Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/372

The Donjon

is given by Guillaume le Breton as "Snubby"!—Bogis, in the French of the time. But Snubby, a Gascon esquire, was a valorous gentleman who accomplished at the imminent risk of his life a very gallant deed. Prowling by night beneath the walls of the castle, he found the opening and perceived its possibilities. Four men as brave as himself joined with him in his adventure. In the darkness, climbing on their shoulders, he made his entry; and with a rope pulled them up after him. Together the five made their way into the crypt of the chapel: where—banging with their sword-hilts on the outer door, and all shouting at the tops of their voices—they raised such a hubbub as to convince the besieged that an entry in force had been effected. Acting precipitately upon this hastily formed erroneous conjecture, the garrison of the outer court set fire to the buildings and retreated to the citadel: whereupon Bogis and his companions came out through the flames and opened the gate for the entry of the French army. Truly, in spite of its queerness, that was a very splendid feat of arms. Virtually it ended the siege. A little later the surrender came.

Mr. Green has summed the result of that great year of battling, and I prefer—lest I should seem to be lured by my enthusiasm into an overestimate of its importance—to quote his authoritative words. The failure of the attempt to relieve the castle was followed, he writes, "by the utter collapse of the military system by which the Angevins held Normandy; John's treasury was exhausted, and his mercenaries passed over to the foe. The King's despairing appeal to the Duchy itself came too late; its nobles were already treating with Philip, and the towns were incapable of resisting the siege-train of the French. It was despair of any aid from Normandy that drove John oversea to seek it as fruitlessly from England; but with the fall of