serve him from one of those
deeds of haughty levity which the handling of sovereign power sometimes
causes even the wisest kings to commit, but reflection made him promptly
acknowledge and retrieve his fault. He charged the Dukes of Anjou and
Bourbon to go and, for his sake, conjure Du Guesclin to remain his
constable; and, though some chroniclers declare that Du Guesclin refused,
his will, dated the 9th of July, 1380, leads to a contrary belief, for in
it he assumes the title of constable of France, and this will preceded
the hero's death only by four days. Having fallen sick before
Chateauneuf-Randon, a place he was besieging in the Gevaudan, Du Guesclin
expired on the 13th of July, 1380, at sixty-six years of age, and his
last words were an exhortation to the veteran captains around him "never
to forget that, in whatsoever country they might be making war,
churchmen, women, children, and the poor people were not their enemies."
According to certain contemporary chronicles, or, one might almost say,
legends, Chateauneuf-Randon was to be given up the day after Du Guesclin
died. The marshal De Sancerre, who commanded the king's army, summoned
the governor to surrender the place to him; but the governor replied that
he had given his word to Du Guesclin, and would surrender to no other.
He was told of the constable's death: "Very well," he rejoined, "I will
carry the keys of the town to his tomb." To this the marshal agreed; the
governor marched out of the place at the head of his garrison, passed
through the besieging army, went and knelt down before Du Guesclin's
corpse, and actually laid the keys of Chateauneuf-Randon on his bier.

[Illustration: Putting the Keys on Du Guesclin's Bier----407]

This dramatic story is not sufficiently supported by authentic documents
to be admitted as an historical fact; but there is to be found in an old
chronicle concerning Du Guesclin [published for the first time at the end
of the fifteenth century, and in a new edition by M. Francisque Michel in
1830] a story which, in spite of many discrepancies, confirms the
principal fact of the keys of Chateauneuf-Randon being brought by the
garrison to the bier. "At the decease of Sir Bertrand," says the
chronicler, "a great cry arose throughout the host of the French. The
English refused to give up the castle. The marshal, Louis de Sancerre,
had the hostages brought to the ditches, for to have their heads struck
off. But forthwith the