"I could send them a good knight, for I have plenty of them, but would they obey him?"

"Methinks not, sire," Edgar replied, frankly. "Just at present they are so content with themselves that they would assuredly accept no foreign leader, and have indeed but small respect for their own."

The king laughed. "What thought you of them, Sir Ralph?"

"'Tis what might be looked for, your Majesty. It is an army of bourgeois and craftsmen, stout fellows who could doubtless defend their walls against an attack, or might fight stoutly shoulder to shoulder, but they have an over-weening conceit in themselves, and deem that all that is necessary in war is to carry a pike or a pole-axe and use it stoutly. A party of children would do as well, or better, were they set to besiege a town. Leadership there is none. Parties go out to skirmish with the garrison; a few lives are lost, and then they return, well content with themselves. 'Tis a mockery of war!"

The king asked them many questions about the state of things in Flanders, to which they replied frankly that Flanders was united at present, and that they thought that--with five thousand English archers and as many men-at-arms under a commander of such station as would give him authority not only over his own troops but over the Flemings--they might be able to resist the attacks of Burgundy, or even of Burgundy allied with France; but that by themselves, without military leaders, they feared that matters would go ill with the Flemings.