Henry the Second eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 229 pages of information about Henry the Second.

Henry the Second eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 229 pages of information about Henry the Second.
whose gain I have brought upon me all this misery, has forsaken me?” Then he laid himself down again and turned his face to the wall.  “Now you have said enough,” he said.  “Let all the rest go as it will, I care no more for myself nor for the world.”  From this time he grew delirious.  But still in the intervals of his ravings the great passionate nature, the defiance, the unconquered will broke out with inextinguishable force.  He cursed the day on which he was born, and called down Heaven’s vengeance on his sons.  The great king’s pride was bowed in the extremity of his ruin and defeat.  “Shame,” he muttered constantly, “shame on a conquered king.”  Geoffrey watched by him faithfully, and the dying king’s last thoughts turned to him with grateful love.  On the 6th of July, the seventh day of his illness, he was seized with violent hemorrhage, and the end came almost instantaneously.  The next day his body was borne to Fontevraud, where his sculptured tomb still stands.  To the astonished onlookers at the great tragedy, the grave in a convent church, separated from the tombs of his Angevin forefathers and of his Norman ancestors, far from his English kingdom, seemed part of the strange disasters foretold by Merlin and inspired messengers.  But no ruler of his age had raised for himself so great a monument as Henry.  Amid the ruin that overwhelmed his imperial schemes, his realm of England stood as the true and lasting memorial of his genius.  Englishmen then, as Englishmen now, taught by the “remembrance of his good times,” recognized him as one of the foremost on the roll of those who have been the makers of England’s greatness.

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Henry the Second from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.