Red King

“ After elaborate preparations and energetic beginnings, the Red King turns away to something else, often without either any marked success to satisfy him or any marked defeat to discourage him. If he could not carry his point at the first rush, he seems to have lacked steadiness to go on. We have seen what he could do when fighting for his crown at the head of a loyal nation. He does not show in so favourable a light, even as a captain, much less as a man, when he was fighting to gratify a restless ambition at the head of hirelings gathered from every land. ”

“ Reading, in the Chroniclers, the life of the Red King seems like rather reading a series of plots against it, not by the English, who were too thoroughly cowed to make the slightest 105 resistance, but by his own prelates and barons. ”

“ At the Palace gate he left everything lying, went before the King, and asked him to come that length with him, and there handed over to him the hides and horns of the oxen. The King was greatly surprised at his valour, and said he knew no one like him, and thanked him heartily for what he had done.
After this the King set Ring next to himself, and all esteemed him highly, and held him to be a great hero; nor could Red any longer say anything against him, though he grew still more determined to destroy him. ”

“ He is sometimes called the Red King, but more commonly William Rufus. Things went worse than ever with the poor English in his time; for at lest William the Conqueror had made everybody mind the law, but now William Rufus let his cruel soldiers do just as they pleased, and spoil what they did not want. It was of no use to complain, for the king would only laugh and make jokes. He did not care for God or man; only for being powerful, for feasting, and for hunting. ”

“ By whose hand the Red King really fell, and whether that hand despatched the arrow to his breast by accident or by design, is only known to God. Some think his brother may have caused him to be killed; but the Red King had made so many enemies, both among priests and people, that suspicion may reasonably rest upon a less unnatural murderer. Men know no more than that he was found dead in the New Forest, which the suffering people had regarded as a doomed ground for his race. ”

“ In these days the Red King was generosity itself.
Hard by the Inn was the very same tiny hut in which Claribel had lived; and over the fireplace still showed dimly the carved coat of arms and the motto, Noblesse oblige.
When Red Rex saw this, he stood and stared at it a long time, saying nothing. "I used to think that meant 'A King can do no wrong,'" said he at last in a low voice to King Victor. "Now I believe it means, 'A King must do no wrong.'"
"So I too believe," agreed King Victor. "But I would make the motto say still more. Every one can be noble, and a noble must do no wrong." ”

“ The King gives glory to God, and gives orders that it shall be as they wish; nothing shall be done against the castle on either Saturday or Sunday; on Monday the attack shall be made. [707]
We now get a glimpse within the walls. The defenders of Mayet, we are told, were men of proved valour and endurance, faithful to their lord and ready to fight for him to the death. [708] It is worth notice that, through the whole story, the Red King’s favourite arms are never heard of within the bounds of Maine. ”

“ If they prove nothing else, they prove at least the deep impression which the Red King’s life and the Red King’s end made on the men of his own days and of the days which followed them. William at Brockenhurst. ”

“ And without fully taking it in, we shall fail to give him his place in the general history of England, Normandy, and mankind in general. He marks the beginning of a new æra. In William Rufus we have not only to study a very varied and remarkable phase of human nature; we have also to look on a man who marks the beginning of a new age and a new state of feeling.
The Red King has indeed this advantage, that the other parts of his character are so bad that the chivalrous side of him stands out as a relief, as at least comparative light amid surrounding darkness. ”

“ Neither was it satisfactory that the accession of a king specially bound by the circumstances of his election to rule as a national sovereign proved to be the signal for a great influx of foreigners—not as in Henry’s time, honest industrious settlers who fled from their own unquiet homes to share “the good peace that he made in this land” and to become an useful element in the growing prosperity of the nation; but as in the Red King’s time, a rapacious and violent race of mercenary adventurers, chiefly from Britanny and Flanders ”

“ A strong hand and a ready wit, by whomsoever shown and howsoever proved, were a passport to the Red King’s service and to his personal favour. [422] And those who thus won his personal favour were more likely to be altogether strangers than natives of the land, whether of the conquering or of the conquered race. Chiefly foreigners. We may suspect that the settled inhabitants of England, whether English or Norman, knew the King’s mercenaries mainly as a body of aliens who had licence to do any kind of wrong among them without fear of punishment. ”

“ The statement of the Chronicle the only safe one. “The King William was in hunting from his own men by an arrow offshot.” Beyond that we cannot go with certainty. But the number of men of every class who must have felt that they would be the better, if an arrow or any other means of death could be brought to light on the Red King, must have been great indeed. Wonder that he was not killed sooner. The real wonder is, not that the shaft struck him in the thirteenth year of his reign, but that no hand had stricken him long before. ”

“ And the conduct of the Counts Alan and Odo and their companion Roger of Poitou is throughout that of strictly honourable men, anxious to carry out to the letter every point to which they have pledged their faith. The Red King, having merely pledged his faith as a king, and not in that more fantastic character in which he always held his plighted word as sacred, is less scrupulous on this head. ”

“ Men, we are told, had ceased to till the ground; hunger followed; there were hardly left any who could tend the dying or bury the dead. [1307] These things might not have greatly stirred the heart of the Red King; but he may, like other tyrants, have felt that there was a bound beyond which oppression could not be safely carried. Causes for the King’s return. And there were political and military reasons which called him back. He could not afford to jeopard his undisputed possession of England for the sake of a few more castles in Normandy. ”

“ The cause of this excitement appeared to be the banner which had just been unfurled in the royalist ranks.
"The red dragon! the red dragon!"
Leofric and Jack looked wonderingly at each other.
"What mean they by that? What is the red dragon?" they asked. And Amalric, looking over his shoulder with a stern, set face, made reply,—
"When the ensign of the red dragon is unfurled in the ranks of the King, it is the sign that no quarter is to be given. We are to be slaughtered like sheep in the shambles if it pleases Heaven to give our foes the victory." ”

“ Ere one can draw breath he falls upon the Red King, who, taken unawares, has not even time to draw his dagger. At the same moment each Moorish knight is seized from behind by a Castilian trooper and dragged into the outer court of the{156} Monteria, where he finds his horse, arms, and slave, receiving at the same time stern injunctions to cross the frontier of Castile before sunrise.
Alone in the hall, Don Pedro advances to where the unhappy Red King lies dead upon the floor, hard by the spot where the blood of Don Fadique stains the marble. ”

“ Everything in the King’s palace was hung with black, and everyone was sorrowful and distressed; but Ritter Red said that he did not think that they had much reason to be afraid—he had delivered the King’s daughter from two Trolls, so he could easily deliver her from the third as well. ”

“ So they laced up their helms and fought freshly. By a cross stroke the Red Knight of the Red Lawns smote Sir Fair-hands' sword from him, and then gave him another buffet on the helm so that he fell grovelling to the earth, and the Red Knight fell upon him to hold him down. ”

“ The Red Rogue stopped laughing, for the fame of Spor's terrible king had long ago reached him. And he reflected that any one who could conquer the army of giants and dwarfs and Gray Men that served Terribus must surely be one to be regarded seriously. Moreover--and this was a secret--the Red Rogue had never been able to gain the strength to correspond with his gigantic size, but had ever remained as weak as when he was a puny boy. So he was accustomed to rely on his cunning and on the terror his very presence usually excited to triumph over his enemies. ”

“ King slipped out of his pew, made a quick circuit around the pillar, and met her squarely as she came toward him.
He stood still in her path, and she, looking partially up to pass him with that complete ignoring of his presence which young women of breeding employ when strangers threaten to take notice, heard his low voice: "Please don't run away—from your friend!"
"Oh—Mr. King!" Her eyes, startled, met his indeed, and into her face, as she spoke his name, poured a flood of beautiful colour, at sight of which King all but lost his head. ”

“ Shall we look and see? Far to the south, far beyond the bold bluffs of the White River, far beyond the swift waters of the Niobrara,—"L'Eau qui Court" of the old French trapper,—far across the swirling flood of the North Platte, and dotting the northward slopes, swarms of naked, brilliantly painted red warriors in their long, trailing war bonnets of eagle's feathers are darting about on nimble ponies, or, crouching prone along the ridges, are eagerly watching a dust-cloud coming northward on the Sidney road. ”

“ At first we fancied that the ugly black was the king of the place, but this we soon discovered was not the case, for, as we were dragged up the main street, we saw issuing from a house of more pretentions than its neighbours another black wearing a red regimental coat on his back with huge epaulets, and a round hat, battered and otherwise the worse for wear, on his head, the insignia of royalty, as we well knew. ”

“ Modestly deeming himself unworthy of such distinction, the Red Cross Knight objects that a ploughman's son should not receive such honor, until the aged man informs him he is in reality the son of the British king, stolen from his cradle by a wicked fairy, who, finding him too heavy to carry, dropped him in a field where a farmer discovered and adopted him. ”

“ And again the King's daughter said to him, 'Sleep a while on my lap,' and while Minnikin lay there she drew some silver raiment over him.
As soon as Ritter Red saw that there was no longer any danger afoot, he crept down from the tree and threatened the Princess, until at last she was again forced to promise to say that it was he who had rescued her: after which he took the tongue and the lungs of the Troll and put them in his pocket-handkerchief, and then he conducted the Princess back to the palace. ”

“ So first he questioned Red-Eye: "My worthy sir, what is to be done under the circumstances?" And Red-Eye said: "O King, what is there to consider here? Kill him without hesitation. For the proverb says:
Kill a weakling, lest he grow
Hard to smite ”

“ Then he conducted her back to the King’s palace, and if honour enough had not been done him before it was certainly done now, for the King had no other thought than how to make much of the man who had saved his daughter from the three Trolls; and it was settled then that Ritter Red should marry her, and receive half the kingdom.
On the wedding-day, however, the Princess begged that she might have the little boy who was in the kitchen, and carried wood and water for the kitchen-maid, to fill the wine-cups at the wedding feast. ”

“ The 'Red Men' are not Indians, but are Englishmen, driven by the unquiet times to become a party of bandits. The hero is a soldier of the King's, of good birth, who seeks refuge among them, after the over-throw of the King's court. ”

“ We then set off, and came to where my ship was, went on board of it, and sailed home. When we were passing a place where a great battle was going on, I asked the King of the Red Shield what battle it was, and the cause of it. [184] 'Don't you know at all?' said the King of the Red Shield. 'I do not,' said I. The King of the Red Shield said, 'That is the battle for the daughter of the King of the Great Universe, the most beautiful woman in the world; and whoever wins her by his heroism shall get her in marriage. ”

“ In "Gutten, Havfruen, og Ridder Rød," from Lyngen, Friis, p. 131, Knight Red [15] acts the part of a traitor, and is shown to be so by the hero, who exhibits part of a ring, the other part of which the princess has, and which they broke when the lad entered the princess' tower to fetch the king's sword, which was hidden there. The reward for bringing it to the battle-field being the princess' hand.
See also Ritter Red in "Shortshanks," and the "Big Bird Dan," pp. 155, 443, in Dasent's Tales from the Norse. ”

“ In the meanwhile the people had found their King and his ministers with their feet in the air on the pavement, and they had gone into the palace to know how it had occurred. On entering the throne-room, when the crowd saw that there was already someone on the royal seat, they broke out in cries of surprise and joy:
‘The King is dead, long live the King! ”