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Long before Columbus set sail from Palos, American history was a-making in the shire-moots of Saxon England, at Hastings, and Runnymead, and Bannockburn. In all the mediæval achievements of England, in peace and war in her cathedrals, her castles, her universities, in Cressy, Poictiers, and Agincourt Americans may without paradox claim their ancestral part.
Awake soon after dawn, we fed the animals, broke our own fast, and, having settled the score, started off on the highroad to Poictiers. It was, by the position of the sun, about nine o'clock in the morning when we perceived a horseman approaching us. He appeared in a desperate hurry, and was spurring his horse vigorously. "Jacques!" I exclaimed, "this is a soldier of some sort.
Who could tell when Anjou was claiming a crown? Messengers therefore were sent out hot-foot to Count Richard at Poictiers, and to Count John, who was supposed to be in Paris. He, however, was at Tours with the French King, and got the news first. It caught him in the wind, so to put it. Alain, a Canon of Tours, came before him kneeling, and told him.
But, as the weeks passed and my strength returned more fully, life in Limoges became more and more insupportable, and I finally resolved to travel by easy stages to Poictiers. The news we gathered on the journey was by no means reassuring. Coligny had failed to capture the town; he had lost several thousand good troops, and had raised the siege.
The Lord of Joinville and his knights were luckily posted near the Count of Poictiers; but having all been so severely wounded in the battle of Shrove Tuesday as to be unable to bear their armour, they could take no prominent part in the conflict raging around them.
When Edward the Black Prince won the Battle of Poictiers, in which he took prisoner the French king and his son, he entertained them in the evening at a banquet, when he insisted on waiting upon and serving them at table. It is the courageous man who can best afford to be generous; or rather, it is his nature to be so.
Pleydell tells me, are distinguished in history as following the banners of their native princes, while our own fought at Cressy and Poictiers.
The ladies of the Crusaders, the Countesses of Poictiers and Provence, and the widowed Countess of Artois, among the number, bewailed the fate of their lords; the queen was afflicted to a terrible degree as she thought of the king's peril; and many people only felt concerned about their own extreme peril.
But he was not satisfied with their answer, and said, He is not thus painted without a cause, and I suspect that at his death there was some wrong done him, whereof he requireth his kindred to take revenge. I will inquire further into it, and then do what shall be reasonable. Then he returned not to Poictiers, but would take a view of the other universities of France.
But he had pushed matters to an extreme, and there were many in high place who resented his efforts to dictate the doctrine of the Church. Thus Gilbert de la Porree, Bishop of Poictiers, a pupil of Abailard, was accused at the Council of Rheims of erroneous doctrines regarding the being of God and the Sacraments.
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