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THE

ANCIENT

LEAGUE WITH FRANCE.

Chapter F.

The Charlemagne and Achaius Question settled-The War of Independence - The established Quarrel with Scotland and England-Its Consequence in the League with France-Wallace's Share in the Transaction-The old Treaties-Social Life in France during the Hundred Years' War. The Constable Buchan-The Battles of Baugé, Crevant, and Verneuil The Establishment of the Scots Guard-Some of their Feats.

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HAVE long thought that the story of the old League between France and Scotland is so significant of national character, is so fruitful in romantic personal incident, and held so powerful an influence on the destinies of Europe, that an account of it could not

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fail of interest in the hands of any one content merely to tell the facts and briefly explain the political conditions out of which they arose. Its own proper interest is so deep and true as to gain rather than lose when its history is stripped of the remote antiquity and other fabulous decorations by which enthusiastic national historians have attempted to enhance it. We are told how the Emperor Charlemagne, having resolved to establish a vast system of national or imperial education, looked around for suitable professors to teach in his universities; and perceiving Scotland to be the most learned of nations, and the most likely to supply him with the commodity he desired, he forthwith entered into a league with Achaius, the then ruling monarch of that ancient kingdom. Such is the account of the origin of the League with France, as told by Boece and our other fabulous chroniclers, and courteously accepted on the side of France by Mezeray and his brethren, who seem gladly to welcome so valuable a piece of authentic information. No doubt one finds, on minute inquiry, that, contemporary with the reign of the Charlemagne of France and the Kaiser Karl of the Germans, there flourished a chief—or a king, if you will-called Eochy or Auchy, holding sway over some considerable portion of the Celtic people of the west, and probably living in a sort of craal built of mud and wattles. But that the Emperor ever knew of his existence is not very probable; and instead of re

ceiving an embassy from Charlemagne as a contemporary monarch seeking the friendship of an honoured and powerful fellow-sovereign, Eochy doubtless owed it to his own insignificance, and his distance from the centre of European power, that he was not called upon to acknowledge the supreme authority of him who had resumed the empire of the world.

In reality, it spoils the interest and significance of the alliance to attempt to trace it farther back than those political conditions which, four hundred years later, gave it efficient purpose. These were the war of independence against the dominion of England, and the contemporary claims of the English kings on the succession to the throne of France. These concurring sources of contest rendered the League the most natural thing in the world. It enabled the kings of the house of Valois to fight their battle on British ground without sending an army there; it provided to the Scots, whenever they could safely leave their homes, an opportunity for striking a blow at the enemy and oppressor of their land.

To see the influence of this adjustment, not only on the nations immediately concerned, but on Europe at large, let us look a little more closely into details. Taking any old-established state, with a fixed natural boundary and distinct institutions of its own, it is difficult to realise in the mind the same area of territory and its people at a time when neither the boundaries nor the institutions existed. Our natural indolence makes us lean on these

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