moment. a fix.

Altogether the question was indeed in

The end illustrated the spirit expressed in the Psalms, "Bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days." The death of their leader did not immediately ruin the Orleanists, who continued the struggle under his relation the Count of Armagnac. Year after year went on the ceaseless contest, each up and down alternately, while their wild struggle crushed and ruined every surrounding object they came in contact with. Nor when Henry V. was thundering at the gate could they hear the warning voice of conquest over the horrid din of their own quarrels, or relax their hold of each other to turn an arm against the invader.

To be sure, they met and tried to come to an understanding. One meeting was held on an island in a small lake with a barrier across it, so that but few could be assembled on either side, and these few could not touch each other. The results of this meeting were not very satisfactory, but the next was more conclusive. It was held on the long bridge of Montereau, where the Yonne meets the Seine. A complex barrier was erected to obviate treachery. The Orleanists, however, had the last handling of it, and the Duke of Burgundy, with the small body of attendants admitted on the bridge, found themselves somehow face to face with the Orleanists, while a bar clicked behind them and cut off their communication. John the Fearless made the best of things,

clapped his greatest enemy, Tanguy du Chatel, on the shoulder, and called him a good guarantee for his safety. As he knelt to the young Dauphin, the hilt of his sword incommoded him, and he touched it to move it aside. Those who surrounded him, waiting the first good opportunity for their work, pretended that they believed he was drawing his sword, and immediately hacked him to pieces. Comines drew from this incident the moral that rival kings and great heads of parties should not attempt to hold personal interviews. The temptation on such occasions to settle all old scores by a single coup, he counted too great for ordinary flesh and blood.

While such was the nature of things at the top of the social tree, to convey an impression of the wretchedness and degradation at its other extremity is beyond the power of general terms. The details themselves make the reader at last callous with their weary monotony of torture, starvation, and slaughter. The stories told to inflame the sans-culottes of the Revolution-how that a feudal lord coming home from the chase would rip up the ventres of a couple of serfs, and warm his feet in their reeking vitals-such things were no exaggeration of the reality, and, indeed, no imagination could exaggerate it. From the frequency with which whole districts are rendered pestilential by the thousands of dead, starved, or slaughtered, one wonders how the land kept up its population, and how the scanty remnant of inhabitants had heart to renew the race, and

bring into the world fresh victims of such horrors. When Henry V. came over to make his conquest, his captains excited curiosity at first, until they knew better the habits of the country, by abstaining from an established practice both of Orleanists and Burgundians, which required that when any peasant had been caught, and compelled to act as guide, to bury the dead, or perform any enforced services, he should, when no longer of use, be stripped of any clothing worth removing, and then be hung up by the heels before a fire, where, whether with the refinement of basting or not, he was roasted until he gave the clue to any hoard of silver pieces he might have saved, or until he died, if he could or would give no such clue.

The English victories in the hundred years' war, which seem so astounding, are but natural results to those who are in the habit of contemplating, through contemporary documents, the abjectness of the French peasantry or villainage of the period. The great masses brought into the field were so far from being trained to war, either as soldiers of the crown or followers of their seigneurs, that they were denied the use of arms, unless when marshalled in an army. The English bow and bill men were, on the other hand, sturdy knaves, well fed, free within certain limits, and expert at handling their weapons. In fact, between them and their Norman masters, after the lapse of centuries, a sort of surly compact had been formed as between those who knew each

other to be sterling stuff, for they were kindred in character, and had both sprung from the same hardy Scandinavian stock. The English bow and bill men were nearly as good as mailed men-at-arms; and one of these fully equipped and mounted was among a crowd of serfs like a ship of war in a fleet of fishingboats-he could go about unharmed, slaughtering all he could come at, until he became tired. So little of common cause was there between them, that the French men-at-arms on some provocation would set to slaughtering among their starving crowd of followers, or would let the enemy do so without taking umbrage. The Captal of Buch gained great honour by a bloody attack on a large body of the Jacques, who were doing no creditable work, certainly, yet it was on his own side. In their great battles with the English invaders, the French men-at-arms were nearly as much occupied in chastising their own serfs as in fighting with the enemy; and at Agincourt the leaders would not condescend to act at the head of their men, but formed themselves into a separate battel, apart from the great mass, who became consequently a chaotic crowd, not only useless but detrimental. According to a very offensive practice of those chivalrous times, the chances of safety to a vanquished foe depended on what he was likely to fetch in ransom; in some instances a rich or royal captive was in danger from a contest among his captors for the monopoly of his capture and the corresponding ransom-money. Alas for the

poor French serf! there was little chance of making anything of him; nor, in the distracted state of the country, was he worth preserving as a slave. He was put to the most valuable use when his carcass manured the ground on which he fell.

So much for the social condition of the French people during the early part of the hundred years' war with the English kings. To the political condition of France as a nation, and one of the European community, perhaps the best key may be found in the remark of Sismondi, that the contest was not in its origin a national one between France and England. It was a question of disputed succession, in which the competitors for the crown were the only persons ostensibly interested. The nobles took their side according to their calculations, founded on interest or connection, as the smaller European princes have done in the great wars of later times. As to the serfage, if they thought at all, the tendency of their thoughts would probably be that they could not be more miserable than they were, whoever was their king; and we may be pretty sure that they did not attempt to solve the question about the prevalence of the old Salic code within the soil of France. In fact, the invaders, accustomed to treat their neighbours at home as fellow-beings, were, as we have seen, kinder to the poor peasantry than their armed countrymen. But a conquering class or race will ever become insolent and exasperating ; and, after a time, the oppression and insolence of