alleged homage to Edward was at this time rendered; that the fact was positively denied by Montfort himself, and by his other historians; and furthermore, that the descent to the female line is very questionable in any French province or principality, the Salique law, adverse to the succession of females, prevailing in that country.

Be this, however, as it may, the princes and peers of France, considering that the dispute between the rival claimants had resolved itself into a question between the rival crowns of France and England, which it virtually had, espoused to a man the party of Charles of Blois.

Thereupon, the Dukes of Normandy, of Alençon, of Burgundy, of Bourbon, the Lord Lewis of Spain, the Constable of France, the Count de Blois, and the Viscount de Rohan, with all the princes and barons present, undertook to maintain the rights of Charles; entered Brittany with powerful forces; and, after some sharp fighting, shut the Count of Montfort up in Nantes, where he was shortly afterwards delivered to the enemy, not without suspicion of treachery on the part of Sir Hervè de Léon, his late chief adviser, whom he had blamed severely for retreating too readily into the city, before the troops of Charles. de Blois.

John de Montfort hereupon nearly disappears from history; Froissart supposing that he died a prisoner in the tower of the Louvre. But it appears that, after three years' confinement, he made good his escape to England, and then, not before, did homage to Edward; who aided him with a force under William de Bohun, Earl of Northampton, to recover his duchy, which his sudden death, after an unsuccessful attempt on Quimperlè, finally prevented. This is, however, in anticipation of the current of history, and more especially of those events which it is my purpose to illustrate in this sketch; for, from the very

moment of his capture, the affairs, both civil and military, of the duchy were administered with the most distinguished energy, ability, and success by his wife, sister of Lewis Count of Flanders, a race noble and brave by descent and nature, "the Countess of Montfort, who possessed the courage of a man and the heart of a lion."

"She was in the city of Rennes," says her historian, “when she heard of the seizure of her lord; and, notwithstanding the great grief she had at heart, she did all she could to reanimate her friends and soldiers. Showing them a young child, called John, after his father, she said, 'Oh, gentlemen, do not be castdown for what we have suffered by the loss of my lord; he I was but one man. Look at my little child here; if it please God, he shall be his restorer, and shall do you much service. I have plenty of wealth, which I will distribute among you, and will seek out for such a leader as may give you a proper confidence.' When the Countess had, by these means, encouraged her friends and soldiers at Rennes, she visited all the other towns and fortresses, taking her young son John with her. She addressed and encouraged them in the same manner as she had done at Rennes. She strengthened her garrisons both with men and provisions, paid handsomely for everything, and gave largely wherever she thought it would have a good effect. She then went to Hennebon, near the sea, where she and her son remained all that winter, frequently visiting her garrisons, whom she encouraged and paid liberally."

Truly a noble woman-a true wife, a true mother, a true princess of her principality--she sought no woman's rights, but did a woman's duty-her duty as her absent husband's representative-her duty as her orphaned son's protectress-her duty as her unsovereigned people's sovereign lady. Nobility

and circumstance obliged her; and nobly she discharged her

obligation.

Much as I contemn women whom a morbid craving after notoriety and excitement urges to grasp the attire, the arms, the attributes of the other sex; in the same degree do I honor, in the same degree admire and laud, the true-hearted woman, the true heroine, who not forcing or assailing, but obeying the claims of her nature, compels her temper to put on strength instead of softness, steels herself to do what she shrinks from doing, not because she arrogates the power of doing it better than the man could do it, but because she has no man to whom she might confide the doing of it.

The hen fighting the sparrow-hawk careless of self for her defenceless brood, is a spectacle beautiful to behold, filling every heart with genuine sympathy, because her act itself is genuine; is part and parcel of her sex, her circumstances, her maternity; in a word, is the act of the God of nature. The hen gaffed and cropped and fighting mains against the males of her own family in the beastly and bloody cock-pit, is a spectacle that would make the lowest frequenter of such vile arenas shudder with disgust, would wring from his lips an honest cry of shame.

Margaret of Anjou, in Hexham forest awing the bandit into submission by the undaunted royalty of her maternal eyethe Countess of Montfort, reanimating her faint-hearted garrisons, even by donning steel harness for "her young child John" -Elizabeth of England, a-horse at Tilbury, for her Protestantism and her people-Maria Theresa, waving her sabre from the guarded mount to the four quarters of heaven in the maintenance of her kingdom and her cause-Marie Antoinette of France, defying her accusers at the misnamed judgment seat, fearless of her butchers at the guillotine-these are the true

types of nature, the true types of their sex, the true heroines, mastering the weakness of their sexual nature, through the might of their maternal nature—these are the hens championing their broods against the falcon.

But of this day of cant and fustian, the man-women, not heroines, called by no duty to the attire or the attributes of men, but panting indelicately for the notoriety, the fierce, passionate excitement of the political, nay! for aught that appears, of the martial arena-these are the hens, if they could but see themselves as they see effeminate, unsexed men, gaffed and cropped and fed to do voluntary battle in the sinks and slaughterhouses of humanity, against the gamecocks of their species.

The Lady Macbeths of a falser period, who fancy that, by proving themselves so much less the woman, they can shine out so much more the man.

"But I wish now to return," with my old friend Froissart, "to the Countess de Montfort, who possessed the courage of a man, and the heart of a lion," and I will add-the soul, the instincts, and the excellence of a true woman.

During the winter succeeding the seizure of her lord, and the treason of Sir Hervè de Léon, who had attached himself to the Count de Blois, she remained peacefully occupied in Hennebon, in the education of her young child John; and how she educated him was seen in his after career, as a knight valorous and gentle, a prince beloved and popular.

But with the summer there came strife and peril, and protection became paramount to everything beside.

During the winter, while the Countess de Montfort lay tranquil in Hennebon, the Count Charles de Blois lay as tranquilly in Nantes, which—as I have before related—had been treasonably surrendered to him by Sir Hervè de Léon and the citizens

of the place. But now that the fair weather had returned, that the swallows were disporting themselves in the summer air, the cuckoos calling by the river-sides, now that armies. could hold themselves in the fields with plenty of all sorts around them, he summoned to him all those great princes of the royal blood, and all the noble barons and valiant knights who had fought with him in the last campaign. And, mindful of their promises, they drew all their forces to a head, and came with a great array of spears of France, and Genoese cross-bowmen, and Spanish men-at-arms, under the leading of the Lord Lewis d'Espagne, to re-conquer for him all that remained unconquered of the fair land of Brittany.

During the last year the strong Castle of Chateauceux had been won by them by sheer dint of arms, and Nantes, the capital of the province, by the vileness of the traitor Hervé de Léon; the next strongest place to these was the city of Rennes, which had been put into complete readiness for war by its late lord, and further fortified by the countess, who had intrusted it to Sir William de Cadoudal, a brave Breton knight, and in all probability an ancestor of the no less valiant George, of the same patronymic, the great Vendean chief and victim of Napoleon, co-murdered with the princely Duc d'Enghien.

This town the French lords surrounded on all sides, and assailed it with fierce and continual skirmishes at the barricades, and wrought it much damage by the persistency of their onslaughts; but still the defenders defended themselves so valiantly, resolute not to lose their liege-lady's city, that the besiegers lost more than they gained-for many lives were lost on both sides, but far most on the French part; and yet more wounded-nor could they amend it anything; nor win a tower, nor force a gate, though they made assaults daily, and plied the walls from mighty engines, with great store of artillery.