Page:Comic History of England.djvu/147

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IRRITABILITY OF THE FRENCH.
143

Quick March—a sort of forced March—towards the gibbet, where he was last seen trying to stand on the English climate. The queen was kept in close confinement during the rest of her life, and the morning papers of that time contained nothing of a social nature regarding her doings.

The Scots, under David Bruce, were defeated at Halidon Hill in 1333, and Bruce fled to France. Thus again under a vassal of the English king, Edward Baliol by name, the Scotch crooked the reluctant hinges of the knee.

Edward now claimed to be a more direct heir through Queen Isabella than Philip, the cousin of Charles IV., who occupied the throne, so he proceeded to vindicate himself against King Philip in the usual way. He destroyed the French fleet in 1340, defeated Philip, though with inferior numbers, at Crecy, and demonstrated for the first time that cannon could be used with injurious results on the enemy.

In 1346 the Black Prince, as Edward was called, on account of the color of the Russia iron used in making his mackintosh, may be said to have commenced his brilliant military career. He captured Calais,—the key to France,—and made it a flourishing English city and a market for wool, leather, tin, and lead. It so continued for two hundred years.

The Scotch considered this a good time to