of the principal perpetrators hung upon the spot. Even Froissart himself, when recounting the slaughter at Durham by the Scotch king David of women, children, monks, and priests, and the demolition of every house and church in the city, only expresses pity for the churches, none for those who were wont to worship in them.1

The slightest embitterment of feeling in a war removed all scruples in favour of sacred buildings. The English, for instance, at one time were so exasperated with the Scots on account of their recent offensive alliance with France, that the beautiful Melrose Abbey, spared in all previous wars between the two countries, was burnt and destroyed by the king of England and the lords of his army. So was the Abbey of Dunfermline, where the Scotch kings used to be buried; and so it fared with the rest of Scotland that the English over-ran: they "spared neither monasteries nor churches, but put all to fire and flame."

Although reason can urge no valid objection against the means of destruction employed in warfare, whether poisoned arrows or explosive bullets, there have generally been certain things excluded from the category of fair military practices, as, for example, the poisoning of an enemy's water. It is therefore curious that the gallant warriors of Froissart's day, though they refrained from poisoning water, should have had no scruples whatever about poisoning the air. Their great engines, called Sows or Muttons, could inject into a besieged town more fatal weapons than huge stones or beams of wood. When the Duke of Normandy was besieging the castle of Thun l'Évêque, he had dead horses and carrion flung into the castle to poison the air; and as it was then the middle of summer, it was not long before the garrison came to reason. The chivalry of Brabant, besieging the town of Grave, threw over the walls all the dead carrion of their army, to empoison the inhabitants by the stench. Another effective weapon was Greek fire, which, consisting of sulphur and pitch, was only extinguishable by vinegar mixed with sand, or by raw hides. The Black Prince made use of it to take the castle of Romorantin.

There is no single character of the Middle Ages round whom more memories and fancies of a noble chivalry still linger than the Black Prince. Some generous traits certainly adorned his career; but the white spots of his character, that stand out in relief of the fundamental black, are really very few and far between. The extreme terms of eulogy

The doubt of the historical fact does not affect the character of Froissart's judgment,

applied to him in history are a proof how little there really was to praise in the military ideal of his age. When two messengers brought him a summons from the French king to answer the appeal of the Gascons of Aquitaine, not only did his nobles and barons advise him to kill them as a salary for their pains, but the Prince actually went so far as to imprison them. Nor is it possible for the modern spirit to admire in the least his conduct in Spain. For if ever one king was substituted for another with the consent and goodwill of a people, it was Henry the Bastard for Pedro the Cruel; but the fact of the latter being as much hated as the former was beloved by the Castilians did not for a moment deter the Black Prince from helping Pedro to recover a throne from which he had been deservedly dethroned. Any thought for the wishes of the people concerned, or of sympathy for their liberation, as little entered into his mind as if the question had concerned toads or rabbits. And the only pretext he could give for the war, namely, that the substitution of a bastard for Pedro was prejudicial to royalty, entirely overlooked the fact that the Pope had expressly legitimised Henry's birth, in order to render such scruples of no avail. Before the battle of Navarette (1367), in which Henry the Bastard was completely defeated, the Prince did not hesitate in his prayers for victory to assert that he had undertaken the war solely in the interests of justice and reason; and it was on account of his success in this exploit (a success which only awaited his departure from the country to be followed by a rising in favour of the monarch he had deposed) that the Prince earned his chief title to fame, that Germans, English, and Flemish dubbed him the mirror of knighthood, and that London exhausted itself in shows, triumphs, and feasts in his honour.

Having seen, as far as the faint line of historical record will enable us to see, what war really was, and in what manner and spirit it was conducted in days when men are supposed to have been more noble and chivalrous than those of after times, let us examine briefly into the causes, the moral causes of the human mind in those days, which made wars break out so frequently and last so long. That war was then the chief thought in men's minds as well as the chief occupation of their lives may well be shown by the way in which it coloured their religion. For at Christmas and at Easter, the two great religious festivals of a religion supposed especially to inculcate peace, the psalm that was deemed most appropriate to be sung in the chapels of the Pope and of the king of France was the psalm beginning: "Benedictus Dominus, Deus meus, qui docet manus meas ad bellum et digitos meos ad prælium."

The fundamental and most general motive for war, even in the fourteenth century, was the desire which nowadays finds vent in the more peaceful channels of commerce-the desire of gain. The desire for glory had far less to do with it than we are commonly taught. From the beginning to the end of Froissart, nothing is more conspicuously displayed than the merely mercenary motive for war. The ransom of prisoners or of towns afforded a royal road to wealth, and was the chief reward and motive of bravery. Men fought, not so much as honour or chivalry impelled them for the weak or the oppressed, but simply as gain tempted them, and in preference against the weak than against the strong. The profit of war was the great thing, and counted for more than the cause at stake. The loot and rapine, the attractions of the brigand, were the main temptations of the soldier; and the distinction between the latter and the robber was then far less than it had been in the pre-Christian era, or than it has been in more modern times. The noble, who was a soldier in war, was not above fighting as a robber after peace was made, nor above making humble villagers compound for their lives; and, in spite of truces and treaties, pillage and ransom afforded his chief, and often his only, source of livelihood.

For instance, after the treaty of Bretigny had put a stop to hostilities between England and France, we read that 12,000 soldiers, or free companies as they were called, under leaders of every nationality, and including valiant knights like Sir John Hawkwood, resolved, rather than lay down their arms, to march into Burgundy, there to relieve, by the ransoms they could levy, the poverty they could not otherwise support. Whoever made use of these noble warriors found them difficult to shake off in peace. Henry the Bastard, who by such help had won the kingdom of Castile from his brother Pedro, designed an invasion of Granada simply to give employment to his dangerous friends. The main cause of the unpopularity of Richard II. was his marriage with the daughter of the king of France, and his desire for peace between the two kingdoms. The poorer knights and squires wished, we are told, for war, because it was their sole means of livelihood. They had learnt idleness, says Froissart, and looked to war as a means of support. He asserts what he expects few people to believe, that England was fonder of war than of peace, because in the conquests made in France in the reign of Edward III. the poorest knights had become rich by the ransoms obtained for so many towns, castles, and men. When the English returned from a war in Castile, they declared that it was a mistake to make war with Castile or Portugal, because in those countries there was nothing but

poverty and loss to be suffered; it was only in war with France, which was so very profitable, that they ought boldly to hazard their lives.

There was not, therefore, very much difference between the free companies and the regular soldiery, since not only the latter merged into the former, but both were actuated by the sole pursuit of gain, and uninfluenced by any ideas of common honour or patriotism. The creed of both was summed up in the following regretful speech, attributed to Aymerigot Marcel, a great captain of the pillaging bands: "There is no pleasure in the world like that which men of arms like ourselves enjoyed. How happy were we when, riding out in search of adventures, we met a rich abbot, a merchant, or a string of mules well laden with draperies, furs, or spices from Montpellier, Begiers, and other places! All was our own, or ransomed according to our own will. Every day we gained money. . . . We lived like kings, and when we went abroad the country trembled."

Nor was it only the common soldiery or needy adventurers who were thus ruled by the desire of gain. The principle pervaded and vitiated all classes of men from the lowest to the highest. What, for instance, can be thought of Charles IV. of France, who, when his sister Isabella, queen of England, fled to him, promised to help her with money; and then, when messengers came to him from England with presents of gold and silver and jewels for himself and his ministers, forbade any of his subjects, under pain of death, from helping his sister to return to England! When Edward III. was about to make war with France, was he not told that his allies were men who loved to gain wealth, and whom it was necessary to pay beforehand? and was it not the judicious distribution of florins which brought to his interest a duke, a marquis, and an archbishop of Cologne, and proved equally efficient with the lords of Germany as with the citizens of the towns of Flanders?

Next to the desire of gain as a general motive for war was the love of adventure and the hope of fame. The desire for personal distinction amounted sometimes almost to mania, as in the case of the young English knights who went about with one of their eyes veiled in a cloth, and made a vow to some ladies that they would neither use both their eyes nor reply to any questions asked of them till they had done some great deed in France. We have to remember that not only did war promise large profits to the successful, but that to persons of rank it was less a risk of life than of property. The personal danger decreased in exact ratio with the rank of the combatant; and it was in the main only the humbler orders of the social hierarchy who unreservedly risked their lives. Even at the

battle of Nicopoli against the Turks, when the flower of the French nobility met with so disastrous a defeat, only four great nobles are mentioned as having been killed. The rest were saved for the sake of their ransoms; and it is probable that the same reason accounted for the magnificence of their dress on that occasion as accounted for the elaborate gold necklaces which were worn by officers of distinction in the time of Gustavus Adolphus, more, it is thought, as symbols of the ransom their wearers could pay than merely from motives of vanity or show. Froissart explains how it was more dangerous to flee from a battle-field than to remain on it, because, whilst fugitives who were overtaken were slain, the man who found the chances against him on the battle-field could always surrender and look to being well cared for as a captive: that is, of course, if he were a man who could pay a ransom. War, therefore, chiefly affected the lives of the great by pleasantly relieving the monotony of peaceful days. Even the usual amusements of peace were not wanting; and field-sports, sometimes spoken of as the image of war, were not absent during its reality. Edward III., when on a campaign, hunted and fished daily; and many of his nobles followed his example, and took their hawks and hounds across the Channel. The King had thirty falconers on horseback, and was followed by sixty couples of staghounds, and as many greyhounds. Yet these warriors were so pious that they actually took with them also boiled leather boats, that they might be able to catch fish in Lent, and so not neglect the rules of fasting.

It is curious that the Christian religion, which could command so strict an observance of its ordinances as is implied in the last statement, should have been powerless to place any check whatever on the atrocities connected with the gratification of the war spiritThere is nothing in the annals of warfare of the Greek or Roman people that surpasses in savagery the conduct of war in the best days of chivalry. The fact is an eternal reflection on the conversion of the Western nations. Nevertheless, the Church, or rather the Papacy, used its influence on the side of peace. Clement VI. succeeded in making peace between France and England. Innocent VI. tried to do the same. Urban V. returned from Rome to Avignon in the hopes of effecting the same good object; and in the same spirit tried in every possible way to put a stop to the evil of the free companies. He excommunicated all who belonged to them. He was thrown into a great rage by the news of the battle of Montauban, in which they defeated some French knights. He forbade the French pri

the ransoms they had agreed to