File:A popular history of France - from the earliest times (1870) (14801046783).jpg

Identifier: popularhistoryof02guiz (find matches)
Title: A popular history of France : from the earliest times
Year: 1870 (1870s)
Authors: Guizot, M. (François), 1787-1874
Subjects:
Publisher: Boston : D. Estes and C.E. Lauriat
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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ybed; but you shall not get me. He set himself againsta wall to be in surety from behind, and defended himselfmanfully with his good axe and his great heart. The Englishassailed him, burning to slay or to take him ; but he resistedthem so wondrously, that he brought down five much woundedto the ground, and the other seven took to flight. Big Ferre,returning in triumph to his bed, and heated again by the blowshe had dealt, again drank cold water in abundance, and fellsick of a more violent fever. A few days afterwards, sinkingunder his sickness, and after having received the holy sacra-ments, Big Ferre went out of this world, and was buried inthe burial-place of his own village. All his comrades andhis country wept for him bitterly, for, so long as he lived,the English would not have come nigh this place. There is probably some exaggeration about the exploits ofBig Ferre* and the number of his victims. The story just quotedis not, however, a legend; authentic and simple, it has all the
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BIG FERRE. — Page 37G. Chap. XXII.) THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR. 377 characteristics of a real and true fact, just as it was pickedup, partly from eye-witnesses and partly from hearsay, by thecontemporary narrator. It is a faithful picture of the internalstate of the French nation in the fourteenth century ; a nationin labor of formation, a nation whose elements, as yet scatteredand incohesive, though under one and the same name, werefermenting each in its own quarter and independently of therest, with a tendency to mutual coalescence in a powerful unity,but, as yet, far from succeeding in it. Externally, King Charles V. had scarcely easier work beforehim. Between himself and his great rival, Edward III., Kingof England, there was only such a peace as was fatal and hatefulto France. To escape some day from the treaty of Bre*tigny,and recover some of the provinces which had been lost by it —this was what king and country secretly desired and labored for.Pending a favorable opportunity fo

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