ject of the expedition.
Had there been any concerted resistance to the Prince's march, doubtless
he might have shown something of his great military talents in directing
his forces in battle; but as it was, the country appeared paralyzed at
his approach: place after place fell before him, or bought him off by a
heavy price; and though there were several citadels in the vanquished
towns which held out for France, the Prince seldom stayed to subdue
them, but contented himself with plundering and burning the town. Not a
very glorious style of warfare for those days of vaunted chivalry, yet
one, nevertheless, characteristic enough of the times. Every
undertaking, however small, gave scope for deeds of individual gallantry
and the exercise of individual acts of courtliness and chivalry; and
even the battles were often little more than a countless number of
hand-to-hand conflicts carried on by the individual members of the
opposing armies. The Prince and his chosen comrades, always on the watch
for opportunities of showing their prowess and of exercising their
knightly chivalry towards any miserable person falling in their own way,
were doubtless somewhat blinded to the ignoble side of such a campaign.

However that may be, Raymond often felt a sinking at heart as he saw
their path marked out by blazing villages and wasted fields; and almost
all his own energies were concentrated in striving to do what one man
could achieve to mitigate the horrors of war for some of its helpless
victims.

Narbonne, on the Gulf of Lions, was the last place attacked and taken by
the Prince, who then decided to return with his spoil to Bordeaux, and
pass the remainder of the winter in the capture of certain places that
would be useful to the English.

Nothing had all this time been spoken as to Saut, which lay out of the
line of their march in the heart of friendly Gascony. But the project
had by no means been abandoned, and the Prince was but waiting a
favourable opportunity to carry it into effect.

The Sieur de Navailles had not attempted to join the Prince's standard,
as so many of the Gascon nobles had done, but had held sullenly aloof,
probably watching and waiting to see the result of this expedition, but
by no means prepared to adventure his person into the hands of a feudal
lord against whom his own sword had more than once been drawn. He was
well aware, no doubt, that there were pages in his past history with
regard to his relation