east--more
interesting works which border on the domain of history, such as the
Memoirs of Blaise de Montluc and Saint-Simon: works which bring home to
us the everyday life of those far-off days more clearly than anything
that has ever been written about them since.

How meagre is the stock of valuable historical memoirs with which we may
furnish our libraries to-day! There is abundance to be had--after long
searching, but the great Memoirs which we may have to hand, such as
Froissart and Monstrelet, Waurin and La Marche, must number scarce a
couple of dozen. Perhaps some day a philanthropic publisher will give us
good editions (unabridged) of Sir James Melvil, Sir Philip Warwick,
Edmund Ludlow, Bulstrode Whitlock, Sir Thomas Herbert, Robert Cary,
Denzil Lord Holles, and many other valuable contemporary evidences now
scarcely to be had, and when found usually in ancient tattered calf. Why
is it, too, that the great mass of French chroniclers who bear witness to
English doings in the wars of Normandy, Brittany, Burgundy, Anjou and
Touraine remain still untranslated and almost unprocurable?

There are so many delightful Memoirs to which one would like to have
access at will. Jean de Boucicault, Marshal of France, stands out as one
of the most interesting figures in mediaeval France and, indeed, Europe.
Nicknamed 'le meingre,' he was Vicomte de Turenne, and bore arms at the
age of ten. His father[78] also was a Marshal of France. Few men have
lived such a stirring life as this paragon of knightly prowess. At
Rosebeque in 1382 (where Philip van Artevelde and 20,000 Flemings were
slain), being then a page of honour to Charles VI., he fought at the
King's side and acquitted himself so well that he received knighthood at
the King's hands. Thenceforward he was fighting continually in Flanders,
Normandy, Brittany, Languedoc--in short wherever there was fighting to be
done. In 1396, marching with the flower of the French chivalry through
Bulgaria against the Turks, he was one of the three thousand knights
taken prisoner at the disastrous battle of Nicopoli; but was among the
twenty-five whose lives were spared by the savage victor. Four years
later he was defending Constantinople for the Emperor against his late
captor, and here again he distinguished himself greatly by his bravery.

Not long after this he was appointed Governor of Genoa. In command of the
Genoese fleet he undertook to chastise the Cypriots for an outrage on
so