Ch. 16 - Edward the First - Page 2

entreaties to him to return home,
he now began the journey. He had got as far as Italy, when he met
messengers who brought him intelligence of the King's death.
Hearing that all was quiet at home, he made no haste to return to
his own dominions, but paid a visit to the Pope, and went in state
through various Italian Towns, where he was welcomed with
acclamations as a mighty champion of the Cross from the Holy Land,
and where he received presents of purple mantles and prancing
horses, and went along in great triumph. The shouting people
little knew that he was the last English monarch who would ever
embark in a crusade, or that within twenty years every conquest
which the Christians had made in the Holy Land at the cost of so
much blood, would be won back by the Turks. But all this came to
pass.

There was, and there is, an old town standing in a plain in France,
called Ch�lons. When the King was coming towards this place on his
way to England, a wily French Lord, called the Count of Ch�lons,
sent him a polite challenge to come with his knights and hold a
fair tournament with the Count and HIS knights, and make a day of
it with sword and lance. It was represented to the King that the
Count of Ch�lons was not to be trusted, and that, instead of a
holiday fight for mere show and in good humour, he secretly meant a
real battle, in which the English should be defeated by superior
force.

The King, however, nothing afraid, went to the appointed place on
the appointed day with a thousand followers. When the Count came
with two thousand and attacked the English in earnest, the English
rushed at them with such valour that the Count's men and the
Count's horses soon began to be tumbled down all over the field.
The Count himself seized the King round the neck, but the King
tumbled HIM out of his saddle in return for the compliment, and,
jumping from his own horse, and standing over him, beat away at his
iron armour like a blacksmith hammering on his anvil. Even when
the Count owned himself defeated and offered his sword, the King
would not do him the honour to take it, but made him yield it up to
a common soldier. There had been such fury shown in this fight,
that it was afterwards called the little Battle of Ch�lons.

The English were very well disposed to be proud of their King after
these adventures; so, when he landed at Dover in the year one
thousand two hundred and seventy-four (being then thirty-six years
old), and went on to Westminster where he and his good Queen were
crowned with great magnificence, splendid rejoicings took place.
For the coronation-feast there were provided, among other eatables,
four hundred oxen, four hundred sheep, four hundred and