d, 'Long live King Henry the Third!'
Next, a great council met at Bristol, revised Magna Charta, and made Lord
Pembroke Regent or Protector of England, as the King was too young to
reign alone. The next thing to be done, was to get rid of Prince Louis
of France, and to win over those English Barons who were still ranged
under his banner. He was strong in many parts of England, and in London
itself; and he held, among other places, a certain Castle called the
Castle of Mount Sorel, in Leicestershire. To this fortress, after some
skirmishing and truce-making, Lord Pembroke laid siege. Louis despatched
an army of six hundred knights and twenty thousand soldiers to relieve
it. Lord Pembroke, who was not strong enough for such a force, retired
with all his men. The army of the French Prince, which had marched there
with fire and plunder, marched away with fire and plunder, and came, in a
boastful swaggering manner, to Lincoln. The town submitted; but the
Castle in the town, held by a brave widow lady, named NICHOLA DE CAMVILLE
(whose property it was), made such a sturdy resistance, that the French
Count in command of the army of the French Prince found it necessary to
besiege this Castle. While he was thus engaged, word was brought to him
that Lord Pembroke, with four hundred knights, two hundred and fifty men
with cross-bows, and a stout force both of horse and foot, was marching
towards him. 'What care I?' said the French Count. 'The Englishman is
not so mad as to attack me and my great army in a walled town!' But the
Englishman did it for all that, and did it--not so madly but so wisely,
that he decoyed the great army into the narrow, ill-paved lanes and
byways of Lincoln, where its horse-soldiers could not ride in any strong
body; and there he made such havoc with them, that the whole force
surrendered themselves prisoners, except the Count; who said that he
would never yield to any English traitor alive, and accordingly got
killed. The end of this victory, which the English called, for a joke,
the Fair of Lincoln, was the usual one in those times--the common men
were slain without any mercy, and the knights and gentlemen paid ransom
and went home.
The wife of Louis, the fair BLANCHE OF CASTILE, dutifully equipped a
fleet of eighty good ships, and sent it over from France to her husband's
aid. An English fleet of forty ships, some good and some bad, gallantly
met them near the mouth of the Thames, and took
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