back on Le Mans, swearing
that he would never forsake the citizens of the town where he had
been born.

The French army, however, followed hard after him. On the 9th of June
Philip and Richard halted fifteen miles off Le Mans, on the 11th of June
they encamped under its walls. The next day they broke through the
handful of troops who desperately held the bridge. A wealthy suburb
which could no longer be defended was set on fire, so that it should not
give shelter to the enemy, the wind swept the flames into the city, and
Henry saw himself shut in between the burning town and the advancing
Frenchmen. Then for the first time in his life he turned his back upon
his enemies. At the head of 700 horsemen he rode out over a bridge to
the north, and fled towards Normandy. As he mounted the spur of a hill
two miles off, he turned to look at the flames that rose from the city,
and in the bitterness of his humiliation he cursed God--"The city which
I have loved best on earth, the city in which I was born and bred, where
my father lies buried, where is the body of Saint Julian--this Thou, O
God, to the heaping up of my confusion, and to the increase of my shame,
hast taken from me in this base manner! I therefore will requite as best
I can; I will assuredly rob Thee too of the thing in me which Thou
lovest best!"

For twenty miles the king, with his son Geoffrey the chancellor, and a
few faithful followers, rode furiously under the burning sun through
narrow lanes and broken roads till knights sank and died on the way.
Once he was only saved from capture by the breaking of a bridge over a
stream which was too deep for the pursuers to ford. Once Count Richard
himself followed so hard upon them that he came up with the flying
troop. William the marshal turned and raised his lance. "God's feet,
marshal, do not kill me!" cried Richard; "I have no hauberk!" William
struck his spear into the count's horse, so that it fell dead. "No, I
will not kill you. Let the devil kill you!" he shouted with a fierce
memory of the old prophecy. By nightfall Henry reached La Frenaye,
within a day's ride of the Norman border. He threw himself on a bed,
refusing to be undressed, and would scarcely allow Geoffrey to cover him
with his own cloak. The next morning he sent his friends forward into
Normandy to gather its forces and renew the war. But he himself, in
spite of all prayers and warnings, declared that he would go back to
Anjou. His passionate em