compensation, and offered as a pledge two of his castles; then broke his word, and refused; whereupon Philippe took up arms, besieged the castles, and had just destroyed them both, when Arthur arrived, with all the Breton knights he could collect, and burning with the eagerness of his sixteen years.
At once Philippe offered to receive his homage for the county of Anjou, and to send him to conquer it with any knights who would volunteer to follow him. Hugh de Lusignan was the first to bring him fifteen, and other Poitevin barons joined him; but, in all, he could muster but one hundred knights and four or five hundred other troops, and the wiser heads advised him to wait for reinforcements from Brittany. The fiery young men, however, asked, 'When was it our fashion to count our foes?' and their rashness prevailed. Arthur marched to besiege the town of Mirabeau, where there resided one whom he should never have attacked-his aged grandmother; but Constance had taught him no sentiment toward her but hatred, and with this ill-omened beginning to his chivalry he commenced his expedition.
The town was soon taken: but Eleanor's high spirit had not deserted her; she shut herself up in the castle, and contrived to send intelligence to her son. John was for once roused, and marched to Mirabeau with such speed, that Arthur soon found himself surrounded in his turn. The Queen was in the citadel, the prince in the town, besieging her, and himself besieged by the King on the outside; but the town wall was strong, and John could not easily injure his nephew, nor send succor to his mother.
He recollected a knight named Guillaume dos Roches, who had once been attached to Arthur's service, but was now in his camp; and sending for him, the wily King thus addressed him: 'It is hard that persons who should be friendly kindred should so disturb each other for want of meeting and coming to an understanding. Here is Eleanor, my honored mother, discourteously shut up in a tower in danger of being broken down by engines of war, and sending forth nothing but cries and tears. Here is Arthur, my fair nephew, who some day will be an honor to chivalry, going straight forward, fancying nothing can hurt him, looking on battles as feasts and sports. And here am I, John, his lord and King, who could easily take from him at a blow all the rest of his life; I am waiting, and endeavoring to spare him, though his men-at-arms may come and catch me like a fox in the toils. Cannot you find some expedient? Can you remember no friend of my fair nephew who could help you to restore peace, and obtain a guerdon from me?'
'The only guerdon I desire,' replied Des Roches, 'is the honor of serving my lord; but one gift I entreat.'
'I grant it, by the soul of my father,' said John.
'To-morrow, then,' said Des Roches, 'the young Duke and all his young lords shall be at your disposal; but I claim the gift you granted me. It is, that none of the besieged shall be imprisoned or put to death, and that Duke Arthur be treated by you as your good and honorable nephew, and that you leave him such of his lands as rightfully pertain to him.'
John promised, and even swore that, if he violated his word, he released his subjects from their oaths. Arthur's stepfather, Guy de Thouars, witnessed the agreement, and, thus satisfied, Des Roches introduced his troops into the town at midnight, and Arthur and his followers were seized in their sleep. But for John's promise, he regarded it no more than the wind; he sent twenty-two knights at once to Corfe Castle, chained two and two together in carts drawn by oxen, where all but Hugh de Lusignan were starved to death by his orders. He threw the rest into different prisons, and closely confined his nephew at Falaise. Des Roches remonstrated, upon which John attempted to arrest both him and De Thouars, but they escaped from his dominions; and Des Roches was so grieved at the fatal consequence of his treachery, that he became a hermit, and ended his life in penance.
The old Queen, whose disposition had softened with her years, charged John, on pain of her curses, not to hurt his nephew, and exerted herself to save the victims from barbarity. She prevailed so far as to obtain the life of Lusignan; but he was shut up at Bristol Castle, where John likewise imprisoned the elder sister of Arthur, Eleanor, a girl of eighteen, of such peerless beauty that she was called the Pearl of Brittany. John held a parley with his nephew at Falaise, when the following dialogue took place; [Footnote: These particulars are from old chronicles of slight authority.]
'Give up your false pretentions,' said John, 'to crowns you will never wear. Am I not your uncle? I will give you a share of my inheritance as your lord, and grant you my friendship.'
'Better the hatred of the King of France!' exclaimed the high-spirited boy; 'he has not broken his faith, and with a noble knight there is always a resource in generosity.'
'Folly to trust him!' sneered John. 'French kings are the born enemies of Plantagenets.'
'Philippe has placed the crown on my brow-he was my godfather in chivalry-he has granted me his daughter,' said Arthur.
'And you will never marry her, fair nephew! My towers are strong; none here resist my will.'
The boy burst out proudly: 'Neither towers nor swords shall make me cowardly enough to deny the right I hold from my father and from God. He was your elder brother, now before the Saviour of men. England, Touraine, Anjou, Guienne, are mine in his right, and Brittany through my mother. Never will I renounce them, but by death.'
'So be it, fair nephew,' were John's words, and with them he left his captive alone, to dwell on the horrors thus implied.
Soon after, John secretly sent a party of men into Arthur's dungeon, with orders to put out his eyes. The youth caught up a wooden bench, and defended himself with it, calling so loudly for help as to bring to the spot the excellent governor of the castle, Hubert de Burgh, who had been in ignorance of their horrible design. He sent away the assassins, and, as the only means of saving the poor prince, he caused the chapel bell to be tolled, and let it be supposed that he had perished under their hands. All the world believed it, and Brittany and Normandy began to rise, to call the murderer to account. Hubert thought he was doing a service in divulging the safety of the prisoner, but the effect was, that John transferred the poor boy to Rouen, and to the keeping of William Bruce.
He was an old man, and dreaded the iniquity that he saw would soon be practised; and, coming to the King, gave up his charge in these words: 'I know not what Fate intends for your nephew, whom I have hitherto faithfully kept. I give him up to you, in full health, and sound in limb; but I will guard him no longer; I must return to my own affairs.'
John's eyes flashed fury; but the baron retired to his own fiefs, which he put in a state of defence. A few days after, John and his wicked squire, Pierre de Maulac, left the court, giving notice that he was going to Cherbourg, and, after wandering for three days in the woods of Moulineau, came late at night in a little boat to the foot of the tower where Arthur was confined. Horses were ready there, and he sent Maulac to bring him his nephew.
'Fair nephew,' said he, 'come and see the day you have so long desired. I will make you free as air: you shall even have a kingdom to govern.'
Arthur began to ask explanations, but John cut him short, telling him there would be time for questions and thanks; and Maulac helped him to his horse, for he was so much weakened by his imprisonment that he could hardly mount. They rode on, Arthur in front, till they came to a spot where the river flowed beneath a precipitous bank. It was John's chosen spot; and he spurred his horse against his nephew's, striking him down with his sword. The poor boy cried aloud for mercy, promising to yield all he required.
'All is mine henceforth,' said John, 'and here is the kingdom I promised you.'
Then striking him again, by the help of Maulac he dragged him to the edge of the rock, and threw him headlong into the Seine, whose waters closed over the brave young Plantagenet, in his eighteenth year, ending all the hopes of the Bretons. The deed of darkness was guessed at, though it was long before its manner became known; and John himself marked out its consummation by causing himself to be publicly crowned over again, and by rewarding his partner in the crime with the hand of the heiress of Mulgrave. His mother, Queen Eleanor, is said to have died of grief at the horror he had perpetrated. She had retired, after the siege of Mirabeau, to the convent of Fontevraud, where she assumed the veil, and now shared the same fate as her husband, King Henry-like him, dying broken- hearted for the crimes of their son. She was buried beside him and her beloved Coeur de Lion.
The Bretons mourned and raged at the loss of their young duke. His sister Eleanor was wasting her youth and loveliness in a prison, which she only left, after her oppressor's death, to become a nun at Ambresbury; and they therefore proclaimed as their duchess her little half-sister, Alix de Thouars, who was, at four years old, presented to the States in her father's arms, and shortly after married to an efficient protector, Pierre de Dreux, called, from his quarrels with the clergy, Mauclerc.
Never had the enemy of the Plantagenets been so well served as by King John. Such was the indignation and grief of the whole French noblesse, that, when Pope Innocent III sent out a legate to mediate between the two kings, the barons bound themselves by a charter, 'to second their lord, King Philippe, in his war against King John, notwithstanding the will of the Pope, exhorting him to contrive it without being dismayed by vain words, and
