Chapter V: The Marriage (3)

In the Ratazzi Ministry the papers lost the most fruitful theme of declamation. The caricatures against this Minister were endless, representing him in every stage of official existence, from the time when he climbs the high ministerial bench by the aid of a little finger stretched out from Paris, to the moment when he is shown hiding his head under the folds of the Emperor’s train.

What is said against the Italian Government, however, is not said in praise of the Grand-duke’s rule. On the contrary, the Opposition papers—those at least that have any circulation—all lean rather towards the “party of action,” or the extreme Liberals. The most prominent paper of this description in Florence is the ‘New Europe,’ which is republican, and makes no mystery of its principles.

Indeed, the press is so outspoken, and is allowed such latitude, that it is difficult to understand for what purpose the Government maintains a censorship. Nevertheless, such is the case. It is not a very effective one. Every paper is bound to be laid before the Reggio procurator twenty-four hours before it is published; but that official is so little able to peruse them all within the specified time, that it has frequently happened that a paper has been sequestrated when it was a day old, and had been already read and forgotten. The right of sequestration, however, has been used pretty freely. The ‘Censor’ was sequestrated more than sixty times in the course of last year, and the ‘New Europe’ has been treated even more severely: on one occasion it was sequestrated for three days running.

It is, however, high time to turn from the ideal to the material world; that is, to leave the tobacconist and his newspapers, and dive into the recesses of some very dirty and narrow little lanes where the market is being held, in order to see whether the prices given and the business done prove any decline in the prosperity of Florence since the days of the Grand-duke.

Passing by the mountains of vegetables piled up ornamentally against the huge stones of the Strozzi Palace, the reader must pick his way carefully amidst the accumulated masses of cabbage-stalks, children, and other dirt beneath, avoiding at the same time the carcasses that hang out from the butchers’ stalls on either side, from poles projecting far into the passage, and stooping every now and then to avoid the festoons of sausages which hang down from above, garland-fashion, just low enough to come in contact with the nose of an average-sized mortal. If by strictly observing the above precautions he can make his way despite all these obstacles, he will on turning the next corner arrive safely in front of an old woman and a boy presiding over sundry emblems of purgatory in the shape of huge frying-pans fixed over charcoal fires. The boy is ladling a mass of tiny dainties out of a seething black liquid, which have an appearance as of whitebait being fished out of the Thames. It is, however, only an appearance; for these are nothing more than small cakes of chestnut-flour, by name “sommomoli,” fried in oil, from which they emerge copper-coloured, sweet, nourishing, and tasteless, costing half a centesimo, or the twentieth part of a penny, a-piece. The old woman is in person superintending a still larger frying-pan, in which are frizzling square cut cakes, resembling Yorkshire pudding, sometimes interspersed with small slices of meat. These, by name “ignochchi,” consist of nothing less than Indian corn savoured with hogs-lard. A penny (ten centesimi) will purchase ten of them—a larger quantity than most English, or any Italian stomach would find it convenient to dispose of at one sitting. A step farther on slices will be offered to the passer-by off a huge flat cake the colour of gingerbread, also made of chestnut-flour, and so satisfying that it would puzzle even an Eton lollypop-eater to consume a penny’s worth. There are yet other delicacies, one especially tempting, a kind of black-pudding or rather black wafer. It consists of a spoonful of hog’s blood fried in oil, and then turned out of the pan on to a plate, seasoned with scraped cheese, and devoured hot, at a halfpenny a-piece.

With street goodies at these rates, whatever rise there may have been in prices, it is impossible to believe that they are of a nature to press to any extent upon the people at large. But take the staples of the market; look into the baker’s shop; weigh the loaves sold over the counter, and the price of the best wheaten bread will prove to be fifteen centesimi (a penny halfpenny a-pound)—not to mention the sacks of maize-flour, of rice, and of millet on the threshold.

Nevertheless the Florentine market shows a general rise in prices, probably attributable in part to the increased facility for sending the products of Tuscany, this garden of Italy, into the adjacent provinces, in part, although indirectly, to increased taxation, by which is meant not merely Government taxation, but the municipal rates, which have considerably increased in Florence; for the corporation of the town, in common with many other municipalities and commonalties, are availing themselves of their greater freedom of action under the new Government to carry out numberless improvements, which it was difficult to execute before on account of the lengthy representations which were required to be laid before the Grand-ducal Government.

The increase of taxation consequently is very considerable. The “tassa prediale,” or property-tax, for instance, has been increasing in Florence since 1859 at the rate of about one per cent every year, and in some commonalties it is even higher. There are men in Florence who are now paying in taxes (local rates and all included) exactly four times what they paid in the Grand-duke’s day. It is true that this increase is not so oppressive as it would appear, because the taxation of Tuscany used to be extremely light, being under fourteen shillings per head compared with the population. Still the cheerfulness with which this increase has been borne is a hopeful sign of the general willingness of the people to support the Italian Government. No impatience even has been shown at the rapidly augmenting taxes, and this single fact deserves to be set against a multitude of complaints on smaller matters.

Taxation, however, probably enters for very little in the rise of market prices. The reason of this increase is to be sought in local causes. For instance, there have been several successive bad seasons for olives. This year the yield is better, and the price is falling. Wine is still very high, owing to the grape disease. Meat is nearly double what it was some years since, owing, it is said, chiefly to a drought last summer.

The rise in prices, however, has been counterbalanced, so far as the working population are concerned, by a rise in wages, which has been on the average from a Tuscan lire to a Sardinian franc, or about 20 per cent.

On the whole, comparing the rise in prices with that in wages, the real pay of the labourer would seem to have slightly improved. So far, therefore, as the people’s stomachs are concerned, the comparison is not unfavourable to the new Government. To persons residing at Florence on fixed incomes, however, the increase in both instances is unfavourable, and they not unnaturally regard that which is inconvenient to themselves as ruinous to the country.

The loss of the custom of the Court and its train, upon which so much stress has been laid, so far from having affected Tuscany, has not even really affected Florence. The amount taken on account of the “octroi” at the gates of Florence shows the consumption to be on the increase.

We may therefore leave the market with the conviction that there is no material pressure at work to cause discontent. Some tradesmen really have suffered from the absence of the Court, as the jewellers and milliners for instance; but trade generally has not felt the difference.

Continuing, however, our walk in search of public opinion, we come, in a street not far distant, to a real cause of complaint; and in Tuscany, where there is a cause, there will be no want of complaint. There are a couple of soldiers standing sentry before a large door, and all around knots of countrymen talking together in anxious expectation, or not talking, but silently taking leave.

The conscription is a grievance. It is the only act of the new Government which is generally felt to be a hardship, and sometimes murmured against as an injustice. Rather more than one in every five of the youths who this year attain the age of twenty-one are being drawn for the army. This is the proportion of those taken from their homes and sent to the depots of different regiments, for all are liable to military service under one category or another. Being inscribed and left at home, however, is no great hardship: it is the separation from home which is dreaded, and therefore the numbers of the first category in the conscription which have alone to be considered. This heavy conscription is something new to the Tuscans. In the palmy days of Grand-ducal Government, before 1848, exemption from military service could be obtained for something less than £4 English; after the Austrian occupation, the conscription having grown severer, the cost of exemption was about doubled; but now it amounts to a sum which none but the wealthy can possibly pay.

The young conscripts, however, become rapidly imbued with the professional pride of their older comrades; and it often happens that lads, who have parted from their home in tears, astonish their quiet parents a few weeks after with letters full of enthusiasm for the Italian army. Enthusiasm on any subject is a rare virtue in Tuscany; and if a military life for six years could infuse into the rising generation some energy and some habits of discipline, the army would prove a more important means of education than all the new schools which are to be introduced.

But how is it that throughout this perambulation of the town of Florence we have not come across a single sign of that touching affection for the late Grand-duke which has been so vividly and so often described in England?

The truth is, that although there is a good deal of discontent with the present Government, there is no regret for the last.

Of all the weak sentiments which exist in Tuscan breasts, loyalty towards the late Grand-duke is certainly the very weakest.

In order, however, that the reader may catch a glimpse of the “Codini” (or “party of the tail,” as the following of the late Grand-duke are called) before they are all numbered among the antiquities of Italy, it will be advisable to take one turn on the banks of the Arno in the “Cascine,” the fashionable walk, or “the world,” of the Florentines.

It is sunset, and the evening chill is making itself felt—in fact, to lay aside all romance about the Italian climate, it is very cold. The upper five hundred come out at dew-fall, when everybody else goes in, apparently for no better reason than because everybody else does go in. There are Russians driving in handsome droschkes, and Americans in livery-stable barouches of an unwieldy magnificence. But our business is not with these; the native gentility of Florence is just arriving—ladies in closely-shut broughams, and young gentlemen, some in open carriages, half dog-carts half phaetons; others, less fortunate, in open fiacres.

They drive down to the end of the Cascine, where old beggar women attend upon them with “scaldine” to warm their fingers over. There men and women alight and promenade at a foot’s pace, despite the cold, after which they all drive home again.

And what can they have been about all day before they came to the Cascine? The masters and mistresses have been sitting in their respective rooms, drawing such warmth as they might from a stove most economically furnished with wood; the servants have been sitting in the antechamber, holding their four extremities over the hot ashes in the “brasero,” a metal vessel something like an English stewpan on a large scale; for the Italian palaces are cold: the architect may have done well, but the mason and the carpenter have been negligent. The walls are joined at any angle except a right one; the windows do not close; the floors are diversified by sundry undulations, so that a space is left beneath the door, through which light zephyrs play over the ill-carpeted floor. Perhaps the lady of the house has been sitting in state to receive her friends; for every Florentine lady is solemnly announced as “at home” to all her friends one day in the week, so as to keep them out of the house all the other six.

This is the married life in the palace. The life of the young men, the bachelor life of Florence, is not a bit more active. In a word, the life of a Florentine in easy circumstances is a prolonged lounge. It is not that they loiter away their time for a few weeks, or for a few months—for “a season,” in short—that is done all the world over; but the Florentines do nothing but loiter. The most active portion of their lives is that now before us,—the life during the carnival. The carnival over, the rest of the year is spent in recruiting finances and health for the next winter.

Lest the reader should treat this description as exaggerated or unduly severe, it will be best to let the Florentines themselves describe their own manner of living, and give, word for word, the rules laid down in a Florentine paper[5] for any young gentleman who wishes to live in holiness, peace, and happiness (_sic_).

“On waking in the morning, take a cup of coffee in bed; and if you have a servant to pour it out, mind that she be a young and pretty one.

“Then light a cigar (but not of native tobacco; it is too bad), or, better still, take a whiff of a pipe.

“Clear your ideas by smoking, and, little by little, have yourself dressed by the person who undressed you the night before.

“After writing a meaningless letter, or reading a chapter out of a novel, go out, weather permitting.

“Should you meet a priest, a hunchback, or a white horse, return straightway, or a misfortune may befall you.

“After a short turn, get back to breakfast, and, this over, bid the driver put to and whip up for the Cascine.

“There go from one carriage to the other, and talk scandal to each lady against all the rest: this to kill time till dinner.

“Eat enough, and drink more; and should some wretch come to trouble your digestion by begging his bread, tell him a man should work.

“At night, go to the theatre, the club, or into society. At the theatre, should there be a new piece, hiss it; this will give you the reputation of a connoisseur; should there be an opera, try to learn an air that you may sing at the next party; should there be a ballet, endeavour to play Mæcenas to some dancer, according to the custom of the century.

“One day over, begin the next in the same way, and so on to the end.”

This, in sober earnest, is the life of a Florentine noble; except that, if rich enough, he spends all his superfluous energy and wealth in occasional visits to Paris. If unusually clever, he will become a good singer, or a judge of art—not of pictures and statues, probably, but of antique pots and pans. Otherwise he has no pursuit whatever, and his sole occupation is to persuade himself that he is an Adonis, and his friends that he is as fortunate as Endymion.

Such is the stuff which the Codini nobles are made of, and so let them drive home in peace. These are not the manner of men to make counter revolutions. Brought up as boys by a priest, within the four walls of a palace, they have never had an opportunity of gaining any experience of life beyond that afforded by the café, the theatre, and the Court, and they feel alarmed and annoyed to find growing up around them a state of things in which men will have to rank according as they can make themselves honoured by the people, and not according to the smile they may catch at Court. To this must be added, with some, a genuine personal feeling towards the late Grand-duke, but these are very few; they are limited for the most part to the courtiers, or “the antechamber” of the Court that has passed away, and even with them it is no more than a feeling of patronising friendship—nothing resembling the loyalty of an Englishman towards his sovereign. But most of the regret expressed for the late Grand-duke is nothing more than ill-disguised disappointment at being no longer able to cut a figure at Court and rub shoulders with royalty; and this is a form of politics not altogether unknown among our good countrymen at Florence.

It is cruel of reactionary writers and orators in other countries to draw down ridicule on the harmless and peaceful gentlemen who form the small band of Codini at Florence, by endeavouring to magnify them into a counter-revolutionary party.

The Codini at Florence would wish for the Austrians: they have a faint and lingering hope of a Parisian Court at Florence, under Prince Napoleon; but they do not even pretend that they would move a finger in any cause.

There are men in Tuscany, and even gentlemen, who will work and form themselves, let us hope, on the stamp of Baron Ricasoli; but these are not to be found among the clique of the Codini at Florence.

The intelligence and energy of the country is for Italy, and nearly all the great names of Florence—the names of republican celebrity, to their honour be it said—are to be found in the ranks of the national party. It is true their name is at present all that they can give to forward the cause.

Let us hope, however, that the ideas of ambition, and the wider field for competition which the new system offers, may awake in the children now growing up in Florence an energy which has been unknown to their fathers for many and many a generation. Then, perhaps, a walk in the streets of Florence thirty years hence will no longer show us electors who will not step a hundred yards out of the way in order to attend an election. The Florentines may, at their own pleasure, by taking a part in their own government and the government of Italy, virtually terminate that Piedmontese tutelage against which they fret, and without which they are not yet fit to carry out a constitutional system.

FLORENCE, _Feb. 2, 1863_.

THE FRANK IN SCOTLAND.[6]

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. Our 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 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 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. The 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-at-arms 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 onto 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 Nottingham 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 down—their 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-in-arms, 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 gallying 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 how to find food for the stalwart sons of the soil, and arms to put in their hands when fighting was necessary. A percentage of the cost and labour of the expedition, spent in sending money or munitions of war, would have done better service. The scene before the adventurers was in lamentable contrast to all that custom had made familiar to them. There were none of the comfortable chateaux, the abundant markets, the carpets, down beds, and rich hangings which gladdened their expeditions to the Low Countries, whether they went as friends or foes. Nor was the same place for _them_ in Scotland, which the Scots so readily found in France, where a docile submissive peasantry only wanted vigorous and adventurous masters. “The lords and their men,” says Froissart, “lodged themselves as well as they could in Edinburgh, and those who could not lodge there were quartered in the different villages thereabout. Edinburgh, notwithstanding that it is the residence of the king, and is the Paris of Scotland, is not such a town as Tournay and Valenciennes, for there are not in the whole town four thousand houses. Several of the French lords were therefore obliged to take up their lodgings in the neighbouring villages, and at Dunfermline, Kelso, Dunbar, Dalkeith, and in other towns.” When they had exhausted the provender brought with them, these children of luxury had to endure the miseries of sordid living, and even the pinch of hunger. They tried to console themselves with the reflection that they had, at all events, an opportunity of experiencing a phase of life which their parents had endeavoured theoretically to impress upon them, in precepts to be thankful to the Deity for the good things which they enjoyed, but which might not always be theirs in a transitory world. They had been warned by the first little band of adventurers that Scotland was not rich; yet the intense poverty of the country whence so many daring adventurers had gone over to ruffle it with the flower of European chivalry, astonished and appalled them. Of the extreme and special nature of the poverty of Scotland, the great war against the English invaders was the cause. It has been estimated, indeed, by those devoted to such questions, that Scotland did not recover fully from the ruin caused by that conflict until the Union made her secure against her ambitious neighbour. It was the crisis referred to in that pathetic ditty, the earliest specimen of our lyrical poetry, when

“Away was sonse of ale and bread,
Of wine and wax, of gaming and glee;
Our gold was changed into lead;
Cryst borne into virginity.
Succour poor Scotland and remede,
That stad is in perplexity.”

It is not sufficiently known how much wealth and prosperity existed in Scotland before King Edward trod its soil. Berwick, the chief commercial port, had commerce with half the world, and bade fair to rival Ghent, Rotterdam, and the other great mercantile cities of the Low Country. Antiquarians have lately pointed to a sad and significant testimony to the change of times. Of the ecclesiastical remains of Scotland, the finest are either in the Norman, or the early English which preceded the Edwards. These are the buildings of a noted and munificent people; they rival the corresponding establishments in England, and are in the same style as the work of nations having common interests and sympathies—indeed the same architects seem to have worked in both countries. At the time when the Gothic architecture of England merged into the type called the Second Pointed, there ceased to be corresponding specimens in Scotland. A long period, indeed, elapses which has handed down to us no vestiges of church architecture in Scotland, or only a few too trifling to possess any distinctive character. When works of Gothic art begin again to arise with the reviving wealth of the people, they are no longer of the English type, but follow that flamboyant style which had been adopted by the ecclesiastical builders of the country with which Scotland had most concern—her steady patron and protector, France.[7]

The poverty of the Scots proceeded from a cause of which they need not have been ashamed; yet, with the reserve and pride ever peculiar to them, they hated that it should be seen by their allies, and when these showed any indications of contempt or derision, the natives were stung to madness. Froissart renders very picturesquely the common talk about the strangers, thus:—“What devil has brought them here? or, who has sent for them? Cannot we carry on our wars with England without their assistance? We shall never do any good as long as they are with us. Let them be told to go back again, for we are sufficient in Scotland to fight our own battles, and need not their aid. We neither understand their language nor they ours, so that we cannot converse together. They will very soon cut up and destroy all we have in this country, and will do more harm if we allow them to remain among us than the English could in battle. If the English do burn our houses, what great matter is it to us? We can rebuild them at little cost, for we require only three days to do so, so that we but have five or six poles, with boughs to cover them.”

The French knights, accustomed to abject submission among their own peasantry, were loth to comprehend the fierce independence of the Scots common people, and were ever irritating them into bloody reprisals. A short sentence of Froissart’s conveys a world of meaning on this specialty: “Besides, whenever their servants went out to forage, they were indeed permitted to load their horses with as much as they could pack up and carry, but they were waylaid on their return, and villanously beaten, robbed, and sometimes slain, insomuch that no varlet dare go out foraging for fear of death. In one month the French lost upwards of a hundred varlets; for when three or four went out foraging, not one returned, in such a hideous manner were they treated.” As we have seen, a not unusual incident of purveying in France was, that the husbandman was hung up by the heels and roasted before his own fire until he disgorged his property. The Scots peasantry had a decided prejudice against such a process, and, being accustomed to defend themselves from all oppression, resisted even that of their allies, to the extreme astonishment and wrath of those magnificent gentlemen. There is a sweet unconsciousness in Froissart’s indignant denunciation of the robbing of the purveyors, which meant the pillaged peasantry recovering their own goods. But the chronicler was of a thorough knightly nature, and deemed the peasantry of a country good for nothing but to be used up. Hence, in his wrath, he says: “In Scotland you will never find a man of worth; they are like savages, who wish not to be acquainted with any one, and are too envious of the good fortune of others, and suspicious of losing anything themselves, for their country is very poor. When the English make inroads thither, as they have very frequently done, they order their provisions, if they wish to live, to follow close at their backs; for nothing is to be had in that country without great difficulty. There is neither iron to shoe horses, nor leather to make harness, saddles, or bridles; all these things come ready made from Flanders by sea; and should these fail, there is none to be had in the country.” What a magnificent contrast to such a picture is the present relative condition of Scotland and the Low Countries! and yet these have not suffered any awful reverse of fortune—they have merely abided in stagnant respectability.

It must be remembered, in estimating the chronicler’s pungent remarks upon our poor ancestors, that he was not only a worshipper of rank and wealth, but thoroughly English in his partialities, magnifying the feats in arms of the great enemies of his own country. The records of the Scots Parliament of 1395 curiously confirm the inference from his narrative, that the French were oppressive purveyors, and otherwise unobservant of the people’s rights. An indenture, as it is termed—the terms of a sort of compact with the strangers—appears among the records, conspicuous among their other Latin and vernacular contents as being set forth in French, in courtesy, of course, to the strangers. It expressly lays down that no goods of any kind shall be taken by force, under pain of death, and none shall be received without being duly paid for—the dealers having free access to come and go. There are regulations, too, for suppressing broils by competent authority, and especially for settling questions between persons of unequal degrees; a remedy for the French practice, which left the settlement entirely with the superior. This document is one of many showing that, in Scotland, there were arrangements for protecting the personal freedom of the humbler classes, and their rights of property, the fulness of which is little known, because the like did not exist in other countries, and those who have written philosophical treatises on the feudal system, or on the progress of Europe from barbarism to civilisation, have generally lumped all the countries of Europe together. The sense of personal freedom seems to have been rather stronger in Scotland than in England; it was such as evidently to astound the French knights. At the end of the affair, Froissart expresses this surprise in his usual simple and expressive way. After a second or third complaint of the unreasonable condition that his countrymen should pay for the victuals they consumed, he goes on, “The Scots said the French had done them more mischief than the English;” and when asked in what manner, they replied, “By riding through the corn, oats, and barley on their march, which they trod under foot, not condescending to follow the roads, for which damage they would have a recompense before they left Scotland, and they should neither find vessel nor mariner who would dare to put to sea without their permission.”

Of the military events in the short war following the arrival of the French, an outline will be found in the ordinary histories; but it was attended by some conditions which curiously bring out the specialties of the two nations so oddly allied. One propitiatory gift the strangers had brought with them, which was far more highly appreciated than their own presence; this was a thousand stand of accoutrements for men-at-arms. They were of the highest excellence, being selected out of the store kept in the Castle of Beauté for the use of the Parisians. When these were distributed among the Scots knights, who were but poorly equipped, the chronicler, as if he had been speaking of the prizes at a Christmas-tree, tells how those who were successful and got them were greatly delighted. The Scots did their part in their own way: they brought together thirty thousand men, a force that drained the country of its available manhood. But England had at that time nothing to divert her arms elsewhere, and the policy adopted was to send northwards a force sufficient to crush Scotland for ever. It consisted of seven thousand mounted men-at-arms, and sixty thousand bow and bill men—a force from three to four times as large as the armies that gained the memorable English victories in France. Of these, Agincourt was still to come off, but Crecy and Poictiers were over, along with many other affairs that might have taught the French a lesson. The Scots, too, had suffered two great defeats—Neville’s Cross and Halidon Hill—since their great national triumph. The impression made on each country by their experiences brought out their distinct national characteristics. The French knights were all ardour and impatience; they clamoured to be at the enemy without ascertaining the amount or character of his force. The wretched internal wars of their own country had taught them to look on the battle-field as the arena of reason in personal conflict, rather than the great tribunal in which the fate of nations was to be decided, and communities come forth freed or enslaved.