Chapter XVII (2)

The English army spent the night before the battle beyond the Miausson, but in the morning the prince, fearing an ambuscade behind the hill of Nouaillé on the east bank, abandoned his original position and crossed the stream in order to occupy it. He divided his forces into three "battles," led respectively by himself, Warwick, and William Montague, since 1343 by his father's death Earl of Salisbury. Though he found no enemy there, he remained with his "battle" on the hill, because it commanded the slopes to the north over on which the French were now advancing. His remote position threw the brunt of the fighting upon the divisions of Warwick and Salisbury. They were stationed side by side in advance of him on ground lower than that held by him, but higher than that of the enemy, and beset with bushes and vineyards which sloped down on the left towards the marshes of the Miausson. Some distance in front of their position, a long hedge and ditch divided the upland, on which the "battles" of Warwick and Salisbury were stationed, from the fields in which the French were arrayed. At its upper end, remote from the Miausson, where Salisbury's command lay, the hedge was broken by a gap through which a farmer's track connected the fields on each side of it. The first fighting began when the English sent a small force of horsemen through the gap to engage with the French cavalry beyond. While Audrehem, on the French right, suspended his attack to watch the result, Clermont made his way straight for the gap, hoping to take Salisbury's division, on the upper or right-hand station, in flank. Before he reached the gap, however, he found the hedge and the approaches to the cart-road held in force by the English archers. Meanwhile the mail-clad men and horses of Audrehem's cavalry had approached dangerously near the left of the English line, where Warwick was stationed. Their complete armour made riders and steeds alike impervious to the English arrows, until the prince, seeing from his hill how things were proceeding, ordered some archers to station themselves on the marshy ground near the Miausson, in advance of the left flank of the English army. From this position they shot at the unprotected parts of the French horses, and drove the little band of cavalry from the field. By that time Clermon's attack on the gap had been defeated, and so both sections of the first French division retired.

Then came the stronger "battle" of the eldest son of the French king. The fight grew more fierce, and for a long time the issue remained doubtful. The English archers exhausted their arrows to little purpose, and the dismounted French men-at-arms, offering a less sure mark than the horsemen, forced their way to the English ranks and fought a desperate hand-to-hand conflict with them. At last the Duke of Normandy's followers were driven back. Thereupon a panic seized the division commanded by the Duke of Orleans, which fled from the field without measuring swords with the enemy. The victors themselves were in a desperate plight. Many were wounded, and all were weary, especially the men-at-arms encased in heavy plate mail. The flight of Orleans gave them a short respite: but they soon had to face the assault of the rear battle of the enemy, gallantly led by the king. "No battle," we are told, "ever lasted so long. In former fights men knew, by the time that the fourth or the sixth arrow had been discharged, on which side victory was to be. But here a single archer shot with coolness a hundred arrows, and still neither side gave way."[1] At last the bowmen had only the arrows they snatched from the bodies of the dead and dying, and when these were exhausted, they were reduced to throwing stones at their foes, or to struggle in the _mêlée_, with sword and buckler, side by side with the men-at-arms. But the Black Prince from his hill had watched the course of the encounter, and at the right moment, when his friends were almost worn out, marched down, and made the fight more even. Before joining himself in the engagement, Edward had ordered the Captal de Buch, the best of his Gascons, to lead a little band, under cover of the hill, round the French position and attack the enemy in the rear. At first the Anglo-Gascon army was discouraged, thinking that the captal had fled, but they still fought on. Suddenly the captal and his men assaulted the French rear. This settled the hard fought day. Surrounded on every side, the French perished in their ranks or surrendered in despair. King John was taken prisoner, fighting desperately to the last, and with him was captured his youngest son Philip, the future Duke of Burgundy, a boy of twelve, whose epithet of "the Bold" was earned by his precocious valour in the struggle. Before nightfall the English host had sole possession of the field, and the best fought, best directed, and most important of the battles of the war ended in the complete triumph of the invaders.

[1] _Eulogium Hist._, iii., 225.

As after Crecy, the victors were too weak to continue the campaign. Next day they began their slow march back to their base. On October 2 Edward reached Libourne, and a few days later conducted the captive king into the Gascon capital. They were soon followed by the Cardinal Talleyrand on whose insistence the prince agreed to resume negotiations. On March 23, 1357, a truce to last until 1359 was arranged at Bordeaux. On May 24 the prince led the vanquished king through the streets of London.

The English, weary of the burden of war, strove to use their advantages to procure a stable peace. Though Charles of Blois was released, he was muzzled for the future, and when John joined his ally David Bruce in the Tower, it was the obvious game of Edward to exact terms from his prisoners. David's spirit was broken, and he was glad to accept a treaty sealed in October, 1357, at Berwick, by which he was released for a ransom of 100,000 marks, to be paid by ten yearly instalments. The task was harder for a poor country like Scotland than the redemption of Richard I. had been for England. On hostages being given, David was released, and Edward, without relinquishing his own pretensions to be King of Scots, took no steps to enforce his claim. The event showed that Edward knew his man. The instalments of ransom could not be regularly paid, and David never became free from his obligations. Nothing save the tenacity of the Scottish nobles prevented him from accepting Edward's proposals to write off the arrears of his ransom in return for his accepting either the English king himself or his son, Lionel of Antwerp, as heir of Scotland. This attitude brought David into conflict with his natural heir, Robert, the Steward of Scotland, the son of his sister Margaret. The tension between uncle and nephew forced the Scots king to remain on friendly terms with Edward. For the rest of the reign, Scottish history was occupied by aristocratic feuds, by financial expedients for raising the king's ransom, by the gradual development of the practice of entrusting the powers of parliament to those committees of the estates subsequently famous as the lords of the articles, by David's matrimonial troubles after Joan's death, and by his unpopular visits to the court of his neighbour. Warfare between the realms there was none, save for the chronic border feuds. When David died in 1371, the Steward of Scotland land mounted the throne as Robert II. This first of the Stewart kings went back to the policy of the French alliance, but was too weak to inflict serious mischief on England.

In January, 1358, preliminaries of peace were also arranged with the captive King of France, and sent to Paris and Avignon for ratification. Innocent VI. was overjoyed at his success, and Frenchmen were willing to make any sacrifices to bring back their monarch, for immediately after Poitiers a storm of disorder burst over France. The states general met a few weeks after the battle, and the regent, Charles of Normandy, was helpless in their hands. This was the time of the power of Stephen Marcel, provost of the merchants of Paris, and of Robert Lecoq, Bishop of Laon. But the movement in Paris was neither in the direction of parliamentary government nor of democracy, and few men have less right to be regarded as popular heroes than Marcel and Lecoq. The estates were manipulated in the interests of aristocratic intrigue, and, behind the ostensible leaders, was the sinister influence of Charles of Navarre, who availed himself of the desolation of France to play his own game. For a time he was the darling of the Paris mob. Innocent VI. was deceived by his protestations of zeal for peace. As grandson of Louis X. he aspired to the French throne, and was anxious to prevent John's return. Edward had no good-will for a possible rival, but it was his interest to keep up the anarchy, and he had no scruple in backing up Charles. There was talk of Edward becoming King of France and holding the maritime provinces, while Charles as his vassal should be lord of Paris and the interior districts. English mercenaries, who had lost their occupation with the truce, enlisted themselves in the service of Navarre. Robert Knowles, James Pipe, and other ancient captains of Edward fought for their own hand in Normandy, and built up colossal fortunes out of the spoils of the country. Some of these hirelings appeared in Paris, where the citizens welcomed allies of the Navarrese, even when they were foreign adventurers. However, Charles went so far that a strong reaction deprived him of all power. He was able to prevent the ratification of the preliminaries of 1358. But in that year the death of Marcel was followed by the return of the regent to Paris, the expulsion of the foreign mercenaries, the collapse of the estates, and the restoration of the capital to the national cause. The short-lived horrors wreaked by the revolted peasantry were followed by the more enduring atrocities of the nobles who suppressed them. Military adventurers pillaged France from end to end, but the worst troubles ended when Charles of Navarre lost his pre-eminence.[1]

[1] An admirable account of the state of France between 1356
and 1358 is in Denifie, _La Desolation des Églises en_ France
_pendant _la _Guerre de Cent Ans, ii.,_ 134-316 (1899).

When the truce of Bordeaux was on the verge of expiration, the French king negotiated a second treaty by which he bought off the threatened renewal of war. This was the treaty of London, March 24, 1359, by which John yielded up to Edward in full sovereignty the ancient empire of Henry II. Normandy, the suzerainty of Brittany, Anjou, and Maine, Aquitaine within its ancient limits, Calais and Ponthieu with the surrounding districts, were the territorial concessions in return for which Edward renounced his claim to the French throne. The vast ransom of 4,000,000 golden crowns was to be paid for John's redemption; the chief princes of the blood were to be hostages for him, and in case of failure to observe the terms of the treaty he was to return to his captivity. The only provision in any sense favourable to France was that by which Edward promised to aid John against the King of Navarre.

The treaty of London excited the liveliest anger in France. "We had rather," declared the assembled estates, "endure the great mischief that has afflicted us so long, than suffer the noble realm of France thus to be diminished and defrauded."[1] Spurred up by these patriotic manifestations, the regent rejected the treaty, and prepared as best he could for the storm of Edward's wrath which soon burst upon his country. Anxious to unite forces against the national enemy, he made peace with Charles of Navarre, who, abandoned by Edward, was delighted to be restored to his estates.

[1] Froissart, v., 180, ed. Luce.

Edward concentrated all his efforts on a new invasion of France. In November, 1359, he marched out of Calais with all his forces. His four sons attended him, and there was a great muster of earls and experienced warriors. Among the less known members of the host was the young Londoner, Geoffrey Chaucer, a page in Lionel of Antwerp's household. In three columns, each following a separate route, the English made their way from Calais towards the south-east. The French avoided a pitched battle, but hung on the skirts of the army and slew, or captured, stragglers and foragers. Chaucer was among those thus taken prisoner. Edward's ambition was to take Reims, and have himself crowned there as King of France. On December 4 he arrived at the gates of the city, and besieged it for six weeks. Then on January 11, 1360, the King despaired of success, abandoned the siege, and marched southwards through Champagne towards Burgundy. Despite the check at Reims, he was still so formidable that in March Duke Philip of Burgundy concluded with him the shameful treaty of Guillon, by which he purchased exemption from invasion by an enormous ransom and a promise of neutrality.

Edward next turned towards Paris. The news that the French had effected a successful descent on Winchelsea and behaved with extreme brutality to the inhabitants, infuriated the English troopers, who perpetrated a hundredfold worse deeds in the suburbs of the French capital. It seemed as if the war was about to end with the siege and capture of Paris. The regent, unable to meet the English in the field, fell back in despair on negotiation. Innocent VI. again offered his good services. John sent from his English prison full powers to his son to make what terms he would, and on April 3, which was Good Friday, ambassadors from each power met under papal intervention at Longjumeau; but Edward still insisted on the terms of the treaty of London, for which the French were not yet prepared. On April 7 Edward began the siege of Paris by an attack on the southern suburbs, but was so little successful that he withdrew five days later. A terrible tempest destroyed his provision train and devastated his army. These disasters made Edward anxious for peace, and the negotiations, after two interruptions, were successfully renewed at Chartres, and facilitated by the signature of a truce for a year. The work of a definitive treaty was pushed forward, and on May 8, preliminaries of peace were signed between the prince of Wales and Charles of France at the neighbouring hamlet of Brétigni, whither the peacemakers had transferred their sittings. There were still formalities to accomplish which took up many months. King John was escorted in July by the Prince of Wales to Calais, and in October he was joined by Edward III., who had returned to England about the time that the negotiations at Brétigni were over. The peace took its final form at Calais in October 24, 1360. Next day John was released, and ratified the convention as a free man on French soil. This permanent treaty is more properly styled the treaty of Calais than the treaty of Brétigni; but the alterations between the two were only significant in one particular respect. At Calais the English agreed to omit a clause inserted at Brétigni by which Edward renounced his claims to the French throne, and John his claims over the allegiance of the inhabitants of the ceded districts. As the Calais treaty of October alone had the force of law, it was a real triumph of French diplomacy to have suppressed so vital a feature in the definitive document.[1] Even with this alleviation the terms were sufficiently humiliating to France. Edward and his heirs were to receive in perpetuity, "and in the manner in which the kings of France had held them," an ample territory both in southern and northern France. All Aquitaine was henceforth to be English, including Poitou, Saintonge, Périgord, Angoumois, Limousin, Quercy, Rouergue, Agenais, and Bigorre. The greatest feudatories of these districts, the friendly Count of Foix as well as the hostile Count of Armagnac, and the Breton pretender to the viscounty of Limoges, were to do homage to Edward for all their lands within these bounds. Nor was this all. The county of Ponthieu, including Montreuil-sur-mer, was restored to its English lords, and added to the pale of Calais, which was to include the whole county of Guînes, made up two considerable northern dominions for Edward. With these cessions were included all adjacent islands, and all islands held by the English king at that time, so that the Channel islands were by implication recognised as English.

[1] On the importance of this, see the paper of MM.
Petit-Dutaillis and P. Collier, _La Diplomatie française et le
Traité de Brétigny_ in _Le Moyen Age_, 2e serie, tome i.
(1897), pp. 1-35.

The ransom of John was fixed at 3,000,000 gold crowns, that is ~500,000 sterling. The vastness of this sum can be realised by remembering that the ordinary revenue of the English crown in time of peace did not much exceed £60,000, while the addition to that of a sum of £150,000 involved an effort which only a popular war could dispose Englishmen to make. Of this ransom 600,000 crowns were to be paid at once, and the rest in annual instalments of 400,000 crowns until the whole payment was effected. During this period the prisoners from Poitiers, several of the king's near relatives, a long list of the noblest names in France, and citizens of some of its wealthiest cities, were to remain as hostages in Edward's hands. As to the Breton succession, Edward and John engaged to do their best to effect a peaceful settlement. If they failed in attaining this, the rival claimants were to fight it out among themselves, England and France remaining neutral. Whichever of the two became duke was to do homage to the King of France, and John of Montfort was, in any case, to be restored to his county of Montfort. A similar care for Edward's friends was shown in the article which preserved for Philip of Navarre his hereditary domains in Normandy. Forfeitures and outlawries were to be pardoned, and the rights of private persons to be respected. Nevertheless Calais was to remain at Edward's entire disposal, and the burgesses, dispossessed by him, were not to be reinstated. The French renounced their alliance with the Scots, and the English theirs with the Flemings. Time was allowed to carry out these complicated stipulations, and, by way of compensating Edward for the significant omission which has been mentioned, elaborate provisions were made for the mutual execution at a later date of charters of renunciation, by which Edward abandoned his claim to the French throne and John the over-lordship of the districts yielded to Edward. These were to be exchanged at Bruges about a year later.

England rejoiced at the conclusion of so brilliant a peace, and laid no stress on the subtle change in the conditions which made the treaty far less definitive in reality than in appearance. In France the faithful flocked to the churches to give thanks for deliverance from the long anarchy. The perfect courtesy and good feeling which the two kings had shown to each other gilded the concluding ceremonies with a ray of chivalry. John was released almost at once, and allowed to retain with him in France some of the hostages, including his valiant son Philip, the companion of his captivity. John made Edward's peace with Louis of Flanders, and Edward persuaded John to pardon Charles and Philip of Navarre. At last the two weary nations looked forward to a long period of repose.