light of their own engagements.[237] Indeed, the whole array of doc.u.ments collected by the astounding diligence of the late subprefect of the Vatican Library is calculated--we may not say, to make us read with equanimity the tale of horrors perpetrated by our countrymen in France--but at least to s.h.i.+ft much of the blame from the individuals to the times in which they lived. The English were not cruel merely because they were strong; the weaker French were on the whole more cruel; nowhere has the bitter proverb _Gallus Gallo lupus_ been more terribly justified.

The main difference was that, in an age when a man must needs be hammer or anvil, our national character and organization, no doubt a.s.sisted also by fortune, enabled us to play the former part. Father Denifle shows very clearly how even great and good Frenchmen like Des Ursins, living in Joan of Arc's time, were ashamed of her because she seemed to have failed. The impulses of actual chivalry--apart from its nominal code--were at best even more capricious in France than in England. Knightly mercy and forbearance seldom even professed to include the mere rank and file of a conquered army. When a place was taken by storm, it was common to ransom the officers and kill the rest without mercy. Here and there a knight earns special praise from Froissart by pleading for the lives of the unhappy privates who had fought as bravely as himself; but I remember no case of one who actually insisted on sharing the fate of his men. The Black Prince tarnished his fair fame by the ma.s.sacre of Limoges; yet in this he did but follow the example of the saintly Charles de Blois, who thanked G.o.d for victory in the cathedral of Quimper while his men were making a h.e.l.l of the captured city. His orisons finished, Charles stayed the slaughter; and the Black Prince, after watching the butchery of Limoges from his litter, and turning his face away from women and children who knelt to implore his mercy, was at last appeased by the manly spectacle of three French warriors fighting boldly for their lives against three Englishmen.[238] Their courage saved them, and what we might now call their conqueror's sporting instincts; just as Queen Philippa's timely pleading saved the citizens of Calais. All honour to the n.o.ble impulse in both cases; but greater honour still to the manly independence and discipline which saved our English commonalty from the need of appealing to a conqueror's mercy; which defended them alike from robbers at home and Frenchmen over the seas, and left us free to work out our own liberties without foreign interference. No doubt the Wars of the Roses were partly a legacy of our unjust aggression in France; but English civil wars have been among the least disorderly the world has known; in all of them the citizen-levies have fought stoutly on the side of liberty; and for centuries after Chaucer's death the national militia was recognized as a strong counterpoise to the unconst.i.tutional tendencies of the standing army.

Of all this Froissart recognized little indeed; though we, in the light of a hundred other doc.u.ments, can see how all went on under Froissart's eyes.

He saw clearly that this was the most warlike nation in Europe; he saw also that it was the most democratic; but he seems neither to have traced any connection here on the one hand, nor on the other to have been troubled by any sense of contrast; it was not in his genius to look for causes, but rather to repeat with child-like vivacity what he saw and heard. Yet for us, to whom nothing in Chaucer's England can be more interesting than to watch, under the great trees of the forest, the springing of that undergrowth which was in time to become the present British people, it is delightful to turn from pictures of mere successful bloodshed to Froissart's bitter-sweet judgments on the national character.

"Englishmen suffer indeed for a season, but in the end they repay so cruelly that it may stand as a great warning; for no man may mock them; the lord who governs them rises and lays him down to rest in sore peril of his life.... And specially there is no people under the sun so perilous in the matter of its common folk as they are in England. For in England the nature and condition of the n.o.bles is very far different from that of the common folk and villeins; for the gentlefolk are of loyal and n.o.ble condition, and the common people is of a fell, perilous, proud and disloyal condition: and wheresoever the people would show their fierceness and their power, the n.o.bles would not last long after. But now for a long time they have been at good accord together, for the n.o.bles ask nothing of the people but what is of full reason; moreover none would suffer them to take aught from him without payment--nay, not an egg or a hen. The tradesmen and labourers of England live by the travail of their hands, and the n.o.bles live on their own rents and revenues, and if the kings vex them they are repaid; not that the king can tax his people at pleasure, no! nor the people would not or could not suffer it. There are certain ordinances and covenants settled upon the staple of wool, wherefrom the king is a.s.sisted beyond his own rents and revenues; and when they go to war, that covenant is doubled. England is best kept of all lands in the world; otherwise they could by no means live together; and it behoveth well that a king who is their lord should order his ways after them and bow to their will in many matters; and if he do the contrary, so that evil come thereof, bitterly then shall he rue it, as did this king Edward II." "And men said then in London and throughout England 'we must reform and take a new ordinance [with our king]; for that which we have had hath brought us sore weariness and travail, and this kingdom of ours is not worth a straw without a good head; whereas we have had one as bad as a man can find....

We have no use for a sluggish and heavy king who seeketh too much his own ease and pleasure; we would rather slay half a hundred of such, one after the other, than fail to get a king to our use and liking.'" "The King of England must needs obey his people, and do all their will."[239]

We with our present liberties must not of course take these words of Froissart's too literally; but they must have conveyed a very definite and, on the whole, a very true impression to his French contemporaries; for no language but that of hyperbole could adequately have described the contrast between their polity and that of England. Moreover, it must be remembered that Froissart wrote this with the Peasant's Revolt not far behind him, and the deposition of Richard II. fresh in his mind. The truth is that the feudal system was already slowly but surely breaking down in England: our lower cla.s.ses, with recognized const.i.tutional rights on the one hand, and on the other hand a rough military organization and discipline of their own, were, in many ways, far more free in 1389 than the French peasants of 1789. Chaucer and Froissart always felt at the bottom of their hearts this coming of the People; it lends a breadth to their thoughts and colour to their brush even when they paint the gorgeous pageantry of overripe feudalism; labouring the more earnestly, perhaps, to record these fleeting hues because of the night which must needs come before the new day. And how vivid their pictures are! The prologue to the "Book of the d.u.c.h.ess," the castle garden and the tournament in the Knight's Tale, Troilus with his knights pacing the aisles of the temple to gaze on the ladies at their prayers, or riding home under Criseyde's balcony after the victorious fight: Froissart's stories of the Chaplet of Pearls, the Court of Gaston de Foix, the Dance of the Wild Men, Queen Isabella's entry into London--what an enchanted palace of tapestries and stained gla.s.s we have here, and what a school of stately manners! But time, which takes away so much, brings us still more in compensation; and without treason to Chaucer or his age we may frankly admit that his perfect knight is only younger brother to Colonel Newcome, and that Froissart himself can show us no figure so deeply chivalrous as the Lawrences or the Havelocks of our later Indian Wars.

CHAPTER XX

THE POOR

"Misuse not thy bondman, the better mayst thou speed; Though he be thine underling here, well may hap in heaven That he win a worthier seat, and with more bliss; For in charnel at the church churls be evil to know, Or a knight from a knave there; know this in thine heart."