ver them, came down into the interior of the
place, crushing through the roofs of the houses, and killing sometimes
multitudes of men. The sow was made, too, so as to afford shelter and
protection to a great number of persons, who could ride upon it while
it was drawn or pushed up near the walls, and thus reach a point where
they could begin to undermine the walls, or plant their ladders for
scaling them. The Duke of Lancaster caused one sow to be made which
would carry, in this way, one hundred men.

Gunpowder, however, began to be used about this time, though in a very
imperfect and inefficient manner. At one siege, namely, that of St.
Malo, a town on the northwestern coast of France, it is said that the
Duke of Lancaster had four hundred cannon. They were all, however, of
very little avail in taking the town.

The wars waged between the English and the French in these chivalrous
times were much more personal in their character than wars are at the
present day. In that period of the world, every great duke, or baron,
or knight was in some sense an independent personage, having his own
separate interests to look out for, and his own individual rights and
honor to maintain, to a degree far greater than now. The consequence
of this was, that the narratives of wars of those times contain
accounts of a great many personal incidents and adventures which make
the history of them much more entertaining than the histories of
modern campaigns. I will give one or two examples of these personal
incidents.

At one time, while the Duke of Lancaster was besieging St. Malo with
his four hundred cannon, there was a famous Welsh knight, named Evan,
known in history as Evan of Wales, who was besieging a castle
belonging to the English. The name of the castle was Mortain. It was
on the River Garonne, in the country of Aquitaine. The castle was so
strong that Evan had no hope of taking it by force, and so he invested
it closely on all sides, and sat down quietly waiting for the garrison
to be starved into a surrender.

The castle was near the river. Evan built three block-houses on the
three sides of it. One of these block-houses was on the edge of a rock
before the castle, on the river side. The second was opposite a
postern gate, and was intended particularly to watch the gate, in
order to prevent any one from coming out or going in. The third
block-house was below the castle, between the lower part of it and the
water. To guard th