ance--the wars that
lasted for a hundred years and only ended in Henry the Sixth's reign
with England's final loss of her French possessions. And six years
after, in 1346, Cressy was fought and won by their brother, the Black
Prince. With the battle of Cressy, England entered upon a career of
military glory, which, though for a time it proved fatal to her higher
interests, gave her a life and energy she had never known before, and
laid the foundation of the Englishman's dogged love of fighting that is
not quite dead yet, if we may judge by the way British soldiers and
sailors fought at El Teb.

At Cressy, too, Feudalism received its death blow, when the English
churl struck down the French noble, and the despised yeoman "proved more
than a match in sheer hard fighting for the knight." Though the nobles
rode into battle as of old at the head of their vassals and retainers,
the body of the army consisted no longer of baronial levies, but of
stout Englishmen serving willingly for pay, and armed like Chaucer's
Yeoman on the pilgrimage to Canterbury:--

A sheaf of peacock arrows bright and keen
Under his belt he bare full thriftily.
Well could he dress his tackle yeomanly:
His arrows drooped not with feathers low,
And in his hand he bare a mighty bow.

If you would know how men fought in those days, read for yourselves in
old Froissart's chronicle, and see how he exults in the charge of the
cavalry bearing down the foe on their ponderous Flemish horses--in the
solid ranks of the foot soldiers--in the flights of arrows that fall
like hail from the tough bows of the archers. And when the fight is over
how he glories in the tourneys and jousts--the song of troubadour and
minstrel--the chase with hawk and hound.

In spite of abuses, in spite of all the miseries that these protracted
wars, this lust of conquest and fighting entailed, there still is
something inexpressibly attractive in the nobler aspects of chivalry. To
rescue the captive, to free the oppressed, to journey away

into Walachy
To Prussia and to Tartary,
To Alexandria or Turkey,

doing deeds of valor for the mere reward of a silken scarf from his
lady, or, noblest of all, for the love of right and truth--is there not
something admirable in this? Is not the idea of true knight and
lady--"a race of noblest men and women, trying to make all below them as
noble as themselves"--[23] is not that a fair ideal, worthy of