Chapter XXII: The Hundred Years’ War.--Charles V (2)

The government of Charles V. was the personal government of an intelligent, prudent, and honorable king, anxious for the interests of the state, at home and abroad, as well as for his own; with little inclination for, and little confidence in, the free co-operation of the country in its own affairs, but with wit enough to cheerfully call upon it when there was any pressing necessity, and accepting it then without chicanery or cheating, but safe to go back as soon as possible to that sole dominion, a medley of patriotism and selfishness, which is the very insufficient and very precarious resource of peoples as yet incapable of applying their liberty to the art of their own government. Charles V. had recourse three times, in July, 1367, and in May and December, 1369, to a convocation of the states-general, in order to be put in a position to meet the political and financial difficulties of France. At the second of these assemblies, when the chancellor, William de Dormans, had explained the position of the kingdom, the king himself rose up “for to say to all that if they considered that he had done anything he ought not to have done, they should tell him so, and he would amend what he had done, for there was still time to repair it, if he had done too much or not enough.” The question at that time was as to entertaining the appeal of the barons of Aquitaine to the King of France as suzerain of the Prince of Wales, whose government had become intolerable, and to thus make a first move to struggle out of the humiliating pace of Bretigny. Such a step, and such words, do great honor to the memory of the pacific prince who was at that time bearing the burden of the government of France. It was Charles V.’s good fortune to find amongst his servants a man who was destined to be the thunderbolt of war and the glory of knighthood of his reign. About 1314, fifty years before Charles’s accession, there was born at the castle of Motte-Broon, near Rennes, in a family which could reckon two ancestors amongst Godfrey de Bouillon’s comrades in the first crusade, Bertrand du Guesclin, “the ugliest child from Rennes to Dinan,” says a contemporary chronicle, flat-nosed and swarthy, thick-set, broad-shouldered, big-headed, a bad fellow, a regular wretch, according to his own mother’s words, given to violence, always striking or being struck, whom his tutor abandoned without having been able to teach him to read. At sixteen years of age, he escaped from the paternal mansion, went to Rennes, entered upon a course of adventures, quarrels, challenges, and tourneys, in which he distinguished himself by his strength, his valor, and likewise his sense of honor. He joined the cause of Charles of Blois against John of Montfort, when the two were claimants for the duchy of Brittany; but at the end of thirty years, “neither the good of him, nor his prowess, were as yet greatly renowned,” says Froissart, “save amongst the knights who were about him in the country of Brittany.” But Charles V., at that time regent, had taken notice of him in 1359, at the siege of Melun, where Du Guesclin had for the first time borne arms in the service of France. When, in 1364, Charles became king, he said to Boucicaut, marshal of France, “Boucicaut, get you hence, with such men as you have, and ride towards Normandy; you will there find Sir Bertrand du Guesclin , hold yourselves in readiness, I pray you, you and he, to recover from the King of Navarre the town of Mantes, which would make us masters of the River Seine.” “Right willingly, sir,” answered Boucicaut; and a few weeks afterwards, on the 7th of April, 1364, Boucicaut, by stratagem, entered Mantes with his troop, and Du Guesclin, coming up suddenly with his, dashed into the town at a gallop, shouting, “St. Yves! Guesclin! death, death to all Navarrese!” The two warriors did the same next day at the gates of Meulan, three leagues from Mantes. “Thus were the two cities taken, whereat King Charles V. was very joyous when he heard the news; and the King of Navarre was very wroth, for he set down as great hurt the loss of Mantes and of Meulan, which made a mighty fine entrance for him into France.”

It was at Rheims, during the ceremony of his coronation, that Charles V. heard of his two officers’ success. The war thus begun against the King of Navarre was hotly prosecuted on both sides. Charles the Bad hastily collected his forces, Gascons, Normans, and English, and put them under the command of John de Grailli, called the Captal of Buch, an officer of renown. Du Guesclin recruited in Normandy, Picardy, and Brittany, and amongst the bands of warriors which were now roaming all over France. The plan of the Captal of Buch was to go and disturb the festivities at Rheims, but at Cockerel, on the banks of the Eure, two leagues from Evreux, he met the troops of Du Guesclin; and the two armies, pretty nearly equal in number, halted in view of one another. Du Guesclin held counsel, and said to his comrades in arms, “Sirs, we know that in front of us we have in the Captal as gallant a knight as can be found to-day on all the earth; so long as he shall be on the spot he will do us great hurt; set we then a-horseback thirty of ours, the most skilful and the boldest; they shall give heed to nothing but to make straight towards the Captal, break through the press, and get right up to him; then they shall take him, pin him, carry him off amongst them, and lead him away some whither in safety, without waiting for the end of the battle. If he can be taken and kept in such way, the day will be ours, so astounded will his men be at his capture.” Battle ensued at all points [May 16, 1364]; and, whilst it led to various encounters, with various results, “the picked thirty, well mounted on the flower of steeds,” says Froissart, “and with no thought but for their enterprise, came all compact together to where was the Captal, who was fighting right valiantly with his axe, and was dealing blows so mighty that none durst come nigh him; but the thirty broke through the press by dint of their horses, made right up to him, halted hard by him, took him and shut him in amongst them by force; then they voided the place, and bare him away in that state, whilst his men, who were like to mad, shouted, ‘A rescue for the Captal! a rescue!’ but nought could avail them, or help them; and the Captal was carried off and placed in safety. In this bustle and turmoil, whilst the Navarrese and English were trying to follow the track of the Captal, whom they saw being taken off before their eyes, some French agreed with hearty good will to bear down on the Captal’s banner, which was in a thicket, and whereof the Navarrese made their own standard. Thereupon there was a great tumult and hard fighting there, for the banner was well guarded, and by good men; but at last it was seized, won, torn, and cast to the ground. The French were masters of the battle-field; Sir Bertrand and his Bretons acquitted themselves loyally, and ever kept themselves well together, giving aid one to another; but it cost them dear in men.”

Charles was highly delighted, and, after the victory, resolutely discharged his kingly part, rewarding, and also punishing. Du Guesclin was made marshal of Normandy, and received as a gift the countship of Longueville, confiscated from the King of Navarre. Certain Frenchmen who had become confidants of the King of Navarre were executed, and Charles V. ordered his generals to no longer show any mercy for the future to subjects of the kingdom who were found in the enemy’s ranks. The war against Charles the Bad continued. Charles V., encouraged by his successes, determined to take part likewise in that which was still going on between the two claimants to the duchy of Brittany, Charles of Blois and John of Montfort. Du Guesclin was sent to support Charles of Blois; “whereat he was greatly rejoiced,” says Froissart, “for he had always held the said lord Charles for his rightful lord.” The Count and Countess of Blois “received him right joyously and pleasantly, and the best part of the barons of Brittany likewise had lord Charles of Blois in regard and affection.” Du Guesclin entered at once on the campaign, and marched upon Auray, which was being besieged by the Count of Montfort. But there he was destined to encounter the most formidable of his adversaries. John of Montfort had claimed the support of his patron, the king of England, and John Chandos, the most famous of the English commanders, had applied to the Prince of Wales to know what he was to do. “You may go full well,” the prince had answered, “since the French are going for the Count of Blois; I give you good leave.” Chandos, delighted, set hastily to work recruiting. Only a few Aquitanians decided to join him, for they were beginning to be disgusted with English rule, and the French national spirit was developing itself throughout Gascony, even in the Prince of Wales’s immediate circle. Chandos recruited scarcely any but English or Bretons, and when, to the great joy of the Count of Montfort, he arrived before Auray, “he brought,” says Froissart, “full sixteen hundred fighting men, knights, and squires, English and Breton, and about eight or nine hundred archers.” Du Guesclin’s troops were pretty nearly equal in number, and not less brave, but less well disciplined, and probably also less ably commanded. The battle took place on the 29th of September, 1364, before Auray. The attendant circumstances and the result have already been recounted in the twentieth chapter of this history; Charles of Blois was killed, and Du Guesclin was made prisoner. The cause of John of Montfort was clearly won; and he, on taking possession of the duchy of Brittany, asked nothing better than to acknowledge himself vassal of the King of France, and swear fidelity to him. Charles V. had too much judgment not to foresee that, even after a defeat, a peace which gave a lawful and definite solution to the question of Brittany, rendered his relations and means of influence with this important province much more to be depended upon than any success which a prolonged war might promise him. Accordingly he made peace at Guerande, on the 11th of April, 1365, after having disputed the conditions inch by inch; and some weeks previously, on the 6th of March, at the indirect instance of the King of Navarre, who, since the battle of Gocherel, had felt himself in peril, Charles V. had likewise put an end to his open struggle against his perfidious neighbor, of whom he certainly did not cease to be mistrustful. Being thus delivered from every external war and declared enemy, the wise King of France was at liberty to devote himself to the re-establishment of internal peace and of order throughout his kingdom, which was in the most pressing need thereof.

We have, no doubt, even in our own day, cruel experience of the disorders and evils of war; but we can form, one would say, but a very incomplete idea of what they were in the fourteenth century, without any of those humane administrative measures, still so ineffectual,--provisionings, hospitals, ambulances, barracks, and encampments,--which are taken in the present day to prevent or repair them. The _Recueil des Ordonnances des Lois de France_ is full of safeguards granted by Charles V. to monasteries and hospices and communes, which implored his protection, that they might have a little less to suffer than the country in general. We will borrow from the best informed and the most intelligent of the contemporary chroniclers, the Continuer of William of Nangis, a picture of those sufferings and the causes of them. “There was not,” he says, “in Anjou, in Touraine, in Beauce, near Orleans and up to the approaches of Paris, any corner of the country which was free from plunderers and robbers. They were so numerous everywhere, either in little forts occupied by them or in the villages and country-places, that peasants and tradesfolks could not travel but at great expense and great peril. The very guards told off to defend cultivators and travellers took part most shamefully in harassing and despoiling them. It was the same in Burgundy and the neighboring countries. Some knights who called themselves friends of the king and of the king’s majesty, and whose names I am not minded to set down here, kept in their service brigands who were quite as bad. What is far more strange is, that when those folks went into the cities, Paris or elsewhere, everybody knew them and pointed them out, but none durst lay a hand upon them. I saw one night at Paris, in the suburb of St. Germain des Pres, while the people were sleeping, some brigands who were abiding with their chieftains in the city, attempting to sack certain hospices: they were arrested and imprisoned in the Chatelet; but, before long, they were got off, declared innocent, and set at liberty without undergoing the least punishment--a great encouragement for them and their like to go still farther. . . . When the king gave Bertrand du Guesclin the countship of Longueville, in the diocese of Rouen, which had belonged to Philip, brother of the King of Navarre, Du Guesclin promised the king that he would drive out by force of arms all the plunderers and robbers, those enemies of the kingdom; but he did nothing of the sort; nay, the Bretons even of Du Guesclin, on returning from Rouen, pillaged and stole in the villages whatever they found there-- garments, horses, sheep, oxen, and beasts of burden and of tillage.”

Charles V. was not, as Louis XII. and Henry IV. were, of a disposition full of affection, and sympathetically inclined towards his people; but he was a practical man, who, in his closet and in the library growing up about him, took thought for the interests of his kingdom as well as for his own; he had at heart the public good, and lawlessness was an abomination to him. He had just purchased, at a ransom of a hundred thousand francs, the liberty of Bertrand du Guesclin, who had remained a prisoner in the hands of John Chandos, after the battle of Auray. An idea occurred to him that the valiant Breton might be of use to him in extricating France from the deplorable condition to which she had been reduced by the bands of plunderers roaming everywhere over her soil. We find in the Chronicle in verse of Bertrand Guesclin, by Cuvelier, a troubadour of the fourteenth century, a detailed account of the king’s perplexities on this subject, and of the measures he took to apply a remedy. We cannot regard this account as strictly historical; but it is a picture, vivid and morally true, of events and men as they were understood and conceived to be by a contemporary, a mediocre poet, but a spirited narrator. We will reproduce the principal features, modifying the language to make it more easily intelligible, but without altering the fundamental character.

“There were so many folk who went about pillaging the country of France that the king was sad and doleful at heart. He summoned his council, and said to them, ‘What shall we do with this multitude of thieves who go about destroying our people? If I send against them my valiant baronage I lose my noble barons, and then I shall never more have any joy of my life. If any could lead these folk into Spain against the miscreant and tyrant Pedro, who put our sister to death, I would like it well, whatever it might cost me.’

“Bertrand du Guesclin gave ear to the king, and ‘Sir King,’ said he, ‘it is my heart’s desire to cross over the seas and go fight the heathen with the edge of the sword; but if I could come nigh this folk which Both anger you, I would deliver the kingdom from them.’ ‘I should like it well,’ said the king. ‘Say no more,’ said Bertrand to him; ‘I will learn their pleasure; give it no further thought.’

“Bertrand du Guesclin summoned his herald, and said to him, ‘Go thou to the Grand Company and have all the captains assembled; thou wilt go and demand for me a safe-conduct, for I have a great desire to parley with them.’ The herald mounted his horse, and went a-seeking these folk toward Chalon-sur-la-Saone. They were seated together at dinner, and were drinking good wine from the cask they had pierced. ‘Sirs,’ said the herald, ‘the blessing of Jesus be on you! Bertrand du Guesclin prayeth you to let him parley with all in company.’ ‘ By my faith, gentle herald,’ said Hugh de Calverley, who was master of the English, ‘I will readily see Bertrand here, and will give him good wine; I can well give it him, in sooth, I do assure you, for it costs me nothing.’ Then the herald departed, and returned to his lord, and told the news of this company.

“So away rode Bertrand, and halted not; and he rode so far that he came to the Grand Company, and then did greet them. ‘God keep,’ said he, ‘the companions I see yonder!’ Then they bowed down; each abased himself. ‘I vow to God,’ said Bertrand, ‘whosoever will be pleased to believe me; I will make you all rich.’ And they answered, ‘Right welcome here sir, we will all do whatsoever is your pleasure.’ ‘Sirs,’ said Bertrand, ‘be pleased to listen to me; wherefore I am come I will tell unto you. I come by order of the king in whose keeping is France, and who would be right glad, to save his people, that ye should come with me whither I should be glad to go into good company I fain would bring ye. If we would all of us look into our hearts, we might full truly consider that we have done enough to damn our souls; think we but how we have dealt with life, outraged ladies and burned houses, slain men, children, and everybody set to ransom, how we have eaten up cows, oxen, and sheep, drunk good wines, and done worse than robbers do. Let us do honor to God and forsake the devil. Ask, if it may please you, all the companions, all the knights, and all the barons; if you be of accord, we will go to the king, and I will have the gold got ready which we do promise you I would fain get together all my friends to make the journey we so strongly desire.’”

Du Guesclin then explained, in broad terms which left the choice to the Grand Company, what this journey was which was so much desired. He spoke of the King of Cyprus, of the Saracens of Granada, of the Pope of Avignon, and especially of Spain and the King of Castile, Pedro the Cruel, “scoundrel-murderer of his wife (Blanche of Bourbon),” on whom, above all, Du Gueselin wished to draw down the wrath of his hearers. “In Spain,” he said to them, we might largely profit, for the country is a good one for leading a good life, and there are good wines which are neat and clear.” Nearly all present, whereof were twenty-five famous captains, “confirmed what was said by Bertrand.” “Sirs,” said he to them at last, “listen to me: I will go my way and speak to the King of the Franks; I will get for you those two hundred thousand francs; you shall come and dine with me at Paris, according to my desire, when the time shall have come for it; and you shall see the king, who will be rejoiced thereat. We will have no evil suspicion in anything, for I never was inclined to treason, and never shall be as long as I live.” Then said the valiant knights and esquires to him, “Never was more valiant man seen on earth; and in you we have more belief and faith than in all the prelates and great clerics who dwell at Avignon or in France.”

When Du Gueselin returned to Paris, “Sir,” said he to the king, “I have accomplished your wish; I will put out of your kingdom all the worst folk of this Grand Company, and I will so work it that everything shall be saved.” “Bertrand,” said the king to him, “may the Holy Trinity be pleased to have you in their keeping, and may I see you a long while in joy and health!” “Noble king,” said Bertrand, “the captains have a very great desire to come to Paris, your good city.” “I am heartily willing,” said the king; “if they come, let them assemble at the Temple; elsewhere there is too much people and too much abundance; there might be too much alarm. Since they have reconciled themselves to us, I would have nought but friendship with them.”

The poet concludes the negotiation thus: “At the bidding of Bertrand, when he understood the pleasure of the noble King of France, all the captains came to Paris in perfect safety; they were conducted straight to the Temple; there they were feasted and dined nobly, and received many a gift, and all was sealed.”

Matters went, at the outset at least, as Du Guesclin had promised to the king on the one side, and on the other to the captains of the Grand Company. There was, in point of fact, a civil war raging in Spain between Don Pedro the Cruel, King of Castile, and his natural brother, Henry of Transtamare, and that was the theatre on which Du Guesclin had first proposed to launch the vagabond army which he desired to get out of France. It does not appear, however, that at their departure from Burgundy at the end of November, 1365, this army and its chiefs had in this respect any well-considered resolution, or any well-defined aim in their movements. They made first for Avignon, and Pope Urban V., on hearing of their approach, was somewhat disquieted, and sent to them one of his cardinals to ask them what was their will. If we may believe the poet-chronicler, Cuvelier, the mission was anything but pleasing to the cardinal, who said to one of his confidants, “I am grieved to be set to this business, for I am sent to a pack of madmen who have not an hour’s, nay, not even half-an-hour’s conscience.” The captains replied that they were going to fight the heathen either in Cyprus or in the kingdom of Granada, and that they demanded of the pope absolution of their sins and two hundred thousand livres, which Du Guesclin had promised them in his name. The pope cried out against this. “Here,” said he, “at Avignon, we have money given us for absolution, and we must give it gratis to yonder folks, and give them money also: it is quite against reason.” Du Guesclin insisted. “Know you,” said he to the cardinal, “that there are in this army many folks who care not a whit for absolution, and who would much rather have money; we are making them proper men in spite of themselves, and are leading them abroad that they may do no mischief to Christians. Tell that to the pope; for else we could not take them away.” The pope yielded, and gave them the two hundred thousand livres. He obtained the money by levies upon the population of Avignon. They, no doubt, complained loudly, for the chiefs of the Grand Company were informed thereof, and Du Guesclin said, “By the faith that I owe to the Holy Trinity, I will not take a denier of that which these poor folks have given; let the pope and the clerics give us of their own; we desire that all they who have paid the tax do recover their money without losing a doit; “and, according to contemporary chronicles, the vagabond army did not withdraw until they had obtained this satisfaction. The piety of the middle ages, though sincere, was often less disinterested and more rough than it is commonly represented.

On arriving at Toulouse from Avignon, Du Guesclin and his bands, with a strength, it is said, of thirty thousand men, took the decided resolution of going into Spain to support the cause of Prince Henry of Transtamare against the King of Castile his brother, Don Pedro the Cruel. The Duke of Anjou, governor of Languedoc, gave them encouragement, by agreement, no doubt with King Charles V., and from anxiety on his own part to rid his province of such inconvenient visitors. On the 1st of January, 1366, Du Guesclin entered Barcelona, whither Henry of Transtamare came to join him. There is no occasion to give a detailed account here of that expedition, which appertains much more to the history of Spain than to that of France. There was a brief or almost no struggle. Henry of Transtamare was crowned king, first at Calahorra, and afterwards at Burgos. Don Pedro, as much despised before long as he was already detested, fled from Castile to Andalusia, and from Andalusia to Portugal, whose king would not grant him an asylum in his dominions, and he ended by embarking at Corunna for Bordeaux, to implore the assistance of the Prince of Wales, who gave him a warm and a magnificent reception. Edward III., King of England, had been disquieted by the march of the Grand Company into Spain, and had given John Chandos and the rest of his chief commanders in Guienne orders to be vigilant in preventing the English from taking part in the expedition against his cousin the King of Castile; but several of the English chieftains, serving in the bands and with Du Guesclin, set at nought this prohibition, and contributed materially to the fall of Don Pedro. Edward III. did not consider that the matter was any infraction, on the part of France, of the treaty of Bretigne, and continued to live at peace with Charles V., testifying his displeasure, however, all the same. But when Don Pedro had reached Bordeaux, and had told the Prince of Wales that, if he obtained the support of England, he would make the prince’s eldest son, Edward, king of Galicia, and share amongst the prince’s warriors the treasure he had left in Castile, so well concealed that he alone knew where, “the knights of the Prince of Wales,” says Froissart, “gave ready heed to his words, for English and Gascons are by nature covetous.” The Prince of Wales immediately summoned the barons of Aquitaine, and on the advice they gave him sent four knights to London to ask for instructions from the king his father. Edward III. assembled his chief councillors at Westminster, and finally “it seemed to all course due and reasonable on the part of the Prince of Wales to restore and conduct the King of Spain to his kingdom; to which end they wrote official letters from the King and the council of England to the prince and the barons of Aquitaine. When the said barons heard the letters read they said to the prince, ‘My lord, we will obey the command of the king our master and your father; it is but reason, and we will serve you on this journey and King Pedro also; but we would know who shall pay us and deliver us our wages, for one does not take men-at-arms away from their homes to go a warfare in a foreign land, without they be paid and delivered. If it were a matter touching our dear lord your father’s affairs, or your own, or your honor or our country’s, we would not speak thereof so much beforehand as we do.’ Then the Prince of Wales looked towards the Prince Don Pedro, and said to him, ‘Sir King, you hear what these gentlemen say; to answer is for you, who have to employ them.’ Then the King Don Pedro answered the prince, ‘My dear cousin, so far as my gold, my silver, and all my treasure which I have brought with me hither, and which is not a thirtieth part so great as that which there is yonder, will go, I am ready to give it and share it amongst your gentry.’ ‘You say well,’ said the prince, ‘and for the residue I will be debtor to them, and I will lend you all you shall have need of until we be in Castile.’ ‘By my head,’ answered the King Don Pedro, you will do me great grace and great courtesy.’”

When the English and Gascon chieftains who had followed Du Guesclin into Spain heard of the resolutions of their king, Edward III., and the preparations made by the Prince of Wales for going and restoring Don Pedro to the throne of Castile, they withdrew from the cause which they had just brought to an issue to the advantage of Henry of Transtamare, separated from the French captain who had been their leader, and marched back into Aquitaine, quite ready to adopt the contrary cause, and follow the Prince of Wales in the service of Don Pedro. The greater part of the adventurers, Burgundian, Picard, Champagnese, Norman, and others who had enlisted in the bands which Du Guesclin had marched out of France, likewise quitted him, after reaping the fruits of their raid, and recrossed the Pyrenees to go and resume in France their life of roving and pillage. There remained in Spain about fifteen hundred men-at-arms faithful to Du Guesclin, himself faithful to Henry of Transtamare, who had made him Constable of Castile.

Amidst all these vicissitudes, and at the bottom of all events as well as of all hearts, there still remained the great fact of the period, the struggle between the two kings of France and England for dominion in that beautiful country which, in spite of its dismemberment, kept the name of France. Edward III. in London, and the Prince of Wales at Bordeaux, could not see, without serious disquietude, the most famous warrior amongst the French crossing the Pyrenees with a following for the most part French, and setting upon the throne of Castile a prince necessarily allied to the King of France. The question of rivalry between the two kings and the two peoples had thus been transferred into Spain, and for the moment the victory remained with France. After several months’ preparation the prince of Wales, purchasing the complicity of the King of Navarre, marched into Spain in February, 1367, with an army of twenty- seven thousand men, and John Chandos, the most able of the English warriors. Henry of Transtamare had troops more numerous, but less disciplined and experienced. The two armies joined battle on the 3d of April, 1367, at Najara or Navarette, not far from the Ebro. Disorder and even sheer rout soon took place amongst that of Henry, who flung himself before the fugitives, shouting, “Why would ye thus desert and betray me, ye who have made me King of Castile? Turn back and stand by me; and by the grace of God the day shall be ours.” Du Guesclin and his men-at-arms maintained the fight with stubborn courage, but at last they were beaten, and either slain or taken. To the last moment Du Guesclin, with his back against a wall, defended himself heroically against a host of assailants. The Prince of Wales, coming up, cried out, “Gentle marshals of France, and you too, Bertrand, yield yourselves to me.” “Why, yonder men are my foes,” cried the king, Don Pedro; “it is they who took from me my kingdom, and on them I mean to take vengeance.” Du Guesclin, darting forward, struck so rough a blow with his sword at Don Pedro, that he brought him fainting to the ground, and then turning to the Prince of Wales said, “Nathless I give up my sword to the most valiant prince on earth.” The Prince of Wales took the sword, and charged the Captal of Buch with the prisoner’s keeping. “Aha! sir Bertrand,” said the Captal to Du Guesclin, “you took me at the battle of Cocherel, and to-day I’ve got you.” “Yes,” replied Du Guesclin; “but at Cocherel I took you myself, and here you are only my keeper.”

The battle of Najara being over, and Don Pedro the Cruel restored to a throne which he was not to occupy for long, the Prince of Wales returned to Bordeaux with his army and his prisoner Du Guesclin, whom he treated courteously, at the same time that he kept him pretty strictly. One of the English chieftains who had been connected with Du Guesclin at the time of his expedition into Spain, Sir Hugh Calverley, tried one day to induce the Prince of Wales to set the French warrior at liberty. “Sir,” said he, “Bertrand is a right loyal knight, but he is not a rich man, or in estate to pay much money; he would have good need to end his captivity on easy terms.” “Let be,” said the prince; “I have no care to take aught of his; I will cause his life to be prolonged in spite of himself: if he were released, he would be in battle again, and always a-making war.” After supper, Hugh, without any beating about the bush, told Bertrand the prince’s answer. “Sir,” he said, “I cannot bring about your release.” “Sir,” said Bertrand, “think no more of it; I will leave the matter to the decision of God, who is a good and just master.” Some time after, Du Guesclin having sent a request to the Prince of Wales to admit him to ransom, the prince, one day when he was in a gay humor, had him brought up, and told him that his advisers had urged him not to give him his liberty so long as the war between France and England lasted. “Sir,” said Du Guesclin to him, “then am I the most honored knight in the world, for they say, in the kingdom of France and elsewhere, that you are more afraid of me than of any other.” “Think you, then, it is for your knighthood that we do keep you?” said the prince: “nay, by St. George; fix you your own ransom, and you shall be released.” Du Guesclin proudly fixed his ransom at a hundred thousand francs, which seemed a large sum even to the Prince of Wales. “Sir,” said Du Guesclin to him, “the king in whose keeping is France will lend me what I lack, and there is not a spinning wench in France who would not spin to gain for me what is necessary to put me out of your clutches.” The advisers of the Prince of Wales would have had him think better of it, and break his promise; but “that which we have agreed to with him we will hold to,” said the prince; “it would be shame and confusion of face to us if we could be reproached with not setting him to ransom when he is ready to set himself down at so much as to pay a hundred thousand francs.” Prince and knight were both as good as their word. Du Guesclin found amongst his Breton friends a portion of the sum he wanted; King Charles V. lent him thirty thousand Spanish doubloons, which, by a deed of December 27, 1367, Du Guesclin undertook to repay; and at the beginning of 1368 the Prince of Wales set the French warrior at liberty.

The first use Du Guesclin made of it was to go and put his name and his sword at the service first of the Duke of Anjou, governor of Languedoc, who was making war in Provence against Queen Joan of Naples, and then of his Spanish patron, Henry of Transtamare, who had recommenced the war in Spain against his brother, Pedro the Cruel, whom he was before long to dethrone for the second time and slay with his own hand. But whilst Du Guesclin was taking part in this settlement of the Spanish question, important events called him back to the north of the Pyrenees for the service of his own king, the defence of his own country, and the aggrandizement of his own fortunes. The English and Gascon bands which, in 1367, had recrossed the Pyrenees with the Prince of Wales, after having restored Don Pedro the Cruel to the throne of Castile had not disappeared. Having no more to do in their own prince’s service, they had spread abroad over France, which they called “their apartment,” and recommenced, in the countries between the Seine and the Loire, their life of vagabondage and pillage. A general outcry was raised; it was the Prince of Wales, men said, who had let them loose, and the people called them the host (army) of England. A proceeding of the Prince of Wales himself had the effect of adding to the rage of the people that of the aristocratic classes. He was lavish of expenditure, and held at Bordeaux a magnificent court, for which the revenues from his domains and ordinary resources were insufficient; so he imposed a tax for five years of ten sous per hearth or family, “in order to satisfy,” he said, “the large claims against him.” In order to levy this tax legally, he convoked the estates of Aquitaine, first at Niort, and then, successively, at Angouleme, Poitiers, Bordeaux, and Bergerac; but nowhere could he obtain the vote he demanded. “When we obeyed the King of France,” said the Gascons, “we were never so aggrieved with subsidies, hearth-taxes, or gabels, and we will not be, as long as we can defend ourselves.” The Prince of Wales persisted in his demands. He was ill and irritable, and was becoming truly the Black Prince. The Aquitanians too became irritated. The prince’s more temperate advisers, even those of English birth, tried in vain to move him from his stubborn course. Even John Chandos, the most notable as well as the wisest of them, failed, and withdrew to his domain of St. Sauveur, in Normandy, that he might have nothing to do with measures of which he disapproved. Being driven to extremity, the principal lords of Aquitaine, the Counts of Comminges, of Armagnac, of Perigord, and many barons besides, set out for France, and made complaint, on the 30th of June, 1368, before Charles V. and his peers, “on account of the grievances which the Prince of Wales was purposed to put upon them.” They had recourse, they said, to the King of France as their sovereign lord, who had no power to renounce his suzerainty or the jurisdiction of his court of peers and of his parliament.

Nothing could have corresponded better with the wishes of Charles V. For eight years past he had taken to heart the treaty of Bretigny, and he was as determined not to miss as he was patient in waiting for an opportunity for a breach of it. But he was too prudent to act with a precipitation which would have given his conduct an appearance of a premeditated and deep-laid purpose for which there was no legitimate ground. He did not care to entertain at once and unreservedly the appeal of the Aquitanian lords. He gave them a gracious reception, and made them “great cheer and rich gifts;” but he announced his intention of thoroughly examining the stipulations of the treaty of Bretigny, and the rights of his kingship. “He sent for into his council chamber all the charters of the peace, and then he had them read on several days and at full leisure.” He called into consultation the schools of Boulogne, of Montpellier, of Toulouse, and of Orleans, and the most learned clerks of the papal court. It was not until he had thus ascertained the legal means of maintaining that the stipulations of the treaty of Bretigny had not all of them been performed by the King of England, and that, consequently, the King of France had not lost all his rights of suzerainty over the ceded provinces, that on the 25th of January, 1369, just six months after the appeal of the Aquitanian lords had been submitted to him, he adopted it, in the following terms, which he addressed to the Prince of Wales, at Bordeaux, and which are here curtailed in their legal expressions: --

“Charles, by the grace of God King of France, to our nephew the Prince of Wales and of Aquitaine, greeting. Whereas many prelates, barons, knights, universities, communes, and colleges of the country of Gascony and the duchy of Aquitaine, have come thence into our presence, that they might have justice touching certain undue grievances and vexations which you, through weak counsel and silly advice, have designed to impose upon them, whereat we are quite astounded, . . . we, of our kingly majesty and lordship, do command you to come to our city of Paris, in your own person, and to present yourself before us in our chamber of peers, for to hear justice touching the said complaints and grievances proposed by you to be done to your people which claims to have resort to our court. . . And be it as quickly as you may.”

“When the Prince of Wales had read this letter,” says Froissart, “he shook his head, and looked askant at the aforesaid Frenchmen; and when he had thought a while, he answered, ‘We will go willingly, at our own time, since the King of France doth bid us, but it shall be with our Basque on our head, and with sixty thousand men at our back.’”

This was a declaration of war; and deeds followed at once upon words. Edward III., after a short and fruitless attempt at an accommodation, assumed, on the 3d of June, 1369, the title of King of France, and ordered a levy of all his subjects between sixteen and sixty, laic or ecclesiastical, for the defence of England, threatened by a French fleet which was cruising in the Channel. He sent re-enforcements to the Prince of Wales, whose brother, the Duke of Lancaster, landed with an army at Calais; and he offered to all the adventurers with whom Europe was teeming possession of all the fiefs they could conquer in France. Charles V. on his side vigorously pushed forward his preparations; he had begun them before he showed his teeth, for as early as the 19th of July, 1368, he had sent into Spain ambassadors with orders to conclude an alliance with Henry of Transtamare against the King of England and his son, whom he called “the Duke of Aquitaine.” On the 12th of April, 1369, he signed the treaty which, by a contract of marriage between his brother, Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, and the Princess Marguerite of Flanders, transferred the latter rich province to the House of France. Lastly he summoned to Paris Du Guesclin, who since the recovery of his freedom had been fighting at one time in Spain, and at another in the south of France, and announced to him his intention of making him constable. “Dear sir and noble king,” said the honest and modest Breton, “I do pray you to have me excused; I am a poor knight and petty bachelor. The office of constable is so grand and noble that he who would well discharge it should have had long previous practice and command, and rather over the great than the small. Here are my lords your brothers, your nephews, and your cousins, who will have charge of men-at-arms in the armies, and the rides afield, and how durst I lay commands on them? In sooth, sir, jealousies be so strong that I cannot well but be afeard of them. I do affectionately pray you to dispense with me, and to confer it upon another who will more willingly take it than I, and will know better how to fill it.” “Sir Bertrand, Sir Bertrand,” answered the king, “do not excuse yourself after this fashion; I have nor brother, nor cousin, nor nephew, nor count, nor baron in my kingdom, who would not obey you; and if any should do otherwise, he would anger me so that he would hear of it. Take, therefore, the office with a good heart, I do beseech you.” Sir Bertrand saw well, says Froissart, “that his excuses were of no avail, and finally he assented to the king’s opinion; but it was not without a struggle, and to his great disgust. . . . In order to give him further encouragement and advancement the king did set him close to him at table, showed him all the signs he could of affection, and gave him, together with the office, many handsome gifts and great estates for binelf and his heirs.” Charles V. might fearlessly lavish his gifts on the loyal warrior, for Du Guesclin felt nothing more binding upon him than to lavish them, in his turn, for the king’s service. He gave numerous and sumptuous dinners to the barons, knights, and soldiers of every degree whom he was to command.

“At Bertrand’s plate gazed every eye,
So massive, chased so gloriously,”

says the poet-chronicler Cuvelier; but Du Guesclin pledged it more than once, and sold a great portion of it, in order to pay “without fail the knights and honorable fighting-men of whom he was the leader.”

The war thus renewed was hotly prosecuted on both sides. A sentiment of nationality became, from day to day, more keen and more general in France. At the commencement of hostilities, it burst forth particularly in the North; the burghers of Abbeville opened their gates to the Count of St. Poi, and in a single week St. Valery, Crotoy, and all the places in the countship of Ponthieu followed this example. The movement made progress before long in the South. Montauban and Milhau hoisted on their walls the royal standard; the Archbishop of Toulouse “went riding through the whole of Quercy, preaching and demonstrating the good cause of the King of France; and he converted, without striking a blow, Cahors and more than sixty towns, castles, or fortresses.” Charles V. neglected no means of encouraging and keeping up the public impulse. It has been remarked that, as early as the 9th of May, 1369, he had convoked the states-general, declaring to them in person that “if they considered that he had done anything he ought not, they should say so, and he would amend it, for there was still time for reparation if he had done too much or not enough.” He called a new meeting on the 7th of December, 1369, after the explosion of hostilities, and obtained from them the most extensive subsidies they had ever granted. They were as stanch to the king in principle as in purse, and their interpretations of the treaty of Bretigny went far beyond the grounds which Charles had put forward to justify war. It was not only on the upper classes and on political minds that the king endeavored to act; he paid attention also to popular impressions; he set on foot in Paris a series of processions, in which he took part in person, and the queen also, “barefoot and unsandaled, to pray God to graciously give heed to the doings and affairs of the kingdom.”

But at the same time that he was thus making his appeal, throughout France and by every means, to the feeling of nationality, Charles remained faithful to the rule of conduct which had been inculcated in him by the experience of his youth; he recommended, nay, he commanded, all his military captains to avoid any general engagement with the English. It was not without great difficulty that he wrung obedience from the feudal nobility, who, more numerous very often than the English, looked upon such a prohibition as an insult, and sometimes withdrew to their castles rather than submit to it; and even the king’s brother, Philip the Bold, openly in Burgundy testified his displeasure at it. Du Guesclin, having more intelligence and firmness, even before becoming constable, and at the moment of quitting the Duke of Anjou at Toulouse, had advised him not to accept battle, to well fortify all the places that had been recovered, and to let the English scatter and waste themselves in a host of small expeditions and distant skirmishes constantly renewed. When once he was constable, Du Guesclin put determinedly in practice the king’s maxim, calmly confident in his own fame for valor whenever he had to refuse to yield to the impatience of his comrades.

This detached and indecisive war lasted eight years, with a medley of more or less serious incidents, which, however, did not change its character. In 1370, the Prince of Wales laid siege to Limoges, which had opened its gates to the Duke of Berry. He was already so ill that he could not mount his horse, and had himself carried in a litter from post to post, to follow up and direct the operations of the siege. In spite of a month’s resistance the prince took the place, and gave it up as a prey to a mob of reckless plunderers, whose excesses were such that Froissart himself, a spectator generally so indifferent, and leaning rather to the English, was deeply shocked. “There,” said he, “was a great pity, for men, women, and children threw themselves on their knees before the prince, and cried, ‘Mercy, gentle sir!’ but he was so inflamed with passion that he gave no heed, and none, male or female, was listened to, but all were put to the sword. There is no heart so hard but, if present then at Limoges and not forgetful of God, would have wept bitterly, for more than three thousand persons, men, women, and children, were there beheaded on that day. May God receive their souls, for verily they were martyrs!” The massacre of Limoges caused, throughout France, a feeling of horror and indignant anger towards the English name. In 1373 an English army landed at Calais, under the command of the Duke of Lancaster, and overran nearly the whole of France, being incessantly harassed, however, without ever being attacked in force, and without mastering a single fortress. “Let them be,” was the saying in the king’s circle; “when a storm bursts out in a country, it leaves off afterwards and disperses of itself; and so it will be with these English.” The sufferings and reverses of the English armies on this expedition were such, that, of thirty thousand horses which the English had landed at Calais, “they could not muster more than six thousand at Bordeaux, and had lost full a third of their men and more. There were seen noble knights, who had great possessions in their own country, toiling along a-foot, without armor, and begging their bread from door to door without getting any.” In vain did Edward III. treat with the Duke of Brittany and the King of Navarre in order to have their support in this war. The Duke of Brittany, John IV., after having openly defied the King of France, his suzerain, was obliged to fly to England, and the King of Navarre entered upon negotiations alternately with Edward III. and Charles V., being always ready to betray either, according to what suited his interests at the moment. Tired of so many ineffectual efforts, Edward III. was twice obliged, between 1375 and 1377, to conclude with Charles V. a truce, just to give the two peoples, as well as the two kings, breathing-time; but the truces were as vain as the petty combats for the purpose of putting an end to this great struggle.