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the invaders sent the healthy blood of patriotism to the heart of the people, where it aroused that cohesive natural energy which swept the enemy from the land, and made France the great empire it became.

With the Scots, on the other hand, the war, though waged on French soil, was national from the beginning. It was thus the fortune of their allies to secure a body of men-at-arms who were not only brave men and thoroughly-trained soldiers, but who brought with them still higher qualities in that steadfast faith which had been hardened on the anvil of a war for national freedom. Nominally entering the French service as mercenary troops, there never were soldiers less amenable to the reproachful application of that term. Of all the various elements which a French army then contained-among the Italian and German hirelings—among native men-at-arms who had been fighting but the other day against their existing leader and cause, and might in a few days do so again—among the wretched serfage who were driven into the field and did not even know what side they were on-among all these, the Scots alone had a cause at heart. France was the field on which they could meet and strike the Norman invaders who had dealt so much oppression on their paternal soil, and had run up so long an account of injuries and cruelties ere they were driven forth. The feeling, no doubt, was an unamiable one, according to modern ethics. It came to nothing that

can be expressed in gentler language than the Scot's undying hatred of his neighbour to the south of the Tweed. The many terrible incidents in the long war of Scottish independence testify the sincerity of this hatred. But as motives went in those days, it was among the most sterling and honest going, and served to provide the French kings with a body of men hardy and resolute, steady and true; and possessing so specially these qualities, that even Louis XI.—perhaps of all monarchs whose character is well known to the world the most unconfiding and most sceptical of anything like simple faith and honestywas content, amid all his shifting slippery policy and his suspicions and precautions, to rely implicitly on the faith of his Scots Guard.

The English army had been twelve years in occupation. Agincourt had been fought, the infant heir of the house of Lancaster had been proclaimed at Paris with the quiet decorum that attends the doings of a strong government, when Scotland resolved to act. In 1424, John Stewart, Earl of Buchan, arrived in France with a small army of his fellow-countrymen. Accounts of the numbers under his command vary from 5000 to 7000. This seems but a small affair in the history of invasions, but, looking at the conditions under which it was accomplished, it will turn out to be a rather marvellous achievement. It is only necessary to look at the map of Europe to see that from whichever side of our island the Scots attempted to approach France,

they must pass through the narrow seas in which England even then professed to have a naval superiority. A steamer now plies from Leith to Dunkirk for the benefit of those who prefer economy and a sea voyage to a railway journey; but from the union of the crowns down to the establishment of that vessel a year or two ago, the idea of going from Scotland to France otherwise than through England would have been scouted. The method of transferring troops, too, in that period, was by galleys, rowed by galley-slaves, little better than mere rafts for sea-going purposes, and ever requiring in foul weather to hug the shore. Scotland could not have afforded vessels to transport this force; it was taken in hand by France, Castile and Aragon offering, as we are told, to assist with forty vessels.

Henry V. of England, then ruling in France, naturally felt the seriousness of an infusion of such fresh blood into the distracted and ruined country; and he instructed his brother, the Duke of Bedford, acting as viceroy, to put on the screw at all the English seaports, and do whatever the old traditional prerogatives of the crown, in purveying vessels and seamen, was capable of doing, in order that a force might be raised to intercept the Scots expedition. Bedford lost the opportunity, however. The Scots troops debarked at La Rochelle, and, passing towards the valley of the Loire, encamped at Chatillon.

These rough northern foreigners were not received by the natives without invidious criticism. Two or

three instances occur in which the simple parsimony of the commissariat of the Scots camp has astonished the people of more luxurious countries. But it became a second nature with the wandering man-atarms to bear enforced starvation at one time, and compensate it by superfluous indulgence at another. The Scots probably took their opportunity in a country which, desolated though it was by warfare, was a Garden of Eden after their own desolate bogs, and they earned for themselves the designation of sacs à vin et mangeurs de moutons.

But an opportunity occurred for wiping off such a reproach. The Scots and some French, all under the command of Buchan, approached the old town of Baugé, in Anjou, on one side of the stream of the Cauanon, while Clarence and the great English host were encamped on the other. The Scots, just in time to save themselves, discovered their danger. The English were crossing the river by a narrow bridge when Buchan came up and fought the portion of the army which had crossed over. As M. Michel remarks, it was the same tactic that enabled Wallace to defeat Surrey and Cressingham at Stirling-it might also be described as a seizing of the opportunity that was afterwards so signally missed at Flodden. Then took place one of those hand-tohand conflicts, in which the highest-spirited and best-mounted knights of the age encountered in a mingled turmoil of general battle and single combat. The great host meanwhile struggled over, and

was attacked in detail. It was a victory attended, from its peculiar conditions, with more than the average slaughter of the conquered. In the words of Monstrelet, "The Duke of Clarence, the Earl of Kyme (?), the Lord Roos, Marshal of England, and, in general, the flower of the chivalry and esquiredom, were left dead on the field, with two or three thousand fighting men."

Henry V. was naturally provoked by a defeat that so strongly resembled those he had been accustomed to inflict; and his anger, sharpened by grief for the death of his brother, tempted him into one of those unworthy acts which great conquerors sometimes commit when thwarted by defeat. He had then in his possession the young King of the Scots, James I. With his consent, or in his name, an instruction was issued to the Scots army no longer to fight in the cause of France against England. Buchan protested that the orders of a monarch not at freedom were of no avail. Henry then thought fit to treat the Scots as rebels, not entitled to the courtesies of war. To make the case more clear, he took his captive to France. James was in the English camp when Melun was taken, and therefore Henry hanged twenty Scotsmen found among the garrison. On the surrendering of Meaux, too, there were especially excluded from the conditions of the capitulation all the Welsh, Irish, and Scotch-as if all these were alike rebels.

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