Tradition tells, too, how the English, besieged in the town of Epernay, had gathered there great store of wine, and how this suggested to their captain a cunning stratagem. Having caused a number of wagons to be laden with casks of wine, he despatched them with a feeble escort through the gate furthest from the beleaguering forces, as though destined to Chalons as a place of safety. The French commander marked this, and as soon as the convoy was well clear of the walls, a body of horse came spurring after it in hot haste. The wagon-train halted; there was a brief attempt to turn the laden vehicles homewards, and then, seeing the hopelessness of this, the escort galloped back into the town, and down swooped the Frenchmen on their prize. The ride had been sharp; the day was hot, and the road dusty. So a score of the captured casks were quickly broached; and as the generous fluid flowed freely down the throats of the captors, it soon began to produce an effect. Some of them, overcome by the heat and the wine, loosened their armour, and stretched themselves at length on the ground; whilst others, grouped around some fast emptying barrel, continued to quaff from their helmets and other improvised drinking vessels confusion to the 'island bull-dogs.' When lo, the gate of the town flew open; an English trumpet rang out its note of defiance; and, with lances levelled, the flower of the garrison poured forth like a living avalanche upon the startled Frenchmen. Before they could make ready to fight or fly, the foe was upon them, and their blood was soon mingling on the dusty highway with the pools of wine which had gushed forth from the abandoned casks. Hardly one escaped the slaughter; but local tradition chuckles grimly as it notes that in revenge thereof every man of the garrison was put to the edge of the sword on the subsequent capture of the town by the French.[258]
At the close of the fruitless struggle against the growing power of Charles the Victorious, we were fain to fall back, as of old, upon the strong wines of south-western France, the vintages of Bergerac, Gaillac, and Rabestens, shipped to us from the banks of the Garonne,[259] and the luscious malmseys of the Archipelago, to which were subsequently added the growths of southern Spain. The taste of the wine of the Champagne must have been almost forgotten amongst us when the growing fame of the vineyards of Ay attracted the notice of Bluff King Hal. Most likely he and Francis I. swore eternal good fellowship at the Field of the Cloth of Gold over a beaker of this regal liquor. Once alive to its merits, the King, whose ambassadors, _pace_ John Styles, seem to have had standing orders to keep an equally sharp look out for wines or wives likely to suit the royal fancy, neglected no opportunity of securing it in perfection. Like his contemporaries, Charles V., Francis I., and Leo X., he stationed a commissioner at Ay intrusted with the onerous duty of selecting a certain number of casks of the best growths, and despatching them, carefully sealed, to the cellars of Whitehall, Greenwich, and Richmond. The example set by the monarch was, however, too costly a one to be followed by his subjects, and the very name of Champagne probably remained unknown to them for years to come. The poets and dramatists of the Elizabethan era, who have left us so accurate a picture of the manners of their day, and make such frequent allusions to the wines in vogue, do not even mention Champagne; Gervase Markham preserves a like silence in his _Modern Housewife_,[260] while the passages in Surflet's _Maison Rustique_ extolling the wine of Ay are merely translations from the original French edition.[261] And though Venner speaks of these wines as excelling all others, he is careful to attribute their consumption to the King and the nobles of France.[262]