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Updated: May 20, 2025
Froissart says 'eight English leagues. In the next chapter the distance becomes 'seven little leagues, and later on, 'a six English miles, where the original is 'lieues. The actual distance is about thirty miles. The translator gives the form 'Combur' here, but 'Ottenburge' in the next chapter, as the name of the place.
As early as the fourteenth century, the age of the Arteveldes, Froissart estimated the number of fighting men whom Ghent could bring into the field at eighty thousand. The city, by its jurisdiction over many large but subordinate towns, disposed of more than its own immediate population, which has been reckoned as high as two hundred thousand.
Between the towers, in olden times, as we know from an illumination in a Froissart MS., stood a great statue of the Virgin. The whole of this glorious fretwork of stone, including the tracery of the rose window, was once refulgent with gold and azure and crimson, and the finished front in its mediæval glory has been compared to a colossal carved and painted triptych.
Thus have I gotten together this lofty and noble history." This picture of Froissart and his work by his own hand would be incomplete without the addition of a characteristic anecdote. In one of his excursions in search of adventures and stories, "he fell in at Pamiers with a good knight, Messire Espaing of Lyons, who had been in all the wars of the time, and managed the great affairs of princes.
They are on my string, Froissart every man." "You do everything, Mr. Dawson," grumbled Froissart. "Where do I come in?" "You have helped me a lot already," replied Dawson handsomely. "You being a foreigner make me talk very simple and plain, and think out my plans so that I can explain them to you. One sees the weak points of a scheme when one has to make it clear to a foreigner.
No more doubt than had the fair and virtuous Countess of Salisbury, who, so Froissart tells us, chilled the lawless passion of Edward the Third by the simple expedient of wearing unbefitting clothes. Saint Lucy, under somewhat similar circumstances, felt it necessary to put out her beautiful eyes; but Katharine of Salisbury knew men better than the saint knew them.
On arriving before the place, September 3, 1346, Edward "immediately had built all round it," says Froissart, "houses and dwelling-places of solid carpentry, and arranged in streets as if he were to remain there for ten or twelve years, for his intention was not to leave it winter or summer, whatever time and whatever trouble he must spend and take.
He was bitterly jealous, but from natural curiosity yearned to know the details of those feats of which Froissart prated so triumphantly. And all the while, unconscious, heedless of his wrathful exasperated chieftain, Froissart devoured food in immense quantities. It was a disgusting exhibition.
Froissart, the genial gossip who first courted the favor of kings and princes and then was gently entreated by them so that his writing of them might be to their renown, was on his way to Blois when he heard of the magnificence of Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix. Whereupon the chronicler turned him about and jogged on his way to Foix.
It has been said that the names of the French officers in America read like a list of medieval heroes in the Chronicles of Froissart. Only half of the expected ships were ready at Brest and only five thousand five hundred men could embark. The vessels were, of course, very crowded. Rochambeau cut down the space allowed for personal effects.
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