that the bridge broke under them “and the king of France drank of the river, and twenty of his knights were drowned.” Such scenes, however, are only the striking episodes in a series of campaigns which are confused and complicated and do not lend themselves to clear narration. Decisive engagements were rare, each side seeking rather to wear out the other. Money was spent freely for allies and mercenaries--a contemporary called the struggle one between the pound sterling and the pound of Tours, and the advantage was on the side of the pounds sterling by reason of their greater number. There was usually a campaign in the spring and summer, ending in a truce in the autumn which the church tried to prolong into a lasting peace but which soon broke down in a new war. The wars were for the most part border forays, in which the country was burned and wasted far and wide, to the injury chiefly of the peasants, upon whom the burden of mediæval warfare mainly fell. “First destroy the land, then the enemy,” was the watchword. Booty and ransom were the object as well as military advantages, so that even the contests between knights had their sordid side, so definitely were they directed toward taking profitable prisoners; while feudal notions of honor might cause Richard to put out the eyes of fifteen prisoners and send them to Philip under the guidance of one of their number who had been left one eye, whereupon Philip blinded an equal number of knights and sent them to Richard under the guidance of the wife of one of them, “in order,” says his eulogist,[44] “that no one should think he was afraid of Richard or inferior to him in force and courage.”