will are come to render themselves to you to save the remnant of the people.’  At this point the King changed countenance with wrath, and said ’Hold your peace, Master Walter! it shall be none otherwise.  Call the headsman.  They of Calais have made so many of my men die, that they must die themselves!’ Then did the noble Queen of England a deed of noble lowliness, seeing she was great with child, and wept so tenderly for pity that she could no longer stand upright; therefore she cast herself on her knees before her lord the King and spake on this wise:  ’Ah, gentle sire, from the day that I passed over sea in great peril, as you know, I have asked for nothing:  now pray I and beseech you, with folded hands, for the love of our Lady’s Son to have mercy upon them.’  The gentle King waited a while before speaking, and looked on the Queen as she knelt before him bitterly weeping.  Then began his heart to soften a little, and he said, ’Lady, I would rather you had been otherwhere; you pray so tenderly that I dare not refuse you; and though I do it against my will, nevertheless take them, I give them to you.’  Then took he the six citizens by the halters and delivered them to the Queen, and released from death all those of Calais for the love of her; and the good lady bade them clothe the six burgesses and make them good cheer.”

Chapter III
the peasant revolt
1347-1381

[Sidenote:  Edward the Third]

Still in the vigour of manhood, for he was but thirty-five, Edward the Third stood at the height of his renown.  He had won the greatest victory of his age.  France, till now the first of European states, was broken and dashed from her pride of place at a single blow.  The kingdom seemed to lie at Edward’s mercy, for Guienne was recovered, Flanders was wholly on his side, and Britanny, where the capture of Charles of Blois secured the success of his rival and the English party which supported him, opened the road to Paris.  At home his government was popular, and Scotland, the one enemy he had to dread, was bridled by the capture of her king.  How great his renown was in Europe was seen in 1347, when on the death of Lewis of Bavaria the electors offered him the Imperial Crown.  Edward was in truth a general of a high order, and he had shown himself as consummate a strategist in the campaign as a tactician in the field.  But to the world about him he was even more illustrious as the foremost representative of the showy chivalry of his day.  He loved the pomp of tournaments; he revived the Round Table of the fabled Arthur; he celebrated his victories by the creation of a new order of knighthood.  He had varied the sterner operations of the siege of Calais by a hand-to-hand combat with one of the bravest of the French knights.  A naval picture of Froissart sketches Edward for us as he sailed to meet a Spanish fleet which was sweeping the narrow seas.  We see the king sitting on deck in his jacket of black velvet, his head covered by a black beaver hat “which became him well,” and calling on Sir John Chandos to troll out the songs he had brought with him from Germany, till the Spanish ships heave in sight and a furious fight begins which ends in a victory that leaves Edward “King of the Seas.”