exultation were
complete.

The prince of Wales conducted his prisoner to Bordeaux; and not being
provided with forces so numerous as might enable him to push his present
advantages, he concluded a two years' truce with France,[**] which
was also become requisite, that he might conduct the captive king with
safety into England. He landed at Southwark, and was met by a great
concourse of people, of all ranks and stations. {1357.} The prisoner was
clad in royal apparel, and mounted on a white steed, distinguished by
its size and beauty, and by the richness of its furniture. The conqueror
rode by his side in a meaner attire, and carried by a black palfrey. In
this situation, more glorious than all the insolent parade of a Roman
triumph, he passed through the streets of London, and presented the king
of France to his father, who advanced to meet him, and received him with
the same courtesy as if he had been a neighboring potentate that had
voluntarily come to pay him a friendly visit.[***] It is impossible, in
reflecting on this noble conduct, not to perceive the advantages which
resulted from the otherwise whimsical principles of chivalry, and which
gave men in those rude times some superiority even over people of a more
cultivated age and nation.

* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 168.

** Rymer, vol. vi p. 3.

*** Froissard, liv i. chap. 173.

The king of France, besides the generous treatment which he met with
in England, had the melancholy consolation of the wretched, to see
companions in affliction. The king of Scots had been eleven years a
captive in Edward's hands; and the good fortune of this latter monarch
had reduced at once the two neighboring potentates, with whom he was
engaged in war, to be prisoners in his capital.

{1357.}But Edward finding that the conquest of Scotland was nowise
advanced by the captivity of its sovereign, and that the government
conducted by Robert Stuart, his nephew and heir, was still able to
defend itself, consented to restore David Bruce to his liberty, for the
ransom of one hundred thousand marks sterling; and that prince delivered
the sons of all his principal nobility, as hostages for the payment.[*]

* Rymer, vol. vi. p. 45, 46, 52, 56. Froissard, liv. i.
chap, 154 Walsing, p. 73.

{1358.} Meanwhile, the captivity of John, joined to the preceding
disorders of the French government, had produced in that country a
dissolution, almost total, of civil author