the castle of Fongeray, looking round at the distant country and the woods, to see what was doing. For a minute this watchman thought he saw a suspicious number of men standing at the edge of the forest, and he rang his alarmbell to warn the soldiers of the garrison that strangers were coming. But Bertrand had very soon recalled all his men into the wood, so that the watchman could not see them; and the alarm given was supposed to have originated in a mistake. Under shelter of the wood, Bertrand divided his men into four small parties, and came forward himself with only fifteen men. When they arrived at the gate of the town with their faggots, the porter thought they were really woodmen, and let down the drawbridge for them to pass over.

Bertrand came first in his white smockfrock. He threw his heavy load of wood down upon the bridge in order to stop up the way, then drew his sword and struck down the poor gate-keeper, calling out at the same time, "Guesclin! Guesclin!" as a signal to his men to make haste. They ran up, got into the gateway, and waited there till the other three

parties arrived. Even then they were but sixty against two hundred English soldiers, who were in the town, besides all the inhabitants, men, women and children, who flung heavy stones upon their heads from the tops of the houses if they stepped forward into the street. Bertrand made his way to a small open place where there was a pound for sheep, and there he set himself with his back against a wall, where no stones could reach him, and with a heavy battle-axe, after his sword was broken, defended himself against the English; they were, as I have said, but sixty against two hundred, and at least half of the sixty were obliged to stay in the gateway, and the rooms above it, to guard the portcullis, so that no enemy might get at the chain to unwind it and let down the iron gate, and so shut them out or shut them in as it might be. Two hundred, then, against sixty! The difference was too great, and Bertrand must soon have been tired out and taken prisoner, or killed, for ten Englishmen were attacking him at once. But just at this moment a party of the Countess of Blois' friends came by; those of Bertrand's men, who were station

28

THE CIVIL WARS OF BRITANY.

ed at the gate, saw and recognised them as friends, and loudly called to them for aid. The new-comers no sooner heard that Bertrand was in danger, than they galloped in and rescued him. It was quite time; he had lost his battleaxe, and was fighting with his fists. But these fresh soldiers rode straight up to the English who were striking at him, and drove them away. Nor was that all; for their arrival rendering the numbers of the two parties more equal, the partisans of Jane now expelled the English from Fongeray, after which the new-comers stayed to keep possession of the castle, while Bertrand went back to his woods.

THE Countess de Montfort had obtained the assistance she sought from Edward III. and the Breton war, in which the Kings of France and England were engaged on opposite sides, lasted, with some intervals of truce, upwards of twenty years. In 1356, John of Gaunt or Ghent, Duke of Lancaster, with a considerable English army, laid siege to the town of Rennes, then in the possession of the party of de Blois.

The Earl of Pembroke, Robert Knowles, and the good John Chandos, who was to be the instructor and guide of the English duke, were with him at this siege, as also many of the neighbouring Breton barons, helping to do

mischief to their own town, and the duke made a vow that he would never go from before the walls until he had planted his standard upon them. He therefore immediately began digging a mine under these walls. A mine is a secret passage under ground, leading to a sort of cave where the miners place barrels of gunpowder, and then come away, strewing gunpowder in a line all along the passage. This line is called the train. When the miners are sufficiently out of danger, and gone back into the open air, they set fire to the train, and so to the barrels, — the barrels explode, the ground above trembles and falls in, as in an earthquake, and most likely the wall and buildings above are thrown down.

Whilst the digging of the mine, by which John of Gaunt hoped to take Rennes, was in progress, the English army slept in tents, in their camp in the fields. Almost every night they were disturbed by attacks, made in the dark, by people who came to the gates of the palisade that were set up round the camp as a defence, and broke them down or clambered over them, killing or driving away the sentinels,