cken the fight one whit, and they bore
themselves as valiantly all as if they had all been Rolands and Olivers.
At last they were forced to stop, and they rested by common accord,
giving themselves truce until they should be rested, and the first to get
up again should recall the others. They rested long, and there were some
who drank wine which was brought to them in bottles. They rebuckled
their armor, which had got undone, and dressed their wounds. Four French
and two English were dead already."

It was no doubt during this interval that the captain of the Bretons,
Robert de Beaumanoir, grievously wounded and dying of fatigue and thirst,
cried out for a drink. "Drink thy blood, Beaumanoir," said one of his
comrades, Geoffrey de Bois, according to some accounts, and Sire de
Tinteniac, according to others. From that day those words became the
war-cry of the Beaumanoirs. Froissart says nothing of this incident.
Let us return to his narrative.

"When they were refreshed, the first to get up again made a sign, and
recalled the others. Then the battle recommenced as stoutly as before,
and lasted a long while. They had short swords of Bordeaux, tough and
sharp, and boar-spears and daggers, and some had axes, and therewith they
dealt one another marvellously great dings, and some seized one another
by the arms a-struggling, and they struck one another, and spared not.
At last the English had the worst of it; Brandebourg, their captain, was
slain, with eight of his comrades, and the rest yielded themselves
prisoners when they saw that they could no longer defend themselves, for
they could not and must not fly. Sir Robert de Beaumanoir and his
comrades, who remained alive, took them and carried them off to Castle
Josselin as their prisoners; and then admitted them to ransom courteously
when they were all cured, for there was none that was not grievously
wounded, French as well as English. I saw afterwards, sitting at the
table of King Charles of France, a Breton knight who had been in it, Sir
Yvon Charnel , and he had a face so carved and cut that he showed full
well how good a fight had been fought. The matter was talked of in many
places, and some set it down as a very poor, and others as a very
swaggering business."

The most modern and most judicious historian of Brittany, Count Daru,
who has left a name as honorable in literature as in the higher
administration of the First Empire, says, very truly, in recoun