So soon as Marcel and three of his chief confidants had been put to death
at the St. Anthony gate, at the very moment when they were about to open
it to the English, John Maillart had information sent to the regent, at
that time at Charenton, with an urgent entreaty that he would come back
to Paris without delay. "The news, at once spread abroad through the
city, was received with noisy joy there, and the red caps, which had been
worn so proudly the night before, were everywhere taken off and hidden.
The next morning a proclamation ordered that whosoever knew any of the
faction of Marcel should arrest them and take them to the Chatelet, but
without laying hands on their goods and without maltreating their wives
or children. Several were taken, put to the question, brought out into
the public square, and beheaded by virtue of a decree. They were the men
who but lately had the government of the city and decided all matters.
Some were burgesses of renown, eloquent and learned, and one of them, on
arriving at the square, cried out, 'Woe is me! Would to Heaven, O King
of Navarre, that I had never seen thee or heard thee!'" On the 2d of
August, 1358, in the evening, the dauphin, Charles, re-entered Paris, and
was accompanied by John Maillart, who "was mightily in his grace and
love." On his way a man cried out, "By God, sir, if I had been listened
to, you would never have entered in here; but, after all, you will get
but little by it." The Count of Tancarville, who was in the prince's
train, drew his sword, and "spurred his horse upon this rascal;" but the
dauphin restrained him, and contented himself with saying smilingly to
the man, "You will not be listened to, fair sir." Charles had the spirit
of coolness and discretion; and "he thought," says his contemporary,
Christine de Pisan, "that if this fellow had been slain, the city which
had been so rebellious might probably have been excited thereby."
Charles, on being resettled in Paris, showed neither clemency nor
cruelty. He let the reaction against Stephen Marcel run its course, and
turned it to account without further exciting it or prolonging it beyond
measure. The property of some of the condemned was confiscated; some
attempts at a conspiracy for the purpose of avenging the provost of
trades-men were repressed with severity, and John Maillart and his family
were loaded with gifts and favors. On becoming king, Charles determined
himself to hold his son at the baptismal font; but Robert Lecocq, Bishop
of Laon, the most intimate of Marcel's accomplices, returned quietly to
his diocese; two of Marcel's brothers, William and John, owing their
protection, it is said, to certain youthful reminiscences on the prince's
part, were exempted from all prosecution; Marcels widow even recovered a
portion of his property; and as early as the 10th of August, 1358,
Charles published an amnesty, from which he excepted only "those who had
been in the secret council of the provost of tradesmen in respect of the
great treason;" and on the same day another amnesty quashed all
proceedings for deeds done during the Jacquery, "whether by nobles or
ignobles." Charles knew that in acts of rigor or of grace impartiality
conduces to the strength and the reputation of authority.
The death of Stephen Marcel and the ruin of his party were fatal to the
plots and ambitious hopes of the King of Navarre. At the first moment he
hastened to renew his alliance with the King of England, and to
recommence war in Normandy, Picardy, and Champagne against the regent of
France. But several of his local expeditions were unsuccessful; the
temperate and patient policy of the regent rallied round him the
populations aweary of war and anarchy; negotiations were opened between
the two princes; and their agents were laboriously discussing conditions
of peace when Charles of Navarre suddenly interfered in person, saying,
"I would fain talk over matters with the lord duke regent, my brother."
We know that his wife was Joan of France, the dauphin's sister. "Hereat
there was great joy," says the chronicler, "amongst their councillors.
The two princes met, and the King of Navarre with modesty and gentleness
addressed the regent in these terms: 'My lord duke and brother, know that
I do hold you to be my proper and especial lord; though I have for a long
while made war against you and against France, our country, I wish not to
continue or to foment it; I wish henceforth to be a good Frenchman, your
faithful friend and close ally, your defender against the English and
whoever it may be: I pray you to pardon me thoroughly, me and mine, for
all that I have done to you up to this present. I wish for neither the
lands nor the towns which are offered to me or promised to me; if I order
myself well, and you find me faithful in all matters, you shall give me
all that my deserts shall seem to you to justify.' At these words the
regent arose and thanked the king with much sweetness; they, one and the
other, proffered and accepted wine and spices; and all present rejoiced
greatly, rendering thanks to God, who doth blow where He listeth, and
doth accomplish in a moment that which men with their own sole
intelligence have nor wit nor power to do in a long while. The town of
Melun was restored to the lord duke; the navigation of the river once
more became free up stream and down; great was the satisfaction in Paris
and throughout the whole country; and peace being thus made, the two
princes returned both of them home."
The King of Navarre knew how to give an appearance of free will and
sincerity to changes of posture and behavior which seemed to be pressed
upon him by necessity; and we may suppose that the dauphin, all the while
that he was interchanging graceful acts, was too well acquainted by this
time with the other to become his dupe; but, by their apparent
reconciliation, they put an end, for a few brief moments, between
themselves to a position which was burdensome to both.
Whilst these events, from the battle of Poitiers to the death of Stephen
Marcel (from the 19th of September, 1356, to the 1st of August, 1358),
were going on in France, King John was living as a prisoner in the hands
of the English, first at Bordeaux, and afterwards in London, and was much
more concerned about the reception he met with, and the galas he was
present at, than about the affairs of his kingdom. When, after his
defeat, he was conducted to Bordeaux by the Prince of Wales, who was
governor of English Aquitaine, he became the object of the most courteous
attentions, not only on the part of his princely conqueror, but of all
Gascon society, "dames and damsels, old and young, and their fair
attendants, who took pleasure in consoling him by providing him with
diversion." Thus he passed the winter of 1356; and in the spring the
Prince of Wales received from his father, King Edward III., the
instructions and the vessels he had requested for the conveyance of his
prisoner to England. In the month of May, 1357, "he summoned," says
Froissart, "all the highest barons of Gascony, and told them that he had
made up his mind to go to England, whither he would take some of them,
leaving the rest in the country of Bordelais and Gascony, to keep the
land and the frontiers against the French. When the Gaseous heard that
the Prince of Wales would carry away out of their power the King of
France, whom they had helped to take, they were by no means of accord
therewith, and said to the prince, 'Dear sir, we owe you, in all that is
in our power, all honor, obedience, and loyal service; but it is not our
desire that you should thus remove from us the King of France, in respect
of whom we have had great trouble to put him in the place where he is;
for, thank God, he is in a good strong city, and we are strong and men
enough to keep him against the French, if they by force would take him
from you.' The prince answered, 'Dear sirs, I grant it heartily; but my
lord my father wishes to hold and behold him; and with the good service
that you have done my father, and me also, we are well pleased, and it
shall be handsomely requited.' Nevertheless, these words did not suffice
to appease the Gascons, until a means thereto was found by Sir Reginald
de Cobham and Sir John Chandos; for they knew the Gascons to be very
covetous. So they said to the prince, 'Sir, offer them a sum of florins,
and you will see them come down to your demands.' The prince offered
them sixty thousand florins; but they would have nothing to do with them.
At last there was so much haggling that an agreement was made for a
hundred thousand francs, which the prince was to hand over to the barons
of Gascony to share between them. He borrowed the money; and the said
sum was paid and handed over to them before the prince started. When
these matters were done, the prince put to sea with a fine fleet, crammed
with men-at-arms and archers, and put the King of France in a vessel
quite apart, that he might be more at his ease."
"They were at sea eleven days and eleven nights," continues Froissart,
and on the 12th they arrived at Sandwich harbor, where they landed, and
halted two days to refresh themselves and their horses. On the third day
they set out and came to St. Thomas of Canterbury."
"When the news reached the King and Queen of England that the prince
their son had arrived and had brought with him the King of France, they
were greatly rejoiced thereat, and gave orders to the burgesses of London
to get themselves ready in as splendid fashion as was beseeming to
receive the King of France. They of the city of London obeyed the king's
commandment, and arrayed themselves by companies most richly, all the
trades in cloth of different kinds." According to the poet
herald-at-arms of John Chandos, King Edward III. went in person, with his
barons and more than twenty counts, to meet King John, who entered London
"mounted on a tall white steed right well harnessed and accoutred at all
points, and the Prince of Wales, on a little black hackney, at his side."
King John was first of all lodged in London at the Savoy hotel, and
shortly afterwards removed, with all his people, to Windsor; "there,"
says Froissart, "to hawk, hunt, disport himself, and take his pastime
according to his pleasure, and Sir Philip, his son, also; and all the
rest of the other lords, counts, and barons, remained in London, but they
went to see the king when it pleased them, and they were put upon their
honor only." Chandos's poet adds, "Many a dame and many a damsel, right
amiable, gay, and lovely, came to dance there, to sing, and to cause
great galas and jousts, as in the days of King Arthur."
In the midst of his pleasures in England King John sometimes also
occupied himself at Windsor with his business in France, but with no more
wisdom or success than had been his wont during his actual reign.
Towards the end of April, 1359, the dauphin-regent received at Paris the
text of a treaty which the king his father had concluded, in London, with
the King of England. "The cession of the western half of France, from
Calais to Bayonne, and the immediate payment of four million golden
crowns," such was, according to the terms of this treaty, the price of
King John's ransom, says M. Picot, in his work concerning the History of
the States-General, which was crowned in 1869 by the Academie des
Sciences Morales et Politiques, and the regent resolved to leave to the
judgment of France the acceptance or refusal of such exorbitant demands.
He summoned a meeting, to be held at Paris on the 19th of May, of
churchmen, nobles, and deputies from the good towns; but "there came but
few deputies, as well because full notice had not by that time been given
of the said summons, as because the roads were blocked by the English and
the Navarrese, who occupied fortresses in all parts whereby it was
possible to get to Paris." The assembly had to be postponed from day to
day. At last, on the 25th of May, the regent repaired to the palace. He
halted on the marble staircase; around him were ranged the three estates;
and a numerous multitude filled the court-yard. In presence of all the
people, William de Dormans, king's advocate in parliament, read the
treaty of peace, which was to divide the kingdom into two parts, so as to
hand over one to the foes of France. The reading of it roused the
indignation of the people. The estates replied that the treaty was not
"tolerable or feasible," and in their patriotic enthusiasm "decreed to
make fair war on the English." But it was not enough to spare the
kingdom the shame of such a treaty; it was necessary to give the regent
the means of concluding a better. On the 2d of June, the nobles
announced to the dauphin that they would serve for a month at their own
expense, and that they would pay besides such imposts as should be
decreed by the good towns. The churchmen also offered to pay them. The
city of Paris undertook to maintain "six hundred swords, three hundred
archers, and a thousand brigands." The good towns offered twelve
thousand men; but they could not keep their promise, the country being
utterly ruined.
When King John heard at Windsor that the treaty, whereby he had hoped to
be set at liberty, had been rejected at Paris, he showed his displeasure
by a single outburst of personal animosity, saying, "Ah! Charles, fair
son, you were counselled by the King of Navarre, who deceives you, and
would deceive sixty such as you!" Edward III., on his side, at once took
measures for recommencing the war; but before engaging in it he had King
John removed from Windsor to Hertford Castle, and thence to Somerton,
where he set a strong guard. Having thus made certain that his prisoner
would not escape from him, he put to sea, and, on the 28th of October,
1359, landed at Calais with a numerous and well-supplied army. Then,
rapidly traversing Northern France, he did not halt till he arrived
before Rheims, which he was in hopes of surprising, and where, it is
said, he purposed to have himself, without delay, crowned King of France.
But he found the place so well provided, and the population so determined
to make a good defence, that he raised the siege and moved on Chalons,
where the same disappointment awaited him. Passing from Champagne to
Burgundy, he then commenced the same course of scouring and ravaging; but
the Burgundians entered into negotiations with him, and by a treaty
concluded on the 10th of March, 1360, and signed by Joan of Auvergne,
Queen of France, second wife of King John, and guardian of the young Duke
of Burgundy, Philip de Rouvre, they obtained, at the cost of two hundred
thousand golden sheep (moutons), an agreement that for three years Edward
and his army "would not go scouring and burning" in Burgundy, as they
were doing in the other parts of France. Such was the powerlessness, or
rather absence, of all national government, that a province made a treaty
all alone, and on its own account, without causing the regent to show any
surprise, or to dream of making any complaint.
As a make-weight, at this same time, another province, Picardy, aided by
many Normans and Flemings, its neighbors, "nobles, burgesses, and
common-folk," was sending to sea an expedition which was going to "try,
with God's help, to deliver King John from his prison in England, and
bring him back in triumph to his kingdom." "Thus," says the chronicler,
"they who, God-forsaken or through their own faults, could not defend
themselves on the soil of their fathers, were going abroad to seek their
fortune and their renown, to return home covered with honor and boasting
of divine succor! The Picard expedition landed in England on the 14th of
March, 1360; it did not deliver King John, but it took and gave over to
flames and pillage for two days the town of Winchelsea, after which it
put to sea again, and returned to its hearths." (The Continuer of
William of Nangis, t. ii. p. 298.)
Edward III., weary of thus roaming with his army over France without
obtaining any decisive result, and without even managing to get into his
hands any one "of the good towns which he had promised himself," says
Froissart, "that he would tan and hide in such sort that they would be
glad to come to some accord with him," resolved to direct his efforts
against the capital of the kingdom, where the dauphin kept himself close.
On the 7th of April, 1360, he arrived hard by Montrouge, and his troops
spread themselves over the outskirts of Paris in the form of an investing
or besieging force. But he had to do with a city protected by good
ramparts, and well supplied with provisions, and with a prince cool,
patient, determined, free from any illusion as to his danger or his
strength, and resolved not to risk any of those great battles of which he
had experienced the sad issue. Foreseeing the advance of the English, he
had burned the villages in the neighborhood of Paris, where they might
have fixed their quarters; he did the same with the suburbs of St.
Germain, St. Marcel, and Notre-Dame-des-Champs; he turned a deaf ear to
all King Edward's warlike challenges; and some attempts at an assault on
the part of the English knights, and some sorties on the part of the
French knights, impatient of their inactivity, came to nothing. At the
end of a week Edward, whose "army no longer found aught to eat," withdrew
from Paris by the Chartres road, declaring his purpose of entering "the
good country of Beauce, where he would recruit himself all the summer,"
and whence he would return after vintage to resume the siege of Paris,
whilst his lieutenants would ravage all the neighboring provinces. When
he was approaching Chartres, "there burst upon his army," says Froissart,
"a tempest, a storm, an eclipse, a wind, a hail, an upheaval so mighty,
so wondrous, so horrible, that it seemed as if the heaven were all
a-tumble, and the earth were opening to swallow up everything; the stones
fell so thick and so big that they slew men and horses, and there was
none so bold but that they were all dismayed. There were at that time in
the army certain wise men, who said that it was a scourge of God, sent as
a warning, and that God was showing by signs that He would that peace
should be made." Edward had by him certain discreet friends, who added
their admonitions to those of the tempest. His cousin, the Duke of
Lancaster, said to him, "My lord, this war that you are waging in the
kingdom of France is right wondrous, and too costly for you; your men
gain by it, and you lose your time over it to no purpose; you will spend
your life on it, and it is very doubtful whether you will attain your
desire; take the offers made to you now, whilst you can come out with
honor; for, my lord, we may lose more in one day than we have won in
twenty years." The Regent of France, on his side, indirectly made
overtures for peace; the Abbot of Cluny, and the General of the
Dominicans, legates of Pope Innocent VI., warmly seconded them; and
negotiations were opened at the hamlet of Bretigny, close to Chartres.
"The King of England was a hard nut to crack," says Froissart; he yielded
a little, however, and on the 8th of May, 1360, was concluded the treaty
of Bretigny, a peace disastrous indeed, but become necessary. Aquitaine
ceased to be a French fief, and was exalted, in the King of England's
interest, to an independent sovereignty, together with the provinces
attached to Poitou, Saintonge, Aunis, Agenois, Perigord, Limousin,
Quercy, Bigorre, Angoumois, and Rouergue. The King of England, on his
side, gave up completely to the King of France Normandy, Maine, and the
portion of Touraine and Anjou situated to the north of the Loire. He
engaged, further, to solemnly renounce all pretensions to the crown of
France so soon as King John had renounced all rights of suzerainty over
Aquitaine. King John's ransom was fixed at three millions of golden
crowns, payable in six years, and John Galeas Visconti, Duke of Milan,
paid the first instalment of it (six hundred thousand florins) as the
price of his marriage with Isabel of France, daughter of King John. Hard
as these conditions were, the peace was joyfully welcomed in Paris, and
throughout Northern France; the bells of the country churches, as well as
of Notre-Dame in Paris, songs and dances amongst the people, and liberty
of locomotion and of residence secured to the English in all places, "so
that none should disquiet them or insult them," bore witness to the
general satisfaction. But some of the provinces ceded to the King of
England had great difficulty in resigning themselves to it. "In Poitou,
and in all the district of Saintonge," says Froissart, "great was the
displeasure of barons, knights, and good towns when they had to be
English. The town of La Rochelle was especially unwilling to agree
thereto; it is wonderful what sweet and piteous words they wrote, again
and again, to the King of France, begging him, for God's sake, to be
pleased not to separate them from his own domains, or place them in
foreign hands, and saying that they would rather be clipped every year of
half their revenue than pass into the hands of the English. And when
they saw that neither excuses, nor remonstrances, nor prayers were of any
avail, they obeyed, but the men of most mark in the town said, 'We will
recognize the English with the lips, but the heart shall beat to it
never.'" Thus began to grow in substance and spirit, in the midst of war
and out of disaster itself [per damna, per caedes ab ipso Duxit opes
animumque ferro], that national patriotism which had hitherto been such
a stranger to feudal France, and which was so necessary for her progress
towards unity—the sole condition for her of strength, security, and
grandeur, in the state characteristic of the European world since the
settlement of the Franks in Gaul.
Having concluded the treaty of Bretigny, the King of England returned on
the 18th of May, 1360, to London; and, on the 8th of July following, King
John, having been set at liberty, was brought over by the Prince of Wales
to Calais, where Edward III. came to meet him. The two kings treated one
another there with great courtesy. "The King of England," says
Froissart, "gave the King of France at Calais Castle a magnificent
supper, at which his own children, and the Duke of Lancaster, and the
greatest barons of England, waited at table, bareheaded." Meanwhile the
Prince-Regent of France was arriving at Amiens, and there receiving from
his brother-in-law, Galdas Visconti, Duke of Milan, the sum necessary to
pay the first instalment of his royal father's ransom. Payment having
been made, the two kings solemnly ratified at Calais the treaty of
Britigny. Two sons of King John, the Duke of Anjou and the Duke of
Berry, with several other personages of consideration, princes of the
blood, barons, and burgesses of the principal good towns, were given as
hostages to the King of England for the due execution of the treaty; and
Edward III. negotiated between the King of France and Charles the Bad,
King of Navarre, a reconciliation precarious as ever. The work of
pacification having been thus accomplished, King John departed on foot
for Boulogne, where he was awaited by the dauphin, his son, and where the
Prince of Wales and his two brothers, like-wise on foot, came and joined
him. All these princes passed two days together at Boulogne in religious
ceremonies and joyous galas; after which the Prince of Wales returned to
Calais, and King John set out for Paris, which he once more entered,
December 13, 1360. "He was welcomed there," says Froissart, "by all
manner of folk, for he had been much desired there. Rich presents were
made him; the prelates and barons of his kingdom came to visit him; they
feasted him and rejoiced with him, as it was seemly to do; and the king
received them sweetly and handsomely, for well he knew how."
And that was all King John did know. When he was once more seated on his
throne, the counsels of his eldest son, the late regent, induced him to
take some wise and wholesome administrative measures. All adulteration
of the coinage was stopped; the Jews were recalled for twenty years, and
some securities were accorded to their industry and interests; and an
edict renewed the prohibition of private wars. But in his personal
actions, in his bearing and practices as a king, the levity, frivolity,
thoughtlessness, and inconsistency of King John were the same as ever.
He went about his kingdom, especially in Southern France, seeking
everywhere occasions for holiday-making and disbursing, rather than for
observing and reforming the state of the country. During the visit he
paid in 1362 to the new pope, Urban V., at Avignon, he tried to get
married to Queen Joan of Naples, the widow of two husbands already, and,
not being successful, he was on the point of involving himself in a new
crusade against the Turks. It was on his return from this trip that he
committed the gravest fault of his reign, a fault which was destined to
bring upon France and the French kingship even more evils and disasters
than those which had made the treaty of Bretigny a necessity. In 1362,
the young Duke of Burgundy, Philip de Louvre, the last of the first house
of the Dukes of Burgundy, descendants of King Robert, died without issue,
leaving several pretenders to his rich inheritance. King John was,
according to the language of the genealogists, the nearest of blood, and
at the same time the most powerful; and he immediately took possession of
the duchy, went, on the 23d of December, 1362, to Dijon, swore on the
altar of St. Benignus that he would maintain the privileges of the city
and of the province, and, nine months after, on the 6th of September,
1363, disposed of the duchy of Burgundy in the following terms:
"Recalling again to memory the excellent and praise-worthy services of
our right dearly beloved Philip, the fourth of our sons, who freely
exposed himself to death with us, and, all wounded as he was, remained
unwavering and fearless at the battle of Poitiers . . . we do concede
to him and give him the duchy and peerage of Burgundy, together with all
that we may have therein of right, possession, and proprietorship . . .
for the which gift our said son hath done us homage as duke and premier
peer of France." Thus was founded that second house of the Dukes of
Burgundy which was destined to play, for more than a century, so great
and often so fatal a part in the fortunes of France.
Whilst he was thus preparing a gloomy future for his country and his
line, King John heard that his second son, the Duke of Anjou, one of the
hostages left in the hands of the King of England as security for the
execution of the treaty of Bretigny, had broken his word of honor and
escaped from England, in order to go and join his wife at Guise Castle.
Knightly faith was the virtue of King John; and it was, they say, on this
occasion, that he cried, as he was severely upbraiding his son, that "if
good faith were banished from the world, it ought to find an asylum in
the hearts of kings." He announced to his councillors, assembled at
Amiens, his intention of going in person to England. An effort was made
to dissuade him; and "several prelates and barons of France told him that
he was committing great folly when he was minded to again put himself in
danger from the King of England. He answered that he had found in his
brother, the King of England, in the Queen, and in his nephews, their
children, so much loyalty, honor, and courtesy, that he had no doubt but
that they would be courteous, loyal, and amiable to him, in any case.
And so he was minded to go and make the excuses of his son, the Duke of
Anjou, who had returned to France." According to the most intelligent of
the chroniclers of the time, the Continuer of William of Nangis, "some
persons said that the king was minded to go to England in order to amuse
himself;" and they were probably right, for kingly and knightly
amusements were the favorite subject of King John's meditations. This
time he found in England something else besides galas; he before long
fell seriously ill, "which mightily disconcerted the King and Queen of
England, for the wisest in the country judged him to be in great peril."
He died, in fact, on the 8th of April, 1364, at the Savoy Hotel, in
London; "whereat the King of England, the Queen, their children, and many
English barons were much moved," says Froissart, "for the honor of the
great love which the King of France, since peace was made, had shown
them." France was at last about to have in Charles V. a practical and
an effective king.
In spite of the discretion he had displayed during his four years of
regency (from 1356 to 1360), his reign opened under the saddest auspices.
In 1363, one of those contagious diseases, all at that time called the
plague, committed cruel ravages in France. "None," says the contemporary
chronicler, "could count the number of the dead in Paris, young or old,
rich or poor; when death entered a house, the little children died first,
then the menials, then the parents. In the smallest villages, as well as
in Paris, the mortality was such that at Argenteuil, for example, where
there were wont to be numbered seven hundred hearths, there remained no
more than forty or fifty." The ravages of the armed thieves, or bandits,
who scoured the country added to those of the plague. Let it suffice to
quote one instance. "In Beauce, on the Orleans and Chartres side, some
brigands and prowlers, with hostile intent, dressed as pig-dealers or
cow-drivers, came to the little castle of Murs, close to Corbeil, and
finding outside the gate the master of the place, who was a knight, asked
him to get them back their pigs, which his menials, they said, had the
night before taken from them, which was false. The master gave them
leave to go in, that they might discover their pigs and move them away.
As soon as they had crossed the drawbridge they seized upon the master,
threw off their false clothes, drew their weapons, and blew a blast upon
the bagpipe; and forthwith appeared their comrades from their
hiding-places in the neighboring woods. They took possession of the
castle, its master and mistress, and all their folk; and, settling
themselves there, they scoured from thence the whole country, pillaging
everywhere, and filling the castle with the provisions they carried off.
At the rumor of this thievish capture, many men-at-arms in the
neighborhood rushed up to expel the thieves and retake from them the
castle. Not succeeding in their assault, they fell back on Corbeil,
and then themselves set to ravaging the country, taking away from the
farm-houses provisions and wine without paying a dolt, and carrying them
off to Corbeil for their own use. They became before long as much feared
and hated as the brigands; and all the inhabitants of the neighboring
villages, leaving their homes and their labor, took refuge, with their
children and what they had been able to carry off, in Paris, the only
place where they could find a little security." Thus the population was
without any kind of regular force, anything like effectual protection;
the temporary defenders of order themselves went over, and with alacrity
too, to the side of disorder when they did not succeed in repressing it;
and the men-at-arms set readily about plundering, in their turn, the
castles and country-places whence they had been charged to drive off the
plunderers.
Let us add a still more striking example of the absence of all publicly
recognized power at this period, and of the necessity to which the
population was nearly everywhere reduced of defending itself with its own
hands, in order to escape ever so little from the evils of war and
anarchy. It was a little while ago pointed out why and how, after the
death of Marcel and the downfall of his faction, Charles the Bad, King of
Navarre, suddenly determined upon making his peace with the regent of
France. This peace was very displeasing to the English, allies of the
King of Navarre, and they continued to carry on war, ravaging the country
here and there, at one time victorious and at another vanquished in a
multiplication of disconnected encounters. "I will relate," says the
Continuer of William of Nangis, "one of those incidents just as it
occurred in my neighborhood, and as I have been truthfully told about it.
The struggle there was valiantly maintained by peasants, Jacques Bonhomme
(Jack Goodfellows), as they are called. There is a place pretty well
fortified in a little town named Longueil, not far from Compiegne, in the
diocese of Beauvais, and near to the banks of the Oise. This place is
close to the monastery of St. Corneille-de-Compiegne. The inhabitants
perceived that there would be danger if the enemy occupied this point;
and, after having obtained authority from the lord-regent of France and
the abbot of the monastery, they settled themselves there, provided
themselves with arms and provisions, and appointed a captain taken from
among themselves, promising the regent that they would defend this place
to the death. Many of the villagers came thither to place themselves in
security, and they chose for captain a tall, fine man, named
William a-Larks (aux Alouettes). He had for servant, and held as with
bit and bridle, a certain peasant of lofty stature, marvellous bodily
strength, and equal boldness, who had joined to these advantages an
extreme modesty: he was called Big Ferre. These folks settled
themselves at this point to the number of about two hundred men, all
tillers of the soil, and getting a poor livelihood by the labor of their
hands. The English, hearing it said that these folks were there and
were determined to resist, held them in contempt, and went to them,
saying, 'Drive we hence these peasants, and take we possession of this
point so well fortified and well supplied.' They went thither to the
number of two hundred. The folks inside had no suspicion thereof, and
had left their gates open. The English entered boldly into the place,
whilst the peasants were in the inner courts or at the windows, a-gape
at seeing men so well armed making their way in. The captain, William
a-Larks, came down at once with some of his people, and bravely began
the fight; but he had the worst of it, was surrounded by the English,
and himself stricken with a mortal wound. At sight hereof, those of his
folk who were still in the courts, with Big Ferre at their head, said
one to another, 'Let us go down and sell our lives clearly, else they
will slay us without mercy.' Gathering themselves discreetly together,
they went down by different gates, and struck out with mighty blows at
the English, as if they had been beating out their corn on the
threshing-floor; their arms went up and down again, and every blow dealt
out a deadly wound. Big Ferre, seeing his captain laid low and almost
dead already, uttered a bitter cry, and advancing upon the English he
topped them all, as he did his own fellows, by a head and shoulders.
Raising his axe, he dealt about him deadly blows, insomuch that in front
of him the place was soon a void; he felled to the earth all those whom
he could reach; of one he broke the head, of another he lopped off the
arms; he bore himself so valiantly that in an hour he had with his own
hand slain eighteen of them, without counting the wounded; and at this
sight his comrades were filled with ardor. What more shall I say? All
that band of English were forced to turn their backs and fly; some
jumped into the ditches full of water; others tried with tottering steps
to regain the gates. Big Ferre, advancing to the spot where the English
had planted their flag, took it, killed the bearer, and told one of his
own fellows to go and hurl it into a ditch where the wall was as not yet
finished. 'I cannot,' said the other, 'there are still so many English
yonder.' 'Follow me with the flag,' said Big Ferre; and marching in
front, and laying about him right and left with his axe, he opened and
cleared the way to the point indicated, so that his comrade could freely
hurl the flag into the ditch. After he had rested a moment, he returned
to the fight, and fell so roughly on the English who remained, that all
those who could fly hastened to profit thereby. It is said that on that
day, with the help of God and Big Ferre, who, with his own hand, as is
certified, laid low more than forty, the greater part of the English who
had come to this business never went back from it. But the captain on
our side, William a-Larks, was there stricken mortally: he was not yet
dead when the fight ended; he was carried away to his bed; he recognized
all his comrades who were there, and soon afterwards sank under his
wounds. They buried him in the midst of weeping, for he was wise and
good."
"At the news of what had thus happened at Longueil the English were very
disconsolate, saying that it was a shame that so many and such brave
warriors should have been slain by such rustics. Next day they came
together again from all their camps in the neighborhood, and went and
made a vigorous attack at Longueil on our folks, who no longer feared
them hardly at all, and went out of their walls to fight them. In the
first rank was Big Ferre, of whom the English had heard so much talk.
When they saw him, and when they felt the weight of his axe and his arm,
many of those who had come to this fight would have been right glad not
to be there. Many fled or were grievously wounded or slain. Some of the
English nobles were taken. If our folks had been willing to give them up
for money, as the nobles do, they might have made a great deal; but they
would not.
"When the fight was over, Big Ferre, overcome with heat and fatigue, drank
a large quantity of cold water, and was forthwith seized of a fever. He
put himself to bed without parting from his axe, which was so heavy that
a man of the usual strength could scarcely lift it from the ground with
both hands. The English, hearing that Big Ferre was sick, rejoiced
greatly, and for fear he should get well they sent privily, round about
the place where he was lodged, twelve of their men bidden to try and rid
them of him. On espying them from afar, his wife hurried up to his bed
where he was laid, saying to him, 'My dear Ferre, the English are coming,
and I verily believe it is for thee they are looking; what wilt thou do?'
Big Ferre, forgetting his sickness, armed himself in all haste, took his
axe which had already stricken to death so many foes, went out of his
house, and entering into his little yard, shouted to the English as soon
as he saw them, 'Ah! scoundrels, you are coming to take me in my bed; but
you shall not get me.' He set himself against a wall to be in surety
from behind, and defended himself manfully with his good axe and his
great heart. The English assailed him, burning to slay or to take him;
but he resisted them so wondrously, that he brought down five much
wounded to the ground, and the other seven took to flight. Big Ferre,
returning in triumph to his bed, and heated again by the blows he had
dealt, again drank cold water in abundance, and fell sick of a more
violent fever. A few days afterwards, sinking under his sickness, and
after having received the holy sacraments, Big Ferre went out of this
world, and was buried in the burial-place of his own village. All his
comrades and his country wept for him bitterly, for, so long as he lived,
the English would not have come nigh this place."
There is probably some exaggeration about the exploits of Big Ferre and
the number of his victims. The story just quoted is not, however, a
legend; authentic and simple, it has all the characteristics of a real
and true fact, just as it was picked up, partly from eye-witnesses and
partly from hearsay, by the contemporary narrator. It is a faithful
picture of the internal state of the French nation in the fourteenth
century; a nation in labor of formation, a nation whose elements, as yet
scattered and incohesive, though under one and the same name, were
fermenting each in its own quarter and independently of the rest, with a
tendency to mutual coalescence in a powerful unity, but, as yet, far from
succeeding in it.
Externally, King Charles V. had scarcely easier work before him. Between
himself and his great rival, Edward III., King of England, there was only
such a peace as was fatal and hateful to France. To escape some day from
the treaty of Bretigny, and recover some of the provinces which had been
lost by it—this was what king and country secretly desired and labored
for. Pending a favorable opportunity for promoting this higher interest,
war went on in Brittany between John of Montfort and Charles of Blois,
who continued to be encouraged and patronized, covertly, one by the King
of England, the other by the King of France. Almost immediately after
the accession of Charles V. it broke out again between him and his
brother-in-law, Charles the Bad, King of Navarre, the former being
profoundly mistrustful, and the latter brazen-facedly perfidious, and
both detesting one another, and watching to seize the moment for taking
advantage one of the other. The states bordering on France, amongst
others Spain and Italy, were a prey to discord and even civil wars, which
could not fail to be a source of trouble or serious embarrassment to
France. In Spain two brothers, Peter the Cruel and Henry of Transtamare,
were disputing the throne of Castile. Shortly after the accession of
Charles V., and in spite of his lively remonstrances, in 1267, Pope Urban
V. quitted Avignon for Rome, whence he was not to return to Avignon till
three years afterwards, and then only to die. The Emperor of Germany
was, at this period, almost the only one of the great sovereigns of
Europe who showed for France and her kings a sincere good will. When, in
1378, he went to Paris to pay a visit to Charles V., he was pleased to go
to St. Denis to see the tombs of Charles the Handsome and Philip of
Valois. "In my young days," he said to the abbot, "I was nurtured at the
homes of those good kings, who showed me much kindness; I do request you
affectionately to make good prayer to God for them." Charles V., who had
given him a very friendly reception, was, no doubt, included in this
pious request.
In order to maintain the struggle against these difficulties, within and
without, the means which Charles V. had at his disposal were of but
moderate worth. He had three brothers and three sisters calculated
rather to embarrass and sometimes even injure him than to be of any
service to him. Of his brothers, the eldest, Louis, Duke of Anjou, was
restless, harsh, and bellicose. He upheld authority with no little
energy in Languedoc, of which Charles had made him governor, but at the
same time made it detested; and he was more taken up with his own
ambitious views upon the kingdom of Naples, which Queen Joan of Hungary
had transmitted to him by adoption, than with the interests of France and
her king. The second, John, Duke of Berry, was an insignificant prince,
who has left no strong mark on history. The third, Philip the Bold, Duke
of Burgundy, after having been the favorite of his father, King John, was
likewise of his brother Charles V., who did not hesitate to still farther
aggrandize this vassal, already so great, by obtaining for him in
marriage the hand of Princess Marguerite, heiress to the countship of
Flanders; and this marriage, which was destined at a later period to
render the Dukes of Burgundy such formidable neighbors for the Kings of
France, was even in the lifetime of Charles V. a cause of unpleasant
complications both for France and Burgundy. Of King Charles's three
sisters, the eldest, Joan, was married to the King of Navarre, Charles
the Bad, and much more devoted to her husband than to her brother; the
second, Mary, espoused Robert, Duke of Bar, who caused more annoyance
than he rendered service to his brother-in-law, the king of France; and
the third, Isabel, wife of Galas Visconti, Duke of Milan, was of no use
to her brother beyond the fact of contributing, as we have seen, by her
marriage, to pay a part of King John's ransom. Charles V., by kindly and
judicious behavior in the bosom of his family, was able to keep serious
quarrels or embarrassments from arising thence; but he found therein
neither real strength nor sure support.
His civil councillors, his chancellor, William de Dormans,
cardinal-bishop of Beauvais, his minister of finance, John de la Grange,
cardinal-bishop of Amiens; his treasurer, Philip de Savoisy; and his
chamberlain and private secretary, Bureau de la Riviere, were,
undoubtedly, men full of ability and zeal for his service, for he had
picked them out and maintained them unchangeably in their offices. There
is reason to believe that they conducted themselves discreetly, for we do
not observe that after their master's death there was any outburst
against them, on the part either of court or people, of that violent and
deadly hatred which has so often caused bloodshed in the history of
France. Bureau de la Riviere was attacked and prosecuted, without,
however, becoming one of the victims of judicial authority at the command
of political passions. None of Charles V.'s councillors exercised over
his master that preponderating and confirmed influence which makes a man
a premier minister. Charles V. himself assumed the direction of his own
government, exhibiting unwearied vigilance, "but without hastiness and
without noise." There is a work, as yet unpublished, of M. Leopold
Delisle, which is to contain a complete explanatory catalogue of all the
Mandements et Actes divers de Charles V. This catalogue, which forms a
pendant to a similar work performed by M. Delisle for the reign of Philip
Augustus, is not yet concluded; and, nevertheless, for the first seven
years only of Charles V.'s reign, from 1364 to 1371, there are to be
found enumerated and described in it eight hundred and fifty-four
mandements, ordonnances et actes divers de Charles V., relating to the
different branches of administration, and to daily incidents of
government; acts all bearing the impress of an intellect active,
farsighted, and bent upon becoming acquainted with everything, and
regulating everything, not according to a general system, but from actual
and exact knowledge. Charles always proved himself reflective,
unhurried, and anxious solely to comport himself in accordance with the
public interests and with good sense. He was one day at table in his
room with some of his intimates, when news was brought him that the
English had laid siege, in Guienne, to a place where there was only a
small garrison, not in a condition to hold out unless it were promptly
succored. "The king," says Christine de Pisan, "showed no great outward
emotion, and quite coolly, as if the topic of conversation were something
else, turned and looked about him, and, seeing one of his secretaries,
summoned him courteously, and bade him, in a whisper, write word to Louis
de Sancerre, his marshal, to come to him directly. They who were there
were amazed that, though the matter was so weighty, the king took no
great account of it. Some young esquires who were waiting upon him at
table were bold enough to say to him, 'Sir, give us the money to fit
ourselves out, as many of us are of your household, for to go on this
business; we will be new-made knights, and will go and raise the siege.'
The king began to smile, and said, 'It is not new-made knights that are
suitable; they must be all old.' Seeing that he said no more about it,
some of them added, 'What are your orders, sir, touching this affair,
which is of haste?' 'It is not well to give orders in haste; when we
see those to whom it is meet to speak, we will give our orders.'"
On another occasion, the treasurer of Nimes had died, and the king
appointed his successor. His brother, the Duke of Anjou, came and asked
for the place on behalf of one of his own intimates, saying that he to
whom the king had granted it was a man of straw, and without credit.
Charles caused inquiries to be made, and then said to the duke, "Truly,
fair brother, he for whom you have spoken to me is a rich man, but one of
little sense and bad behavior." "Assuredly," said the Duke of Anjou, "he
to whom you have given the office is a man of straw, and incompetent to
fill it." "Why, prithee?" asked the king. "Because he is a poor man,
the son of small laboring folks, who are still tillers of the ground in
our country." "Ah!" said Charles; "is there nothing more? Assuredly,
fair brother, we should prize more highly the poor man of wisdom than the
profligate ass;" and he maintained in the office him whom he had put
there.
The government of Charles V. was the personal government of an
intelligent, prudent, and honorable king, anxious for the interests of
the state, at home and abroad, as well as for his own; with little
inclination for, and little confidence in, the free co-operation of the
country in its own affairs, but with wit enough to cheerfully call upon
it when there was any pressing necessity, and accepting it then without
chicanery or cheating, but safe to go back as soon as possible to that
sole dominion, a medley of patriotism and selfishness, which is the very
insufficient and very precarious resource of peoples as yet incapable of
applying their liberty to the art of their own government. Charles V.
had recourse three times, in July, 1367, and in May and December, 1369,
to a convocation of the states-general, in order to be put in a position
to meet the political and financial difficulties of France. At the
second of these assemblies, when the chancellor, William de Dormans, had
explained the position of the kingdom, the king himself rose up "for to
say to all that if they considered that he had done anything he ought not
to have done, they should tell him so, and he would amend what he had
done, for there was still time to repair it, if he had done too much or
not enough." The question at that time was as to entertaining the appeal
of the barons of Aquitaine to the King of France as suzerain of the
Prince of Wales, whose government had become intolerable, and to thus
make a first move to struggle out of the humiliating pace of Bretigny.
Such a step, and such words, do great honor to the memory of the pacific
prince who was at that time bearing the burden of the government of
France. It was Charles V.'s good fortune to find amongst his servants
a man who was destined to be the thunderbolt of war and the glory of
knighthood of his reign. About 1314, fifty years before Charles's
accession, there was born at the castle of Motte-Broon, near Rennes, in a
family which could reckon two ancestors amongst Godfrey de Bouillon's
comrades in the first crusade, Bertrand du Guesclin, "the ugliest child
from Rennes to Dinan," says a contemporary chronicle, flat-nosed and
swarthy, thick-set, broad-shouldered, big-headed, a bad fellow, a regular
wretch, according to his own mother's words, given to violence, always
striking or being struck, whom his tutor abandoned without having been
able to teach him to read. At sixteen years of age, he escaped from the
paternal mansion, went to Rennes, entered upon a course of adventures,
quarrels, challenges, and tourneys, in which he distinguished himself by
his strength, his valor, and likewise his sense of honor. He joined the
cause of Charles of Blois against John of Montfort, when the two were
claimants for the duchy of Brittany; but at the end of thirty years,
"neither the good of him, nor his prowess, were as yet greatly renowned,"
says Froissart, "save amongst the knights who were about him in the
country of Brittany." But Charles V., at that time regent, had taken
notice of him in 1359, at the siege of Melun, where Du Guesclin had for
the first time borne arms in the service of France. When, in 1364,
Charles became king, he said to Boucicaut, marshal of France, "Boucicaut,
get you hence, with such men as you have, and ride towards Normandy; you
will there find Sir Bertrand du Guesclin, hold yourselves in readiness,
I pray you, you and he, to recover from the King of Navarre the town of
Mantes, which would make us masters of the River Seine." "Right
willingly, sir," answered Boucicaut; and a few weeks afterwards, on the
7th of April, 1364, Boucicaut, by stratagem, entered Mantes with his
troop, and Du Guesclin, coming up suddenly with his, dashed into the town
at a gallop, shouting, "St. Yves! Guesclin! death, death to all
Navarrese!" The two warriors did the same next day at the gates of
Meulan, three leagues from Mantes. "Thus were the two cities taken,
whereat King Charles V. was very joyous when he heard the news; and the
King of Navarre was very wroth, for he set down as great hurt the loss of
Mantes and of Meulan, which made a mighty fine entrance for him into
France."
It was at Rheims, during the ceremony of his coronation, that Charles V.
heard of his two officers' success. The war thus begun against the King
of Navarre was hotly prosecuted on both sides. Charles the Bad hastily
collected his forces, Gascons, Normans, and English, and put them under
the command of John de Grailli, called the Captal of Buch, an officer of
renown. Du Guesclin recruited in Normandy, Picardy, and Brittany, and
amongst the bands of warriors which were now roaming all over France.
The plan of the Captal of Buch was to go and disturb the festivities at
Rheims, but at Cockerel, on the banks of the Eure, two leagues from
Evreux, he met the troops of Du Guesclin; and the two armies, pretty
nearly equal in number, halted in view of one another. Du Guesclin held
counsel, and said to his comrades in arms, "Sirs, we know that in front
of us we have in the Captal as gallant a knight as can be found to-day on
all the earth; so long as he shall be on the spot he will do us great
hurt; set we then a-horseback thirty of ours, the most skilful and the
boldest; they shall give heed to nothing but to make straight towards the
Captal, break through the press, and get right up to him; then they shall
take him, pin him, carry him off amongst them, and lead him away some
whither in safety, without waiting for the end of the battle. If he can
be taken and kept in such way, the day will be ours, so astounded will
his men be at his capture." Battle ensued at all points [May 16, 1364];
and, whilst it led to various encounters, with various results, "the
picked thirty, well mounted on the flower of steeds," says Froissart,
"and with no thought but for their enterprise, came all compact together
to where was the Captal, who was fighting right valiantly with his axe,
and was dealing blows so mighty that none durst come nigh him; but the
thirty broke through the press by dint of their horses, made right up to
him, halted hard by him, took him and shut him in amongst them by force;
then they voided the place, and bare him away in that state, whilst his
men, who were like to mad, shouted, 'A rescue for the Captal! a rescue!'
but nought could avail them, or help them; and the Captal was carried off
and placed in safety. In this bustle and turmoil, whilst the Navarrese
and English were trying to follow the track of the Captal, whom they saw
being taken off before their eyes, some French agreed with hearty good
will to bear down on the Captal's banner, which was in a thicket, and
whereof the Navarrese made their own standard. Thereupon there was a
great tumult and hard fighting there, for the banner was well guarded,
and by good men; but at last it was seized, won, torn, and cast to the
ground. The French were masters of the battle-field; Sir Bertrand and
his Bretons acquitted themselves loyally, and ever kept themselves well
together, giving aid one to another; but it cost them dear in men."
Charles was highly delighted, and, after the victory, resolutely
discharged his kingly part, rewarding, and also punishing. Du Guesclin
was made marshal of Normandy, and received as a gift the countship of
Longueville, confiscated from the King of Navarre. Certain Frenchmen who
had become confidants of the King of Navarre were executed, and Charles
V. ordered his generals to no longer show any mercy for the future to
subjects of the kingdom who were found in the enemy's ranks. The war
against Charles the Bad continued. Charles V., encouraged by his
successes, determined to take part likewise in that which was still going
on between the two claimants to the duchy of Brittany, Charles of Blois
and John of Montfort. Du Guesclin was sent to support Charles of Blois;
"whereat he was greatly rejoiced," says Froissart, "for he had always
held the said lord Charles for his rightful lord." The Count and
Countess of Blois "received him right joyously and pleasantly, and the
best part of the barons of Brittany likewise had lord Charles of Blois in
regard and affection." Du Guesclin entered at once on the campaign, and
marched upon Auray, which was being besieged by the Count of Montfort.
But there he was destined to encounter the most formidable of his
adversaries. John of Montfort had claimed the support of his patron, the
king of England, and John Chandos, the most famous of the English
commanders, had applied to the Prince of Wales to know what he was to do.
"You may go full well," the prince had answered, "since the French are
going for the Count of Blois; I give you good leave." Chandos,
delighted, set hastily to work recruiting. Only a few Aquitanians
decided to join him, for they were beginning to be disgusted with English
rule, and the French national spirit was developing itself throughout
Gascony, even in the Prince of Wales's immediate circle. Chandos
recruited scarcely any but English or Bretons, and when, to the great joy
of the Count of Montfort, he arrived before Auray, "he brought," says
Froissart, "full sixteen hundred fighting men, knights, and squires,
English and Breton, and about eight or nine hundred archers." Du
Guesclin's troops were pretty nearly equal in number, and not less brave,
but less well disciplined, and probably also less ably commanded. The
battle took place on the 29th of September, 1364, before Auray. The
attendant circumstances and the result have already been recounted in the
twentieth chapter of this history; Charles of Blois was killed, and Du
Guesclin was made prisoner. The cause of John of Montfort was clearly
won; and he, on taking possession of the duchy of Brittany, asked nothing
better than to acknowledge himself vassal of the King of France, and
swear fidelity to him. Charles V. had too much judgment not to foresee
that, even after a defeat, a peace which gave a lawful and definite
solution to the question of Brittany, rendered his relations and means of
influence with this important province much more to be depended upon than
any success which a prolonged war might promise him. Accordingly he made
peace at Guerande, on the 11th of April, 1365, after having disputed the
conditions inch by inch; and some weeks previously, on the 6th of March,
at the indirect instance of the King of Navarre, who, since the battle of
Gocherel, had felt himself in peril, Charles V. had likewise put an end
to his open struggle against his perfidious neighbor, of whom he
certainly did not cease to be mistrustful. Being thus delivered from
every external war and declared enemy, the wise King of France was at
liberty to devote himself to the re-establishment of internal peace and
of order throughout his kingdom, which was in the most pressing need
thereof.
We have, no doubt, even in our own day, cruel experience of the disorders
and evils of war; but we can form, one would say, but a very incomplete
idea of what they were in the fourteenth century, without any of those
humane administrative measures, still so ineffectual,—provisionings,
hospitals, ambulances, barracks, and encampments,—which are taken in the
present day to prevent or repair them. The Recueil des Ordonnances des
Lois de France is full of safeguards granted by Charles V. to
monasteries and hospices and communes, which implored his protection,
that they might have a little less to suffer than the country in general.
We will borrow from the best informed and the most intelligent of the
contemporary chroniclers, the Continuer of William of Nangis, a picture
of those sufferings and the causes of them. "There was not," he says,
"in Anjou, in Touraine, in Beauce, near Orleans and up to the approaches
of Paris, any corner of the country which was free from plunderers and
robbers. They were so numerous everywhere, either in little forts
occupied by them or in the villages and country-places, that peasants and
tradesfolks could not travel but at great expense and great peril. The
very guards told off to defend cultivators and travellers took part most
shamefully in harassing and despoiling them. It was the same in Burgundy
and the neighboring countries. Some knights who called themselves
friends of the king and of the king's majesty, and whose names I am not
minded to set down here, kept in their service brigands who were quite as
bad. What is far more strange is, that when those folks went into the
cities, Paris or elsewhere, everybody knew them and pointed them out, but
none durst lay a hand upon them. I saw one night at Paris, in the suburb
of St. Germain des Pres, while the people were sleeping, some brigands
who were abiding with their chieftains in the city, attempting to sack
certain hospices: they were arrested and imprisoned in the Chatelet; but,
before long, they were got off, declared innocent, and set at liberty
without undergoing the least punishment—a great encouragement for them
and their like to go still farther. . . . When the king gave Bertrand
du Guesclin the countship of Longueville, in the diocese of Rouen, which
had belonged to Philip, brother of the King of Navarre, Du Guesclin
promised the king that he would drive out by force of arms all the
plunderers and robbers, those enemies of the kingdom; but he did nothing
of the sort; nay, the Bretons even of Du Guesclin, on returning from
Rouen, pillaged and stole in the villages whatever they found there—
garments, horses, sheep, oxen, and beasts of burden and of tillage."
Charles V. was not, as Louis XII. and Henry IV. were, of a disposition
full of affection, and sympathetically inclined towards his people; but
he was a practical man, who, in his closet and in the library growing up
about him, took thought for the interests of his kingdom as well as for
his own; he had at heart the public good, and lawlessness was an
abomination to him. He had just purchased, at a ransom of a hundred
thousand francs, the liberty of Bertrand du Guesclin, who had remained a
prisoner in the hands of John Chandos, after the battle of Auray. An
idea occurred to him that the valiant Breton might be of use to him in
extricating France from the deplorable condition to which she had been
reduced by the bands of plunderers roaming everywhere over her soil. We
find in the Chronicle in verse of Bertrand Guesclin, by Cuvelier, a
troubadour of the fourteenth century, a detailed account of the king's
perplexities on this subject, and of the measures he took to apply a
remedy. We cannot regard this account as strictly historical; but it is
a picture, vivid and morally true, of events and men as they were
understood and conceived to be by a contemporary, a mediocre poet, but a
spirited narrator. We will reproduce the principal features, modifying
the language to make it more easily intelligible, but without altering
the fundamental character.
"There were so many folk who went about pillaging the country of France
that the king was sad and doleful at heart. He summoned his council, and
said to them, 'What shall we do with this multitude of thieves who go
about destroying our people? If I send against them my valiant baronage
I lose my noble barons, and then I shall never more have any joy of my
life. If any could lead these folk into Spain against the miscreant and
tyrant Pedro, who put our sister to death, I would like it well, whatever
it might cost me.'
"Bertrand du Guesclin gave ear to the king, and 'Sir King,' said he, 'it
is my heart's desire to cross over the seas and go fight the heathen with
the edge of the sword; but if I could come nigh this folk which Both
anger you, I would deliver the kingdom from them.' 'I should like it
well,' said the king. 'Say no more,' said Bertrand to him; 'I will learn
their pleasure; give it no further thought.'
"Bertrand du Guesclin summoned his herald, and said to him, 'Go thou to
the Grand Company and have all the captains assembled; thou wilt go and
demand for me a safe-conduct, for I have a great desire to parley with
them.' The herald mounted his horse, and went a-seeking these folk
toward Chalon-sur-la-Saone. They were seated together at dinner, and
were drinking good wine from the cask they had pierced. 'Sirs,' said the
herald, 'the blessing of Jesus be on you! Bertrand du Guesclin prayeth
you to let him parley with all in company.' 'By my faith, gentle
herald,' said Hugh de Calverley, who was master of the English, 'I will
readily see Bertrand here, and will give him good wine; I can well give
it him, in sooth, I do assure you, for it costs me nothing.' Then the
herald departed, and returned to his lord, and told the news of this
company.
"So away rode Bertrand, and halted not; and he rode so far that he came
to the Grand Company, and then did greet them. 'God keep,' said he, 'the
companions I see yonder!' Then they bowed down; each abased himself. 'I
vow to God,' said Bertrand, 'whosoever will be pleased to believe me; I
will make you all rich.' And they answered, 'Right welcome here sir, we
will all do whatsoever is your pleasure.' 'Sirs,' said Bertrand, 'be
pleased to listen to me; wherefore I am come I will tell unto you. I
come by order of the king in whose keeping is France, and who would be
right glad, to save his people, that ye should come with me whither I
should be glad to go into good company I fain would bring ye. If we
would all of us look into our hearts, we might full truly consider that
we have done enough to damn our souls; think we but how we have dealt
with life, outraged ladies and burned houses, slain men, children, and
everybody set to ransom, how we have eaten up cows, oxen, and sheep,
drunk good wines, and done worse than robbers do. Let us do honor to God
and forsake the devil. Ask, if it may please you, all the companions,
all the knights, and all the barons; if you be of accord, we will go to
the king, and I will have the gold got ready which we do promise you I
would fain get together all my friends to make the journey we so strongly
desire.'"
Du Guesclin then explained, in broad terms which left the choice to the
Grand Company, what this journey was which was so much desired. He spoke
of the King of Cyprus, of the Saracens of Granada, of the Pope of
Avignon, and especially of Spain and the King of Castile, Pedro the
Cruel, "scoundrel-murderer of his wife (Blanche of Bourbon)," on whom,
above all, Du Gueselin wished to draw down the wrath of his hearers. "In
Spain," he said to them, "we might largely profit, for the country is a
good one for leading a good life, and there are good wines which are neat
and clear." Nearly all present, whereof were twenty-five famous
captains, "confirmed what was said by Bertrand." "Sirs," said he to them
at last, "listen to me: I will go my way and speak to the King of the
Franks; I will get for you those two hundred thousand francs; you shall
come and dine with me at Paris, according to my desire, when the time
shall have come for it; and you shall see the king, who will be rejoiced
thereat. We will have no evil suspicion in anything, for I never was
inclined to treason, and never shall be as long as I live." Then said
the valiant knights and esquires to him, "Never was more valiant man seen
on earth; and in you we have more belief and faith than in all the
prelates and great clerics who dwell at Avignon or in France."
When Du Gueselin returned to Paris, "Sir," said he to the king, "I have
accomplished your wish; I will put out of your kingdom all the worst folk
of this Grand Company, and I will so work it that everything shall be
saved." "Bertrand," said the king to him, "may the Holy Trinity be
pleased to have you in their keeping, and may I see you a long while in
joy and health!" "Noble king," said Bertrand, "the captains have a very
great desire to come to Paris, your good city." "I am heartily willing,"
said the king; "if they come, let them assemble at the Temple; elsewhere
there is too much people and too much abundance; there might be too much
alarm. Since they have reconciled themselves to us, I would have nought
but friendship with them."
The poet concludes the negotiation thus: "At the bidding of Bertrand,
when he understood the pleasure of the noble King of France, all the
captains came to Paris in perfect safety; they were conducted straight to
the Temple; there they were feasted and dined nobly, and received many a
gift, and all was sealed."
Matters went, at the outset at least, as Du Guesclin had promised to the
king on the one side, and on the other to the captains of the Grand
Company. There was, in point of fact, a civil war raging in Spain
between Don Pedro the Cruel, King of Castile, and his natural brother,
Henry of Transtamare, and that was the theatre on which Du Guesclin had
first proposed to launch the vagabond army which he desired to get out of
France. It does not appear, however, that at their departure from
Burgundy at the end of November, 1365, this army and its chiefs had in
this respect any well-considered resolution, or any well-defined aim in
their movements. They made first for Avignon, and Pope Urban V., on
hearing of their approach, was somewhat disquieted, and sent to them one
of his cardinals to ask them what was their will. If we may believe the
poet-chronicler, Cuvelier, the mission was anything but pleasing to the
cardinal, who said to one of his confidants, "I am grieved to be set to
this business, for I am sent to a pack of madmen who have not an hour's,
nay, not even half-an-hour's conscience." The captains replied that they
were going to fight the heathen either in Cyprus or in the kingdom of
Granada, and that they demanded of the pope absolution of their sins and
two hundred thousand livres, which Du Guesclin had promised them in his
name. The pope cried out against this. "Here," said he, "at Avignon, we
have money given us for absolution, and we must give it gratis to yonder
folks, and give them money also: it is quite against reason." Du
Guesclin insisted. "Know you," said he to the cardinal, "that there are
in this army many folks who care not a whit for absolution, and who would
much rather have money; we are making them proper men in spite of
themselves, and are leading them abroad that they may do no mischief to
Christians. Tell that to the pope; for else we could not take them
away." The pope yielded, and gave them the two hundred thousand livres.
He obtained the money by levies upon the population of Avignon. They, no
doubt, complained loudly, for the chiefs of the Grand Company were
informed thereof, and Du Guesclin said, "By the faith that I owe to the
Holy Trinity, I will not take a denier of that which these poor folks
have given; let the pope and the clerics give us of their own; we desire
that all they who have paid the tax do recover their money without losing
a doit;" and, according to contemporary chronicles, the vagabond army did
not withdraw until they had obtained this satisfaction. The piety of the
middle ages, though sincere, was often less disinterested and more rough
than it is commonly represented.
On arriving at Toulouse from Avignon, Du Guesclin and his bands, with a
strength, it is said, of thirty thousand men, took the decided resolution
of going into Spain to support the cause of Prince Henry of Transtamare
against the King of Castile his brother, Don Pedro the Cruel. The Duke
of Anjou, governor of Languedoc, gave them encouragement, by agreement,
no doubt with King Charles V., and from anxiety on his own part to rid
his province of such inconvenient visitors. On the 1st of January, 1366,
Du Guesclin entered Barcelona, whither Henry of Transtamare came to join
him. There is no occasion to give a detailed account here of that
expedition, which appertains much more to the history of Spain than to
that of France. There was a brief or almost no struggle. Henry of
Transtamare was crowned king, first at Calahorra, and afterwards at
Burgos. Don Pedro, as much despised before long as he was already
detested, fled from Castile to Andalusia, and from Andalusia to Portugal,
whose king would not grant him an asylum in his dominions, and he ended
by embarking at Coronna for Bordeaux, to implore the assistance of the
Prince of Wales, who gave him a warm and a magnificent reception. Edward
III., King of England, had been disquieted by the march of the Grand
Company into Spain, and had given John Chandos and the rest of his chief
commanders in Guienne orders to be vigilant in preventing the English
from taking part in the expedition against his cousin the King of
Castile; but several of the English chieftains, serving in the bands and
with Du Guesclin, set at nought this prohibition, and contributed
materially to the fall of Don Pedro. Edward III. did not consider that
the matter was any infraction, on the part of France, of the treaty of
Bretigne, and continued to live at peace with Charles V., testifying his
displeasure, however, all the same. But when Don Pedro had reached
Bordeaux, and had told the Prince of Wales that, if he obtained the
support of England, he would make the prince's eldest son, Edward, king
of Galicia, and share amongst the prince's warriors the treasure he had
left in Castile, so well concealed that he alone knew where, "the knights
of the Prince of Wales," says Froissart, "gave ready heed to his words,
for English and Gascons are by nature covetous." The Prince of Wales
immediately summoned the barons of Aquitaine, and on the advice they gave
him sent four knights to London to ask for instructions from the king his
father. Edward III. assembled his chief councillors at Westminster, and
finally "it seemed to all course due and reasonable on the part of the
Prince of Wales to restore and conduct the King of Spain to his kingdom;
to which end they wrote official letters from the King and the council of
England to the prince and the barons of Aquitaine. When the said barons
heard the letters read they said to the prince, 'My lord, we will obey
the command of the king our master and your father; it is but reason, and
we will serve you on this journey and King Pedro also; but we would know
who shall pay us and deliver us our wages, for one does not take
men-at-arms away from their homes to go a warfare in a foreign land,
without they be paid and delivered. If it were a matter touching our
dear lord your father's affairs, or your own, or your honor or our
country's, we would not speak thereof so much beforehand as we do.' Then
the Prince of Wales looked towards the Prince Don Pedro, and said to him,
'Sir King, you hear what these gentlemen say; to answer is for you, who
have to employ them.' Then the King Don Pedro answered the prince, 'My
dear cousin, so far as my gold, my silver, and all my treasure which I
have brought with me hither, and which is not a thirtieth part so great
as that which there is yonder, will go, I am ready to give it and share
it amongst your gentry.' 'You say well,' said the prince, 'and for the
residue I will be debtor to them, and I will lend you all you shall have
need of until we be in Castile.' 'By my head,' answered the King Don
Pedro, you will do me great grace and great courtesy.'"
When the English and Gascon chieftains who had followed Du Guesclin
into Spain heard of the resolutions of their king, Edward III., and the
preparations made by the Prince of Wales for going and restoring Don
Pedro to the throne of Castile, they withdrew from the cause which they
had just brought to an issue to the advantage of Henry of Transtamare,
separated from the French captain who had been their leader, and marched
back into Aquitaine, quite ready to adopt the contrary cause, and follow
the Prince of Wales in the service of Don Pedro. The greater part of the
adventurers, Burgundian, Picard, Champagnese, Norman, and others who had
enlisted in the bands which Du Guesclin had marched out of France,
likewise quitted him, after reaping the fruits of their raid, and
recrossed the Pyrenees to go and resume in France their life of roving
and pillage. There remained in Spain about fifteen hundred men-at-arms
faithful to Du Guesclin, himself faithful to Henry of Transtamare, who
had made him Constable of Castile.
Amidst all these vicissitudes, and at the bottom of all events as well as
of all hearts, there still remained the great fact of the period, the
struggle between the two kings of France and England for dominion in that
beautiful country which, in spite of its dismemberment, kept the name of
France. Edward III. in London, and the Prince of Wales at Bordeaux,
could not see, without serious disquietude, the most famous warrior
amongst the French crossing the Pyrenees with a following for the most
part French, and setting upon the throne of Castile a prince necessarily
allied to the King of France. The question of rivalry between the two
kings and the two peoples had thus been transferred into Spain, and for
the moment the victory remained with France. After several months'
preparation the prince of Wales, purchasing the complicity of the King of
Navarre, marched into Spain in February, 1367, with an army of
twenty-seven thousand men, and John Chandos, the most able of the English
warriors. Henry of Transtamare had troops more numerous, but less
disciplined and experienced. The two armies joined battle on the 3d of
April, 1367, at Najara or Navarette, not far from the Ebro. Disorder and
even sheer rout soon took place amongst that of Henry, who flung himself
before the fugitives, shouting, "Why would ye thus desert and betray me,
ye who have made me King of Castile? Turn back and stand by me; and by
the grace of God the day shall be ours." Du Guesclin and his men-at-arms
maintained the fight with stubborn courage, but at last they were beaten,
and either slain or taken. To the last moment Du Guesclin, with his back
against a wall, defended himself heroically against a host of assailants.
The Prince of Wales, coming up, cried out, "Gentle marshals of France,
and you too, Bertrand, yield yourselves to me." "Why, yonder men are my
foes," cried the king, Don Pedro; "it is they who took from me my
kingdom, and on them I mean to take vengeance." Du Guesclin, darting
forward, struck so rough a blow with his sword at Don Pedro, that he
brought him fainting to the ground, and then turning to the Prince of
Wales said, "Nathless I give up my sword to the most valiant prince on
earth." The Prince of Wales took the sword, and charged the Captal of
Buch with the prisoner's keeping. "Aha! sir Bertrand," said the Captal
to Du Guesclin, "you took me at the battle of Cocherel, and to-day I've
got you." "Yes," replied Du Guesclin; "but at Cocherel I took you
myself, and here you are only my keeper."
The battle of Najara being over, and Don Pedro the Cruel restored to a
throne which he was not to occupy for long, the Prince of Wales returned
to Bordeaux with his army and his prisoner Du Guesclin, whom he treated
courteously, at the same time that he kept him pretty strictly. One of
the English chieftains who had been connected with Du Guesclin at the
time of his expedition into Spain, Sir Hugh Calverley, tried one day to
induce the Prince of Wales to set the French warrior at liberty. "Sir,"
said he, "Bertrand is a right loyal knight, but he is not a rich man, or
in estate to pay much money; he would have good need to end his captivity
on easy terms." "Let be," said the prince; "I have no care to take aught
of his; I will cause his life to be prolonged in spite of himself: if he
were released, he would be in battle again, and always a-making war."
After supper, Hugh, without any beating about the bush, told Bertrand the
prince's answer. "Sir," he said, "I cannot bring about your release."
"Sir," said Bertrand, "think no more of it; I will leave the matter to
the decision of God, who is a good and just master." Some time after,
Du Guesclin having sent a request to the Prince of Wales to admit him to
ransom, the prince, one day when he was in a gay humor, had him brought
up, and told him that his advisers had urged him not to give him his
liberty so long as the war between France and England lasted. "Sir,"
said Du Guesclin to him, "then am I the most honored knight in the world,
for they say, in the kingdom of France and elsewhere, that you are more
afraid of me than of any other." "Think you, then, it is for your
knighthood that we do keep you?" said the prince: "nay, by St. George;
fix you your own ransom, and you shall be released." Du Guesclin proudly
fixed his ransom at a hundred thousand francs, which seemed a large sum
even to the Prince of Wales. "Sir," said Du Guesclin to him, "the king
in whose keeping is France will lend me what I lack, and there is not a
spinning wench in France who would not spin to gain for me what is
necessary to put me out of your clutches." The advisers of the Prince of
Wales would have had him think better of it, and break his promise; but
"that which we have agreed to with him we will hold to," said the prince;
"it would be shame and confusion of face to us if we could be reproached
with not setting him to ransom when he is ready to set himself down at so
much as to pay a hundred thousand francs." Prince and knight were both
as good as their word. Du Guesclin found amongst his Breton friends a
portion of the sum he wanted; King Charles V. lent him thirty thousand
Spanish doubloons, which, by a deed of December 27, 1367, Du Guesclin
undertook to repay; and at the beginning of 1368 the Prince of Wales set
the French warrior at liberty.
The first use Du Guesclin made of it was to go and put his name and his
sword at the service first of the Duke of Anjou, governor of Languedoc,
who was making war in Provence against Queen Joan of Naples, and then of
his Spanish patron, Henry of Transtamare, who had recommenced the war in
Spain against his brother, Pedro the Cruel, whom he was before long to
dethrone for the second time and slay with his own hand. But whilst Du
Guesclin was taking part in this settlement of the Spanish question,
important events called him back to the north of the Pyrenees for the
service of his own king, the defence of his own country, and the
aggrandizement of his own fortunes. The English and Gascon bands which,
in 1367, had recrossed the Pyrenees with the Prince of Wales, after
having restored Don Pedro the Cruel to the throne of Castile had not
disappeared. Having no more to do in their own prince's service, they
had spread abroad over France, which they called "their apartment," and
recommenced, in the countries between the Seine and the Loire, their life
of vagabondage and pillage. A general outcry was raised; it was the
Prince of Wales, men said, who had let them loose, and the people called
them the host (army) of England. A proceeding of the Prince of Wales
himself had the effect of adding to the rage of the people that of the
aristocratic classes. He was lavish of expenditure, and held at Bordeaux
a magnificent court, for which the revenues from his domains and ordinary
resources were insufficient; so he imposed a tax for five years of ten
sous per hearth or family, "in order to satisfy," he said, "the large
claims against him." In order to levy this tax legally, he convoked the
estates of Aquitaine, first at Niort, and then, successively, at
Angouleme, Poitiers, Bordeaux, and Bergerac; but nowhere could he obtain
the vote he demanded. "When we obeyed the King of France," said the
Gascons, "we were never so aggrieved with subsidies, hearth-taxes, or
gabels, and we will not be, as long as we can defend ourselves." The
Prince of Wales persisted in his demands. He was ill and irritable, and
was becoming truly the Black Prince. The Aquitanians too became
irritated. The prince's more temperate advisers, even those of English
birth, tried in vain to move him from his stubborn course. Even John
Chandos, the most notable as well as the wisest of them, failed, and
withdrew to his domain of St. Sauveur, in Normandy, that he might have
nothing to do with measures of which he disapproved. Being driven to
extremity, the principal lords of Aquitaine, the Counts of Comminges, of
Armagnac, of Perigord, and many barons besides, set out for France, and
made complaint, on the 30th of June, 1368, before Charles V. and his
peers, "on account of the grievances which the Prince of Wales was
purposed to put upon them." They had recourse, they said, to the King of
France as their sovereign lord, who had no power to renounce his
suzerainty or the jurisdiction of his court of peers and of his
parliament.
Nothing could have corresponded better with the wishes of Charles V. For
eight years past he had taken to heart the treaty of Bretigny, and he was
as determined not to miss as he was patient in waiting for an opportunity
for a breach of it. But he was too prudent to act with a precipitation
which would have given his conduct an appearance of a premeditated and
deep-laid purpose for which there was no legitimate ground. He did not
care to entertain at once and unreservedly the appeal of the Aquitanian
lords. He gave them a gracious reception, and made them "great cheer and
rich gifts;" but he announced his intention of thoroughly examining the
stipulations of the treaty of Bretigny, and the rights of his kingship.
"He sent for into his council chamber all the charters of the peace, and
then he had them read on several days and at full leisure." He called
into consultation the schools of Boulogne, of Montpellier, of Toulouse,
and of Orleans, and the most learned clerks of the papal court. It was
not until he had thus ascertained the legal means of maintaining that the
stipulations of the treaty of Bretigny had not all of them been performed
by the King of England, and that, consequently, the King of France had
not lost all his rights of suzerainty over the ceded provinces, that on
the 25th of January, 1369, just six months after the appeal of the
Aquitanian lords had been submitted to him, he adopted it, in the
following terms, which he addressed to the Prince of Wales, at Bordeaux,
and which are here curtailed in their legal expressions:—
"Charles, by the grace of God King of France, to our nephew the Prince of
Wales and of Aquitaine, greeting. Whereas many prelates, barons,
knights, universities, communes, and colleges of the country of Gascony
and the duchy of Aquitaine, have come thence into our presence, that they
might have justice touching certain undue grievances and vexations which
you, through weak counsel and silly advice, have designed to impose upon
them, whereat we are quite astounded, . . . we, of our kingly majesty
and lordship, do command you to come to our city of Paris, in your own
person, and to present yourself before us in our chamber of peers, for to
hear justice touching the said complaints and grievances proposed by you
to be done to your people which claims to have resort to our court. . .
And be it as quickly as you may."
"When the Prince of Wales had read this letter," says Froissart, "he
shook his head, and looked askant at the aforesaid Frenchmen; and when he
had thought a while, he answered, 'We will go willingly, at our own time,
since the King of France doth bid us, but it shall be with our Basque on
our head, and with sixty thousand men at our back.'"
This was a declaration of war; and deeds followed at once upon words.
Edward III., after a short and fruitless attempt at an accommodation,
assumed, on the 3d of June, 1369, the title of King of France, and
ordered a levy of all his subjects between sixteen and sixty, laic or
ecclesiastical, for the defence of England, threatened by a French fleet
which was cruising in the Channel. He sent re-enforcements to the Prince
of Wales, whose brother, the Duke of Lancaster, landed with an army at
Calais; and he offered to all the adventurers with whom Europe was
teeming possession of all the fiefs they could conquer in France.
Charles V. on his side vigorously pushed forward his preparations; he had
begun them before he showed his teeth, for as early as the 19th of July,
1368, he had sent into Spain ambassadors with orders to conclude an
alliance with Henry of Transtamare against the King of England and his
son, whom he called "the Duke of Aquitaine." On the 12th of April, 1369,
he signed the treaty which, by a contract of marriage between his
brother, Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, and the Princess Marguerite
of Flanders, transferred the latter rich province to the House of France.
Lastly he summoned to Paris Du Guesclin, who since the recovery of his
freedom had been fighting at one time in Spain, and at another in the
south of France, and announced to him his intention of making him
constable. "Dear sir and noble king," said the honest and modest Breton,
"I do pray you to have me excused; I am a poor knight and petty bachelor.
The office of constable is so grand and noble that he who would well
discharge it should have had long previous practice and command, and
rather over the great than the small. Here are my lords your brothers,
your nephews, and your cousins, who will have charge of men-at-arms in
the armies, and the rides afield, and how durst I lay commands on them?
In sooth, sir, jealousies be so strong that I cannot well but be afeard
of them. I do affectionately pray you to dispense with me, and to confer
it upon another who will more willingly take it than I, and will know
better how to fill it." "Sir Bertrand, Sir Bertrand," answered the king,
"do not excuse yourself after this fashion; I have nor brother, nor
cousin, nor nephew, nor count, nor baron in my kingdom, who would not
obey you; and if any should do otherwise, he would anger me so that he
would hear of it. Take, therefore, the office with a good heart, I do
beseech you." Sir Bertrand saw well, says Froissart, "that his excuses
were of no avail, and finally he assented to the king's opinion; but it
was not without a struggle, and to his great disgust. . . . In order
to give him further encouragement and advancement the king did set him
close to him at table, showed him all the signs he could of affection,
and gave him, together with the office, many handsome gifts and great
estates for himself and his heirs." Charles V. might fearlessly lavish
his gifts on the loyal warrior, for Du Guesclin felt nothing more binding
upon him than to lavish them, in his turn, for the king's service. He
gave numerous and sumptuous dinners to the barons, knights, and soldiers
of every degree whom he was to command.
"At Bertrand's plate gazed every eye,
So massive, chased so gloriously,"
says the poet-chronicler Cuvelier; but Du Guesclin pledged it more than
once, and sold a great portion of it, in order to pay "without fail the
knights and honorable fighting-men of whom he was the leader."
The war thus renewed was hotly prosecuted on both sides. A sentiment of
nationality became, from day to day, more keen and more general in
France. At the commencement of hostilities, it burst forth particularly
in the North; the burghers of Abbeville opened their gates to the Count
of St. Poi, and in a single week St. Valery, Crotoy, and all the places
in the countship of Ponthieu followed this example. The movement made
progress before long in the South. Montauban and Milhau hoisted on their
walls the royal standard; the Archbishop of Toulouse "went riding through
the whole of Quercy, preaching and demonstrating the good cause of the
King of France; and he converted, without striking a blow, Cahors and
more than sixty towns, castles, or fortresses." Charles V. neglected no
means of encouraging and keeping up the public impulse. It has been
remarked that, as early as the 9th of May, 1369, he had convoked the
states-general, declaring to them in person that "if they considered that
he had done anything he ought not, they should say so, and he would amend
it, for there was still time for reparation if he had done too much or
not enough." He called a new meeting on the 7th of December, 1369, after
the explosion of hostilities, and obtained from them the most extensive
subsidies they had ever granted. They were as stanch to the king in
principle as in purse, and their interpretations of the treaty of
Bretigny went far beyond the grounds which Charles had put forward to
justify war. It was not only on the upper classes and on political minds
that the king endeavored to act; he paid attention also to popular
impressions; he set on foot in Paris a series of processions, in which he
took part in person, and the queen also, "barefoot and unsandaled, to
pray God to graciously give heed to the doings and affairs of the
kingdom."
But at the same time that he was thus making his appeal, throughout
France and by every means, to the feeling of nationality, Charles
remained faithful to the rule of conduct which had been inculcated in him
by the experience of his youth; he recommended, nay, he commanded, all
his military captains to avoid any general engagement with the English.
It was not without great difficulty that he wrung obedience from the
feudal nobility, who, more numerous very often than the English, looked
upon such a prohibition as an insult, and sometimes withdrew to their
castles rather than submit to it; and even the king's brother, Philip the
Bold, openly in Burgundy testified his displeasure at it. Du Guesclin,
having more intelligence and firmness, even before becoming constable,
and at the moment of quitting the Duke of Anjou at Toulouse, had advised
him not to accept battle, to well fortify all the places that had been
recovered, and to let the English scatter and waste themselves in a host
of small expeditions and distant skirmishes constantly renewed. When
once he was constable, Du Guesclin put determinedly in practice the
king's maxim, calmly confident in his own fame for valor whenever he had
to refuse to yield to the impatience of his comrades.
This detached and indecisive war lasted eight years, with a medley of
more or less serious incidents, which, however, did not change its
character. In 1370, the Prince of Wales laid siege to Limoges, which had
opened its gates to the Duke of Berry. He was already so ill that he
could not mount his horse, and had himself carried in a litter from post
to post, to follow up and direct the operations of the siege. In spite
of a month's resistance the prince took the place, and gave it up as a
prey to a mob of reckless plunderers, whose excesses were such that
Froissart himself, a spectator generally so indifferent, and leaning
rather to the English, was deeply shocked. "There," said he, "was a
great pity, for men, women, and children threw themselves on their knees
before the prince, and cried, 'Mercy, gentle sir!' but he was so inflamed
with passion that he gave no heed, and none, male or female, was listened
to, but all were put to the sword. There is no heart so hard but, if
present then at Limoges and not forgetful of God, would have wept
bitterly, for more than three thousand persons, men, women, and children,
were there beheaded on that day. May God receive their souls, for verily
they were martyrs!" The massacre of Limoges caused, throughout France, a
feeling of horror and indignant anger towards the English name. In 1373
an English army landed at Calais, under the command of the Duke of
Lancaster, and overran nearly the whole of France, being incessantly
harassed, however, without ever being attacked in force, and without
mastering a single fortress. "Let them be," was the saying in the king's
circle; "when a storm bursts out in a country, it leaves off afterwards
and disperses of itself; and so it will be with these English." The
sufferings and reverses of the English armies on this expedition were
such, that, of thirty thousand horses which the English had landed at
Calais, "they could not muster more than six thousand at Bordeaux, and
had lost full a third of their men and more. There were seen noble
knights, who had great possessions in their own country, toiling along
a-foot, without armor, and begging their bread from door to door without
getting any." In vain did Edward III. treat with the Duke of Brittany
and the King of Navarre in order to have their support in this war. The
Duke of Brittany, John IV., after having openly defied the King of
France, his suzerain, was obliged to fly to England, and the King of
Navarre entered upon negotiations alternately with Edward III. and
Charles V., being always ready to betray either, according to what suited
his interests at the moment. Tired of so many ineffectual efforts,
Edward III. was twice obliged, between 1375 and 1377, to conclude with
Charles V. a truce, just to give the two peoples, as well as the two
kings, breathing-time; but the truces were as vain as the petty combats
for the purpose of putting an end to this great struggle.
The great actors in this historical drama did not know how near were the
days when they would be called away from this arena, still so crowded
with their exploits or their reverses. A few weeks after the massacre of
Limoges the Prince of Wales lost, at Bordeaux, his eldest son, six years
old, whom he loved with all the tenderness of a veteran warrior, so much
the more affected by gentle impressions as they were a rarity to him; and
he was himself so ill that "his doctors advised him to return to England,
his own land, saying that he would probably get better health there."
Accordingly he left France, which he would never see again, and, on
returning to England, he, after a few months' rest in the country, took
an active part in Parliament in the home-policy of his country, and
supported the opposition against the government of his father, who since
the death of the queen, Philippa of Hainault, had been treating England
to the spectacle of a scandalous old age closing a life of glory.
Parliamentary contests soon exhausted the remaining strength of the Black
Prince, and he died on the 8th of June, 1376, in possession of a
popularity that never shifted, and was deserved by such qualities as
showed a nature great indeed and generous, though often sullied by the
fits of passion of a character harsh even to ferocity. "The good fortune
of England," says his contemporary Walsingham, "seemed bound up with his
person, for it flourished when he was well, fell off when he was ill, and
vanished at his death. As long as he was on the spot the English feared
neither the foe's invasion nor the meeting on the battle-field; but with
him died all their hopes." A year after him, on the 21st of June, 1377,
died his father, Edward III., a king who had been able, glorious, and
fortunate for nearly half a century, but had fallen, towards the end of
his life, into contempt with his people and into forgetfulness on the
continent of Europe, where nothing was heard about him beyond whispers of
an indolent old man's indulgent weaknesses to please a covetous mistress.
Whilst England thus lost her two great chiefs, France still kept hers.
For three years longer Charles V. and Du Guesclin remained at the head of
her government and her armies. The truce between the two kingdoms was
still in force when the Prince of Wales died, and Charles, ever careful
to practise knightly courtesy, had a solemn funeral service performed for
him in the Sainte-Chapelle; but the following year, at the death of
Edward III., the truce had expired. The Prince of Wales's young son,
Richard II., succeeded his grandfather, and Charles, on the accession of
a king who was a minor, was anxious to reap all the advantage be could
hope from that fact. The war was pushed forward vigorously, and a French
fleet cruised on the coast of England, ravaged the Isle of Wight, and
burned Yarmouth, Dartmouth, Plymouth, Winchelsea, and Lewes. What
Charles passionately desired was the recovery of Calais; he would have
made considerable sacrifices to obtain it, and in the seclusion of his
closet he displayed an intelligent activity in his efforts, by war or
diplomacy, to attain this end. "He had," says Froissart, "couriers going
a-horseback night and day, who, from one day to the next, brought him
news from eighty or a hundred leagues' distance, by help of relays posted
from town to town." This labor of the king had no success; on the whole
the war prosecuted by Charles V. between Edward III.'s death and his own
had no result of importance; the attempt, by law and arms, which he made
in 1378, to make Brittany his own and reunite it to the crown, completely
failed, thanks to the passion with which the Bretons, nobles, burgesses,
and peasants, were attached to their country's independence. Charles V.
actually ran a risk of embroiling himself with the hero of his reign; he
had ordered Du Guesclin to reduce to submission the countship of Rennes,
his native land, and he showed some temper because the constable not only
did not succeed, but advised him to make peace with the Duke of Brittany
and his party. Du Guesclin, grievously hurt, sent to the king his sword
of constable, adding that he was about to withdraw to the court of
Castile, to Henry of Transtamare, who would show more appreciation of his
services. All Charles V.'s wisdom did not preserve him from one of those
deeds of haughty levity which the handling of sovereign power sometimes
causes even the wisest kings to commit, but reflection made him promptly
acknowledge and retrieve his fault. He charged the Dukes of Anjou and
Bourbon to go and, for his sake, conjure Du Guesclin to remain his
constable; and, though some chroniclers declare that Du Guesclin refused,
his will, dated the 9th of July, 1380, leads to a contrary belief, for in
it he assumes the title of constable of France, and this will preceded
the hero's death only by four days. Having fallen sick before
Chateauneuf-Randon, a place he was besieging in the Gevaudan, Du Guesclin
expired on the 13th of July, 1380, at sixty-six years of age, and his
last words were an exhortation to the veteran captains around him "never
to forget that, in whatsoever country they might be making war,
churchmen, women, children, and the poor people were not their enemies."
According to certain contemporary chronicles, or, one might almost say,
legends, Chateauneuf-Randon was to be given up the day after Du Guesclin
died. The marshal De Sancerre, who commanded the king's army, summoned
the governor to surrender the place to him; but the governor replied that
he had given his word to Du Guesclin, and would surrender to no other.
He was told of the constable's death: "Very well," he rejoined, "I will
carry the keys of the town to his tomb." To this the marshal agreed; the
governor marched out of the place at the head of his garrison, passed
through the besieging army, went and knelt down before Du Guesclin's
corpse, and actually laid the keys of Chateauneuf-Randon on his bier.
This dramatic story is not sufficiently supported by authentic documents
to be admitted as an historical fact; but there is to be found in an old
chronicle concerning Du Guesclin [published for the first time at the end
of the fifteenth century, and in a new edition by M. Francisque Michel in
1830] a story which, in spite of many discrepancies, confirms the
principal fact of the keys of Chateauneuf-Randon being brought by the
garrison to the bier. "At the decease of Sir Bertrand," says the
chronicler, "a great cry arose throughout the host of the French. The
English refused to give up the castle. The marshal, Louis de Sancerre,
had the hostages brought to the ditches, for to have their heads struck
off. But forthwith the people in the castle lowered their bridge, and
the captain came and offered the keys to the marshal, who refused them,
and said to him, 'Friends, you have your agreements with Sir Bertrand,
and ye shall fulfil them to him.' 'God the Lord!' said the captain, 'you
know well that Sir Bertrand, who was so much worth, is dead: how, then,
should we surrender to him this castle? Verily, lord marshal, you do
demand our dishonor when you would have us and our castle surrendered to
a dead knight.' 'Needs no parley hereupon,' said the marshal, 'but do it
at once, for, if you put forth more words, short will be the life of your
hostages.' Well did the English see that it could not be otherwise; so
they went forth all of them from the castle, their captain in front of
them, and came to the marshal, who led them to the hostel where lay Sir
Bertrand, and made them give up the keys and place them on his bier,
sobbing the while: 'Let all know that there was there nor knight, nor
squire, French or English, who showed not great mourning.'"
The body of Du Guesclin was carried to Paris to be interred at St. Denis,
hard by the tomb which Charles V. had ordered to be made for himself; and
nine years afterwards, in 1389, Charles V.'s successor, his son Charles
VI., caused to be celebrated in the Breton warrior's honor a fresh
funeral, at which the princes and grandees of the kingdom, and the young
king himself, were present in state. The Bishop of Auxerre delivered the
funeral oration over the constable; and a poet of the time, giving an
account of the ceremony, says,
"The tears of princes fell,
What time the bishop said,
'Sir Bertrand loved ye well;
Weep, warriors, for the dead!
The knell of sorrow tolls
For deeds that were so bright:
God save all Christian souls,
And his—the gallant knight:"
The life, character, and name of Bertrand du Guesclin were and remained
one of the most popular, patriotic, and legitimate boasts of the middle
ages, then at their decline.
Two months after the constable's death, on the 16th of September, 1380,
Charles V. died at the castle of Beaute-sur-Marne, near Vincennes, at
forty-three years of age, quite young still after so stormy and
hard-working a life. His contemporaries were convinced, and he was
himself convinced, that he had been poisoned by his perfidious enemy,
King Charles of Navarre. His uncle, Charles IV., Emperor of Germany,
had sent him an able doctor, who "set him in good case and in manly
strength," says Froissart, by effecting a permanent issue in his arm.
"When this little sore," said he to him, "shall cease to discharge and
shall dry up, you will die without help for it, and you will have at the
most fifteen days' leisure to take counsel and thought for the soul."
When the issue began to dry up, Charles knew that death was at hand; and
"like a wise and valiant man as he was," says Froissart, "he set in order
all his affairs, and sent for his three brothers, in whom he had most
confidence, the Duke of Berry, the Duke of Burgundy, and the Duke of
Bourbon, and he left in the lurch his second brother, the Duke of Anjou,
because he considered him too covetous. 'My dear brothers,' said the
king to them, 'I feel and know full well that I have not long to live.
I do commend and give in charge to you my son Charles. Behave to him as
good uncles should behave to their nephew. Crown him as soon as possible
after my death, and counsel him loyally in all his affairs. The lad is
young, and of a volatile spirit; he will need to be guided and governed
by good doctrine; teach him or have him taught all the kingly points and
states he will have to maintain, and marry him in such lofty station that
the kingdom may be the better for it. Thank God, the affairs of our
kingdom are in good case. The Duke of Brittany [John IV., called the
Valiant] is a crafty and a slippery man, and he hath ever been more
English than French; for which reason keep the nobles of Brittany and the
good towns affectionate, and you will thus thwart his intentions. I am
fond of the Bretons, for they have ever served me loyally, and helped to
keep and defend my kingdom against my enemies. Make the lord Clisson
constable, for, all considered, I see none more competent for it than he.
As to those aids and taxes of the kingdom of France, wherewith the poorer
folks are so burdened and aggrieved, deal with them according to your
conscience, and take them off as soon as ever you can, for they are
things which, although I have upheld them, do grieve me and weigh upon my
heart; but the great wars and great matters which we have had on all
sides caused me to countenance them."
Of all the dying speeches and confessions of kings to their family and
their councillors, that which has just been put forward is the most
practical, precise, and simple. Charles V., taking upon his shoulders at
nineteen years of age, first as king's lieutenant and as dauphin, and
afterwards as regent, the government of France, employed all his soul and
his life in repairing the disasters arising from the wars of his
predecessors and preventing any repetition. No sovereign was ever more
resolutely pacific; he carried prudence even into the very practice of
war, as was proved by his forbidding his generals to venture any general
engagement with the English, so great a lesson and so deep an impression
had he derived from the defeats of Crecy and Poitiers, and the causes
which led to them. But without being a warrior, and without running any
hazardous risks, he made himself respected and feared by his enemies.
"Never was there king," said Edward III., "who handled arms less, and
never was there king who gave me so much to do." When the condition of
the kingdom was at the best, and more favorable circumstances led Charles
to believe that the day had come for setting France free from the cruel
conditions which had been imposed upon her by the treaty of Bretigny, he
entered without hesitation upon that war of patriotic reparation; and,
after the death of his two powerful enemies, Edward III. and the Black
Prince, he was still prosecuting it, not without chance of success, when
he himself died of the malady with which he had for a long while been
afflicted. At his death he left in the royal treasury a surplus of
seventeen million francs, a large sum for those days. Nor the labors of
government, nor the expenses of war, nor far-sighted economy had
prevented him from showing a serious interest in learned works and
studies, and from giving effectual protection to the men who devoted
themselves thereto. The University of Paris, notwithstanding the
embarrassments it sometimes caused him, was always the object of his
good-will. "He was a great lover of wisdom," says Christine de Pisan,
"and when certain folks murmured for that he honored clerks so highly, he
answered, 'So long as wisdom is honored in this realm, it will continue
in prosperity; but when wisdom is thrust aside, it will go down.'" He
collected nine hundred and fifty volumes (the first foundation of the
loyal Library), which were deposited in a tower of the Louvre, called the
library tower, and of which he, in 1373, had an inventory drawn up by his
personal attendant, Gilles de Presle. His taste for literature and
science was not confined to collecting manuscripts. He had a French
translation made, for the sake of spreading a knowledge thereof, of the
Bible in the first place, and then of several works of Aristotle, of
Livy, of Valerius Maximus, of Vegetius, and of St. Augustine. He was
fond of industry and the arts as well as of literature. Henry de Vic, a
German clock-maker, constructed for him the first public clock ever seen
in France, and it was placed in what was called the Clock Tower in the
Palace of Justice; and the king even had a clock-maker by appointment,
named Peter de St. Beathe. Several of the Paris monuments, churches, or
buildings for public use were undertaken or completed under his care. He
began the building of the Bastille, that fortress which was then so
necessary for the safety of Paris, where it was to be, four centuries
later, the object of the wrath and earliest excesses on the part of the
populace. Charles the Wise, from whatever point of view he may be
regarded, is, after Louis the Fat, Philip Augustus, St. Louis, and Philip
the Handsome, the fifth of those kings who powerfully contributed to the
settlement of France in Europe, and of the kingship in France. He was
not the greatest nor the best, but, perhaps, the most honestly able. And
at the same time he was a signal example of the shallowness and
insufficiency of human abilities. Charles V., on his death-bed,
considered that "the affairs of his kingdom were in good case;" he had
not even a suspicion of that chaos of war, anarchy, reverses and ruin
into which they were about to fall, in the reign of his son, Charles VI.
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