[[A.D. 1357.]] In 1357 the English gained a grand victory at Poictiers, and the Black Prince returned with many prisoners. Among them was one Bertrand Du Guesclin. One day when Queen Philippa was entertaining at her court a number of the noble French prisoners, the Prince of Wales proposed that Du Guesclin should name his own ransom, adding that whatever sum he mentioned should set him free. The warrior named a hundred thousand crowns. The Prince of Wales was astonished at such a sum, and asked how he could raise it. "I know a hundred knights," replied Du Guesclin, "in my native Bretagne, who would mortgage their last acre rather than have me languish in captivity or be rated below my value. Yea, and there is not a woman in France now toiling with her distaff who would not devote a year's earnings to liberate me, for well have I deserved of their sex. And if all the fair spinners of France employ their hands to redeem me, think you, prince, that I shall abide much longer with you?" Queen Philippa, who had listened to this conversation {231} [Illustration: 0235] {233}with great attention, now spoke: "I name," she said, "fifty thousand crowns, my son, as my contribution towards your gallant prisoner's ransom; for though an enemy to my husband, a knight who is famed for the courteous protection he has afforded to my sex deserves the assistance of every woman." Du Guesclin threw himself at the feet of the generous queen, saying: "Ah, lady, being the ugliest knight in France, I never reckoned on any goodness from your sex excepting those whom I protected with my sword, but your bounty will make me think less despicably of myself." Philippa, like all great women, honored those men who paid most reverence to her own sex. After a lingering illness, she sent for the king one day when she knew that death was approaching. Taking his hand in her own, she asked him to grant her three requests. He promised in advance with tears rolling down his cheeks. "My lord," she said, "I beg you will fulfil whatever engagements I have made with the merchants for their wares, as well on this as on the other side of the sea; I beseech you to fulfil whatever gifts or legacies I have made or left to churches and to all my servants, whether male or female; and when it shall please God to call upon you hence, you will choose no other sepulchre than mine, and that you will lie by my side in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey." The king replied: "Lady, all this shall be done." [[A.D. 1369.]] Shortly after she died, and with her life departed the happiness, good fortune and even respectability of Edward III. and his family. Where Philippa had once promoted virtue, justice and wisdom, scenes of folly, strife and sorrow now followed at court. One of the chroniclers of the time says: "I firmly believe that her spirit was caught by holy angels and carried to the glory of Heaven, for she had never done anything by thought or deed to endanger her soul." {234}