[72] Such plunderings were common enough, though the best knightly sentiment was against participating directly in them. Says a bard, Geraud de Borneil, "O fie on the knight who drives off a flock of bleating sheep--and then appears before a lady!" [73] These prisoners were lucky if they finally escaped without at least mutilation. To "give your captives (of villein blood) the empty sleeve or the wooden leg" seems to have been direfully common in feudal wars. [74] Similar taunts were delivered at the well-known siege of Carcasonne in 1240. Chapter XV: A Great Feudal Battle--Bouvines. So ended the feud between St. Aliquis and Foretvert--a less exhausting and more decisive baronial war than were many, and causing correspondingly less misery to the helpless peasants. But it has also been Conon's fortune to fight in a really great battle, one that will hereafter be set down among the most famous engagements in the annals of France. It is a sunny afternoon. Young François and Anseau have wearied of hunting frogs beside the outer moat. Under the garden trees, Sire Eustace, tough old warrior, is meditating over a pot of hippocras. They demand of him once more the story of "the battle." For them there is only one battle--Bouvines. The seneschal, ever the slave of his youthful masters, after suitable urgings, begins. "Now you must know, my fair damoisieux, that all this took place six years since, in the year 1214, upon the seven-and-twentieth day of July. For our sins it was extremely hot that season, so that all of us have, I trust, obtained some remission from purgatory. God grant that next time we have a great battle it be in the pleasant spring or autumn, though otherwise the saints showed to us French a great mercy. But now to commence. "That year King John of England, having, by his evil rule and folly lost nearly all his Anjou and Norman lands to our good King Philip, sent large money and skillful ambassadors into Flanders and Germany to stir up trouble. The great counts of Flanders and Boulogne nursed grievances against their liege lord our king, and to them joined many other seigneurs of those parts, notably the Dukes of Brabant and Limburg, the Count of Holland, and chiefest of all the German Emperor Otto IV himself, who came with a huge levy of Saxons. With those rode the English Earl of Salisbury with a great band of Flemish mercenaries who took King John's ill-gained penny. Never since Duke Charles Martel smote back the Paynym had so terrible a host menaced our gentle France; and when at last, in July, the whole array under Emperor Otto came together at Valenciennes to take the road to Paris, even brave knights trembled for the king and kingdom.