the French in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, is plain enough to any one who has studied the
history of the people, though it may be incomprehensible to those who
have only studied the history of courts and armies. It arose from the
growing freedom of the British. Before the introduction of firearms,
the great dependence of an army was generally in the men-at-arms, as
they were called, or the knights and others who were sheathed in plate
armour, mounted on strong horses, and provided with costly weapons.
The knight and his horse were like a movable fortification; the
peasantry or serfs who went along with them to battle, half-naked and
half-fed, with rude and trifling arms, were looked upon as mere dross
in comparison with the men-at-arms. One man-at-arms was considered
equal to ten or even twenty of them; and when knights were not engaged
in encountering each other, it was deemed as a sort of amusement for a
few of them, with their heavy horses and armour, to ride down
multitudes of these abject serfs.

So it was in the rest of Europe, but not in England. The English
bowman, or billman, who carried a large axe or bill, was a strong,
healthy, well-fed man; and though he had not perfect freedom,
according to our modern acceptation of the term, he had an existence
worth struggling for, and not entirely at the command of an imperious
lord. Hence he was sometimes not much inferior, as a combatant, to the
mail-clad man-at-arms. Now, at the battle of Crecy, the French, though
the wretched serfs were so numerous, had only about 8000 men-at-arms;
and though the English had not a third of that number of the higher
kind of warriors, yet they had nearly 30,000 sturdy bowmen and
billmen. A characteristic illustration of the contempt with which the
poor slaves were viewed occurred in that very battle. A party of
cross-bowmen hesitated to advance--they felt tired, the fatigue of the
march being beyond their strength. On this, the Count of Alencon cried
out: 'Kill the lazy scoundrels!' A number of the men-at-arms rushed in
among them, to chastise them, and this produced a confusion which
assisted the English to their victory.

From these battles, and a multitude of other sources, we can see the
great superiority, in freedom and condition of living, of the humbler
class in England over that in France; and yet, at the same time, it is
difficult in the nineteenth century to believe in the extent of
tyranny exercised, down to a