lect, he would shrug and say, 'Yes.
But he is a fool.' Insufficient answer: he did not see or did not choose
to see that there are two sorts of fools. Stranded on his peak, one man
might be fool enough to stop there, another to try a descent. Prince
John (no fool either) was of this second quality. How he tried to get
down, and where else he tried to go, will be made clear in time. You and
I must go to the war in the west.

War showed Count Richard entered into his birthright. As a strategist he
was superb, the best of his time. What his eye took in his mind snapped
up--like a steel gin. And his eye was the true soldier's eye,
comprehending by signs, investing with life what was tongueless else.
Over great stretches of barren country--that limitless land of
France--he could see massed men on the move; creeping forward in snaky
columns, spread fanwise from clump to woody clump; here camping snugly
under the hill, there lining the river bluffs with winged death; checked
here, helped there by a moraine--as well as you or I may foresee the
conduct of a chess-board. He omitted nothing, judged times and seasons,
reckoned defences at their worth, knew all the fordable places by the
lie of the land, timed cavalry and infantry to rendezvous, forestalled
communications, provided not only for his own base, but against the
enemy's. All this, of course, without maps, and very much against the
systems of his neighbours. It was thus he had outwitted the heady barons
of Aquitaine when little more than a lad, and had turned the hill forts
into death-traps against their tenants. He had the secret of swift
marching by night, of delivering assault upon assault, so that while you
staggered under one blow you received another full. He could be as
patient as Death, that inchmeal stalker of his prey; he could be as
ruthless as the sea, and incredibly generous upon occasion. To the men
he led he was a father, known and beloved as such; it was as a ruler
they found him too lonely to be loved. In war he was the very footboy's
friend. Personally, when the battles joined, he was rash to a fault; but
so blithe, so ready, and so gracefully strong, that to think of wounds
upon so bright a surface was an impiety. No one did think of them: he
seemed to play with danger as a cat with whirling leaves. 'I have seen
him,' Milo writes somewhere, 'ride into a serry of knights, singing,
throwing up and catching again his great sword Gaynpayn; then, all of a
su