As a rule the Plantagenets waged these wars with a ferocity which contributed to their failure. But they were not Englishmen; and it is strange that English historians should accept their misdeeds as one element of national glory. Green says they were “English to the core.” Well, there was not one whole drop of insular blood in their veins: there was, to be sure, a fraction of a drop coming from Matilda daughter of the Malcolm of Macbeth and grandmother of the first Plantagenet king; and that was all. They were French Spaniards, and their pedigree was even more enriched with Moorish blood than with English.[7] But there were some honorable exceptions to their usual behavior. The duke of Gloucester youngest son of Edward III. was besieging Troyes. A French knight named Micaille sent a challenge to any English knight to fight with him for the love of his sweetheart. These by-fights were often to settle precedence of beauty between respective sweethearts. A knight no sooner fell in love than he went swaggering about daring every other knight in love or out, to fight; and these combats were often mortal. An Englishman named Fitzwalter accepted the challenge. The lists were held in the English camp. Gloucester who was so learned on the subject of these duels that he wrote a treatise on them which still exists, laid down the rule that the lance should be addressed either to the shield or the helmet and not elsewhere. The Englishman’s horse was unruly and disturbed his aim, so that he took his adversary in the thigh, and inflicted an ugly wound. The duke pronounced the blow a foul one, and adjudged the victory to the Frenchman who had splintered his lance duly and truly against the buckler of his opponent. English surgeons dressed his wound, and English soldiers carried him back with honor to the French garrison. Charles V. married Jane of Bourbon a princess of that youngest branch of the Capetiens which finally came to the throne. His nobles had made an earnest effort to have him instead of his brother Philip, marry Margaret of Flanders. Had he done so, Flanders, Artois and La Franche Comté would have fallen early to the French crown; and the history of the Valois dukes might have been as uninteresting as that of their predecessors the Robertines. It shows of how little account the Bourbons were at that time, that the king’s marriage was looked upon as a sort of misalliance; and the duke of Bourbon Queen Jane’s brother was not admitted to a share in the government because his estates were not considered ample enough. Charles-the-wise died after a reign of sixteen years during which he had found a remedy for all the misrule of his father except the alienation of Burgundy: that was beyond cure; but as Philip was always true to his brother and to France, it was not yet that the evil was apparent.