Historic Boys: Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times

That crafty and unscrupulous king, whose relations with his boy vassal had been one continual game of "fast and loose," as desire dictated or opportunity served, gave a secret chuckle of joy as Duke William and his slender escort of knights and men-at-arms rode into the palace yard at Poissy, only a few miles north-west of modern Versailles. And when at last he saw the youth an actual suppliant at his throne his thought was: "Ah ha! Duke William and Normandy are in my power at last."

But King Henry's lips seldom spoke his thoughts.

"Cousin of Normandy," he said, "you have done well and wisely to pray my aid against your rebel barons and this wicked boy of Burgundy. To whom else should you turn but to the overlord to whom your great father, Duke Robert, confided you as a sacred trust years ago?"

The lad might justly have inquired how King Henry had kept the trust his father had confided in him. But he only said:

"'T is not for me but for my father's duchy that I plead. The very life of Normandy is in jeopardy, my liege."

"And right valiantly will we relieve it, lad," the king exclaimed. "Send out your rallying-call. Summon your loyal vassals. Join force and arm with me, and the banners of France and Normandy shall wave above conquered rebels and a victorious field."

Action quickly succeeded words. An army was speedily raised. The loyal Normans of the eastern counties hurried to the standard of their young lord, and at the head of a combined French and Norman force, king and duke, in the summer of the year 1047, confronted the rebel knights under Guy of Burgundy, Grimbald de Plessis, Neel of St. Savior, and Randolf of Bayeux, on the open slopes of Val-es-dunes, or the valley of the sand-hills, not far from the town of Caen, and almost within sight of the English Channel.

Duke William led the left wing and King Henry the right. There was a shouting of battle-cries – the Dix aie of the loyal Normans and the Montjoye-St. Denys of France mingling with St. Savior and St. Armand from the rebel ranks. Then, as in a great tournament, horse and rider, shield, sword, and lance closed in desperate combat. It was a battle of the knights. King Henry went down twice beneath the thrust of Norman lances, but was on his horse again fighting valiantly in his vassal's cause, and Duke William, in this his first pitched battle, by a day of mingled courage, good fortune, prowess, and personal success, laid the basis of that wonderful career that filled his daring and victorious future, and fitted him to bear the proud though bloody title of the Conqueror. Hand to hand, not with lance but with sword, he vanquished in open conflict the champion of the rebel knights, Hardrez of Bayeux, and ere darkness fell his enemies were vanquished and in desperate flight for life, and his power as Duke of Normandy was established finally and forever.

Great in his victory the boy knight was greater still in his generous treatment of the conquered rebels. Only one, Grimbald de Plessis, who had been the prime mover in the treason, suffered imprisonment and death. All were pardoned, and young Guy of Burgundy, like the coward he seems to have been, slipped sullenly away rather than face his generous rival and old-time playfellow, and in his distant court of Burgundy spent his after years in unsuccessful plots against his always successful rival.

And here our story of the boy William ends. Conqueror at Val-es-dunes, when yet scarcely nineteen, his course from that time on through his busy manhood, was one of unvarying success in battle and in statecraft. The wonderful victory at Senlac, or Hastings, which, on the 14th of October, 1066, gave him the throne of England, and made him both king and conqueror, has placed his name in the foremost rank of the military heroes of the world. From this point his story is known to all. It is a part of the history of our race. It is, indeed, as Palgrave the historian says:

"Magnificent was William's destiny. Can we avoid accepting him as the Founder of the predominating empire now existing in the civilized world? Never does the sun set upon the regions where the British banner is unfurled. Nay, the Stars and Stripes of the Transatlantic Republic would never have been hoisted, nor the Ganges flow as a British stream, but for Norman William's gauntleted hand."

Eight hundred years of progress have removed us far from the savagery of Duke William's day. The nations of the world are, each year, less and less ready to fly at each other's throats like "dogs of war," whenever any thing goes wrong or their "angry passions rise." The desires of to-day are largely in the direction of universal peace and brotherhood. But still we honor valor and courage and knightly and noble deeds. And though, as we study the record of that remarkable life that so changed the history of the world eight centuries back, we can see faults and vices, shortcomings and crimes even, in the stirring life of William, Duke of Normandy and King of England, still, as we look upon his spirited statue that now stands in the market-place of Falaise, almost beneath the ruined walls of the grim old castle in which he was born, and which he stormed and carried when a boy of scarce fourteen, our thoughts go back to his stormy and turbulent boyhood. And, as we do so, we see, not the Conqueror of England, the enslaver of the Saxons, the iron-handed tyrant of the Curfew-bell and the Doomsday-book, but the manly, courageous, true-hearted, perplexed, and persecuted little fellow of the old Norman days, when, spite of trouble and turmoil, he kept his heart brave, and true, and pure, and was in all things the real boy knight – in those fresh and generous days of youth, when, as Mr. Freeman, the brilliant historian of the Norman Conquest, says: "He shone forth before all men as the very model of every princely virtue."

V

BALDWIN OF JERUSALEM: THE BOY CRUSADER

(Known as Baldwin III., the Fifth of the Latin Kings of Jerusalem.)

[a. d. 1147.]

Through a flood of sunlight, cooled by mountain breezes, breaks a straggling mass of hill and plain and deep ravine crowded with gray-walled buildings, crumbling ruins, dismantled towers, glittering minarets and crosses, stout walls and rounded domes. A palace here, a broken arch or cross-crowned chapel there; narrow and untidy streets thronged with a curious crowd drawn from every land and race – Syrian and Saxon, Norman and Nubian, knight and squire, monk and minstrel, – such was Jerusalem, "city of ruins," when, seven hundred years ago, the Red-Cross banner floated from its towered walls and the Holy City stood as the capital of the short-lived and unfortunate realm of the Crusaders – the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem.

I take it for granted that most of my young readers know something of the history of the Crusades – those wonderful religious wars, when Europe overflowed into Asia and under the banner of the Cross sought by blood and blows and daring deeds to gain possession from the Saracen conquerors – or, as they were called, the "Infidel," – of the tomb of Him whose mission was "Peace on Earth; Good-Will to Men." But how many of them know any thing of that eventful and romantic chapter in the history of Palestine, when, for eighty-eight years, from the days of Duke Godfrey, greatest of the Crusaders, to the time of Saladin, greatest of the Sultans, the Holy City was governed by Christian nobles and guarded by Christian knights, drawn from the shores of Italy, the downs of Normandy, and the forests of Anjou? It is a chapter full of interest and yet but little known, and it is at about the middle of this historic period, in the fall of the year 1147, that our sketch opens.

In the palace of the Latin kings, on the slopes of Mount Moriah, a boy of fifteen and a girl of ten were leaning against an open casement and looking out through the clear September air toward the valley of the Jordan and the purple hills of Moab.

"Give me thy gittern, Isa," said the boy, a ruddy-faced youth, with gray eyes and auburn hair; "let me play the air that Réné, the troubadour, taught me yesterday. I'll warrant thee 't will set thy feet a-flying, if I can but master the strain," and he hummed over the gay Provençal measure:

"O Magali! thy witcheries
In vain shall try me!
When thou art fish, I'll fisher be
And fish for thee!"

But, bewitching little maiden though she was, the fair young Isabelle had no thought of becoming a fish. She had now found something more absorbing than the song of the troubadour.

"Nay, my lord, rather let me try the gittern," she said. "See, now will I charm this snaily from its cell with the air that Réné taught me," and together the two heads bent over one of the vicious little "desert snails of Egypt," which young Isabelle of Tyre had found crawling along the casement of the palace.

"Snaily, snaily, little nun,
Come out of thy cell, come into the sun;
Show me thy horns without delay,
Or I'll tear thy convent-walls away,"

sang the girl merrily, as she touched the strings of her gittern. But his snailship continued close and mute, and the boy laughed loudly as he picked up the snail and laid it on his open palm.

"'T is in vain, Isa," he said; "this surly snail is no troubadour to come out at his lady's summons. Old Hassan says the sluggards can sleep for full four years, but trust me to waken this one. So, holo! See, Isa, there be his horns – ah! oh! the Forty Martyrs grind thy Pagan shell!" he cried, with sudden vehemence, dancing around the room in pain, "the beast hath bitten me! Out, Ishmaelite!" and he flung the snail from him in a rage, while Isabelle clung to the casement laughing heartily at her cousin's mishap.

But the snail flew across the room at an unfortunate moment, for the arras parted suddenly and a tall and stalwart man, clothed in the coarse woollen gown of a palmer, or pilgrim to Jerusalem, entered the apartment just in time to receive the snail full against his respected and venerated nose.

"The saints protect us!" exclaimed the palmer, drawing back in surprise and clapping a hand to his face. "Doth the king of Jerusalem keep a catapult in this his palace with which to greet his visitors?" Then, spying the two young people, who stood in some dismay by the open casement, the stranger strode across the room and laid a heavy hand upon the boy's shoulder, while little Isa's smothered laugh changed to an alarmed and tremulous "Oh!"

"Thou unmannerly boy," said the palmer, "how dar'st thou thus assault a pilgrim to the holy shrines?"

But the lad stood his ground stoutly. "Lay off thine hand, sir palmer," he said. "Who art thou, forsooth, that doth press thy way into the private chambers of the king?"

"Nay, that is not for thee to know," replied the palmer. "Good faith, I have a mind to shake thee well, sir page, for this thy great impertinence."

But here little Isa, having recovered her voice, exclaimed hurriedly: "O no, – not page, good palmer. He is no page; he is – "

"Peace, Isa," the lad broke in with that peculiar wink of the left eyelid well known to every boy who deals in mischief and mystery. "Let the gray palmer tell us who he may be, or, by my plume, he goeth no farther in the palace here."

The burly pilgrim looked down upon the lad, who, with arms akimbo and defiant face, barred his progress. He laughed a grim and dangerous laugh. "Thou rare young malapert!" he said. "Hath, then, the state of great King Godfrey fallen so low that chattering children keep the royal doors?" Then, seizing the boy by the ear, he whirled him aside and said: "Out of my path, sir page. Let me have instant speech with the king, thy master, ere I seek him out myself and bid him punish roundly such a saucy young jackdaw as thou."

"By what token askest thou to see the king?" the boy demanded, nursing his wounded ear.

"By this same token of the royal seal," replied the palmer, and he held out to the lad a golden signet-ring, "the which I was to show to whomsoever barred my path and crave due entrance to the king for the gray palmer, Conradin."

"So, 't is the queen-mother's signet," said the boy. "There is then no gainsaying thee. Well, good palmer Conradin, thou need'st go no farther. I am the King of Jerusalem."

The palmer started in surprise. "Give me no more tricks, boy," he said, sternly.

"Nay, 't is no trick, good palmer," said little Isabelle, in solemn assurance. "This is the king."

The palmer saw that the little maid spoke truly, but he seemed still full of wonder, and, grasping the young king's shoulder, he held him off at arm's length and looked him over from head to foot.

"Thou the king!" he exclaimed. "Thou that Baldwin of Jerusalem whom men do call the hero of the Jordan, the paladin of the Sepulchre, the young conqueror of Bostra? Thou – a boy!"

"It ill beseemeth me to lay claim to hero and paladin," said young King Baldwin, modestly. "But know, sir pilgrim, that I am as surely King Baldwin of Jerusalem as thou art the palmer Conradin. What warrant, then, hast thou, gray palmer though thou be, to lay such heavy hands upon the king?" And he strove to free himself from the stranger's grasp.

But the palmer caught him round the neck with a strong embrace. "What warrant, lad?" he exclaimed heartily. "Why, the warrant of a brother, good my lord. Thousands of leagues have I travelled to seek and succor thee. Little brother of Jerusalem, here am I known only as a gray palmer at the holy shrines, but from the Rhine to Ratisbon and Rome am I hailed as Conrad, King of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor!"

It was now the boy's turn to start in much surprise. "Thou the great emperor – and in palmer's garb?" he said. "Where, then, are thy followers, valiant Conrad?"

"Six thousand worn and weary knights camp under the shadow of Acre's walls," replied the emperor, sadly, "the sole remains of that gallant train of close on ninety thousand knights who followed the banner of the Cross from distant Ratisbon. Greek traitors and Arab spears have slain the rest, and I am come, a simple pilgrim, to do deep penance at the holy shrines, and thereafter to help thee, noble boy, in thy struggles 'gainst the Saracen."

"And the King of France?" asked Baldwin.

"King Louis is even now at Antioch, with barely seven thousand of his seventy thousand Frankish knights," the emperor replied. "The rest fell, even as did mine, by Greek craft, by shipwreck, and by Infidel device."