Chapter VI: John the Good and Charles the Wise (2)

There was one strong enough place, in a little Longueil village, close to Compiègne. The inhabitants, seeing they would be in great peril if the enemy should take possession of it, demanded of their ruling lord, and of the abbé of St. Corneille whose serfs they were, permission to fortify their village. After having obtained this, they collected provisions and arms, chose for captain a fine strong man named Guillaume des Alouettes from among themselves, and swore to defend their town with their last breath. When this was done and became known, many hastened from neighbouring villages for protection. The captain had for servant a man as brave as he was tall and strong, known as “Le Grand Ferré” (_Magnus Ferratus_). In spite of his huge size and strength Le Grand Ferré had a very poor opinion of himself, and the captain could do with him what he liked.

There were about two hundred of them, all labourers and accustomed to gain a scanty livelihood with their hands. The English, who occupied a strong position near Creil, on learning of these preparations for defence, were filled with scorn for such wretched people. “Let us drive the villagers out,” they said, “the place is good and strong and we will occupy it.” And they prepared to do as they said. Two hundred English marched thither. Watch was not well kept; even the gates were open, and the enemy entered boisterously. At the noise they made those in the houses rushed to the windows, and seeing so many armed men were overcome by fright. The captain finally appeared with some of his men, and began to strike the English bravely, but was soon surrounded and mortally wounded. At this misfortune the others including Le Grand Ferré said among themselves, “Let us go down and sell our lives dearly, for we may expect no mercy.” So they collected together and suddenly appearing from different directions threw themselves with redoubled blows upon the English; they struck as if threshing wheat on the barn floor. Arms were raised and lowered and at each blow an Englishman fell.

When Le Grand Ferré reached the side of his dying captain, his grief overcame him and he threw himself furiously upon the enemy. As he was head and shoulders above his companions they could see him wielding his axe, striking and redoubling his blows, none of which missed a victim. Helmets were broken, skulls split, and arms cut off. In a short time there was a clear space around him, for he had killed eighteen and wounded many more. His encouraged comrades did marvels, and the English quit the affair and took to flight. Some jumped into the moat and were drowned, others flung themselves against the gates; but blows rained upon them thick and fast. Le Grand Ferré, reaching the middle of the street where the enemy had planted its standard, killed the bearer, and seizing the flag told one of his own men to go and throw it into the moat. The man however pointed with terror to the still thick mass of English. “Follow me,” called out Le Grand Ferré, and seizing his great axe in both hands he struck right and left, till he made a path to the moat where the others threw the enemy’s ensign into the mud. Le Grand Ferré stopped a moment for breath, but returned at once to what remained of the English. Only a very few of those who came to perform this deed escaped, thanks to God and Le Grand Ferré, who killed that day more than forty of them.

The English were very angry and disturbed to see so many of their brave soldiers perish at the hands of these peasants. The next day they returned in greater numbers, but the people of Longueil no longer feared them. They went forth to meet the enemy, Le Grand Ferré at their head. And when the enemy saw him and felt the weight of his arm and his iron axe, they wished they had never come that way. They could not get back so fast that many were not mortally wounded, killed, or taken prisoners, and among these were some men of high lineage. If the folk of Longueil had consented to ransom them as the nobles do among themselves, they would have been very rich. But they would not hear of this and killed their captives, saying that in this way the enemy would do no more harm.

In this last struggle the fighting was very hard and Le Grand Ferré became much exhausted. He drank quantities of cold water and was almost immediately seized with a fever. He managed to get back to the village to his cottage and went to bed, but keeping close to him his good axe, an iron axe so heavy that a man of ordinary strength could scarcely lift it from the ground with both hands. The English learned with joy that Le Grand Ferré was ill, and without giving him time to recover despatched twelve soldiers with orders to kill him. His wife saw them from afar and cried to him, “Oh, my poor Ferré, here come the English, what will you do?” He forgot his illness, and got up quietly. Taking his heavy axe he strode into his yard. When they entered, “Ah, brigands,” he cried, “you come to take me in my bed, but you don’t know me.” He placed his back to the wall so as not to be surrounded, and swinging his axe brought his assailants face to face with death. Of the twelve he killed five and put the rest to flight. Le Grand Ferré returned to his bed, but he had again overheated himself in dealing so many blows and drank more cold water. The violence of the fever redoubled, and a few days later, having received the sacraments, he passed away. Le Grand Ferré was buried in the village cemetery. All his companions, the whole countryside in fact, mourned his loss; for with him alive the English would never have dared approach.[d]

One feels, in the wealth of detail into which the chronicler enters, the sympathy of the old monk for the poor peasants. In the depths of the monasteries were narrated their valiant deeds against the pillagers of churches; these are told much more frequently in village companies. The tales spread slowly but went far. Little by little the foundations of hatred for the foreigner were laid in the hearts of the people, and a love of country whose fiercest outburst is found in Joan of Arc.

THE TREATY OF BRETIGNY (1360 A.D.)

The dauphin was still more anxious to send the English home because “France was in its last throes, and for so little as its woes might last it might perish.” A conference was opened at Bretigny, near Chartres, the 1st of May, 1360. The English negotiators demanded in the first place the whole crown of France; then they limited themselves to what had belonged to the Plantagenets; finally Edward III contented himself with the duchy of Aquitaine and all its dependencies (Gascony, Poitou, Saintonge, Aunis, Agénois, Périgord, the Limousin, Quercy, Rouergue, and Angoumois), ceded in independent sovereignty, and Calais with the counties of Ponthieu and Guines, also the viscounty of Montreuil. Thus ended the first period of the Hundred Years’ War. The king’s ransom was fixed at three million gold crowns;[27] in guarantee for which sum John had to leave in Edward’s hands a certain number of hostages taken from the highest nobles and richest bourgeoisie of the land. Edward carried them with him across Normandy, which he harassed once more, in order to embark at Honfleur, the Havre of that day. The provinces promised to the king of England were given up, despite the protests against this pretended restitution by the great majority who said, with the inhabitants of La Rochelle, “We will acknowledge the English with our lips, but never with our hearts.” For a whole year they refused to open their gates to the English.

At Abbeville things went still better. When the patriotic citizens saw in their streets the soldiers who for fifteen years had trampled France under foot, they were unable to restrain themselves; secret meetings were held; then a riot broke out which was quickly suppressed, but not before a rich citizen, Ringois, was captured. The English commandant used, however, moderation and offered Ringois his liberty on sole condition that he would take the oath of allegiance to Edward III. Ringois refused. They took him to Dover, threatening him this time with death if he were obstinate, but he persisted. They brought him even to the platform of the fortress and showed him the furthermost parapet with the sea beating furiously at its feet; if he said one word he would be saved. He still refused and the guard threw him off.

There still remained to find the money for the first payment of the ransom, and it was obtained by a shameful expedient. “The king of France,” says Matteo Villani[q] the historian, “sold his flesh and blood.” For 600,000 florins he bestowed his daughter Isabella, then only eleven years of age, on Gian Galeazzo Visconti, the son of the fiercest tyrant in Italy, who hunted men in the streets of his capital and threw them living into the flames. Thanks to this money the king left Calais on the 25th of October, 1360.

THE LAST YEARS OF KING JOHN (1360-1364 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1360-1364 A.D.]]

The 5th of December following we find an ordinance by which John announces, in spite of the great compassion he has for his people, the levy of a new tax on all merchandise sold or exported, on salt and on wine, in return for which he promises henceforth good and loyal justice to all, to put nothing but undebased coin into circulation, and to abolish the right of seizure and other abuses that fell so heavily upon the poor people. These promises did not deceive any more than the taxes profited them. What could be produced in a country ceaselessly ravaged by large forces and desolated by frequent appearances of the black death? It became necessary to fall back on other resources--loans, the revocation of all donations made by kings since Philip the Fair, and giving the Jews considerable privileges in matters of finance. With the money thus procured what did the king do? Did he use it to break up those bands of brigands, marauders, and _tard venues_ that had just (1362) captured and killed the constable James de Bourbon at Brignais near Lyons? He made little journeys at great expense, travelling from town to town to take possession of the rich heritage of the Capetian house of Burgundy, which the death of Philip de Rouvre had recently placed in his hands. From there he journeyed down to Avignon where he spent six months in feasting, and planning a marriage with the famous queen Joanna of Naples. The pope, who had already been twice ransomed from the great companies, made John a proposition capable of appealing to his adventurous imagination--to form all these warrior bands into a crusade, which would rid France of them, and at the same time win glory for himself. It is not impossible that John would have embarked on this rash enterprise had he not learned that one of his sons, the duke of Anjou, had escaped from the English, by whom he was held in hostage. John felt for his son to do a thing like this was a slight on royal honour, and resolved to go himself to replace the fugitive. He thus escaped in a chivalrous manner from his embarrassing position and the sight of France’s misery. A part of the winter was spent in London, “in great rejoicings and recreations,” says Froissart,[g] “in dinners, suppers, and other fashions.” These fêtes and great repasts killed him; he died in London, April 8th, 1364, at the age of forty-four.[l]

Towards the end of 1361 the young duke Philip de Rouvre of Burgundy expired, leaving no issue; his marriage with the young heiress of Flanders not having been consummated. The duke possessed not only Burgundy, but Franche-Comté, Champagne, Artois, and Boulogne. An ancestor of Duke Philip had three daughters, to whom the succession now reverted. The eldest had been Marguerite, the unfortunate queen of Louis Hutin, whose daughter, married to the king of Navarre, had conveyed to the representative of that family the best right to the Burgundian succession. King John, descended from the second sister, would admit no right to the king of Navarre, nor yet to the count of Bar, descended from the third sister. He pleaded that he was nearer of kin than Charles of Navarre to the duke just deceased; and thus made use of the same claim to Burgundy that Edward III had done to France. John hastened to Dijon and installed himself there as duke, taking a solemn oath to respect all the privileges and rights of the duchy. Artois and Franche-Comté returned to the duchess-dowager of Flanders. John had no intention of uniting Burgundy to the crown, which he well knew would displease the Burgundians, accustomed from time immemorial to their native dukes and provincial independence. He therefore, in 1363, gave the duchy of Burgundy to his youngest son, Philip, who had been constantly by his side during the battle of Poitiers and his subsequent captivity. King John, indeed, assigned this reason for the gift. It was fully acquiesced in by John’s successor; and thus was founded that brilliant house of the dukes of Burgundy of the second race, which reigned from the Schelde to the Alps, and overshadowed and endangered the monarchy of France itself.[28][j]

CHARLES THE WISE (1364-1380 A.D.)

Charles V was seven-and-twenty when he began to reign, and if he had followed the example of his father, he would have played the part of feudal king and fighting cavalier, as that for which he was ordained. But the young monarch saw that France had need of other defenders than feudal kings and fighting cavaliers. It needed a clear eye and a steady hand--a man at the helm, not a gilt figure at the prow; for never was there a time when the vessel of the state seemed in such danger. There was a whole people to feed and satisfy--rebellious vassals to reclaim--an open foe to guard against--riotous bands in the very heart of the kingdom to be discomfited; and for all this he had an empty treasury, a discontented parliament, ambitious communes, and a disunited nobility. But the French heart of courage and chivalrous spirit of loyalty was still entire.

Charles was weak in body, and over him hung the sentence of death passed on him by the physicians in his youth. Charles the Bad, it was said, in return for his arrest at Rouen, had poisoned the dauphin’s food.[29] The prince escaped destruction by the opening of a perpetual wound in his left arm. “Whenever the sore heals over,” the doctors said, “the dauphin must die.” This issue was probably only a sign of a feeble constitution, but it silenced the sneers of his enemies, who were not accustomed to see a king except in armour; it doubled the respect of the few discerning potentates of the time, who began to perceive that a cabinet might be quite as great a scene of glory as a field of battle. Edward III said he was never so resisted in open fight, as by the calm, sagacious councillor who had never drawn a sword. Before the first year was over all men perceived that things were greatly changed. There were no tournaments at the Louvre--no feasts at the palace. The king lived like an anchorite, except on state occasions, when he outshone the magnificence of oriental princes; and paid his men-at-arms their wages, and granted privileges to the trading towns, and did not increase a single tax! People must have grown ashamed of sustaining the cause of Charles the Bad against so true a Frenchman and gracious a king as Charles the Wise; yet the war continued.[n]

Charles V at first made use of the help of his brothers, committing to their hands the provinces most remote from the centre, Languedoc to the duke of Anjou, and Burgundy to Philip the Bold. He himself attended only to the centre; but he needed an arm--a sword. There was then hardly any military spirit except among the Bretons and the Gascons. The king attached to him a brave Breton of Dinan, the sieur Du Guesclin, whom he had himself seen at the siege of Melun, and who had been fighting for France for some years.[e]

_Early Exploits of Bertrand du Guesclin_

The childhood of Bertrand du Guesclin offers some striking peculiarities. His ugliness, his deformity, and his rough, wild bearing had won for him the dislike of his family; the harsh treatment he endured only served to embitter his character. Armed with a stick, which he invariably carried, young Bertrand was a great trouble to his mother, and the terror of all the children in the neighbourhood. He could not be taught to read. “He knew nothing of letters,” says a chronicle, “and no masters could ever be found from whom he was willing to learn; but he always wanted to strike and beat them.”

One fine day, being then about sixteen or seventeen years of age, Bertrand escaped from his father’s house, which to his youthful ardour felt like a prison, and went off in triumph to Rennes to wrestle with a young Breton, already made proud by having overcome twelve adversaries; and soon afterwards Rennes beheld him again victorious in a solemn tournament, and from that time everyone who knew him, even his parents, understood that Bertrand had a great future before him. The war between Charles of Blois and John de Montfort, the two claimants of the duchy of Brittany, afforded Bertrand a favourable opportunity for distinguishing himself; he took the side of Charles of Blois, whose cause appeared to him more French than that of his rival, and the walls of Vannes, Fougeray, and Rennes were in turns witnesses of his extraordinary valour. Charles of Blois, to show his gratitude, presented him with the valuable domain of La Roche d’Airien or De Rien. In 1359 Bertrand compelled the duke of Lancaster to raise the siege of Dinan. His battle-cry was, “Notre Dame, Guesclin. Guesclin!” When in battle, this name rang in the ears of the English; it had the effect of a clap of thunder, and even the bravest trembled before such an enemy. The most careful and complete investigations have not enabled the learned to state the precise date when Bertrand entered the service of the king of France; it is not certain whether it was to King John or to the dauphin that he first offered the support of his valour. But at least we know that in 1361 he was already in the royal pay, and that he was in command of a company of men-at-arms and archers; this fact is proved by a discharge signed at Paris by Du Guesclin, and preserved amongst the registers of the court of exchequer.

Some authors say that the governorship of Pontorson was given to Du Guesclin as a mark of special favour. Whilst fighting for the glory of the lilies of France, the Breton warrior by no means forgot the interests of Charles of Blois, his natural sovereign; thus, after driving the English out of Normandy, he marched to the siege of Bécherel and routed De Montfort’s troops. It must have been about this time that his marriage took place with Tiphaine or Thiéphaine Raguenel, a rich heiress who, if we are to believe the traditions of the fourteenth century, foretold future events. The date of this marriage is one of the points of uncertainty in the history of Bertrand.[o]

The new king’s first care was to recover the mastery of the course of the Seine. Mantes and Meulan belonged to the king of Navarre; Boucicault and Du Guesclin got possession of them by an act of signal perfidy. The two towns had paid the penalty of all the mischief the Navarrese had done to the Parisians. The citizens had the satisfaction of seeing twenty-eight of them hanged in Paris.

The Navarrese, reinforced by English and Gascons under the captal De Buch, desired to avenge themselves, and do something to hinder the king from going to Rheims. Du Guesclin soon advanced with a considerable body, of French, Bretons, and also Gascons. The captal retreated towards Évreux, and halted at Cocherel, on an eminence; but Du Guesclin had the address to deprive him of the advantage of the ground. He sounded a retreat and made a feint of running away. The captal could not hinder his Englishmen from descending to pursue; they were too proud to hearken to a Gascon general, though a great lord and of the house of Foix. He was, therefore, constrained to obey his soldiers and accompany them into the plain. Thereupon Du Guesclin wheeled round. The Gascons whom he had with him appointed thirty of their number to carry off the captal from the midst of his men. The other Navarrese leaders were killed and the battle was won. Won on the 16th of May (1364), it was known at Rheims on the 18th, the coronation day--a fine omen for the new royalty. Charles V gave Du Guesclin such a reward as never king before him had bestowed: an establishment on the footing of a prince, the county of Longueville, the patrimony of the king of Navarre’s brother. At the same time he beheaded the sire de Saquenville, one of the chief advisers of the Navarrese. He dealt no better with the French who were found in the ranks of the companies. Men began to bethink them that brigandage was a crime.

_End of the Breton War: Battle of Auray (1364 A.D.)_

The war in Brittany ended in the same year. The king of France lent Charles of Blois Du Guesclin and one thousand lances. The prince of Wales sent De Montfort John Chandos,--the only rival in Europe to the fame of Du Guesclin as general and knight,--two hundred lances, and as many archers; and with these were joined several English knights. Montfort and the English were posted on a height, like the prince of Wales at Poitiers. Charles of Blois did not care for that. That devout prince, who believed in miracles, and who himself performed them, had refused at the siege of Quimper to retreat before a flood. “If it is God’s will,” he said, “the tide will do us no harm.” He made no more account of the mountain at Auray than of the flood at Quimper. Charles of Blois had the greater strength; many Bretons, even, of La Bretagne-Bretonnante joined him, out of hatred doubtless to the English. Du Guesclin disposed the army in an admirable manner. “Each man-at-arms,” says Froissart,[g] “carried his lance straight before him, projecting five feet, and had a small, hard, and well-sharpened axe, with a small handle. And thus they advanced in most handsome array. They rode so close that you could not have thrown a tennis ball among them, but it would have fallen on the points of the lances.” John Chandos gazed long on the French order of battle, “the which he praised mightily within himself.” He could not conceal his sentiments, but said, “So help me God as it is true that there is here flower of chivalry, great sense, and good arrangement.” Chandos had set apart a reserve to support each corps that wavered. It was not without difficulty he prevailed on one of his knights to remain in the rear and command that reserve; prayers, and almost tears were necessary to overcome the feudal prejudice that made the front rank be regarded as the only post of honour. Du Guesclin could not have effected the same thing in the other army.

[Sidenote: [1364-1366 A.D.]]

The two adverse claimants fought at the head of their respective forces. The Bretons were weary of this war, and wished to see it ended by the death of the one or the other. Chandos’ reserve gave him the advantage over Du Guesclin, who was unhorsed and taken prisoner. The whole brunt of the battle then fell on Charles of Blois; his banner was pulled down and himself slain. The greatest lords of Brittany obstinately held out, and were likewise slain (September 29th, 1364). When the English came, with great exultation, and showed De Montfort his enemy whom they had killed, the voice of French blood, or perhaps of kindred, awoke within him, and tears started from his eyes. A haircloth was found under the dead man’s cuirass. His piety and his good qualities recurred to memory. He had recommenced the war only in deference to his wife, whose patrimony Brittany was. This saint was also a man. He made verses and composed _lais_ in the intervals between his battles. He had been a lover, too; a bastard of his was killed by his side, endeavouring to avenge him. De Montfort got possession of all the strongest places in the country in a few days. The children of Charles of Blois were prisoners in England. The king of France, who carried no passion into the trade of war, made terms with the victor, and induced the widow of Charles of Blois to content herself with the county of Penthièvre, the viscounty of Limoges, and an income of 10,000 livres. The king did wisely. The essential thing was to hinder Brittany from doing homage to the English sovereign. There was every probability that, sooner or later, it would become weary of the protégé of England.[e] Peace was concluded on these terms at Guérande in 1365, and Du Guesclin was restored to liberty.

Peace also was concluded with Charles of Navarre, who was glad to accept the city of Montpellier in exchange for the places he had lost upon the Seine, and a period of rest was promised to the distracted land.

_Du Guesclin Leads the Free Companies into Castile (1366 A.D.)_

But the rest was impossible with so many conflicting interests to arrange, and such a spirit of unrule diffused by the recent struggles. Charles the Wise looked back with fond regret to the time of the Crusades, and meditated an exportation of the thousands of armed men of all surrounding countries to the East. But the Brabanters, English, and Saxons were very well satisfied with their present position, and had no desire to distinguish themselves against the enemies of the faith, when they could live so comfortably on the fat of abbey-lands, and occasionally put a bishop to ransom at home. The example of Montferrat, who had saved the pope at Avignon by leading the free lances of the south against the wealth of Milan, occurred also to the anxious thoughts of the king; and just at the moment when he was in greatest distress, a circumstance occurred in Spain which gave him the wished-for opportunity. Pedro, known in general history as the Cruel, but recognised in Spanish annals as the Great Justiciar, had offended a great proportion of his subjects by his relentless executions and harsh behaviour. He had poisoned his wife, a princess of Bourbon, at the instigation of his favourite Maria de Padilla, and threatened death to the surviving natural children of his father. Of these, Don Henry of Trastamara was the most popular and the best; he fled to France, and implored the aid of Charles against the murderous husband and unpitying brother. Du Guesclin saw the opening. “Sir,” he said, “the free lances are anxious for work, and will gather from all parts if I hoist my banner. Better neighbours will they be on the other side of the Pyrenees than on this.”

Charles adopted the party of the banished brother, and preparations were instantly made. Du Guesclin himself had begun as a leader of free lances, and knew their ways. Thirty thousand of them joined him in an incredibly short space of time, and he marched southward down the Rhone. The pope was as much alarmed as his predecessor had been, and sent out to know the object of their approach to Avignon. Bertrand answered with a grim smile, “We are thirty thousand poor Christian pilgrims bound on a crusade against the Saracens of Granada, and we want the holy father’s absolution, and also 200,000 livres.” “Touching the absolution, my son,” replied the nuncio, “you shall have it without fail; but with regard to the money, that is a different thing.” “Sir,” replied the knight, “there be many here who reck not of absolution, but many who desire the money, for we make them prudent men in spite of themselves.” Their prudence was rewarded with both the absolution and coin to the amount of 200,000 livres. They made a detour and Avignon was saved. When they reached Toulouse, the object of the expedition was for the first time declared to them. Plunder and battle was all they required, and a deluge of cruelty, courage, and destructiveness poured down on devoted Spain. Pedro was expelled from the throne, and fled to Portugal. Henry was crowned at Burgos with Du Guesclin at his side, and was joyously received in the other cities of Castile.

[Sidenote: [1366-1368 A.D.]]

Both nations now seemed ready for repose, and the triumph of having restored an exile and created a king was added to the other glories of the French monarch. But the Black Prince held his court at Bordeaux. Shortly after his marriage, in 1361, he was created duke of Aquitaine and had been living in his dominions since 1363. Feasts and tournaments were celebrated according to the strictest rules of chivalry, and noble ladies listened to the songs of troubadours, and the picturesque narratives of Froissart, and the adventures of fabulous warriors, as their predecessors were said to have done in the days of Charlemagne and Arthur. Suddenly the dethroned and powerless Pedro threw himself at the feet of the master of the lists; and half the stories of kingdoms lost and won by the irresistible sword of a single champion immediately rushed to their minds. All the blood of knighthood was on fire at the insolence of a people who had rebelled against their anointed lord, and Edward of Wales, as became a knight and man of honour, vowed to restore his suppliant to the throne. Crécy was renewed over again in the great field of Navarrete in 1367. Du Guesclin himself fell into the enemy’s hands, and all the work of the free lances was utterly undone. Pedro was king and justiciary in one, and let loose his royal vengeance on all the land. Murders, executions, confiscations threw the whole kingdom into despair, and the English bitterly repented of their interference in behalf of so unchivalrous, unpitying a tyrant. The dreadful heats of the south came to the support of Henry. The English died of fever and excess, and discipline became relaxed. The reinstated king declined to pay the stipulated rewards; mutiny broke out among the discontented conquerors; and in the scorching summer, and amid these disturbances, the health of the Black Prince began to fail.

Meantime, Charles the Wise endeared himself to his subjects by diminishing their burdens, by encouraging agriculture, and giving greater influence to the parliaments he convoked. The contrast was great and striking. Conquest in the field was of no avail against the steady advance of a popularity so justly founded and nobly sustained, as now grew on the vanquished side. The free lances, who had joined the prince, if not paid by the treasuries of Pedro, must be satisfied by the wealth of their employer. Edward returned to Bordeaux with barren laurels, and an empty exchequer. He laid fresh burdens on his unhappy subjects in Aquitaine, to pay for the expenses incurred in Castile, and when the population of that trampled province compared their position with that of their neighbours under the crown, dissatisfaction took a wider range, and they complained of their rulers, not only as oppressors, but as foreigners. The English, indeed, even when the languages were the same, never became acclimated in France, and now there was added the great distinction of a different tongue; for the Norman portion of the English people had now become so small that English at this time was declared to be the language of law, as it had long been of religion and commerce. Anglo-Saxon bowmen, who never spoke a word of French, served in the ranks of the Black Prince, and, of course, offended the nations by their brutal contempt for everything they did not understand. The prince, therefore, in the midst of failing health and military disappointment, perceived that his countrymen were not the masters of the land he claimed, but were only forcibly encamped on it.

[Sidenote: [1368-1369 A.D.]]

From England no help was to be had. The king was old, and had fallen into the hands of a designing favourite, Alice Perrers, and her accomplices, who ruled him at their will. And nothing was wanting to the French monarch in these favourable circumstances, but warriors who could carry his plans into effect. Du Guesclin was a prisoner at Bordeaux, and all the wiser spirits in the court advised the prince on no account to let so dangerous an enemy go. But Edward was made of penetrable stuff; and on one occasion when they were in familiar conversation, he said, if the captive could collect a hundred thousand francs, he should be set at large--a vast sum in those days; but the sight of Du Guesclin, sword in hand, and released from bondage, was worth forty times the amount to the French king. The money was sent at once, and Du Guesclin lost no time in showing his arm was as strong and his heart as brave as ever. A rapid incursion into Spain and the battle of Montiel (March 14th, 1369) established Henry of Trastamara once more upon the throne, and freed him from the rivalry of Pedro, by the death of that ferocious tyrant. He was stabbed to the heart by his infuriated brother, after a personal struggle which lasted a long time. Henry was now undisturbed, and attributed his prosperity to the favour of the French king. He put the Castilian navy at the service of France.

_The Peace of Bretigny is Broken (1368-1369 A.D.)_

Charles was not slow in seeing the advantage of his position. Strengthened by the gratitude of his new ally, and the general favour of all his subjects, he spoke in a tone of defiance and majesty to the English prince, which sounded strange in his ears within twelve years of the battle of Poitiers. He summoned the prince of Wales to appear before his court of peers, as one of the feudatories of the realm, to answer for high crimes and misdemeanours. Edward answered, with much submission, that he would not fail to obey the summons, but would bring sixty thousand men along with him--helmet on head and spear in rest. Charles knew too well that this was but a vain boast, for the warrior was now too feeble to ride, and advanced in the exorbitance of his claims. Edward of England took up the game of brag on behalf of his son, and retorted from Windsor by reasserting his claim to the French throne, and calling himself, in formal documents, king of England and France once more. War was openly declared, and Charles summoned his states in Paris (May 9th, 1369). Never was meeting so unanimous and so sedately firm. Taxes were voted, forces were raised, and defiance was hurled against the English both in their island fastness and the lands they usurped in France. The court of peers, consulted in its turn, declared that King Edward and his, not having appeared in answer to these summons, the duchy of Aquitaine and other English holdings in France should be and were confiscated. Every village, in imitation of the enemy they had learned to fear, had butts for practice of the bow; games of manly exertion were encouraged; freedom was extended to the serfs, and the municipal towns were enriched with further privileges. Du Guesclin returned from the Spanish triumph, and visited the king. The feeling in favour of illustrious birth was then so strong that, though Charles had bestowed the highest commands on the Breton soldier, they were offices which gave him only a temporary superiority over the forces employed, and implied no permanent pre-eminence when peace should be restored. But on this occasion a stately assemblage was called. All the princes of the blood, nobles of highest rank, chancellors, judges, warriors, were assembled in the great hôtel St. Pol, and Charles gave his sword to Du Guesclin, and said: “Du Guesclin, take my sword, and use it against my enemies. Henceforth you are constable of France.” This was the highest dignity a subject could hold, and Bertrand excused himself on account of his humble extraction; but Charles persisted, and the Montmorencys, and De Coucys, and Courtenays, and Bourbons, thought the sword could not be in better wielding, and did obeisance to Sir Bertrand du Guesclin, who was now the foremost man in all the land.[n]

_The English Invasion (1369-1370 A.D.)_

[Sidenote: [1369-1370 A.D.]]

The English immediately landed at Calais, while the Black Prince prepared another attack upon the south. A French army marched to meet them, but refused to engage them and retreated as they advanced. The towns were well fortified, and none was taken; the expedition was confined to useless devastation of the surrounding country.

In 1370 they returned and the same programme was repeated. The order to refrain from combat was so rigorously observed that at Noyon, when one of the enemy’s cavalry climbed the ramparts crying out: “My lords, I have come to call on you; since you do not condescend to come out of your shell, I will come in!” he was allowed to depart safe and sound. Before Rheims, before Paris, the English encountered the same stolidity. From his refuge at St. Pol, where he had shut himself up, the king could watch the burning of the villages. But the brave Clisson himself exclaimed:

“Sire, you have no need to pit your own men against these furies; let them wear themselves out. They will not deprive you of your heritage with all these rubbish-heaps.”

“Never was a king of France less given to war,” said Edward III; “never was one who kept me so busy!” Charles V, in fact, feeble and ailing, never held a lance; he was vastly more fond of books. He had the most valuable library of the day, 910 volumes carefully guarded behind iron bars in a tower of the Louvre. He read the Bible through once every year. He corresponded with the pope and sent him presents; and again, to quote Froissart,[g] “my lord the king piously marched barefoot in the procession, and madame the queen also.” So good a friend of the pope, so pious a sovereign, merited the alliance of every bishop of the realm; and in fact the majority opened to him the gates of their capitals; even those upon whom the English most depended, as the bishop of Limoges, comrade of the prince of Wales, turned French.

This last act of treachery exasperated the English. The Black Prince swore by the soul of his father that he would enter into no other undertaking until he had made Limoges and the other traitors pay dearly for their treason. Having arrived before the city, he had part of the wall torn down, and his soldiers plunged through the breach into the streets. The prince had himself carried in in his litter.

“That was a sad scene,” writes Froissart,[g] “where men, women, and children flung themselves at his feet, crying, ‘Mercy, gentle prince.’ But he was too inflamed with excitement to attend. Their pleading went unheard, and all were put to the sword. Never a heart so hard but would have wept to have stood in that city of Limoges and witnessed so great slaughter; more than three thousand men, women, and children lost their heads that day. And may God receive their souls, for martyrs they truly were.”

[Sidenote: [1370-1380 A.D.]]

The English grew somewhat calmer at last through their interest in a new spectacle: three French cavaliers, with backs to an old wall, contended as if in the lists against the duke of Lancaster and the earls of Cambridge and Pembroke. The prince of Wales stopped his chariot near by, the better to look on; and he allowed the three cavaliers to be recommended to mercy. The bishop, the principal author of the treason, he also spared. This unfortunate exploit was the Black Prince’s last adventure; he languished for a few years, and returned to die in England (1376).

The English possessed an excellent infantry, archers whose darts pierced the best-made cuirasses, and men-at-arms almost worth a regular cavalry by their remarkable discipline and their habituation to concerted movement. To these Charles could oppose only an immense throng of nobles who, though they might be very brave, were also totally undisciplined. The part of wisdom, therefore, was to avoid encounter with large bodies; but in the intervals between expeditions he allowed his men to indulge in skirmishes. Thus Du Guesclin fought at Pont-Valain with Robert Knolles, a redoubtable English partisan (1370), and another corps near Chizey in Poitou (1373). Chandos had been killed during the first campaign. Another leader of great renown, the captal De Buch, was taken in 1372, near Soubise. The French were not always beaten back.

Meanwhile the king had his own battles to fight, and his victories are inscribed intact in the _Recueil des Ordonnances_. Under date of 1370 we read: “February, 1370, letters according the inhabitants of Rodez the right to trade with the entire kingdom free of duty on imports.--March, 1370, letters to the effect that the inhabitants of Figeac, now on land declaring allegiance to Edward, son of the king of England, will not have their goods confiscated if they return to French soil; ordinance setting forth privileges accorded the city of Montauban.--April, 1370, ordinance setting forth privileges accorded the city of Verfeil.--May, 1370, letters exempting the city of Milhaud from imposts during twenty years, and ordinance of privileges accorded the city of Tulle.--June, 1370, ordinance containing privileges accorded the inhabitants of the county of Tartas, the cities of Dorat and Puy-Mirol.--July, 1370, ordinances containing privileges accorded the cities of Cahors, Castres, Puy-la-Roque, Sarlat, Montégrier, and Salvetat.”

These were Charles V’s implements of war. Among those cities whose doors the royal ordinances failed to open prowled his captains with their stratagems of war, cajoling and negotiating. Du Guesclin treated in secret with the inhabitants of Poitiers, who like those of many other towns had remained French at heart, and they allowed him to enter with three hundred lances within their walls (1372). Charles at once granted titles to all those who afterwards exercised the functions of mayor or alderman in that city.

Philip Mansel with one hundred English held La Rochelle. One day while dining with the mayor, John Caudourier, he received a letter from the king of England. The governor, recognising the royal seal, but being in his quality of gentleman unable to read, requested his host to read it for him. The mayor read out a message composed by himself to the effect that on the following day, August 15th, 1372, the citizens and the garrison should pass in review before the square. As soon as Mansel had drawn his men from the château, a troop placed in ambush by the mayor occupied the citadel. Du Guesclin was there with two hundred lances, ready to take possession in the name of France. Some weeks previously the Castilian fleet had destroyed an English fleet before La Rochelle.

Nevertheless the confident enemy tried again in 1373. Landing at Calais with thirty thousand men, the duke of Lancaster set forth to conquer France: he only crossed it. The journey was prosperous as long as it lay through the rich provinces of the north; but in the poor and meagre central districts deprivation and illness were encountered. At Auvergne not a horse remained; at Bordeaux only six thousand men were left: the cavaliers as well as foot soldiers had to beg their bread from door to door.

The English, disgusted with such warfare, remained away the following year; and the year after that they demanded a truce, which lasted up to the death of Edward III in 1377. Charles then broke the truce and struck a blow. He fitted out five armies and conquered all Guienne, while a Castilian fleet manned by French troops ravaged the English counties of Kent and Sussex. In 1380 there remained to the enemy only five French towns--Bayonne, Bordeaux, Brest, Cherbourg, and Calais. At the same time Charles the Bad was overwhelmed and saved his Pyrenean kingdom only by the ceding of twenty places as a pledge of peace (1379).

LAST YEARS OF CHARLES V AND OF DU GUESCLIN

The king of France attempted in Brittany what had served him so well in Guienne. June 20th, 1378, he summoned the duke John IV to appear before the court of nobles; the duke not appearing, his fief was declared forfeit to the crown. The Gascons gave themselves up to France. The Bretons would not hear of the alliance. Barons, knights, and esquires signed at Rennes, April 26th, 1379, an act of confederation that the citizens themselves subscribed.

John IV, although expelled from the country, was recalled. All the Bretons in the service of the king--and there was a great number of them--abandoned him; even those who had previously promised to second his projects turned against him. The old Du Guesclin sent him the constable’s sword; and on March 1st, 1380, a treaty of alliance was signed at Westminster between England and Brittany. Again an English army landed at Calais under the earl of Buckingham, and again it journeyed with impunity across the north of France. It had not reached Brittany when Charles V died at Vincennes, September 16th, 1380.[l]

Many things had conduced to weaken the health of the too thoughtful king. Dissensions among his brothers renewed in Paris the scenes of falsehood and partisanship which were going on in London. The influence he possessed over Europe as long as the pope resided in Avignon was taken from him, first by the removal of Gregory XI to Rome; and, in a short time after that, the usefulness of the papal chair in his schemes of advancement was altogether destroyed by the schism which broke out at the election of the next pope.

France accepted the Frenchman, Clement VII, who resided at Avignon as his predecessor had done; and half the rest of Christendom, including England, adhered to his Italian rival. This is the commencement of the great schism which afforded such vantage-ground, not only to the enemies of priestcraft but of Christianity itself. Charles felt the blow equally as Christian and king. While mourning this unhappy event, his grief was increased by the fall of the constable. Bertrand was besieging one of the strong castles in Auvergne which was rebellious against the royal authority and strengthened with an English garrison. The commander had agreed to surrender if not relieved within a certain time. Fever, pain, and anxiety laid Du Guesclin low; and when the appointed day came he was lying on his bier, and preparations were making to carry him to the grave. The governor, true to his word, hauled down the flag of independence, and marched out with all his men, head bare and sword drawn, and laid the keys of the fortress on the hero’s coffin. So died the best soldier and truest gentleman of France. His last words to his comrades who bent over his couch were these: “Remember that whenever you are at war, the churchmen, the women, the children, and the poor are not your enemies.”[n]

The modern editors of the works of the sieur Le Fevre give the following exaggerated estimate of Du Guesclin’s merits:

“Bertrand was the man selected by providence as the instrument by which France was to be saved. Such a man deserved to take his place beside the kings among the tombs of St. Denis. He has been compared to Turenne; both brave and generous, they were like fathers to the men fighting under them; and when they were in want, Turenne sold his silver service for the benefit of his troops, as Bertrand sold his lands; there is some resemblance between these two characters, and the parallel might truthfully be carried further. But in reviewing the history of the Middle Ages, we find two heroes who much more strongly resemble Du Guesclin--Tancred and Richard Cœur de Lion. Examine carefully these three men, Tancred, Richard, and Du Guesclin, and you will find the same courage, the same boldness, the same rashness, the same contempt for danger, the same self-abnegation in victory; you will see three men who, on the battle-field, kill men as easily as an autumn wind blows down the leaves from the trees, and who, on their return to their tents, are as mild and docile as children; for them there is no intoxication in triumph, they show no pride in the hour of victory; their brows are humble, and you would think them unconscious of their own greatness. Bertrand du Guesclin swore ‘by God who suffered on the cross and rose again the third day’; Tancred and Richard swore by the Holy Sepulchre, and trusting in the justice of their cause, the three knights would rush on the enemy with as much confidence as if God himself were speaking to them and urging them on. Does not the disinterestedness of Du Guesclin remind one of Tancred? How many knights were fed and paid by them--how many times they took off their own cloaks to conceal the poverty of some needy nobleman! Du Guesclin has all the characteristics of a hero of the Crusades; he would figure worthily in the Christian _Iliad_ of the poet of Sorrento.”[o]

The entire secret of Charles’ success was reliance on his people; and perhaps the most valuable portion of this reliance was in the fact that in the word “people” he included the whole population of France. This great word was not limited, in his interpretation of it, to the taxpaying inhabitants of the towns or free labourers on the farms. The very serfs on the soil were fellow-countrymen of the great successor of St. Louis. His laws had reference as often to the interests of the lowest of his subjects as to the rights of the richest cities. He was the first and the last to put arms into the hands of the whole nation. Each man had his bow and quiver of arrows, his short sword or iron-pointed staff. He was openly practised in the use of them, and was taught that it was dishonourable for a Frenchman to be unable to defend his wife and children with his own hands. The experiment was so successful against even such generals as Chandos and the Black Prince, that it might be expected to continue one of the standing institutions of the kingdom. But these feelings of self-respect were only useful against a foreign enemy, and might be dangerous against a domestic master. So, ere many years elapsed, the system was abolished; the butts were destroyed, the bows and swords withdrawn, for fear the “small people” should find themselves too powerful; and the result was--as we shall see--Henry V of England and the battle of Agincourt. It was not more in the formation of new establishments that Charles showed his wisdom than in the purification and improvement of the old. The legalism so strongly encouraged by Philip the Fair, as a preservative against the power of the nobles, had now become an oppression to the people. The civil servants of the crown absorbed a vast portion of the taxes they were employed to raise, and the paid offices about the provincial courts and local parliaments were innumerable. He diminished them both in number and amount of salary, and tried to save his subjects from the intricacies of technical pleadings, as almost an equal evil with the violence of lawless force. The only people, indeed, he could not bring within the rules of mercy and justice were the lords and gentlemen, who were the ornaments of chivalry and the strength of his armies. Feudalism, in fact, was dissolving, and chivalry, which was its poetic ideal, could not stand the trial of actual war. Knights were still mere gladiators--sometimes more for show than action; and gentlemen, in our sense of the word, were not yet in existence.[n]

FOOTNOTES

[24] [The continuator of Nangis[d] is responsible for this statement.]

[25] [The French left 11,000 dead on the field of battle. The English loss was but 2,500, and they made prisoners of 13 counts, 1 archbishop, 70 barons, and 2,000 armed men, not counting persons of less importance.]