according to Hume, was five times their number. Arundel was slain and his detachment routed.

Among the prisoners taken, was an English knight named Richard Woodville, and it is on this occasion, I believe, that he makes his début on the page of history. He had fought with blind and misdirected valor in the battle, and so had other knights whose names have not come down to us. His name would not have spanned such a distance had it not been his fate to become the father of the long line of kings referred to in the beginning of this essay; nor is that the only royal line that traces descent from him.

He soon recovered his liberty and entered the personal service of the duke of Bedford as a sort of staff officer, and had frequent occasions to admire the charming duchess. After Bedford's death Sir Richard ventured to lift his eyes to the widowed Jaqueline. Like Borssele he was handsome; and Jaqueline of Luxembourg took a leaf out of the book of Jaqueline of Bavaria, and became the bride of Sir Richard Woodville.

Their daughter was that Elizabeth Woodville, lady Grey who came and knelt before Edward IV. and prayed that he would lift from her and her children the attainder that had fallen upon them because her husband had perished at Saint

Albans, fighting for the House of Lancaster. Edward granted her prayer, fell in love with her and married her. Their daughter was Elizabeth Plantagenet who become the queen of Henry VII.

One more love story is needed to complete the mosaic. Catharine of France widow of Henry V., became enamoured of what one English historian calls "an obscure Welch gentleman named Owen Tudor." This was the gravest misalliance of all. Catharine of Valois, daughter of a king, sister of a king, widow of a king, mother of a king, stooped to be the wife of an obscure country gentleman. Their son Edmund Tudor, married Margaret Beaufort of the Beaufort family already mentioned. The son of Edmund Tudor and Margaret Beaufort was Henry earl of Richmond who seized the crown as the prize of his victory at Bosworth, and then strengthened his claim to it by marrying Elizabeth Plantagenet, Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV. and grand daughter of Jaqueline.

Thus did the blood of Beaufort come to the throne; and thus were Jaqueline of Luxembourg and her true knight the progenitors of the line which Macbeth said would stretch out to the crack of doom.

VALOIS,

BURGUNDY,

BOURBON.

HAPSBURG,

(The italics mark the line of descent.)

Charles-le-temeraire, Charles-the-rash, miscalled by the English, Charles-the-bold, was the last Valois duke of Burgundy. He left an only child Mary of Burgundy who married Maximillian of Hapsburg, afterward emperor. Their son was the Archduke Philip who is counted as Philip the first of Spain though he never reigned. Philip married Joanna daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and sister of Catharine of Aragon wife of Henry VIII. The son of Philip and Joanna was the great emperor Charles-the-fifth who was Charles the first of Spain. The crown of Spain then fell from father to son, to Philip II., Philip III., Philip IV. and Charles II. where the male line of the elder branch of Hapsburg ended. The crown then fell to Philip V. (Bourbon), grandson of Louis XIV. and Maria Teresa eldest daughter of Philip IV.

The younger, the Austrian branch of the House of Hapsburg, is descended from the emperor Ferdinand brother of Charles-the-fifth.

Hoche

MANY years ago I knew a Frenchman whose

father a captain of infantry, had been killed in La Vendée fighting under Hoche. He had many things to tell me about Hoche which interested me in his career, and led me to treasure up in my memory whatever I came across afterwards concerning him.

There was a certain confidential air about the communications of my French friend, which leads me to say to the reader that I trust to his honor not to divulge what I say to him touching the warrior in question.

The French themselves hold that next to Napoleon Bonaparte, the most brilliant soldier thrown to the surface by the revolution, was Lazarus Hoche. This seems too to be the opinion of a writer in the Encylopedia Brittanica who says that the death of Hoche deprived the French people of the only man capable of making head against the ambition of the Corsican. And it still adds force to that view to bear in mind how short a time was allotted him to win immortality he never lived to be thirty.

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In

deed I remember but one general in history who died so young with so high a reputation; and that was that wondrous boy Gaston de Foix nephew of Louis XII., who fell at the age of twenty-three at Ravenna after having there as elsewhere totally overthrown the famous Spanish infantry.

Perhaps some honest reader still callow from the study of John Richard Green, may remind me that that unique historian not only makes the Spanish infantry triumphant at Ravenna, but cites it as their typical exploit. Well, we must be thankful that Mr. Green does not cite the Caudine Forks as the typical exploit of the Roman legions.

Lazarus Hoche was born near Versailles in June 1768. He was the son, not of a common workman as some of the encyclopedias do vainly talk, but of a common soldier, or rather of an uncommon soldier; for his father on account of his uncommonness, was taken from the line and made keeper of the royal kennels at Versailles; and the first useful occupation of the boy, if useful it were, was to help his father in the care of the king's hounds.

Nature had endowed him with a handsome and vigorous body and a precocious intellect. He had a maternal uncle who was curé of Saint Germain-en-laye and a man of some learning.