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Thelon Gest Wart Hate Verwas
Is thisanother Latin heading?
No, it’s English.
Don’t you understand English?
It was 1338, and Edward III was king of England. Edward III wanted to rule France as well as England. He said he was related to the former king of France and had a better right to the country than the one who was ruling. So he started a war to take France, and the war he started lasted more than a hundred years. So this is known as the Hundred Years’ War and it is:
The Longest War that Ever Was!
The English army sailed over from England and landed in France. The first great battle was fought at a little place called Crécy. The English army was on foot and was made up chiefly of the common people. The French army were mostly knights clad in armor on horseback—the society people.
The French knights on horseback thoughtthemselves much finer than the common English soldiers who were on foot, as a man in a motor-car is likely to look down on the man who is walking.
The English soldiers, however, used a weapon called thelongbow, which shot arrows with terrific force, and they completely whipped the French knights in spite of the fact that the knights were nobles, were trained to be fighters, rode on horses, and were protected by armor.
Cannon were used by the English in this battle for the first time. The cannon, however, did not amount to much nor do very much harm. They were so weak that they simply tossed the cannon-balls at the enemy as one might throw a basketball or football. They scared the horses of the French but did little other damage. But this was the beginning of what was before long to be the end of knights and armor and feudalism.
The battle of Crécy was only the beginning of the Hundred Years’ War. The next year after the battle of Crécy a horribly contagious disease called the Black Death attacked the people of Europe. It was like the plague in Athens in the Age of Pericles, but the Black Death did not attack just one city or country. It was supposed to have started in Cathay, but it spread westward until it reached Europe. There was no running away from it. It spread far and wide over thewhole land and killed more human beings than any war that has ever been. It was called Black Death because black spots came out all over the body of any one who caught it, and he was certain to die within a few hours or a day or two. There was no hope. No medicine had any effect. Many people committed suicide just as soon as they found they had the disease. Many died just from fright, actually “scared to death.”
It lasted two years, and millions upon millions caught the disease. Half of the people of Europe died of it. Whole towns were wiped out, and in many places no one was left to bury the dead. Dead bodies lay where they had fallen—on the street, in the doorway, in the market-place.
The crops in the fields went to waste, for there was no one to gather them. Horses and cows roamed over the country at will, for there was no one to care for them. The plague attacked even sailors at sea, and ships were found drifting about on the water with not a soul alive left on board, with not even one left to steer the ship.
What if it had killed every last man, woman, and child in the world! What then would have been the future history of the world?
But, as if there were not enough people dead already, the Hundred Years’ War still went on year after year. The soldiers who had fought at Crécy had been dead for years. Their childrenhad grown up, fought, and died; their grandchildren had grown up, fought and died, and their great-grandchildren had done the same; and the English army was still fighting in France. The French prince at that time was very young and weak, and the French were almost in despair—hopeless—because they had no strong leader to help them drive out the English after all these many years.
Now, in a little French village there was living a poor peasant girl, a shepherdess, called Joan of Arc. As she watched her flocks of sheep, she had wonderful visions. She heard voices calling to her, telling her she was the one who must lead the French armies and save France from England. She went to the prince’s nobles and told them her visions. But they did not put any faith in her or her visions, and they did not believe she was able to do the things she thought she could.
To test her, however, they dressed up another man as the prince and put him on the throne while the prince stood at one side with the nobles. Then they let Joan into the room. When Joan entered the royal hall, she gave one look at the man who was seated on the throne and dressed up as prince. Then without hesitating she walked directly past him and went straight to therealprince. Before him she knelt and said, “I have come to lead your armies to victory.” The princeat once gave her his flag and a suit of armor, and she rode out at the head of all the army and had him crowned king.
Joan of Arc at the stake.
Joan of Arc at the stake.
The French soldiers took heart again. Itseemed as if the Lord had sent an angel to lead them, and they fought so hard and so bravely that they won many battles.
The English soldiers, however, thought that it was not the Lord but the devil who had sent Joan and that she was not an angel but a witch, and they were very much afraid of her. At last, the English made her prisoner. The French king, whom she had saved, in spite of all she had done for him, didn’t even try to save her. Now that things were going his way, he didn’t like to have a woman running things, and the soldiers didn’t like to have a woman ordering them around, and they were glad to be rid of her.
The English tried her for a witch, judged her guilty of being a witch, and then they burned her alive at the stake.
But Joan seemed to have brought the French good luck, to have put new life into their armies, for from that time on, France increased in strength, and after more than a hundred years of fighting at last drove the English out of the country. In one hundred years of fighting hundreds of thousands of people had been wounded and crippled and blinded and killed, and after it all England was no better off, just the same as when she started—all the fighting all for nothing.