hester, which was
obstinately defended by William de Aubenie, at the head of a hundred
and forty knights with their retainers, but was at last reduced by
famine. [MN 30th Nov.] John, irritated with the resistance, intended
to have hanged the governor and all the garrison; but, on the
representation of William de Mauleon, who suggested to him the danger
of reprisals, he was content to sacrifice, in this barbarous manner,
the inferior prisoners only [x]. The captivity of William de Aubenie,
the best officer among the confederated barons, was an irreparable
loss to their cause; and no regular opposition was thenceforth made to
the progress of the royal arms. The ravenous and barbarous
mercenaries, incited by a cruel and enraged prince, were let loose
against the estates, tenants, manors, houses, parks of the barons, and
spread devastation over the face of the kingdom. Nothing was to be
seen but the flames of villages and castles reduced to ashes, the
consternation and misery of the inhabitants, tortures exercised by the
soldiery to make them reveal their concealed treasures, and reprisals
no less barbarous committed by the barons and their partisans on the
royal demesnes, and on the estates of such as still adhered to the
crown. The king, marching through the whole extent of England, from
Dover to Berwick, laid the provinces waste on each side of him; and
considered every estate, which was not his immediate property, as
entirely hostile, and the object of military execution. The nobility
of the north, in particular, who had shown the greatest violence in
the recovery of their liberties, and who, acting in a separate body,
had expressed their discontent even at the concessions made by the
great charter, as they could expect no mercy, fled before him with
their wives and families, and purchased the friendship of Alexander,
the young King of Scots, by doing homage to him.
[FN [x] M. Paris, p. 187.]

[MN Prince Lewis called over.]
The barons, reduced to this desperate extremity, and menaced with the
total loss of their liberties, their properties, and their lives,
employed a remedy no less desperate; and making applications to the
court of France, they offered to acknowledge Lewis, the eldest son of
Philip, for their sovereign, on condition that he would afford them
protection from the violence of their enraged prince. Though the
sense of the common rights of mankind, the only rights that are
entirely indefeasible, m