boy; it merely suited his ambitious schemes to oppose the King of
England. So John and the French King went to war about Arthur.
He was a handsome boy, at that time only twelve years old. He was
not born when his father, Geoffrey, had his brains trampled out at
the tournament; and, besides the misfortune of never having known a
father’s guidance and protection, he had the additional misfortune
to have a foolish mother (CONSTANCE by name), lately married to her
third husband. She took Arthur, upon John’s accession, to the
French King, who pretended to be very much his friend, and who made
him a Knight, and promised him his daughter in marriage; but, who
cared so little about him in reality, that finding it his interest
to make peace with King John for a time, he did so without the
least consideration for the poor little Prince, and heartlessly
sacrificed all his interests.
Young Arthur, for two years afterwards, lived quietly; and in the
course of that time his mother died. But, the French King then
finding it his interest to quarrel with King John again, again made
Arthur his pretence, and invited the orphan boy to court. ‘You
know your rights, Prince,’ said the French King, ‘and you would
like to be a King. Is it not so?’ ‘Truly,’ said Prince Arthur, ‘I
should greatly like to be a King!’ ‘Then,’ said Philip, ‘you shall
have two hundred gentlemen who are Knights of mine, and with them
you shall go to win back the provinces belonging to you, of which
your uncle, the usurping King of England, has taken possession. I
myself, meanwhile, will head a force against him in Normandy.’
Poor Arthur was so flattered and so grateful that he signed a
treaty with the crafty French King, agreeing to consider him his
superior Lord, and that the French King should keep for himself
whatever he could take from King John.
Now, King John was so bad in all ways, and King Philip was so
perfidious, that Arthur, between the two, might as well have been a
lamb between a fox and a wolf. But, being so young, he was ardent
and flushed with hope; and, when the people of Brittany (which was
his inheritance) sent him five hundred more knights and five
thousand foot soldiers, he believed his fortune was made. The
people of Brittany had been fond of him from his birth, and had
requested that he might be called Arthur, in remembrance of that
dimly-famous English Arthur, of whom I told you early in this book,
whom they believed to have been the brave friend and companion of
an old King of their own. They had tales among them about a
prophet called MERLIN (of the same old time), who had foretold that
their own King should be restored to them after hundreds of years;
and they believed that the prophecy would be fulfilled in Arthur;
that the time would come when he would rule them with a crown of
Brittany upon his head; and when neither King of France nor King of
England would have any power over them. When Arthur found himself
riding in a glittering suit of armour on a richly caparisoned
horse, at the head of his train of knights and soldiers, he began
to believe this too, and to consider old Merlin a very superior
prophet.
He did not know – how could he, being so innocent and
inexperienced? – that his little army was a mere nothing against
the power of the King of England. The French King knew it; but the
poor boy’s fate was little to him, so that the King of England was
worried and distressed. Therefore, King Philip went his way into
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Dickens, Charles – A Child’s History of England
Normandy and Prince Arthur went his way towards Mirebeau, a French
town near Poictiers, both very well pleased.
Prince Arthur went to attack the town of Mirebeau, because his
grandmother Eleanor, who has so often made her appearance in this
history (and who had always been his mother’s enemy), was living
there, and because his Knights said, ‘Prince, if you can take her