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This hall shews us the light, yet splendid architecture of the Arabs, introduced into France in consequence of the Crusades. Here are the statues of the kings that successively appeared in this age down to king JOHN, who was taken prisoner by Edward, the black prince, at the battle of Poietiers.
Harassed and chained down as he was, the councils of Anse, Clermont, Dijon, Autun, Poietiers, and Lyons were thundering against simony and incontinency. It would be presumptuous to offer a word in defence of the conduct of such a man, had not his actions been so grievously misstated, and his aims so ungenerously misinterpreted.
Gaston he sent to the South, to Angoulesme, to Périgord, to Auvergne, to Cahors. The horn must be heard at the head of every brown valley, the armed men shadow every white road. He himself went to his city of Poietiers. Bertran de Born saw him go, and rubbed his hair till it stood like reeds shaken by the wind.
The Earl of Warwick went as Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, Marshal-General of the army at the battle of Poietiers; the Duke of Norfolk as Thomas Howard, Earl-Marshal in the reign of Elizabeth; the Earl of Rosslyn as the Master of the Buckhounds; the Duke of St. Albans as Grand Falconer-hereditary offices. Mr. Monckton Milnes, the poet, presented himself as Chaucer.
These were the times when, at the battles of Cressy, Poietiers, and Agincourt, the French chivalry was completely destroyed by the bowmen of England. The yeomanry, too, have never been what they were, when, in times of peace, they were constantly exercised with the bow, and archery was a favourite holiday pastime."
Diane de Poietiers, mistress of Henri II., was the patroness of artists; and Fontainebleau has been well said to "reflect the glories of gay and splendour loving kings from Francois Premier to Henri Quatre." Besides Fontainebleau, Francis I. built the Chateau of Chambord, that of Chenonceaux on the Loire, the Chateau de Madrid, and others, and commenced the Louvre.
Coligny then laid siege to Poietiers; and as the eyes of all France were fixed on this enterprise, the duke of Guise, emulous of the renown which his father had acquired by the defence of Metz, threw himself into the place, and so animated the garrison by his valor and conduct, that the admiral was obliged to raise the siege.
As we are not excusing a defeat, it may be sufficient to say that the fight was as nearly equal as it is given to such affairs to be. The action lasted forty-three minutes; the "Frolic" hauling down her colors shortly after noon. Almost immediately afterward the British seventy-four "Poietiers" came in sight, and in the disabled condition of the two combatants overhauled them easily.
If he had a turn for dramatics he had certainly indulged it now, and given himself strong meat for a new Sirvente of Kings. At least he was very busy after Richard's departure, himself preparing for a long journey to the South. Count Richard found time, while he was at Poietiers awaiting the Aquitanian levies, to write six letters to Jehane Saint-Pol.
'Next day Count Richard moved his hosts out of the fields by Poietiers to the very borders of his country, and calling a halt at Saint-Gilles and making snug against alarms, himself, with my lord Gaston of Béarn, with the Dauphin of Auvergne also, and the Viscount of Béziers, crossed the march into Touraine, and so came to Tours about a week before Christmas, the weather being bright and frosty.
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