t the
best of it, and they were afraid to tell the King of France how the
English had beaten them, for hundreds of the French had been either
killed or been forced to jump into the sea to escape the swords of the
English.

Now, at this time every king kept a jester to make jokes and amuse him
and his friends at their feasts, and the jester was a privileged person,
who could say anything he liked. So now they told the jester of the King
of France that he must tell the king the bad news, because he could say
what he liked and no one would punish him for it. So the jester said--

"Oh! what dastardly cowards the English are!"

"How so?" said the king, who expected to hear that the cowardly English
had been driven away by his men.

[Illustration: .KING. .EDWARD. .SAILS. .FOR. .FRANCE.]

"Because," answered the jester, "they have not jumped into the sea as
our brave men had to do."

So then the king asked him what he meant, and then the courtiers came
forward and told the sad story of the English victory.

Then Edward besieged a town called Tournay, but he had not enough money
to get provisions for his men, so he had to make friends with the king
of France for a little while and go back to England.

Six years later he pawned his crown and his queen's jewels, and at last
got together enough money to go and fight with the French again. He
landed at La Hogue, and as he landed he fell so violently that his nose
began to bleed.

"Oh, this is a bad sign," said his courtiers, "that your first step on
French soil should be a fall."

"Not so," said the king. "It is a good sign. It shows that the land
desires me: so she takes me close to her."

He had thirty-two thousand men with him, and his son, the Black Prince.
Some say he was called the Black Prince because he wore black armour,
but others say it was because he made himself as great a terror to the
French as a black night is to foolish children.

Edward marched towards the French and the French marched to meet him,
and as they marched they broke down all the bridges, so that the English
could not advance by them. But Edward had made up his mind to get across
the river Seine and fight with his enemies; and he was no more to be
stopped by the water than a dog would have been who wanted to get over
to the other side to fight another dog. He got a poor man to show him a
place where the river was shallow at low tide, and there he plunged into
the river, crying, "Let him