Chapter XXXI: EDWARD III. (concluded) (2)

Undoubtedly there were many evils to redress, and abuses of the royal power to complain of; but this was not the time when honourable men would have sought to enforce these objects. It was taking a cowardly advantage of the unfortunate position of a mere youth, to wrest from him what he had no legal authority to yield. Brave and upright men would have brought back the monarch, and from him demanded those measures which justice and the circumstances of the kingdom required. But what should have been reform was dastardly and lawless faction, and the very naming of the King of Navarre, the evil genius of France, betrayed its real origin. Marcel, the provost of the merchants, was the determined tool of Charles of Navarre; he put himself at the head of the mob, and endeavoured to terrify the dauphin into submission to his demands. The States-General, influenced by the same spirit, demanded the entire change of the king's ministers, and the punishment of several of them; and, dividing itself into separate committees, attempted to usurp the different departments of the executive. The dauphin was only to act under the control of a council of thirty-six members of the States-General, in which were to reside the powers of the whole body, and the King of Navarre was at once to be liberated. The dauphin temporised with the art of a much older man, till he had obtained some supplies, with which he proposed to put down disorders in the provinces, and then he dissolved the States, in spite of the citizens of Paris, headed by Marcel.

Freed from this millstone about his neck, Charles despatched Robert de Clermont, a brave commander, into Normandy against Godfrey de Harcourt, who was again gone over to the English, in resentment for the execution of his brother, Count Harcourt, as one of the adherents of the factious King of Navarre.

Robert de Clermont came up with Godfrey near Coutances, in November, 1356, and not only routed his forces, but slew him. Soon after this a truce was made with the English in Normandy; but still the captains of Edward pursued their predatory career in Brittany and Gascony. To complete the mischief, the King of Navarre was released from his prison, and received with rapture by the disaffected people of Amiens and Paris. He harangued the people in those cities, and seemed, by the drift of his speeches, to aim at a republic. His brother, Philip of Navarre, remained in the English camp, and denounced the idea of a republic as pregnant with disorder, mutability, and bloodshed.

Charles, the dauphin, was compelled to call the States-General together again, to demand fresh taxes for the prosecution of the war; but Marcel, the democratic provost, uniting with the King of Navarre, opposed all his measures, and excited the people to violence. He caused them to assume red caps, as a badge of their adherence to his party, which, from its co-operation with Charles of Navarre, was also called the Navarrese party.

Matters now ripened apace from anarchy into civil war. In February, 1358, a man of the name of Macé, having murdered the treasurer of France, took refuge in a church. The dauphin ordered him to be fetched thence, and put to death. But when Robert de Clermont and John de Conflans, the marshals of Champagne and Normandy went to execute this command, the Bishop of Paris protested against it as a violation of the sanctuary of the church; and Marcel, seizing so admirable an opportunity for bearding the dauphin, marched with the whole mob of Paris to his palace, then called the Palais de Justice. Entering without any regard to the person of the dauphin, he seized the two marshals and put them to death so close to the prince that his dress was sprinkled with their blood. "How now," cried the dauphin; "will you shed the blood royal of France?" Marcel replied, "No;" and, to show his pacific intentions, he clapped his own red cap on the head of the dauphin. The bodies of the murdered marshals were dragged through the streets.

Thus the capital of France was reduced to the utmost anarchy. The dauphin returned into Picardy and Champagne, where he assembled the estates of those provinces, and was aided by them to the best of their ability. But all France was one scene of discord, insurrection, violence, and crime. The mercenary and predatory bands of the Companies, many of whom, or, at least, their leaders, were English, were engaged by the King of Navarre to carry out his projected revolution. The dauphin, on the other side, assembled forces to oppose him; and now broke out one of the most frightful calamities which can afflict a nation--that of a peasants' war. In the reign of Richard II. in England, some few years after this time, our own country was on the verge of such a horrible state of things, under Wat Tyler and Jack Straw. At the time of the Reformation, Germany experienced its unspeakable atrocities, under the name of the Bauern Krieg, or War of the Peasantry, and France now was doomed to drink deeply of its demon horrors, under the name of the _Jacquerie_, from the gentry being used to call the peasant Jacques Bonhomme, or Goodman James.

The country people, ground by a long course of exaction, oppression, and insult, treated more as beasts than men by their feudal lords, now seized the moment when the Government were beset with difficulties and enemies to take a blind, sweeping, and tremendous vengeance. The nobility and the petty gentry holding fiefs under them had all been accustomed to plunder, tread on, and abuse the peasantry as a race of inferior creatures. The feudal system had run to seed in unbridled licence, and in every species of infuriating wrong. Ignorant and outraged, the people, once broken loose, placed no limits to their cruelties and revenge. They despised the nobles who, while they had oppressed them, had, in base cowardice, deserted their sovereign at Poitiers. Formerly crushed down into slaves, they were now terrible masters. They burnt and laid waste the country everywhere, plundered the villages, and cut off the supplies of the terrified towns.

They attacked the castles of the nobles, burnt them to the ground, chased the once proud owners, like wild beasts, into the woods, committed horrors, which cannot be named, on the helpless women, murdered them and the children without mercy, and, as in Germany afterwards, actually roasted some of their former harsh lords before slow fires.

Of the frightful situation to which the highest ladies of the country were reduced, Froissart gives a striking example. The Duchess of Normandy, the Duchess of Orleans, and nearly 300 ladies, young girls, and children, had fled for refuge to the strong town of Meaux, and were besieged by 9,000 or 10,000 of the furious Jacquerie, when they were threatened with every horror that human nature could endure. Fortunately, two famous knights of the directly opposite parties, the Count of Foix and the brave Captal de Buch, who made the successful rear assault at the battle of Poitiers, hearing of the alarming situation of these high ladies, forgot their hostility, united their forces, and, falling on the Jacquerie, put them to the sword, killing 7,000 of them, and rescuing the terrified women.

The dauphin, on his part, did not spare the insurgents. He cut them down like sheep wherever he could meet with them. In one case he is said to have killed more than 20,000 of them. The nobles, in Picardy and Artois, mowed them down like grass, and soon cleared that part of the country of them. Everywhere the knights and gentry, roused by the ferocious deeds of the Jacquerie towards their families, collected and, easily overcoming the undisciplined mobs, slaughtered them in heaps, like beasts. At the same time, Marcel, endeavouring to complete his crime by betraying Paris to the King of Navarre and the English, was killed by the exasperated people, and thus the land was eventually reduced to quiet. But it was a quiet like that described by the Roman historian:--"_Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant._" ("They make a solitude, and call it peace.") No country was ever reduced to a more awful condition of ruin and wide-spread desolation; this frightful Jacquerie pest lasted nearly two years.

Meantime Edward had worked on his captive, King John of France, to make a peace, restoring to England all the provinces which had belonged to Henry II. and his two sons, for ever; but the dauphin and the States rejected the treaty, which would have totally ruined the kingdom. On this Edward once more invaded that devoted country, assembled an army of 100,000 men, with which he overran Picardy and Champagne, besieged Rheims, but without success, advanced into Burgundy, marched into Nivernais, and laid waste Brie and Gatinais, and sat down before Paris, where, not being able to draw the dauphin into a battle, he proceeded to devastate the province of Maine. It is said that his desolating career was at length closed by a terrible thunderstorm by which he was overtaken near Chartres, in which the terrors of heaven seemed to his awestruck imagination to be arrayed against him. "Looking towards the church of Notre Dame at Chartres," says Froissart, "he made a vow to grant peace, which he afterwards humbly repeated in confession in the cathedral of Chartres, and thus took up his lodging in the village of Bretigny, near that city."

Here the peace was concluded on these conditions: the King of France was to pay three millions of gold crowns for his ransom--about a million and a half of our money; he was also to yield up to Edward in full sovereignty the province of Gascony, Guienne, the whole of Poitou, and other dependencies in Aquitaine, and in the north of France, Calais, Guisnes, Montreuil, and the country of Ponthieu. Edward, on the other hand, was to renounce all other French territory, and all claim to the crown and kingdom of France. The King of Navarre was to be restored to all his honours and possessions, and the alliances of Edward with the Flemings and of John with the Scots were to close. In consequence of the peace of Bretigny, signed the 24th of October, 1360, John returned to France; but finding that his government was unwilling to keep faith with England, and that his son, the Duke of Anjou, had broken his parole as a hostage, John, with a noble sense of honour, refused to be a party to such dishonesty and, returning voluntarily to his captivity in London, died there on the 8th of April, 1364.

Charles V., the fifty-first monarch of France, succeeded his father John to a kingdom, desolate but not dismembered. John had, indeed, added to the realm the provinces of Dauphiné and Burgundy; but the latter he again dissevered from the crown and settled on his favourite son, Philip, his companion at the battle of Poitiers and in his captivity. This unwise act, the result, not of prudence--in which John was singularly deficient--but of affection, became the source of much contention and many miseries.

Charles had been early taught in the school of adversity, and he soon displayed proofs that he had profited by its lessons. He was cautious, thoughtful how to retrieve the condition of France, and eventually won the name of the Wise. Had his designation been the Worldly Wise it would have been still more correct, for he was not too strict in interpreting the code of honour where it interfered with his plans. He was the first of his race and his times who renounced the practice of leading his armies, deeming it more befitting a monarch to head his kingdom, and place over his armies the ablest commanders whom he could obtain, as he would place the ablest ministers over the different departments of his Government. This very circumstance marks Charles as a sagacious prince. The practice was a step onward in governmental science.

Charles deemed it necessary to reduce the disorders of his own kingdom before he commenced his intended operations against the English. It was necessary to put down Charles of Navarre, and to settle the affairs of Brittany. To do this, he first sent the young Breton knight, Bertrand du Guesclin, destined to acquire a great renown in this reign, into Normandy, where the brave Captal de Buch, the hero of Poitiers, commanded the King of Navarre's forces. These two commanders met near Cocherel, where Du Guesclin turned the tide of war in favour of France, gaining the first complete victory for it since the days of Creçy, and not only routed De Buch, but took him prisoner.

Du Guesclin then marched into Brittany, where Lord Chandos and Sir Hugh Calverley were in command of the English forces. Here Du Guesclin's good fortune deserted him; he was defeated and taken prisoner. Here, also, Charles of Blois was slain, and the young De Montfort secured in his possessions. The prudence of Charles V. was now seen conspicuously; instead of resuming the war, he acknowledged De Montfort as rightful lord of the duchy, though a strong partisan of England, admitted him to do homage for the fief, and thus bound him in a certain degree to him by kindness--a display of political philosophy too much neglected by Edward III. of England and his son, the Black Prince.

Finding the estates of the crown greatly reduced by weak grants made by his father and former monarchs to the princes and nobles about them, he set himself to reclaim them, and thus restore the national finances--an undertaking which would have ruined a weak or imprudent king. But he prosecuted this design with such consummate address and persuasive mildness--showing its absolute necessity if France were to enable herself to shake off the incubus of the English, and beginning with his own uncle, the Duke of Orleans--that he carried it through triumphantly. This done, he proceeded to rid the nation of the bands of Free Companies which preyed on the very vitals of the kingdom. At the peace of Bretigny the disbanded soldiery of Edward, men from almost every European country, being scattered over the land, and being in possession of many of the strongholds, refused to lay down their arms. They were accustomed to a life of the utmost licence under the English king and prince, and they determined to continue it. Both English and Gascon officers now took the command of these freebooters, who became the scourge of the provinces. Sir Hugh Calverley, Sir Matthew Gournay, and the Chevalier Verte, were their most distinguished leaders. These troops amounted to 40,000, and did not fear to encounter the armies of France. They fought with them and beat them, and killed Jacques de Bourbon, a prince of the blood. The more they spoiled and ravaged, the more their numbers grew, for they were increased by those who sought for booty, and by those who were left without any other resource. People flocked to them precisely as they did in ancient times to David, in the cave of Adullam: "Every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him." The Pope excommunicated them; but though that ban, so awful in that age, alarmed, it did not disperse them.

Charles at first complained to Edward warmly that his forces were not disbanded according to the treaty, and called upon him to see them dispersed; but when Edward, finding proclamations for the purpose unheeded, declared that he would himself march against them, Charles took alarm at the prospect of seeing an English army again on the soil of France, and hastened to request him to spare himself that trouble--he would deal with them in his own way. His mode of ridding himself of them was worthy of his enlightened mind. He used all his persuasion to engage them in foreign wars. He represented to them what a rich field the wars of Italy presented to them; and a large body, under one Hawkwood, an Englishman, proceeded thither, and won great wealth and distinction. Fortune favoured the plans of the king, and opened a still wider field of action to the troublesome Free Companies. Pedro, the king of Castile at that time, was one of the most bloody monsters who ever disgraced a throne. He indulged his savage disposition by the murder of his own near relations and the nobles about the court. He had put to death several of his natural brothers for fear of their conspiring against him. The murder of one noble led him to that of others, who he dreaded might attempt retaliation. His court was become a perfect hell of blood and terror, and that terror alone prevented his dethronement. But, instigated by Mary de Padilla, his mistress, he poisoned his wife, the sister of the queen of Charles of France.

At this Enrique, Count of Trastamare, and Tello, Count of Biscay, his natural brothers, who had taken arms against him in vain, fled to the court of France, and implored Charles to avenge the sister of his queen, and rid the country of this modern Nero.

Charles embraced the proposal as the evident beckoning hand of a good Providence. He procured the liberty of Du Guesclin, who was still a prisoner to Lord Chandos, and set him to bring over the chiefs of the Companies to take command under him for a feigned expedition against the Moors in Spain, which was regarded as a crusade against the infidels. The Pope, who had his cause of quarrel with the monster Pedro, gave his blessing to the scheme, and Du Guesclin speedily found himself at the head of 30,000 of these desperadoes. The King of France gave them 200,000 francs; and, assembling at Châlons, on the river Marne, they marched towards Avignon. The Pope, who then resided there, alarmed at the approach of such a force, sent a cardinal to learn their object in coming that way. Du Guesclin answered that as they were bound on a crusade against the enemies of the Church, they sought the Pope's blessing, and the small sum of 200,000 florins to help them on their way. His holiness readily promised the blessing and absolution of all their sins--an awful score! But Du Guesclin replied that his followers were of that description that they would, if necessary, dispense with the absolution, but not with the money. The Pope then proposed to levy the sum of 100,000 florins on the inhabitants, but Du Guesclin said they were not come to oppress the innocent people, but would expect the money out of the Pope's own coffers. His holiness thought it well to comply with a request backed by such arguments as 30,000 notorious banditti, and the bold beggars marched on. They very soon drove the tyrant from his throne and kingdom, who fled, with his two daughters, into Guienne, and put himself under the protection of the Black Prince.

In all the wars of Edward III. against Scotland and France he had shown an utter disregard of right; and in this respect he was fully seconded by the Black Prince; but of all their undertakings none so flagrantly outraged every principle of justice, humanity, and chivalry as their abetting this demon in human shape, Don Pedro of Castile. Here was a man steeped in the blood of his own family and of his own wife; a man who had oppressed and plundered his subjects till they hated him with a mortal hatred, and had joined in chasing him from the country; yet Edward--though a professed champion of chivalry, and as such bound to defend and redress the grievances of women--at once undertook to restore the murderer of his wife to his ensanguined throne, and to force him again on a people whom he had driven to desperation by his ferocious tyrannies. It has been attempted to vindicate this action by representing Don Pedro as the _legitimate_ sovereign, whom, therefore, the prince, as an upholder of legitimate authority, was bound to support. But the fact is that Edward and his father had all their lives been engaged in endeavouring, by all the force of their talents and the resources of their kingdom, to destroy legitimacy in the person of the King of France. It has been again urged that the King of France sanctioning the expedition to dethrone Don Pedro naturally aroused the rivalry of the Black Prince, who would probably, say these authors, never have succoured the infamous Pedro had not the King of France taken the other side. But the worst of it is, that the King of France was on the right side, the just and honourable one--that of punishing a murderer of his own relative, and of assisting an oppressed people. The Prince of Wales was on the wrong side--the odious one of abetting as foul a monster as ever disgraced humanity; and his proceeding was as impolitic as it was unjust, for it raised a new enemy, the reigning King of Castile, Don Enrique, and threw him into the alliance of France. The conduct of the Black Prince in this affair proved that, with all his personal virtues, he was destitute of that high moral sense--that perception of what is intrinsically great and noble--which stamps the true hero; and the hand of Providence appears speedily and unequivocally to have displayed itself against him and his father, who sanctioned his fatal enterprise. All his wisest and most faithful counsellors urged him to reflect on the crimes and bloodstained character of Don Pedro; to remember that such men were as ungrateful as they were base; and also that the expedition must be attended by severe charges on the province of Gascony, already loudly complaining of its burthens.

These just admonitions were all lost on the prince. He assembled a force, recalling his officers from the bands of the Companies, 12,000 of whom, on learning that he was about to take the field, left Du Guesclin, headed by Sir Hugh Calverley, and Sir Robert Knowles, and followed his banners, believing in the ascendency of his fortune, and careless of every other motive. The Prince of Wales came into action with the troops of Don Enrique and Du Guesclin at Navarrete, routed them with a loss of 20,000 men, and easily reinstated the tyrant upon the throne. But there the success of the Black Prince ceased. He could not make the monster Pedro anything but a monster; and Pedro immediately displayed his diabolical disposition by proposing to the prince to murder all their prisoners in cold blood, which the prince indignantly refused.

And now the punishment of the Prince of Wales for this unhappy deed--a foul blot for ever on his brilliant escutcheon--came fast and heavily upon him; so fast, so heavily, so palpably, that the writers of the time plainly ascribed it to the displeasure of Providence. The tyrant, once restored, gave Prince Edward immediate proof of the miserable work he had done, by refusing to fulfil a single stipulation that he had made. He left the prince's army without the pay so liberally promised, and without provisions. The prince was exposed to the murmurs of his deluded soldiers. The heat of the climate and strange and unwholesome food began to sweep them off in great numbers, whilst his own health gave way, never to be restored. He made his way back to Bordeaux as well as he could, where he arrived in July, 1367, with a ruined constitution, and covered with debts, incurred on behalf of the ungrateful tyrant. To discharge the debt due to his troops, he laid a tax on hearths, not unknown in England, but new to the Gascons, which was calculated to produce 1,200,000 francs a year. But the inhabitants resented this tax on their chimneys, or _feuage_, as they called it, excessively. It was the climax to a host of grievances of which they began vehemently to clamour--as, for example, that all offices and honours were conferred on foreigners; and that their treatment was harsh, like that of a conquered people. As the Black Prince paid no attention to their complaints, the nobles of the district carried them to the King of France, as their ancient lord paramount.

While the Prince of Wales was thus about to be embroiled with France, on account of his ill-fated restoration of Don Pedro, he had the mortification to learn that that savage had only regained his throne to wreak the most diabolical cruelties on his subjects, whom he now regarded as rebels. Du Guesclin, having obtained his ransom, once more joined Enrique de Trastamare to expel the despot. He defended himself with desperate valour, but he was eventually defeated. As he had only about a dozen men with him, Don Pedro attempted to steal away at night, but he was seized by a French officer; and such was the implacable fury of the two brothers against each other, that, as soon as Don Enrique heard of his capture, he flew to the tent where he was in custody. There, after insulting and irritating each other, the two proceeded to a deadly struggle, in which Don Enrique stabbed Pedro to the heart with his dagger.

Such were the fruits for which the Prince of Wales had sacrificed his honour--his life, as it proved--and the peace of his provinces. The wary Charles V. had long been eagerly watching the proceedings of the English. He had on various pretences deferred the fulfilment of the conditions of the treaty of Bretigny, and now, on the plea that it was void, he summoned the Black Prince to Paris, as his vassal, to answer the complaints of his subjects. The treaty of Bretigny liberated the English provinces from all feudal subjection, and made them independent. When the heralds conveyed the summons to the Black Prince, his eyes flamed with indignation at this breach of faith; he looked furiously on the messengers, and exclaimed, "Is it even so? Does our fair cousin desire to see us at Paris? Gladly will we go thither; but I assure you, sirs, that it shall be with our basnets on our heads, and at the head of 60,000 men."

The messengers dropped on their knees in terror, begging him to remember that they only did the message of him who sent them. But the prince, deigning them no word, left them in wrath, and the courtiers ordered them to get away as fast as they could; but the prince, hearing of their departure, sent after them and brought them back, but did them no injury.

Thus were England and France once more plunged into war through the ill-timed restoration of a base tyrant; with general discontent in the English provinces in the south of France, and the health of the prince fast failing. The French king had carefully calculated the declining vigour of Edward III., as well as the health of his son; and now he advanced to regain the territories he had lost, and to avenge the mortal injuries which his country had suffered from the English. Circumstances were highly favourable to Charles. Discontent prevailed in the English provinces, and there was disunion amongst the commanders of the forces. On his own side he had with him the wishes of the whole country. Many of the great commanders who had assisted to win the proud laurels of Edward and the Black Prince were dead, or sunk into old age. The Free Companies who had served under the Black Prince were dismissed from the want of that very pay which the tyrant Pedro had refused, and were now eagerly engaged by the French king. The feudal troops and the archery of England, the very soul of the army, had returned home at the end of the war, and it would now require much time and expenditure of money to collect them again.

On the other hand, a new generation had sprung up in France, who had not known the terrors of Creçy or Poitiers, but only had heard of the defeat of France and the death of their fathers, and burned to avenge them. The terrible King of England was old; his lion-hearted son was known to be sinking into the grave. It seemed as if the doom of heaven was pronounced on the power of the English. They had overrun and destroyed, but taken no pains to conciliate, and the hatred which flamed in the hearts of the people was fanned and made holy by the universal voice of the clergy, producing everywhere revolt from the English, and adhesion to the French monarch. Charles had prepared for this crisis for years, husbanding his income till he was called not only the Wise, but the Wealthy; and the people, now kindled with the spirit of patriotism, submitted cheerfully to new taxes for reconquering the independence of their country, even to that same _feuage_ which, imposed in Gascony, had cost the Prince of Wales his popularity; so much does the payment of a tax depend on the person who imposes it, and the purpose for which it is demanded.

Still the Black Prince, though ill, was not cast down. Some of the Free Companies, in spite of the defection of their fellows, joined him to the number of 6,000 lances, under the brave Sir Hugh Calverley; and Edward III. sent from England a considerable army, under the command of the Earl of Cambridge, the prince's fourth brother, and Sir John Hastings, the Earl of Pembroke, his brother-in-law.

The King of France fell on the province of Ponthieu, which gave the English admittance into the heart of France. The people everywhere received him with open arms, showing how completely all the efforts of England to conquer France had been thrown away. The citizens of Abbeville opened their gates to him. Those of the neighbouring towns followed their example, and in a very little time the whole country was regained by the French.

In Poitou the brothers of Charles, the Dukes of Berri and Anjou, assisted by the gallant Du Guesclin, were equally successful. Lord Audley, the son of that Sir James Audley who distinguished himself so greatly at the battle of Poitiers, who was seneschal of the province, fell sick and died in the very commencement of the war, to the extreme grief of the prince, who made the celebrated Sir John Chandos his successor. But jealousies amongst the commanders, now the Prince of Wales was unable to be at the head of his armies, produced disastrous consequences, and worse very soon followed in the death of the brave Chandos. That enterprising leader proposed to the Earl of Pembroke to join him in an expedition against Louis de Sancerre, the Marshal of France. But Pembroke, jealous of the fame of Sir John, and instigated by his flatterers, who insinuated that with such a renowned general the earl would come off with very little of the glory of the undertaking, declined the proposal. Sir John Chandos, disgusted by the refusal, retired into the city of Poitiers, and dismissed such troops as were not necessary for its defence.

No sooner had he done this, than the Earl of Pembroke issued forth with 200 spears to win distinction for himself, and waste the lands of the nobles who were opposed to the Black Prince's taxation. This was good news for the Marshal Sancerre, who had little fear when he learned that Chandos had retired in displeasure. He came suddenly with an overwhelming force on Pembroke, killed a considerable number of his knights, and compelled him to take refuge in an old church of the abolished Knights Templars. Pembroke, now awake to his folly, dispatched a messenger to Sir John Chandos for help. The messenger did not reach Poitiers till the next morning, when Sir John was at breakfast. On hearing Pembroke's appeal, he coolly went to mass, glad, no doubt, to let the envious nobleman feel the effects of his foolish conduct. Meantime the battle at the church was going on vigorously, the English stoutly defending their retreat, but feeling, from the thinness of the walls and want of provisions, that they could not hold out long. Another messenger was dispatched to Sir John, accompanied by a most earnest entreaty, and a valuable ring from the finger of the earl himself. Sir John was at dinner when the messenger arrived, describing in earnest words the imminent danger of the earl and his followers. Sir John had not yet forgiven the young nobleman. He went on with his dinner, saying, "If it be as you say, nothing can save him." But anon, lifting up his head, he said to his knights and esquires around him, "Hear me, sirs! the Earl of Pembroke is a noble person, and of high lineage, son-in-law to our natural lord, the King of England. Foul shame were it to see him lost, if we can save him. I will go, by the grace of God."

Two hundred men-at-arms mounted in haste, and, Sir John at their head, galloped off to surprise the Marshal of Sancerre while besieging Pembroke in the Temple-house. But the wary French, apprised of the approach of Sir John, speedily drew off and escaped.

In December of the same year, 1370, Sir John Chandos lost his life in a confused skirmish, owing to want of proper co-operation among the English commanders; and his loss was soon obvious in a greater lack of spirit and success in the English army in the south of France; the gallant Captal de Buch, who preceded Sir John as seneschal of Guienne, being taken prisoner, and lost to the English service.

Meantime Edward III. had sent fresh forces to Calais, under his son, the Duke of Lancaster, commonly called John of Ghent, or Gaunt, in alliance with the Count of Namur. The King of France sent a still larger army to oppose the inroads of these forces under his brother Philip, the Duke of Burgundy, but commanded him on no account to come to a general engagement with the English, lest the fate of Creçy and Poitiers should once more overtake him. The duke posted himself between St. Omer and Tournay, where the Duke of Lancaster came out against him, but could not induce the French to fight. The Duke of Burgundy, impatient of this inglorious position, desired to be recalled, and the king ordered him to fall back on Paris. Then John of Gaunt advanced, pillaging and laying waste the country in the old English manner from Calais to Bordeaux, while Sir Robert Knowles, the Free Companies' leader, with an army of 30,000 men, took his way by Terouenne and through Artois, burning and destroying all before him. He next advanced to the very gates of Paris, up to which one of his knights rode, and struck a blow with his spear, having made a vow that he would strike his lance on the gate of Paris. The daring warrior, however, lost his life returning through the suburbs, being cut down by a gigantic butcher with his cleaver. After that Knowles marched into Brittany for winter quarters. On their march that fatal disunion which now infected the English army, once more showed itself. Lord Grandison, Lord Fitzwalter, and other English nobles, refused to follow Knowles into Brittany. They declared that it did not become noblemen like themselves to serve under a man of mean birth, as Sir Robert Knowles was, and they drew off their forces to Anjou and Touraine.

Bertrand du Guesclin, now made Constable of France, hearing of this disunion from an English traitor, pursued Knowles to cut him off. Knowles sent information of this pursuit to Lord Grandison, and his disdainful aristocratic companions; but too late, for Du Guesclin overtook them at Pont Volant, defeated them, and slew the greater part of these proud exclusives. Knowles made good his retreat into Brittany.

About this time the Black Prince performed his last military exploit; and it was one calculated to become an additional brand on his name in France. Limoges, the capital of Limousin, had been betrayed to the Dukes of Anjou and Berri by the bishop and the chief inhabitants. The prince was greatly enraged, both because the bishop had been his personal friend, and because he had conferred many privileges on the citizens. He was now too weak to mount a horse, but he ordered out 1,200 lancers and 2,000 archers and, being borne in an open litter at the head of his troops, advanced to take vengeance on Limoges. The garrison treated with scorn his summons to surrender. But his sappers soon undermined the wall, though Du Guesclin did all he could by a flying force to draw off his attention. Some authors say that he there used gunpowder, lately introduced, to blow up the mine, as they contend that his father used cannon in the battle of Creçy. Others say that he threw down the wall by burning the props which supported the excavation while in progress. Whatever was now the mode, he made a breach, and his troops, rushing in, perpetrated the most ruthless and indiscriminate slaughter. The poor people, men, women, and children, knelt in the streets, and threw themselves down before the prince, crying, "Mercy! mercy, for God's sake!" But the inexorable prince turned a deaf ear to these moving prayers from the innocent people who had nothing whatever to do with the surrender of the city, and 4,000 were put to death. The only pity which he showed was to the bishop who gave up the place, and to a knot of brave knights whom he found standing with their backs to a wall, engaged in mortal combat with his brothers the Dukes of Lancaster and Cambridge, and Pembroke, his brother-in-law. After watching their gallant defence some time in high admiration, he consented to accept their submission, and dismissed them with praises. This extraordinary man could still feel delight in the spectacle of a brave feat of arms, though his soul was become utterly callous to every sentiment of pity for his fellow men in general. He gave up the city to be sacked, and it was burnt to the ground.

In the early part of the following year he lost his eldest son, and his own health being now completely broken, he returned to England, quitting for ever the country where he had gained so much glory, and on which he had inflicted such extensive calamities. He left the Duke of Lancaster, his lieutenant, who maintained a court at Bordeaux as brilliant as that of the prince himself. At this court were residing the two daughters of the late Don Pedro the Cruel; and John of Gaunt, now a widower, but in the prime of his life, married Donna Constance, the eldest, and in her right assumed the title of King of Castile and Leon; and his brother, the Earl of Cambridge, married, at the same time, the second sister. This, as we have said of the Black Prince's expedition into Castile to reinstate the tyrant Don Pedro, was a most false and calamitous policy, for it made a firm ally of Enrique, now reigning king of Castile, to Charles of France; and of this the effect was speedily felt.

John of Gaunt went over to England to introduce his royal bride at court there; and the Earl of Pembroke going out to supply his place in June, 1372, with a fleet of forty ships, was encountered off the port of La Rochelle by a powerful navy belonging to King Enrique. The battle was fiercely contested; but the Spanish ships were not only much larger than those of the English, but provided with cannon, now for the first time employed at sea. The English were completely defeated; the greater part of their ships were taken, burnt, or sunk, including one carrying the military chest, with £20,000. The Earl of Pembroke, with many other men of rank, remained prisoners.

Such was the immediate effect of the English alliance with the family of such a monster as Don Pedro; and nothing showed more completely the degree to which the English had made themselves detested in France than the eagerness with which the people of La Rochelle and its neighbourhood, though still English subjects, aided the Spaniards by every means in their power.

This defeat and loss laid open the country to the attacks of the King of France, through his valiant and wise constable, Du Guesclin, who took town after town. The Duke of Lancaster set sail from England with a fresh army, accompanied by the Earls of Suffolk, Warwick, Stafford, and Lord Edward Spencer, to repel the French forces. But these forces, divided into three hosts, under the Dukes of Burgundy and Bourbon, and Du Guesclin, still avoided any engagement, but watched the English army, harassed its rear, and cut off its foraging parties everywhere. In vain the Duke of Lancaster marched from Bordeaux to Calais and back; everywhere the enemy fled before him, and yet everywhere he suffered loss; so that the king, his father, declared, with irrepressible vexation "that there never was a monarch at once so little of a soldier and who contrived to give so much trouble." The last town possessed by the English in Gascony was Thouars, then a considerable place. The constable invested it, and the English lords shut up in it--the best of those whom the long series of skirmishes and sieges had left--agreed to surrender it at the next Michaelmas, if the King of England or one of his sons did not relieve them within that period. Edward, on hearing this, put to sea with a considerable army; but winds and waves were steadily opposed to him, and he was compelled to put back and leave Thouars to its fate. The last ally of Edward, the Count de Montfort, was driven from his duchy by Du Guesclin and Oliver de Clisson, and compelled to take refuge in England. The Duke of Lancaster marched to and fro, but gained no signal advantage; and Charles V., thinking that Edward's fortunes were too low again to reinstate the Count of Brittany, proposed to the estates of France to confiscate his territory, and annex it to the French crown; but this the nobles of Brittany opposed, and recalled John de Montfort from his exile in England.

In 1374, but two years previous to the death of the Black Prince, and three to the death of Edward himself, a truce was signed at Bruges between France and England for one year. The Pope, by his legates, who followed both armies, and attended both courts, had never remitted his Christian endeavours to put a stop to the barbarities of the war; but it was not till France had won almost all that it had lost that he could succeed. The truce was concluded, and was maintained till the death of the King of England; at which time all that was left of his French possessions were Bordeaux, Bayonne, a few towns on the Dordogne, and Calais in the north. Such were the miserable fruits of all the human blood and lives expended, and all the miseries inflicted in these unjust and impolitic wars of more than forty years' duration.

When the Black Prince returned to England, broken down in constitution, he found things far from agreeable. The king was become feeble, and ruled by favourites. Great abuses had sprung up and were carried on in the king's name. The Duke of Lancaster had created a strong party for himself, and exercised the principal power. The prince, still growing weaker, yet roused himself to restrain the domination of Lancaster, and remove his creatures from about the person of the king. The Commons, as is supposed, by direct encouragement of the prince, impeached nearly all the ministers. They removed the chamberlain, Lord Latimer, from the king's council, and put him in prison. They deprived Lord Neville of the offices which he held, and arrested several farmers of the customs. They even censured Alice Perrers, the King's mistress. The excellent Philippa had been dead several years, and this Alice Perrers, who had been a lady of the bedchamber to the queen, had acquired the most complete influence over the old king. She was now banished from court. This Parliament was known as "The Good Parliament," but its efforts were, for the most part, fruitless.

Such were the unhappy affairs which clouded the last days of the celebrated Black Prince, and even tended to sow dissension between him and his father. He died on Trinity Sunday, the 8th of June, 1376, in the forty-sixth year of his age, to the immense regret of the people, who regarded his military achievements, though of no solid advantage to the nation, with a deep national pride, and, from his opposition to corruptions at home, esteemed him as a most patriotic prince. It is clear that he must have been of a naturally noble nature, and possessed of personal qualities as engaging as his courage and military genius were unrivalled; but his warlike education had blunted many of the finest feelings of the heart, and led him to become the scourge of France, and in a great measure useless to his own country. His body was drawn by twelve horses from London to Canterbury, the whole court and Parliament following through the city; and he was buried in the cathedral, near the shrine of Thomas Becket.

After his death the Duke of Lancaster recovered his ascendency in the state and over the king, who, grown indolent, and devoted only to the society of his artful mistress, paid little attention to State affairs. John of Gaunt hastened to undo all that the Black Prince had effected. He caused his own Steward, Sir Thomas Hungerford, to be made Speaker of the House of Commons. He restored his faction there, and soon had Sir Peter de la Mare, the late Speaker, arrested, and the celebrated William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, deprived of his temporalities, on charges of embezzlement which could not be proved, and dismissed from court. The duke went so far as not only to implore that the Lord Latimer, but Alice Perrers, should be freed from the censures passed upon them by the late Parliament in the name of the king, and restored to their former condition and privileges. The present Parliament, however, was not so completely packed by John of Gaunt but that it possessed a spirit of opposition, which insisted that the accused should be put upon their trial; and the bishops demanded the same justice towards William of Wykeham, one of the greatest men of the age, the architect of Windsor Castle, the founder of St. Mary's College at Winchester and of New College at Oxford.

It is said that we owe it to the resentment of John of Gaunt against the bishops that he took up so earnestly the cause of Wycliffe, the great English reformer, and thus became a most effectual champion and guardian of the Reformation. Wycliffe, who was a parish priest at this time, living at Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, and the prebendary of Aust, in the collegiate church of Westbury, in the diocese of Worcester, had been a member of a commission sent by Edward to Pope Gregory XI., which met at Bruges; and it is remarkable that this glimpse of the papal court is said to have had the same effect on him as the visit of Luther afterwards to Rome. He became a decided Church reformer, and being a teacher at Oxford, had ample opportunity of making public his ideas. His denunciation of Church abuses, and opposition to many of its doctrines, had caused him to be cited by a convocation of the clergy to appear at St. Paul's on the 3rd of February, 1377, to answer to the charges against him. Here he was attended by John of Gaunt and the Earl Marshal, Lord Percy. These noblemen and the bishops became mutually very hot on the question, and the Duke of Lancaster is reported to have threatened to drag Courtenay, the Bishop of London, who presided, by the hair of the head out of the church. A riot was the consequence, the Duke of Lancaster protecting Wycliffe; and the people, who were very jealous of Lancaster's overgrown power, resenting his insult to the bishop, broke into his house and that of Lord Percy, killing Lord Percy's chaplain, and doing immense damage to the duke's palace. The two noblemen escaped across the water to Kennington, where the widow of the Black Prince, the "Fair maid of Kent," and her son Richard, the heir apparent, resided. The riot ran so high that the debates of Parliament were interrupted, and the mob reversed the duke's arms as a traitor.

The king, completing the fiftieth year of his reign and the sixty-fourth of his life, published a general amnesty for all minor offences; still however, through the influence of Lancaster, excluding Wykeham of Winchester. He was now fast failing, and passed his time between Eltham Palace and his manor of Shene (or Sheen), near Richmond. The last days of this great monarch were like those of many others who during their lives ruled men with a high hand. They were desolate and deserted. Nobles and courtiers were now looking out for the rising sun, and paying it their assiduous adoration. By some this was held to be the Duke of Lancaster, against whose designs on the throne the people had called on the king, before the death of the Black Prince, to guard; and he had named his grandson Richard, then not six years old, his successor. By others Richard was deemed the true fountain of future favour, and all deserted the dying king, except his deeply interested mistress, who, after securing everything else of value that she could, drew the diamond ring from the finger of the dying monarch, and departed. The servants had gone before to plunder the house, and only a solitary, faithful priest, preferring his duty to the things of this world, hastened to the bedside of the departing monarch, held aloft his crucifix, and remained in that position till the once mighty king had breathed his last.

Englishmen look with pride to the reign of Edward III., as one of those which stamped the martial ascendency of their race; and unquestionably it was an era of high military glory. But, beyond the glory, what was the genuine advantage won by Edward III. and his heroic son? Neither in France nor in Scotland, the scenes of his feats of arms, did he retain a foot of the land which he conquered, except Calais and its little circle of environs. In fact, in France, he lost much territory which he inherited. Of all the time--a great and invaluable lifetime--spent, of all the human lives destroyed, of all the taxes wrung from his people, there remained no fruits but the small district of Calais, destined to furnish fresh cause of feud, and a heritage of eternal hate on the part of France towards England. But, so far as Edward III.'s foreign expeditions led his great and factious nobles abroad, they ensured a long and settled quiet at home. That quiet, it is true, was not free from oppressions and from plunderings of the people by the practice of purveyance. Edward ruled with a high hand, and kept both his nobles and people in subjection; but the exactions of the Crown were, at their worst, far more tolerable than those of a crowd of barons and their vassals, and the horrors which civil dissensions inflicted on the people. With all the drain of men and _barones minores_, or lesser nobility, to the wars, there were constant complaints of robberies, murders, and other outrages committed under protection of the great; but in no degree so extensive as at the times when the restless and quarrelsome nobles were all at home. The king, too, driven to straits by the constant want of money for his wars, always made very free in levying taxes without consent of Parliament, and in procuring provisions by what was styled purveyance. When the king had no money his family must subsist, and therefore he was obliged to send out his servants as purveyors, who seized provisions wherever they could find them, and gave tallies, or wooden memoranda, of what they took, at what rate they pleased; the price to be obtained as best it might, or stopped out of the next taxes.