The army of Philip, the French king, made up of barons, bishops, and knights, clad in steel, and a large body of foot-soldiers sent by sixteen free cities and towns, gained a complete victory. It was one of the most memorable contests of the Middle Ages, for on that hard-fought field three great branches of the Teutonic race--German, Flemish, and English--went down before the furious onset of “hostile blood and speech.” Lords, clergy, and Common People fought side by side against a foreign foe, and henceforth were united by a common bond of pride. It was the hardy yeomanry of Edward, the Black Prince, who won the battle of Crecy (1346), at the beginning of the Hundred Years’ War, against three times as many Frenchmen. It was in 1598 that Henry IV. issued the Edict of Nantes, which secured to the long and bitterly persecuted Huguenots the rights they demanded. It marked a new era in history. It was the first formal recognition of toleration in religion made by any leading power of Europe, and anticipated a similar act in England by nearly a century. The king saw what all have since come to see, that freedom of conscience is one of the surest guarantees of national strength. Henry IV. of France was essentially the people’s king. He was popular with the masses to the same extent that Louis XV. was unpopular. To the Common People in France, Henry IV. represented as much democracy in that age of tyranny as Abraham Lincoln and Grover Cleveland do in a better age and country. Henry was murdered on the streets of Paris by the fanatic Ravaillac, whose dagger inflicted an almost mortal wound upon France herself. With the aid of Richelieu, the absolute power of the crown was built up; then followed the despotisms of Louis XIV. and Louis XV.; the revocation of the Edict of Nantes; the disastrous failure of the Mississippi Scheme; the struggle between England and France for mastery in the New World, and the complete triumph of the former, and the preparation for the awful revolution of 1789. France had materially and powerfully assisted the American colonies in their struggle with Great Britain for independence. Many illustrious sons of France, like Lafayette and Rochambeau, had joined and fought side by side with those sons of liberty who were then creating the great republic of America. America was a storehouse of freedom, liberty, and concentrated hate of “caste” and class distinction, from whence Frenchmen like Lafayette carried to France the spirit of freedom. It may fairly be said that the struggle on this continent lighted the torch of liberty which has illuminated the world since, torn Spain’s oppressed colonies in America from her grasp, and made possible the existence of the French Republic, which has now taken its place among the most powerful nations of the earth.