It would be endless to detail all those marvels which Chivalry at various times effected; nor have I space to dwell upon Crecy, or Poitiers, or Agincourt. With respect to those great battles, where England was so eminently triumphant, it is sufficient to point out the extraordinary fact, that though the glory rested with the British, no disgrace attached to their enemies. Each knight in the French armies did every thing that personal valour could do to win the field; and the honour to England consists not so much in having conquered, as in having conquered such opponents. For long, however, it appears that the French commanders were inferior to the English in skill, and that their forces were destitute of that unity which alone secures success. At length, the son of a nobleman of Brittany, who had been much neglected in his early years, began to make head against the English. From his infancy Bertrand Duguesclin had shown the most persevering passion for arms, which had been always repressed; till at a tournament--from the neighbourhood of which he had been purposely sent away--he appeared in disguise, defeated all that encountered him, and was only discovered by refusing to meet his own father. From that hour Duguesclin rose in the estimation of the world; and after opposing, with considerable success, Edward the Black Prince himself, on the death of that noble commander he delivered the greater part of France from the domination of the English. One of the favourite schemes of Duguesclin was to restore to Chivalry its ancient simplicity, and he strove by every means to enforce the more severe and salutary laws by which it had been originally governed. Of course, an institution which had vast privileges and obligations was not without rewards and punishments; and many of these were revived by Duguesclin after he had become Constable of France.