Some of the nobles
expended immense sums upon themselves. In the case of one expedition
that put to sea from the southern coast of England, the nobleman who
commanded it had twenty-five vessels loaded with his own personal
property and baggage, and that of his servants and attendants. This
man had fifty-two new suits of apparel, made of cloth of gold,
immensely expensive. The fleet was wrecked, and all this property was
lost in the sea.

A great many of the expeditions that were fitted out in England were
for the purpose of carrying on wars in Brittany and Aquitaine, in
France, for the benefit exclusively of the nobles and knights who
claimed possessions in those countries; the mass of the people of
England, at whose expense the operations were carried on, having no
interest whatever in the result. The worst of it was, that in these
wars no real progress was made. Towns were taken and castles were
stormed, first by one party and then by the other. The engraving
represents the storming of one of these towns, and, being copied from
an ancient picture, it shows truthfully the kind of armor and the mode
of fighting employed in those days.

[Illustration: STORMING OF A TOWN.]

Almost the only way of forcing a passage into a castle or fortified
town was by climbing over the walls by means of ladders, and
overpowering the garrison upon the top of them by main force, as
represented in the engraving. Sometimes, it is true, the besiegers of
a castle undermined the walls, so as to make them fall in and thus
open a breach. At the present day, mines dug in this way are blown up
by gunpowder. But people were little acquainted with the use of
gunpowder then, and so they were obliged to shore up the walls while
they were digging them by means of posts and beams, and these, after
the miners had withdrawn, were pulled out by ropes, and thus the walls
were made to fall down.

Great engines were sometimes used, too, to batter down the walls of
castles and towns. There was one kind of engine, used by the Duke of
Lancaster in one of his campaigns in France in the early part of
Richard's reign, which was called a _sow_. The sow was made in many
parts, at a distance from the place besieged, wherever a suitable
supply of beams and timber could be obtained, and then was brought on
carts to the spot. When it was framed together and put in operation,
it would hurl immense stones, which, striking the walls, made breaches
in them, or, going o