s to oppose the King of England. So, John and the French
King went to war about Arthur.

He was a handsome boy, at that time only twelve years, old. He was not
born when his father, Geoffrey, had his brains trampled out at the
tournament; and, beside the misfortune of never having known a father's
guidance and protection, he had the additional misfortune to have a
foolish mother (Constance by name), lately married to her third husband.
She took Arthur, upon John's accession, to the French King, who pretended
to be very much his friend, and made him a knight, and promised him his
daughter in marriage; but, who cared so little about him in reality, that
finding it his interest to make peace with King John for a time, he did so
without the least consideration for the poor little Prince, and
heartlessly sacrificed all his interests.

Young Arthur, for two years afterward, lived quietly; and in the course of
that time his mother died. But, the French King then finding it his
interest to quarrel with King John again, again made Arthur his pretense,
and invited the orphan boy to court. "You know your rights, Prince," said
the French King, "and you would like to be a king. Is it not so?" "Truly,"
said Prince Arthur, "I should greatly like to be a King!" "Then," said
Philip, "you shall have two hundred gentlemen who are knights of mine, and
with them you shall go to win back the provinces belonging to you, of
which your uncle, the usurping King of England, has taken possession. I
myself, meanwhile, will head a force against him in Normandy." Poor Arthur
was so flattered and so grateful, that he signed a treaty with the crafty
French King, agreeing to consider him his superior Lord, and that the
French King should keep for himself whatever he could take from King John.

Now, King John was so bad in all ways, and King Philip was so perfidious,
that Arthur, between the two, might as well have been a lamb between a fox
and a wolf. But, being so young, he was ardent and flushed with hope; and,
when the people of Brittany (which was his inheritance) sent him five
hundred more knights and five thousand foot soldiers, he believed his
fortune was made. The people of Brittany had been fond of him from his
birth, and had requested that he might be called Arthur, in remembrance of
that dimly-famous English Arthur, of whom I told you early in this book,
whom they believed to have been the brave friend and companion of an old
king of their o