ish king a sportsman (a rarer occurrence).

But clever as Chesterton is in regard to this particular story, the
ordinary schoolboy would do better to stick to the common tale of Becket
that came on the hasty words spoken by a hasty king; he will better
understand the significance of the whipping of the king when he can read
history back to the days when kings could not only not be whipped, but
could whip whom they chose, and put men's eyes out when they used them
to shoot at the king's deer.

A great part of the Middle Ages is concerned with the French wars, those
wars that staggered the English exchequer and made the English kings
leaders of armies. The reason of these wars was, Chesterton tells us,
the fact that Christianity was a very local thing. It was more--it was a
national thing that was bound up with England. 'Men began to feel that
foreigners did not eat or drink like Christians,' which is to say that
the Englishman began his contempt for the foreigner which has resulted
in nearly all our wars, and has made the Englishman abroad a
supercilious creature, and has made the English schoolboy put his tongue
out at the French master.

The French wars were something more than a national hatred, they were a
national dislike of foreigners, a dislike that had its probable origin
in the Tower of Babel. But this was not the only reason of the incessant
French wars--there was a question of policy. France began to be a
nation, and 'a true patriotic applause hailed the later victory of
Agincourt.' France had become something more than a nation; it had
become a religion, because it had as its figure a simple girl who
believed in voices, and took her part in the struggles of a defeated
country.

Chesterton's chapter is a fine understanding of the French wars; it is
an amplification of the mere skeletons of ordinary history, and as such
is very valuable.

From being a reasonable national dislike, the French wars 'gradually
grew to be almost as much a scourge to England as they were to France.'
'England was despoiled by her own victories; luxury and poverty
increased at the extremes of society, and the balance of the better
mediaevalism was lost.' It resulted in the revolt connected with Wat
Tyler, a revolt that 'was not only dramatic but was domestic'; it ended
in the death of Tyler and the intervention of the boy king, who, in
swaying the multitude that was a dangerous mob, 'gives us a fleeting and
final glimpse of the c