In an hour which did not prove propitious to France, a resolution was adopted to invade England at both ends. Even before the truce was at an end, the forges of Henault and Picardy were hard at work making battle-axes; and all along the coast, from Harfleur to Sluys, there was busy baking of biscuits and purveyance of provender. Early in spring an expedition of a thousand men-at-arms, with their followers, put to sea under John of Vienne, the Admiral of France, and arrived at Leith, making a voyage which must have been signally prosperous, if we may judge by the insignificance of the chief casualty on record concerning it. In those days, as in the present, it appears that adventurous young gentlemen on shipboard were apt to attempt feats for which their land training did not adapt them—in nautical phrase, “to swing on all top ropes.” A hopeful youth chose to perform such a feat in his armour, and with the most natural of all results. “The knight was young and active, and, to show his agility, he mounted aloft by the ropes of his ship, completely armed; but his feet slipping he fell into the sea, and the weight of his armour, which sank him instantly, deprived him of any assistance, for the ship was soon at a distance from the place where he had fallen.” The expedition soon found itself to be a mistake. In fact, to send fighting men to Scotland was just to supply the country with that commodity in which it superabounded. The great problem was how to find food for the stalwart sons of the soil, and arms to put in their hands when fighting was necessary. A percentage of the cost and labour of the expedition, spent in sending money or munitions of war, would have done better service. The scene before the adventurers was in lamentable contrast to all that custom had made familiar to them. There were none of the comfortable chateaux, the abundant markets, the carpets, down beds, and rich hangings which gladdened their expeditions to the Low Countries, whether they went as friends or foes. Nor was the same place for _them_ in Scotland, which the Scots so readily found in France, where a docile submissive peasantry only wanted vigorous and adventurous masters. “The lords and their men,” says Froissart, “lodged themselves as well as they could in Edinburgh, and those who could not lodge there were quartered in the different villages thereabout. Edinburgh, notwithstanding that it is the residence of the king, and is the Paris of Scotland, is not such a town as Tournay and Valenciennes, for there are not in the whole town four thousand houses. Several of the French lords were therefore obliged to take up their lodgings in the neighbouring villages, and at Dunfermline, Kelso, Dunbar, Dalkeith, and in other towns.” When they had exhausted the provender brought with them, these children of luxury had to endure the miseries of sordid living, and even the pinch of hunger. They tried to console themselves