FOR the benefit of the reader who may not have time and inclination to work his way through two thick volumes of research-for the benefit also of him who might be inclined to that adventurous task, but desires beforehand to have some notion of the tenor and character of the work before he invests in it his time and patience-we gave, in our November Number, a sketch of what we thought the prominent features of the doings of our countrymen in France, during the long period when Scotland was alienated from England. We now propose to take up the other side of the reciprocity. The two sketches will necessarily be distinct in character, as the material facts to which they refer were distinct. France was, as we have seen, the centre round which what remained of the civilisation of the old world lingered; and, along with much wretchedness among the common people, she was of all the states of Europe that which contained the largest abundance of the raw material of wealth, and consequently of the elements by which men of enterprise could raise themselves to affluence and station. Scotland was on the outskirts of those lands in which the new civilisation of the northern nations was slowly and coldly ripening to a still distant maturity. These two countries, so unlike, were knit into a close alliance, by a common danger inducing them to adopt a common policy. But, being fundamentally unlike, their close intercourse naturally tended, by close contact and comparison, to bring out the specialties of their dissimilarity.

And in nothing is this dissimilarity more conspicuous than when we look at the method and the object of the Scots' sojourn in France, and compare them with those which characterised the few Frenchmen who came to us. The ruling feature in the former side of the reciprocity is, the profuseness with which our countrymen domesticated themselves in the land of their ancient allies, and infused new blood into theirs. There was little to attract the Frenchman to pitch his tent with us. As soon almost would he have thought of seeking his fortunes in Lapland or Iceland. Here, therefore, we have less to do with the fortunes of individual adventurers than with the national policy of the French towards Scotland, and those who casually came among us for the purpose of giving it effect. country had in fact been in a great measure cleared of French names before our intercourse with France began, and they never reappeared, except casually and in connection with some special political movement. The Norman French who had migrated from England over the border having, as we have seen, rendered themselves offensive by helping their own Norman King to enslave Scotland, were driven away in considerable numbers at the conclusion of the war of independence; and afterwards the French, though they kept up the policy of a close alliance with us, and gave a hearty reception to our own adventurers, found nothing to tempt them to reciprocate hospitalities. Hence the present sketch is not likely to afford any such genial history of

Our

Par Francisque Michel, London: Trübner & Co.

national hospitality and successful adventure as the paper devoted to the conduct of our countrymen in France.

The policy of our alliance against England as the common enemy had become a thing of pretty old standing; many a Scot had sought his fortune in France; and names familiar to us now on shop-signs and in street-directories had been found among the dead at Poictiers, before we have authentic account of any Frenchmen having ventured across the sea to visit the sterile territory of their allies. Froissart makes a story out of the failure of the first attempt to send a French ambassador here. The person selected for the duty was the Lord of Bournazel or Bournaseau, whose genealogy is disentangled by M. Michel in a learned note. He was accredited by Charles V. in the year 1379, and was commanded to keep such state as might become the representative of his august master. Bournazel set off to embark at Sluys, and then had to wait fifteen days for a favourable wind. The ambassador thought there was no better way of beguiling the time than a recitation among the Plat Dutch of the splendours which he was bound in the way of public duty to exhibit in the sphere of his mission. Accordingly, "during this time he lived magnificently; and gold and silver plate were in such profusion in his apartments as if he had been a prince. He had also music to announce his dinner, and caused to be carried before him a sword in a scabbard richly blazoned with his arms in gold and silver. His servants paid well for everything. Many of the townspeople were much astonished at the great state this knight lived in at home, which he also maintained when he went abroad." This premature display of his diplomatic glories brought him into a difficulty highly characteristic of one of the political specialties of France at that period. It was the time when the nobles of the blood-royal were arrogating to

VOL. XCIII.-NO. DLXIX.

The

themselves alone certain prerogatives and ceremonials distinguishing them from the rest of the territorial aristocracy, however high these might be. The Duke of Bretagne and the Count of Flanders, who were near at hand, took umbrage at the grand doings of Bournazel, and sent for him through the bailiff of Sluys. That officer, after the manner of executive functionaries who find themselves sufficiently backed, made his mission as offensive as possible, and, tapping Bournazel on the shoulder, intimated that he was wanted. great men had intended only to rebuke him for playing a part above his commission, but the indiscretion of their messenger gave Bournazel a hold which he kept and used sagaciously. When he found the princes who had sent for him lounging at a window looking into the gardens, he fell on his knees and acknowledged himself the prisoner of the Count of Flanders. To take prisoner an ambassador, and the ambassador of a crowned king, the feudal lord of the captor, was one of the heaviest of offences, both against the law of nations and the spirit of chivalry. The Earl was not the less enraged that he felt himself caught; and after retorting with, "How, rascal, do you dare to call yourself my prisoner when I have only sent to speak with you?" he composed himself to the delivery of the rebuke he had been preparing in this fashion: "It is by such talkers and jesters of the Parliament of Paris and of the king's chamber as you, that the kingdom is governed; and you manage the king as you please, to do good or evil according to your wills: there is not a prince of the blood, however great he may be, if he incur your hatred, who will be listened to; but such fellows shall yet be hanged until the gibbets be full of them." Bournazel carried this pleasant announcement and the whole transaction to the throne, and the king took his part, saying to those around,

"He has kept his ground well: I would not for twenty thousand francs it had not so happened." The embassy to Scotland was thus for the time frustrated. It was said that there were English cruisers at hand to intercept the ambassador, and that he himself had no great heart for a sojourn in the wild unknown northern land. Possibly the fifteen days' lording it at Sluys may have broken in rather inconveniently on his outfit; but the most likely cause of the defeat of the first French embassy to our shores was, the necessity felt by Bournazel to right himself at once at court, and turn the flank of his formidable enemies; and Froissart says, the Earl of Flanders lay under the royal displeasure for having, in his vain vaunting, defeated so important a project as the mission to the Scots.

A few years afterwards our country received a visit, less august, it is true, than the intended embassy, but far more interesting. In 1384, negotiations were exchanged near the town of Boulogne for a permanent peace between England and France. The French demanded concessions of territory which could not be yielded, and a permanent peace, founded on a final settlement of pending claims, was impossible. A truce even was at that time, however, a very important conclusion to conflict; it sometimes lasted for years, being in reality a peace under protest that each party reserved certain claims to be kept in view when war should again break out. Such a truce was adjusted between England on the one side and France on the other-conditional on the accession of her allies Spain and Scotland. France kept faith magnanimously, in ever refusing to negotiate a separate peace or truce for herself; but, as the way is with the more powerful of two partners, she was apt to take for granted that Scotland would go with her, and that the affair was virtually finished by her own accession to terms.

It happened that in this instance the Duke of Burgundy took in hand

to deal with Scotland. He had, however, just at that moment, a rather important piece of business, deeply interesting to himself, on hand. By the death of the Earl of Flanders he succeeded to that fair domain-an event which vastly influenced the subsequent fate of Europe. So busy was he in adjusting the affairs of his succession, that it was said he entirely overlooked the small matter of the notification of the truce to Scotland. Meanwhile, there was a body of men-atarms in the French service at Sluys thrown out of employment by the truce with England, and, like other workmen in a like position, desirous of a job. They knew that the truce had not yet penetrated to Scotland, and thought a journey thither, long and dangerous as it was, might be a promising speculation. There were about thirty of them, and Froissart gives a head-roll of those whose names he remembered, beginning with Sir Geoffry de Charny, Sir John de Plaissy, Sir Hugh de Boulon, and so on. They dared not attempt, in face of the English warships, to land at a southern harbour, but reached the small seaport called by Froissart Monstres, and not unaptly supposed by certain sage commentators to be Montrose, since they rode on to Dundee and thence to Perth. They were received with a deal of rough hospitality, and much commended for the knightly spirit that induced them to cross the wide ocean to try their lances against the common enemy of England. Two of them were selected to pass on to Edinburgh, and explain their purpose at the court of Holyrood. Here they met two of their countrymen on a mission which boded no good to their enterprise. These were ambassadors from France, come at last to notify the truce. It was at once accepted by the peaceable King Robert, but the Scots lords around him were grieved in heart at the prospect that these fine fellows should come so far and return without having any sport of that highly flavoured kind which the

border wars afforded. The truce they held had been adjusted not by Scotland but by France; and here, as if to contradict its sanction, were Frenchmen themselves offering to treat it as naught. There was, however, a far stronger reason for overlooking it. Just before it was completed, but when it was known to be inevitable, the Earls of Northumberland and Nottingham suddenly and secretly drew together two thousand men-at-arms and six thousand bowmen, with which they broke into Scotland, and swept the country as far as Edinburgh with more than the usual ferocity of a border raid; for they made it to the Scots as if the devil had come among them, having great wrath, for he knew that his time was short. It was said, even, that the French ambassadors sent to Scotland to announce the truce had been detained in London to allow time for this raid coming off effectively. "To say the truth," says Froissart, mildly censorious, "the lords of England who had been at the conference at Bolinghen, had not acted very honourably when they had consented to order their men to march to Scotland and burn the country, knowing that a truce would speedily be concluded: and the best excuse they could make was, that it was the French and not they who were to signify such truce to the Scots." Smarting from this inroad, the Scots lords, and especially the Douglases and others on the border, were in no humour to coincide with their peaceful King. They desired to talk the matter over with the representatives of the adventurers in some quiet place; and, for reasons which were doubtless sufficient to themselves, they selected for this purpose the church of St Giles in Edinburgh. The conference was highly satisfactory to the adventurers, who spurred back to Perth to impart the secret intelligence that though the king had accepted the truce, the lords were no party to it, but would immediately prepare an expedition to avenge Not

tingham and Northumberland's raid. This was joyful intelligence, though in its character rather surprising to followers of the French court. A force was rapidly collected, and in a very few days the adventurers were called to join it in the Douglases' lands.

So far Froissart. This affair is not, at least to our knowledge, mentioned in detail by any of our own annalists writing before the publication of his Chronicles. Everything, however, is there set forth so minutely, and with so distinct and accurate a reference to actual conditions in all the details, that few things in history can be less open to doubt. Here, however, we come to a statement inviting question, when he says that the force collected so suddenly by the Scots lords contained fifteen thousand mounted men; nor can we be quite reconciled to the statement though their steeds were the small mountain horses called hackneys. The force, however, was sufficient for its work. It found the English border trusting to the truce, and as little prepared for invasion as Nottingham and Northumberland had found Scotland. The first object was the land of the Percies, which the Scots, in the laconic language of the chronicler, "pillaged and burnt." And so they went onwards; and where peasants had been peacefully tilling the land or tending their cattle amid the comforts of rude industry, there the desolating host passed, the crops were trampled downtheir owners left dead in the ashes of their smoking huts-and a few widows and children, fleeing for safety and food, was all of animal life left upon the scene. The part, indeed, taken in it by his countrymen was exactly after Froissart's own heart, since they were not carrying out any of the political movements of the day, nor were they even actuated by an ambition of conquest, but were led by the sheer fun of the thing and the knightly spirit of adventure to

partake in this wild raid. To the Scots it was a substantial affair, for they came back heavy-handed, with droves and flocks driven before them-possibly some of them recovered their own.

The king had nothing to say in his vindication touching this little affair, save that it had occurred without his permission, or even knowledge. The Scots lords were not the only persons who broke that truce. It included the Duke of Burgundy and his enemies, the Low Country towns; yet his feudatory, the Lord Destournay, taking advantage of the defenceless condition of Oudenarde during peace, took it by a clever stratagem. The Duke of Burgundy, when appealed to, advised Destournay to abandon his capture; but Destournay was wilful he had conquered the city, and the city was his-so there was no help for it, since the communities were not strong enough to enforce their rights, and Burgundy would only demand them on paper. What occasioned the raid of the Scots and French to be passed over was, however, that the Duke of Lancaster, John of Gaunt, who had the chief authority over the English councils, as well as the command over the available force, was taken up with his own schemes on the crown of Castile, and not inclined to find work for the military force of the country elsewhere. The truce, therefore, was cordially ratified; bygones were counted bygones; and the French adventurers bade a kindly farewell to their brethren-inarms, and crossed the seas homewards.

Driven from their course, and landing at the Brille, they narrowly escaped hanging at the hands of the boorish cultivators of the swamp; and after adventures which would make good raw materials for several novels, they reached Paris.

There they explained to their own court how they found that the great enemy of France had, at the opposite extremity of his dominions, a nest of fighting fiends, who

wanted only their help in munitions of war to enable them to rush on the vital parts of his dominions with all the fell ferocity of men falling on their bitterest feudal enemy. Thus could France, having under consideration the cost and peril of galleying an invading army across the Straits, by money and management, do far more damage to the enemy than any French invading expedition was likely to accomplish.

In an hour which did not prove propitious to France, a resolution was adopted to invade England at both ends. Even before the truce was at an end, the forges of Henault and Picardy were hard at work making battle-axes; and all along the coast, from Harfleur to Sluys, there was busy baking of biscuits and purveyance of provender. Early in spring an expedition of a thousand men-at-arms, with their followers, put to sea under John of Vienne, the Admiral of France, and arrived at Leith, making a voyage which must have been signally prosperous, if we may judge by the insignificance of the chief casualty on record concerning it. In those days, as in the present, it appears that adventurous young gentlemen on shipboard were apt to attempt feats for which their land training did not adapt them— in nautical phrase, "to swing on all top ropes." A hopeful youth chose to perform such a feat in his armour, and with the most natural of all results. "The knight was young and active, and, to show his agility, he mounted aloft by the ropes of his ship, completely armed; but his feet slipping he fell into the sea, and the weight of his armour, which sank him instantly, deprived him of any assistance, for the ship was soon at a distance from the place where he had fallen."

The expedition soon found itself to be a mistake. In fact, to send fighting men to Scotland was just to supply the country with that commodity in which it superabounded. The great problem was