Bayard.
The Black Prince.
Francis the First of France.
Twofold character of the Black Prince.
- out Reproach refused to expose himself to toils of war
which were too dangerous for any but the base churl.[1] It was fully carried out when the mirror of chivalry, the Black Prince himself, gave their lives to the French knights who fought against him, and murdered the unarmed men, women, and children, who craved for mercy.[2] It was no less worthily carried out by the king who ever had the faith of a gentleman on his lips, who boasted that he had never broken his word except to women, and who betrayed, not only the women, but the allied princes and commonwealths who trusted in him. William the Red at least need not shrink from a comparison with Francis of Valois.[3] But it must not be forgotten that one of the chivalrous heroes on our list had a side to him better than his chivalry. William the Great assuredly, and I believe William the Red also, would have shrunk from such a deed as the slaughter of Limoges. But he who wrought the slaughter of Limoges
- ↑ This was at the siege of Padua in 1509. "Maximilien fit proposer à La Palisse de faire mettre pied à terre à sa gendarmerie pour monter à l'assaut avec les landsknechts. Mais d'après le conseil de Bayard, La Palisse répondit que la gendarmerie française était toute composée de gentilshommes, et qu'il ne serait pas convenable de la faire combattre pêle-mêle avec les fantassins allemands, qui étaient roturiers." Sismondi, Rép. Ital. xiv. 26.
- ↑ The story of the massacre of Limoges, the most truly chivalrous deed ever done, is well known. It will be found in Froissart, i. 289 (vol. i. p. 401, ed. Sauvage).
- ↑ Hallam, who thoroughly understood Henry the Eighth, adds in a note (Const. Hist. i. 36); "After all, Henry was every whit as good a king and man as Francis I, whom there are still some, on the other side of the channel, servile enough to extol; not in the least more tyrannical and sanguinary, and of better faith towards his neighbours." The famous letter of Francis about all being lost except honour is now disbelieved, but it is characteristic all the same. I have said something about this in the Fortnightly Review, December, 1876. It is singular enough that in 1546 some reader of the "Normanniæ Nova Chronica," after the entries about the misdeeds of William Rufus in 1098, bursts out (p. 9) into a fierce invective against the vices and oppressions of Francis the First, as far surpassing those of Rufus. If men murmured in 1098, how much more reason had they to murmur in 1546.
