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PERHAPS no boy will deny that to find the world still reading a book which was written five hundred years ago is a very wonderful business. For the world grows,—faster than a boy; and when you remember how it is only about ten years since you were reading Jack the Giant-killer, and how you are infinitely beyond all that now,—you know,—you readily see that it must be a very manful man indeed who can make a book so strong and so all-time like as to go on giving delight through the ages, spite of prodigious revolutions in customs, in governments, and in ideas.

Now, Froissart sets the boy’s mind upon manhood and the man’s mind upon boyhood. In reading him the young soul sifts out for itself the splendor, the hardihood, the daring, the valor, the generosity, the boundless conflict and unhindered action, which make up the boy’s early ideal of the man; while a more mature reader goes at once to his simplicity, his gayety, his passion for deeds of arms, his freedom from consciousness and from all internal debate—in short, his boyishness. Thus Froissart helps youth forward and age backward.

With this enchanting quality, by which he not only defies, but even reverses, the passage of time, our fine Sir John has always had and will long have readers, both old and young; and if it were not for some peculiarities of his manner, growing mainly out of the habits of his time, there would be no need of any special edition of him for boys. But the latter sort find many halting-places and many skipping-places in him, by reason of his long dialogues, his tranquil way of telling all the particulars, and his gay habit of often relating events in chapter fifty which happened before those in chapter forty. The first two of these faults were virtues in Froissart’s day, when the longer a story the better it helped to pass the time between battles; and the last one probably arose from the manner in which he collected many of his facts,—which was as follows.

You must know that in the year 1357 this lively young Hainaulter, being at that time but about twenty years old, was asked by the Count Robert de Namur to write a history of the wars of those times. The idea tickled his fancy, and he went straightway to work.

If any of you should set about writing a history, you would most likely go up into the library, take down a great many books, pamphlets, and manuscripts, and pore and peer and scribble, until after a while when your back was aching and your eyes burning you would look at your watch and say, “Bless me! it’s two o’clock in the morning,” and so to bed; and such would be your day’s work until the history was finished. But not so with our young Froissart. Instead of painfully burrowing among dusty books, he saddled his horse, strapped on his portmanteau behind, and cantered off along the road through the bright French air, with his faithful greyhound following.[1] Presently he was pretty sure to overtake or be overtaken by some knight or esquire: whereupon Froissart would salute him, politely inquire his name, and ply him with artful questions as to the battles he had fought, the lords he had served, the negotiations he had conducted or assisted in, the events he had witnessed or heard of; and thus the two would converse by the way, the horses meantime embracing the opportunity to slacken pace, and the greyhound taking his chance to nose about here and there on each side the road. When the inn or friendly castle would be reached where lodgment was to be had in the evening, Froissart would jot down notes of all that he had learned from fellow-travellers during the day. Sometimes such a journey would terminate in a long visit at the castle of a great man,—as when he went to see the Count of Foix, referred to in the Third Book of these Chronicles; and then in the long evenings he would learn, either from the actors themselves or from knights or attendants about their persons, the deeds and events with which they had been connected.

Although from Hainault, he was much in England. He loved the society of the great, and was often in it. He was at different times attached to the households of King Edward III. of England, and of King John of France; and became an especial favorite of his countrywoman Queen Philippa, wife to Edward III., who made him the Clerk of her Chamber. He had various offices and preferments, but is most commonly associated with the Church of Chimay in France, of which he was canon. He knew how to please his powerful friends: when he visited the Count of Foix,—who loved dogs, and had sixteen hundred of them about him,—he carried four greyhounds as a present to that nobleman; he bore a beautiful copy of his love-poem “Meliador” to Richard II. of England; he presented the earlier portions of his Chronicles to Queen Philippa, who was fond of letters.

He was romantic and poetical. It would seem that he began his travels early, in order to escape the torments of an unfortunate love for a certain lady which had attacked him when a mere boy, and which endured with more or less strength for some time. He was engaged in writing his Chronicles from the year 1357 certainly to the year 1400, for they include events up to the latter date. Without burdening my young readers’ minds, there are three names of great Englishmen which I cannot forbear begging them to associate with this period. These are, the names of Geoffrey Chaucer, who wrote the “Canterbury Tales” and many other works; of William Langland, or Langley, who probably wrote the wonderful “Book concerning Piers the Plowman;” and of John Wyclif, who did the greatest service both for our religion and our language by giving forth the first complete translation of the Bible into English. Three large and beautiful souls; so large and beautiful, that one could scarcely frame a finer wish for any boy than that he should make friends with them, and live with them when he becomes a man.

Froissart did not confine himself to history: he wrote many poems,—rondeaus, virelays, pastorals, romances. He lived a bright, genial, active, fruitful, and happy life; and died after the year 1400.

As you read of the fair knights and the foul knights,—for Froissart tells of both,—it cannot but occur to you that somehow it seems harder to be a good knight nowadays than it was then. This is because we have so many more ways of fighting now than in King Edward the Third’s time. A good deal of what is really combat nowadays is not called combat. Many struggles, instead of taking the form of sword and armor, will present themselves to you after a few years in the following shapes: the strict payment of debts; the utmost delicacy of national honor; the greatest openness of party discussion, and the most respectful courtesy towards political opponents; the purity of the ballot-box; the sacred and liberal guaranty of all rights to all citizens; the holiness of marriage; the lofty contempt for what is small, knowing, and gossipy; and the like. Nevertheless the same qualities which made a manful fighter then make one now. To speak the very truth; to perform a promise to the uttermost; to reverence all women; to maintain right and honesty; to help the weak; to treat high and low with courtesy; to be constant to one love; to be fair to a bitter foe; to despise luxury; to preserve simplicity, modesty, and gentleness in heart and bearing: this was in the oath of the young knight who took the stroke upon him in the fourteenth century, and this is still the way to win love and glory in the nineteenth.

You will find all these elements of knighthood which I have just named particularly puzzling in many affairs connected with money. This was always so: indeed, I cannot help somewhat sadly reminding you that as you read along in these Chronicles of Froissart’s you will here and there perceive how money is already creeping into the beautiful institution of knighthood in the fourteenth century and corrupting it. After each battle related in this book, Froissart is pretty apt to say something about the great wealth acquired by this or that fighter through the ransom paid him by or for such prisoners as he took. In other words, war is becoming a trade; and in succeeding centuries of European history the young student will quickly notice that the great organized armies were no whit less thieves and rascals than the rogues who composed the Free Companies about whom Froissart will presently speak. The fair ideal of the knight-errant, as he who goes forth in the world to help every one that may need him, and who despises wealth and personal ease whenever they interfere with this great object—an ideal which is presented to us in Sir Lancelot, and, less finely, in other knights of the Round Table—grows dim.

And here I could do no better service to the American boy of the present day than by calling his attention to a certain curious and interesting connection between these present Chronicles of Froissart and Sir Thomas Malory’s History of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table, which was written in the following century and which must some day come to be known more widely than now as one of the sweetest and strongest books in our language.

The connection I mean is this: that Froissart’s Chronicle is, in a grave and important sense, a sort of continuation of Malory’s novel. For Malory’s book is, at bottom, a picture of knighthood in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; while Froissart’s is a picture of knighthood in the fourteenth century. It is true that Malory’s King Arthur is a personage, if not fabulous, at least unhistorical, while Froissart’s Edward III. is actual flesh and blood, and is almost in sight; it is true that Froissart gives us real events occurring in definite localities during the last three-quarters of the fourteenth century, while Malory drags Joseph of Arimathea alongside of Merlin the Magician, and sets Briton, Saxon, Roman, Frenchman, Scotchman, Irishman, Welshman, and Saracen face to face in scenes which often defy place and time: yet it is no less true that Froissart’s work is a continuation of Malory’s, since what Malory gives us is substantially a view of life in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which Froissart follows with a view of life in the fourteenth century. A boy who reflects that Sir Thomas Malory wrote a hundred years later than Froissart will be puzzled to know how he comes to give a picture of chivalry a hundred years earlier, until certain facts appear which show in what manner Sir Thomas Malory’s book was made, and what were the habits of the writers whom he followed.

About the year 1147 all England was delighted with a narration which was published by Geoffrey of Monmouth, concerning the deeds of a glorious man whom Geoffrey declared to have been an old king of that country, and whose name he gave as Arthur. Geoffrey, who was a Welsh priest living in England at that time, declared that he had found this account of King Arthur in a Welsh book, and gave it as true history. Whether history or fable,—upon this modern opinion is divided,—his story of the great knight Arthur so charmed the people that the poets and prose-writers, not only of England, but of France, straightway took hold of it, turned it into verse, amplified it, added to it, retold it in long prose tales, and in various ways spread it abroad, until there came to be what is called a cycle—that is, a connected ring—of Arthurian romances. In this cycle all the prominent characters of the modern story made their appearance: besides King Arthur, the fascinated world read of Sir Lancelot du Lake, of Queen Guenever, of Sir Tristram, of Queen Isolde, of Merlin, of Sir Gawaine, of the Lady of the Lake, of Sir Galahad, and of the wonderful search for the Holy Cup called the “Saint Graal,” which was said to have received the blood that flowed from the wounds of our Saviour when he hung on the cross.

I hope that every boy will hereafter become acquainted with the names of many of these old writers who contributed to the collection of romances that make up the Arthurian cycle; but for the present, without perplexing young minds with a long list, I wish to impress four of these names upon your memories. They are Wace, Layamon, De Borron, and Walter Map. I should wish particularly that my young readers would remember the name of Layamon, because he wrote his account of King Arthur in English, and is therefore to be reverenced as the sturdy poet who made a great stand for our native tongue after William the Conqueror had imposed his French dialect upon us.

But now to come to Sir Thomas Malory. These stories of King Arthur, and Sir Lancelot, and Sir Tristram, and Merlin, written by Wace, and Layamon, and Map, and others, were, as I said, carried about and read with great delight through England and France during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; and the important point to remember here is that the writers who developed them from the original stock furnished by Geoffrey of Monmouth, although professing to tell of things which happened in the early centuries of our era, really did nothing more than present a picture of their own times—that is, of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—in which nothing was ancient but the names of the figures. This was a notable custom of all the middle-age artists, not only of the artists in words—the poets and prose tale-tellers—but even of the later artists who drew and painted actual pictures. Just as an old picture-maker would represent King Solomon in a costume of the ninth century; or as the old writer of Arthurian romances speaks of the Biblical Joshua as Duke Joshua, thus bringing the old Jew before us with a title some thousands of years younger than his name: so these twelfth and thirteenth century writers merely took the characters of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s story and clothed them as mediæval knights and ladies, while they re-arranged the events similarly into such relations as accorded with their own times. Now, in the fifteenth century, Sir Thomas Malory re-arranged this series of stories about King Arthur, Sir Lancelot, Sir Tristram, the Round Table, and the Holy Cup, which had been written in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and which were really pictures of life in those centuries, though grouped about legendary figures; while Sir John Froissart wrote chronicles which present us pictures of life grouped about the historic characters of his own fourteenth century.

But though, as I said, the ideal of knighthood begins to be lowered in Froissart by the temptations of ransom-money, there are still many beautiful features of it which come out with perfect colors in these following chronicles. The kingliness of Edward III.; the stem lessons of hardihood, of self-help, and of perseverance unto the end, which he teaches his son Edward in refusing to send him re-enforcements when he is so dreadfully bested before Crecy; the beautiful courtesy and modesty with which this same young Edward attends upon King John of France at supper in his own tent on the night after he had taken the king prisoner and routed his army at Poictiers; the pious reverence with which Sir Walter Manny seeks out the grave of his father; the energy with which the stout abbot of Hennecourt hews, whacks, and pulls the blooded knights about; the frequent expostulations of generous gentlemen against the harsh treatment of prisoners; the prayer of the queen in favor of the citizens of Calais, and King Edward’s knightly concession to her ladyhood; the splendor and liberality of the Count de Foix; the unconquerable loyalty of Sir Robert Salle, who prefers a brave death at the hands of Wat Tyler’s rebels, to the leadership of their army; the dash and gallantry of the young Saracen Agadinquor Oliferne, who flies about like a meteor before the besieging crusaders round about the town of Africa: these, and many fine things of like sort, will not fail to strike the most inexperienced eyes.

My main task in editing this book for you has been to choose connected stories which would show you as many of the historic figures in Froissart as possible; though I have tried to preserve at the same time the charm which lies in his very rambling manner. I have not altered his language at all. Every word in this book is Froissart’s; except of course that he wrote in French, and his words are here translated into English. A very noble translation was made in the time of King Henry the Eighth, by Lord Berners, whose name I hope you will remember. I should have greatly preferred to give you his Froissart for the present edition: it is beautiful English, and infinitely stronger, brighter, and more picturesque, than the translation here used; but it would have been difficult for you to read. Yet, in order that you might see what the English of King Henry the Eighth’s time looks like, I have given a chapter of Lord Berners’, on the battle of Crecy, without alteration; and, believing that many of my young readers who may be studying French might be curious to read a little of that language in one of its earlier stages, I have added the same chapter in French from the manuscripts printed by Buchon. For similar reasons, at the chapter describing the battle of Neville’s Cross, I have added an old English ballad upon the same fight, giving it unaltered from Messrs. Hales and Furnivall’s edition of Bishop Percy’s Manuscript.

Again, when the Chronicle reaches King Richard II., I have embraced the opportunity to show you the kind of English which was spoken in Froissart’s time, by adding to one of the chapters the robust “Ballad sent to King Richard” by Geoffrey Chaucer,—begging you to believe that our time cries out to every young American man, as Chaucer to his prince, to

“Do law, love truth and worthiness,

And wed thy folk again to steadfastness.”

Finally, do not think that to read this book is to exhaust Froissart. Only about one-ninth of his Chronicle could be got into the space here assigned; and you have the comfort of knowing that there is a great deal more.

To him, then; and I envy every one of you!

“For herein,”—as old William Caxton, the first English printer, says in his Prologue to Sir Thomas Malory’s history of King Arthur,—“for herein may be seen chyvalrye, curtosye, humanyte, frendlynesse, hardynesse, love, frendshyp, cowardyse, murdre, hate, vertue, synne. Doo after the good, and leve the evil, and it shall bring you to good fame and renommee.”

Sidney Lanier

Baltimore, Md., 1879.