The women of the town seem to have borne an Amazonian part in the defence of their hearths and homes, for we learn that they fought stoutly, “using slings with dire effect, so that many of the invaders, both knights and common men fell beneath their missiles into the said ditch.” These and many others were summarily killed by the men, who appear to have given no quarter even if it were asked. On this occasion as on many others the men of Devon proved themselves as well able to defend their homes and possessions as to ravage and take those of other people, and the French, after losing upwards of 400 killed and wounded, and leaving another 200 or so of their comrades prisoners in the hands of the Dartmouth folk, were compelled to seek refuge in their ships as best they could, and ultimately to abandon the idea of attacking other towns on the coast, and return to their own shores. Scarcely a year elapsed, however, ere the Bretons were back again, and this time, unhappily for the men of the Dart, the news of their coming did not precede them. Dartmouth was surprised, an entrance was forced, the town burned, and many--both men and women--were slain. Thus, in the stirring times of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, ebbed and flowed the fortune of piratical warfare between the hereditary foes of the sea-coasts of Brittany and Devon. But Dartmouth men and Dartmouth ships were never idle, nor were they always engaged upon mere filibustering expeditions. In the hearts of Devon seamen the flame of patriotism has ever burned, and so on more than one occasion they came in the nick of time to the aid of England, and embarked upon enterprises of national, not merely personal, significance and importance. It was so half a century before the expeditions to Brittany, which brought about the descent of Du Chastel and his force. Then, in 1385, after the death of Edward III and his warlike son Edward the Black Prince, the French were planning one of the periodical invasions of England, which on a grand scale were always doomed to failure, and the English admirals and generals seemed to have become indifferent, or were, perhaps, worn out by the long years of fruitless fighting in Guienne, Poitou, and Brittany. It was then that the Dartmouth men gathered their ships together, and regardless of treaties or the lack of national support, swept up the Channel, forced their way into the mouth of the Seine, where the French fleet was being brought together, and preparations for the invasion were going on, attacked the enemy, sank several of the ships, and carried off with them back to Dartmouth four others, including, Walsingham tells us, a knight’s barge, filled with spoil rich enough to satisfy the greediest freebooter. This undertaking of Dartmouth folk was of national importance; although such events were usually much more of the nature of merchants’ speculations or piracy, which seldom failed to bring about retribution from the equally bold and enterprising