weaknesses of John in the case of those whom he suspected; the snares he laid for them; the precipitancy and cruel violence with which he struck them down, without form of trial, and almost with his own hand, forbid history to receive his suspicious and his forcible proceedings as any kind of proof; but amongst those whom he accused there were undoubtedly traitors to the king and to France. There is one about whom there can be no doubt at all. As early as 1351, amidst all his embroilments and all his reconciliations with his father-in-law, Charles the Bad, King of Navarre, had concluded with Edward III. a secret treaty, whereby, in exchange for promises he received, he recognized his title as King of France. In 1355 his treason burst forth. The King of Navarre, who had gone for refuge to Avignon, under the protection of Pope Clement VI., crossed France by English Aquitaine, and went and landed at Cherbourg, which he had an idea of throwing open to the King of England. He once more entered into communications with King John, once more obtained forgiveness from him, and for a while appeared detached from his English alliance. But Edward III. had openly resumed his hostile attitude; and he demanded that Aquitaine and the courtship of Ponthieu, detached from the kingdom of France, should be ceded to him in full sovereignty, and that Brittany should become all but independent. John haughtily rejected these pretensions, which were merely a pretext for recommencing war. And it recommenced accordingly, and the King of Navarre resumed his course of perfidy. He had lands and castles in Normandy, which John put under sequestration, and ordered the officers commanding in them to deliver up to him. Six of them, the commandants of the castles of Cherbourg and Evreux, amongst others, refused, believing, no doubt, that in betraying France and her king, they were remaining faithful to their own lord.
At several points in the kingdom, especially in the northernprovinces, the first fruits of the war were not favorable for the English. King Edward, who had landed at Calais with a body of troops, made an unsuccessful campaign in Artois and Picardy, and was obliged to re-embark for England, falling back before King John, whom he had at one time offered and at another refused to meet and fight at a spot agreed upon. But in the south-west and south of France, in 1355 and 1356, the Prince of Wales, at the head of a small picked army, and with John Chandos for comrade, victoriously overran Limousin, Perigord, Languedoc, Auvergne, Berry, and Poitou, ravaging the country and plundering the towns into which he could force an entrance, and the environs of those that defended themselves behind their walls. He met with scarcely any resistance, and he was returning by way of Berry and Poitou back again to Bordeaux, when he heard that King John, starting from Normandy with a large army, was advancing to give him battle. John, in fact, with easy self-complacency, and somewhat proud of his petty successes against King Edward in Picardy, had been in a hurry to move against the Prince of Wales, in hopes of forcing him also to re-embark for England. He was at the head of forty or fifty thousand men, with his four sons, twenty-six dukes or counts, and nearly all the baronage of France; and such was his confidence in this noble army, that on crossing the Loire he dismissed the burgher forces, “which was madness in him and in those who advised him,” said even his contemporaries. John, even more than his father Philip, was a king of courts, ever surrounded by his nobility, and caring little for his people. Jealous of the order of the Garter, lately instituted by Edward III. in honor of the beautiful Countess of Salisbury, John had created, in 1351, by way of following suit, a brotherhood called Our Lady of the Noble House, or of the Star, the knights of which, to the number of five hundred, had to swear, that if they were forced to recoil in a battle they would never yield to the enemy more than four acres of ground, and would be slain rather than retreat. John was destined to find out before long that neither numbers nor bravery can supply the place of prudence, ability, and discipline. When the two armies were close to one another, on the platform of Maupertuis, two leagues to the north of Poitiers, two legates from the pope came hurrying up from that town, with instructions to negotiate peace between the Kings of France, England, and Navarre. John consented to an armistice of twenty-four hours. The Prince of Wales, seeing himself cut off from Bordeaux by forces very much superior to his own,–for he had but eight or ten thousand men,–offered to restore to the King of France “all that he had conquered this bout, both towns and castles, and all the prisoners that he and his had taken, and to swear that, for seven whole years, he would bear arms no more against the King of France; “but King John and his council would not accept anything of the sort, saying that “the prince and a hundred of his knights must come and put themselves as prisoners in the hands of the King of France.” Neither the Prince of Wales nor Chandos had any hesitation in rejecting such a demand: “God forbid,” said Chandos, “that we should go without a fight! If we be taken or discomfited by so many fine men-at-arms, and in so great a host, we shall incur no blame; and if the day be for us, and fortune be pleased to consent thereto, we shall be the most honored folk in the world.” The battle took place on the 19th of September, 1356, in the morning. There is no occasion to give the details of it here, as was done but lately in the case of Crecy; we should merely have to tell an almost perfectly similar story. The three battles which, from the fourteenth to the fifteenth century, were decisive as to the fate of France, to wit, Crecy, on the 26th of August, 1346; Poictiers, on the 19th of September, 1356; and Azincourt, on the 25th of October, 1415, considered as historical events, were all alike, offering a spectacle of the same faults and the same reverses, brought about by the same causes. In all three, no matter what was the difference in date, place, and persons engaged, it was a case of undisciplined forces, without co-operation or order, and ill-directed by their commanders, advancing, bravely and one after another, to get broken against a compact force, under strict command, and as docile as heroic. From the battle of Poictiers we will cull but that glorious feat which was peculiar to it, and which might be called as unfortunate as glorious if the captivity of King John had been a misfortune for France. Nearly all his army had been beaten and dispersed; and three of his sons, with the eldest, Charles, Duke of Normandy, at their head, had left the field of battle with the wreck of the divisions they commanded. John still remained there with the knights of the Star, a band of faithful knights from Picardy, Burgundy, Normandy, and Poitou, his constable, the Duke of Artois, his standard-bearer, Geoffrey de Charny, and his youngest son Philip, a boy of fourteen, who clung obstinately to his side, saying, every instant, “Father, ware right! Father, ware left!”
[Illustration: “Father, ware right! Father, ware left!”—-326]
The king was surrounded by assailants, of whom some did and some did not know him, and all of whom kept shouting, “Yield you! yield you! else you die.” The banner of France fell at his side; for Geoffrey de Charny was slain. Denis de Morbecque, a knight of St. Omer, made his way up to the king, and said to him, in good French, “Sir, sir, I pray you, yield!” “To whom shall I yield me?” said John:
where is my cousin, the Prince of Wales?” “Sir, yield you to me; I will bring you to him.” “Who are you?” “Denis de Morbecque, a knight of Artois; I serve the King of England, not being able to live in the kingdom of France, for I have lost all I possessed there.” “I yield me to you,” said John: and he gave his glove to the knight, who led him away “in the midst of a great press, for every one was dragging the king, saying, ‘I took him!’ and he could not get forward, nor could my lord Philip, his young son. . . . The king said to them all, Sirs, conduct me courteously, and quarrel no more together about the taking of me, for I am rich and great enough to make every one of you rich.'” Hereupon, the two English marshals, the Earl of Warwick and the Earl of Suffolk, “seeing from afar this throng, gave spur to their steeds, and came up, asking, ‘What is this yonder?’ And answer was made to them, ‘It is the King of France who is taken, and more than ten knights and squires would fain have him.’ Then the two barons broke through the throng by dint of their horses, dismounted and bowed full low before the king, who was very joyful at their coming, for they saved him from great danger.” A very little while afterwards, the two marshals “entered the pavilion of the Prince of Wales, and made him a present of the King of France; the which present the prince could not but take kindly as a great and noble one, and so truly he did, for he bowed full low before the king, and received him as king, properly and discreetly, as he well knew how to do. . . . When evening came, the Prince of Wales gave a supper to the King of France, and to my lord Philip, his son, and to the greater part of the barons of France, who were prisoners. . . . And the prince would not sit at the king’s table for all the king’s entreaty, but waited as a serving-man at the king’s table, bending the knee before him, and saying, ‘Dear sir, be pleased not to put on so sad a countenance because it hath not pleased God to consent this day to your wishes, for assuredly my lord and father will show you all the honor and friendship he shall be able, and he will come to terms with you so reasonably that ye shall remain good friends forever.”
[Illustration: King John taken Prisoner—-326]
Henceforth it was, fortunately, not on King John, or on peace or war between him and the King of England, that the fate of France depended.
CHAPTER XXI.—-THE STATES–GENERAL OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
Let us turn back a little, in order to understand the government and position of King John before he engaged in the war which, so far as he was concerned, ended with the battle of Poitiers and imprisonment in England.
A valiant and loyal knight, but a frivolous, hare-brained, thoughtless, prodigal, and obstinate as well as impetuous prince, and even more incapable than Philip of Valois in the practice of government, John, after having summoned at his accession, in 1351, a states-assembly concerning which we have no explicit information left to us, tried for a space of four years to suffice in himself for all the perils, difficulties, and requirements of the situation he had found bequeathed to him by his father. For a space of four years, in order to get money, he debased the coinage, confiscated the goods and securities of foreign merchants, and stopped payment of his debts; and he went through several provinces, treating with local councils or magistrates in order to obtain from them certain subsidies which he purchased by granting them new privileges. He hoped by his institution of the order of the Star to resuscitate the chivalrous zeal of his nobility. All these means were vain or insufficient. The defeat of Crecy and the loss of Calais had caused discouragement in the kingdom and aroused many doubts as to the issue of the war with England. Defection and even treason brought trouble into the court, the councils, and even the family of John. To get the better of them he at one time heaped favors upon the men he feared, at another he had them arrested, imprisoned, and even beheaded in his presence. He gave his daughter Joan in marriage to Charles the Bad, King of Navarre, and, some few months afterwards, Charles himself, the real or presumed head of all the traitors, was seized, thrown into prison, and treated with extreme rigor, in spite of the supplications of his wife, who vigorously took the part of her husband against her father. After four years thus consumed in fruitless endeavors, by turns violently and feebly enforced, to reorganize an army and a treasury, and to purchase fidelity at any price or arbitrarily strike down treason, John was obliged to recognize his powerlessness and to call to his aid the French nation, still so imperfectly formed, by convoking at Paris, for the 30th of November, 1355, the states-general of _Langue d’oil_. that is, Northern France, separated by the Dordogne and the Garonne from _Langue d’oc,_ which had its own assembly distinct. Auvergne belonged to _Langue d’oil_.
It is certain that neither this assembly nor the king who convoked it had any clear and fixed idea of what they were meeting together to do. The kingship was no longer competent for its own government and its own perils; but it insisted none the less, in principle, on its own all but unregulated and unlimited power. The assembly did not claim for the country the right of self-government, but it had a strong leaven of patriotic sentiment, and at the same time was very much discontented with the king’s government: it had equally at heart the defence of France against England and against the abuses of the kingly power. There was no notion of a social struggle and no systematic idea of political revolution; a dangerous crisis and intolerable sufferings constrained king and nation to come together in order to make an attempt at an understanding and at a mutual exchange of the supports and the reliefs of which they were in need.
On the 2d of December, 1355, the three orders, the clergy, the nobility, and the deputies from the towns assembled at Paris in the great hall of the Parliament. Peter de la Forest, Archbishop of Rouen and Chancellor of France, asked them in the king’s name “to consult together about making him a subvention which should suffice for the expenses of the war,” and the king offered to “make a sound and durable coinage.” The tampering with the coinage was the most pressing of the grievances for which the three orders solicited a remedy. They declared that “they were ready to live and die with the king, and to put their bodies and what they had at his service;” and they demanded authority to deliberate together–which was granted them. John de Craon, Archbishop of Rheims; Walter de Brienne, Duke of Athens; and Stephen Marcel, provost of the tradesmen of Paris, were to report the result, as presidents, each of his own order. The session of the states lasted not more than a week. They replied to the king “that they would give him a subvention of thirty thousand men-at-arms every year,” and, for their pay, they voted an impost of fifty hundred thousand livres (five millions of livres), which was to be levied “on all folks, of whatever condition they might be, Church folks, nobles, or others,” and the gabel or tax on salt “over the whole kingdom of France.” On separating, the states appointed beforehand two fresh sessions at which they would assemble, one, in the month of March, to estimate the sufficiency of the impost, and to hear, on that subject, the report of the nine superintendents charged with the execution of their decision; the other, in the month of November following, to examine into the condition of the kingdom.”
They assembled, in fact, on the 1st of March, and on the 8th of May, 1356 [N. B. As the year at that time began with Easter, the 24th of April was the first day of the year 1356: the new style, however, is here in every case adopted]; but they had not the satisfaction of finding their authority generally recognized and their patriotic purpose effectually accomplished. The impost they had voted, notably the salt-tax, had met with violent opposition. “When the news thereof reached Normandy,” says Froissart, “the country was very much astounded at it, for they had not learned to pay any such thing. The Count d’Harcourt told the folks of Rouen, where he was puissant, that they would be very serfs and very wicked if they agreed to this tax, and that, by God’s help, it should never be current in his country.” The King of Navarre used much the same language in his countship of Evreux. At other spots the mischief was still more serious. Close to Paris itself, at Malun, payment was peremptorily refused; and at Arras, on the 5th of March, 1356, “the commonalty of the town,” says Froissart, “rose upon the rich burghers and slew fourteen of the most substantial, which was a pity and loss; and so it is when wicked folk have the upper hand of valiant men. However, the people of Arras paid for it afterwards, for the king sent thither his cousin, my lord James of Bourbon, who gave orders to take all them by whom the sedition had been caused, and, on the spot, had their heads cut off.”
The states-general at their re-assembly on the 1st of March, 1356, admitted the feebleness of their authority and the insufficiency of their preceding votes for the purpose of aiding the king in the war. They abolished the salt-tax and the sales-duty, which had met with such opposition; but, stanch in their patriotism and loyalty, they substituted therefor an income-tax, imposed on every sort of folk, nobles or burghers, ecclesiastical or lay, which was to be levied “not by the high justiciers of the king, but by the folks of the three estates themselves.” The king’s ordinance, dated the 12th of March, 1356, which regulates the execution of these different measures, is (article 10) to this import: “there shall be, in each city, three deputies, one for each estate. These deputies shall appoint, in each parish, collectors, who shall go into the houses to receive the declaration which the persons who dwell there shall make touching their property, their estate, and their servants. When a declaration shall appear in conformity with truth, they shall be content therewith; else they shall have him who has made it sent before the deputies of the city in the district whereof he dwells, and the deputies shall cause him to take, on this subject, such oaths as they shall think proper. . . . The collectors in the villages shall cause to be taken therein, in the presence of the pastor, suitable oaths on the subject of the declarations. If, in the towns or villages, any one refuse to take the oaths demanded, the collectors shall assess his property according to general opinion, and on the deposition of his neighbors.” (_Ordonnances des Bois de France,_ t. iv. pp. 171 175.)
In return for so loyal and persevering a co-operation on the part of the states-general, notwithstanding the obstacles en-countered by their votes and their agents, King John confirmed expressly, by an ordinance of May 26, 1356 [art. 9: _Ordonnances des Bois de France,_ t. iii. p. 55], all the promises he had made them and all the engagements he had entered into with them by his ordinance of December 28, 1355, given immediately after their first session (Ibidem, t. iii. pp. 19 37): a veritable reformatory ordinance, which enumerated the various royal abuses, administrative, judicial, financial, and military, against which there had been a public clamor, and regulated the manner of redressing them.
After these mutual concessions and promises the states-general broke up, adjourning until the 30th of November following (1356); but two months and a half before this time King John, proud of some success obtained by him in Normandy and of the brilliant army of knights remaining to him after he had dismissed the burgher-forces, rushed, as has been said, with conceited impetuosity to encounter the Prince of Wales, rejected with insolent demands the modest proposals of withdrawal made to him by the commander of the little English army, and, on the 19th of September, lost, contrary to all expectation, the lamentable battle of Poitiers. We have seen how he was deserted before the close of the action by his eldest son, Prince Charles, with his body of troops, and how he himself remained with his youngest son, Prince Philip, a boy of fourteen years, a prisoner in the hands of his victorious enemies. “At this news,” says Froissart, “the kingdom of France was greatly troubled and excited, and with good cause, for it was a right grievous blow and vexatious for all sorts of folk. The wise men of the kingdom might well predict that great evils would come of it, for the king, their head, and all the chivalry of the kingdom were slain or taken; the knights and squires who came back home were on that account so hated and blamed by the commoners that they had great difficulty in gaining admittance to the good towns; and the king’s three sons who had returned, Charles, Louis, and John, were very young in years and experience, and there was in them such small resource that none of the said lads liked to undertake the government of the said kingdom.”
The eldest of the three, Prince Charles, aged nineteen, who was called the Dauphin after the cession of Dauphiny to France, nevertheless assumed the office, in spite of his youth and his anything but glorious retreat from Poitiers. He took the title of lieutenant of the king, and had hardly re-entered Paris, on the 29th of September, when he summoned, for the 15th of October, the states-general of _Langue d’oil,_ who met, in point of fact, on the 17th, in the great chamber of parliament. “Never was seen,” says the report of their meeting, “an assembly so numerous, or composed of wiser folk.” The superior clergy were there almost to a man; the nobility had lost too many in front of Poitiers to be abundant at Paris, but there were counted at the assembly four hundred deputies from the good towns, amongst whom special mention is made, in the documents, of those from Amiens, Tournay, Lille, Arras, Troyes, Auxerre, and Sens. The total number of members at the assembly amounted to more than eight hundred.
The session was opened by a speech from the chancellor, Peter de la Forest, who called upon the estates to aid the dauphin with their counsels under the serious and melancholy circumstances of the kingdom. The three orders at first attempted to hold their deliberations each in a separate hall; but it was not long before they felt the inconveniences arising from their number and their separation, and they resolved to choose from amongst each order commissioners who should examine the questions together, and afterwards make their report and their proposals to the general meeting of the estates. Eighty commissioners were accordingly elected, and set themselves to work. The dauphin appointed some of his officers to be present at their meetings, and to furnish them with such information as they might require. As early as the second day “these officers were given to understand that the deputies would not work whilst anybody belonging to the king’s council was with them.” So the officers withdrew; and a few days afterwards, towards the end of October, 1356, the commissioners reported the result of their conferences to each of the three orders. The general assembly adopted their proposals, and had the dauphin informed that they were desirous of a private audience. Charles repaired, with some of his councillors, to the monastery of the Cordeliers, where the estates were holding their sittings, and there he received their representations. They demanded of him “that he should deprive of their offices such of the king’s councillors as they should point out, have them arrested, and confiscate all their property. Twenty-two men of note, the chancellor, the premier president of the Parliament, the king’s stewards, and several officers in the household of the dauphin himself, were thus pointed out. They were accused of having taken part to their own profit in all the abuses for which the government was reproached, and of having concealed from the king the true state of things and the misery of the people. The commissioners elected by the estates were to take proceedings against them: if they were found guilty, they were to be punished; and if they were innocent, they were at the very least to forfeit their offices and their property, on account of their bad counsels and their bad administration.”
The chronicles of the time are not agreed as to these last demands. We have, as regards the events of this period, two contemporary witnesses, both full of detail, intelligence, and animation in their narratives, namely, Froissart and the continuer of William of Nangis’ _Latin Chronicle_. Froissart is in general favorable to kings and princes; the anonymous chronicler, on the contrary, has a somewhat passionate bias towards the popular party. Probably both of them are often given to exaggeration in their assertions and impressions; but, taking into account none but undisputed facts, it is evident that the claims of the states-general, though they were, for the most part, legitimate enough at bottom, by reason of the number, gravity, and frequent recurrence of abuses, were excessive and violent, and produced the effect of complete suspension in the regular course of government and justice. The dauphin, Charles, was a young man, of a naturally sound and collected mind, but without experience, who had hitherto lived only in his father’s court, and who could not help being deeply shocked and disquieted by such demands. He was still more troubled when the estates demanded that the deputies, under the title of reformers, should traverse the provinces as a check upon the malversations of the royal officials, and that twenty- eight delegates, chosen from amongst the three orders, four prelates, twelve knights, and twelve burgesses, should be constantly placed near the king’s person, “with power to do and order everything in the kingdom, just like the king himself, as well for the purpose of appointing and removing public officers as for other matters.” It was taking away the entire government from the crown, and putting it into the hands of the estates.
The dauphin’s surprise and suspicion were still more vivid when the deputies spoke to him about setting at liberty the King of Navarre, who had been imprisoned by King John, and told him that “since this deed of violence no good had come to the king or the kingdom, because of the sin of having imprisoned the said King of Navarre.” And yet Charles the Bad was already as infamous as he has remained in history; he had labored to embroil the dauphin with his royal father; and there was no plot or intrigue, whether with the malcontents in France or with the King of England, in which he was not, with good reason, suspected of having been mixed up, and of being ever ready to be mixed up. He was clearly a dangerous enemy for the public peace, as well as for the crown, and, for the states-general who were demanding his release, a bad associate.
[Illustration: Charles the Bad, King of Navarre, in Prison—-335]
In the face of such demands and such forebodings, the dauphin did all he could to gain time. Before he gave an answer he must know, he said, what subvention the states-general would be willing to grant him. The reply was a repetition of the promise of thirty thousand men-at-arms, together with an enumeration of the several taxes whereby there was a hope of providing for the expense. But the produce of these taxes was so uncertain, that both parties doubted the worth of the promise. Careful calculation went to prove that the subvention would suffice, at the very most, for the keep of no more than eight or nine thousand men. The estates were urgent for a speedy compliance with their demands. The dauphin persisted in his policy of delay. He was threatened with a public and solemn session, at which all the questions should be brought before the people, and which was fixed for the 3d of November. Great was the excitement in Paris; and the people showed a disposition to support the estates at any price. On the 2d of November, the dauphin summoned at the Louvre a meeting of his councillors and of the principal deputies; and there he announced that he was obliged to set out for Metz, where he was going to follow up the negotiations entered into with the Emperor Charles IV. and Pope Innocent VI. for the sake of restoring peace between France and England. He added that the deputies, on returning for a while to their provinces, should get themselves enlightened as to the real state of affairs, and that he would not fail to recall them so soon as he had any important news to tell them, and any assistance to request of them.
[Illustration: The Louvre in the Fourtheenth Century—-336]
It was not without serious grounds that the dauphin attached so much importance to gaining time. When, in the preceding month of October, he had summoned to Paris the states-general of _Langue d’oil_, he had likewise convoked at Toulouse those of _Langue d’oe_, and he was informed that the latter had not only just voted a levy of fifty thousand men-at- arms, with an adequate subsidy, but that, in order to show their royalist sentiments, they had decreed a sort of public mourning, to last for a year, if King John were not released from his captivity. The dauphin’s idea was to summon other provincial assemblies, from which he hoped for similar manifestations. It was said, moreover, that several deputies, already gone from Paris, had been ill received in their towns, at Soissons amongst others, on account of their excessive claims, and their insulting language towards all the king’s councillors. Under such flattering auspices the dauphin set out, according to the announcement he had made, from Paris, on the 5th of December, 1356, to go and meet the Emperor Charles IV. at Metz; but, at his departure, he committed exactly the fault which was likely to do him the most harm at Paris: being in want of money for his costly trip, he subjected the coinage to a fresh adulteration, which took effect five days after his departure.
The leaders in Paris seized eagerly upon so legitimate a grievance for the support of their claims. As early as the 3d of the preceding November, when they were apprised of the dauphin’s approaching departure for Metz, and the adjournment of their sittings, the states-general had come to a decision that their remonstrances and demands, summed up in twenty-one articles, should be read in general assembly, and that a recital of the negotiations which had taken place on that subject between the estates and the dauphin should be likewise drawn up, “in order that all the deputies might be able to tell in their districts wherefore the answers had not been received.” When, after the dauphin’s departure, the new debased coins were put in circulation, the people were driven to an outbreak thereby, and the provost of tradesmen, “Stephen Marcel, hurried to the Louvre to demand of the Count of Anjou, the dauphin’s brother and lieutenant, a withdrawal of the decree. Having obtained no answer, he returned the next day, escorted by a throng of the inhabitants of Paris. At length, on the third day, the numbers assembled were so considerable that the young prince took alarm, and suspended the execution of the decree until his brother’s return. For the fist time Stephen Marcel had got himself supported by an outbreak of the people; for the first time the mob had imposed its will upon the ruling power; and from this day forth pacific and lawful resistance was transformed into a violent struggle.”
At his re-entry into Paris, on the 19th of January, 1357, the dauphin attempted to once more gain possession of some sort of authority. He issued orders to Marcel and the sheriffs to remove the stoppage they had placed on the currency of the new coinage. This was to found his opposition on the worst side of his case. “We will do nothing of the sort,” replied Marcel; and in a few moments, at the provost’s orders, the work-people left their work, and shouts of “To arms!” resounded through the streets. The prince’s councillors were threatened with death. The dauphin saw the hopelessness of a struggle; for there were hardly a handful of men left to guard the Louvre. On the morrow, the 20th of January, he sent for Marcel and the sheriffs into the great hall of parliament, and giving way on almost every point, bound himself to no longer issue new coin, to remove from his council the officers who had been named to him, and even to imprison them until the return of his father, who would do full justice to them. The estates were at the same time authorized to meet when they pleased: on all which points the provost of tradesmen requested letters, which were granted him; “and he demanded that the dauphin should immediately place sergeants in the houses of those of his councillors who still happened to be in Paris, and that proceedings should be taken without delay for making an inventory of their goods, with a view to confiscation of them.
The estates met on the 5th of February. It was not without surprise that they found themselves less numerous than they had hitherto been. The deputies from the duchy of Burgundy, from the countships of Flanders and Alencon, and several nobles and burghers from other provinces, did not repair to the session. The kingdom was falling into anarchy; bands of plunderers roved hither and thither, threatening persons and ravaging lands; the magistrates either could not or would not exercise their authority; disquietude and disgust were gaining possession of many honest folks. Marcel and his partisans, having fallen into somewhat of disrepute and neglect, keenly felt how necessary, and also saw how easy, it was for them to become completely masters. They began by drawing up a series of propositions, which they had distributed and spread abroad far and wide in the provinces. On the 3d of March, they held a public meeting, at which the dauphin and his two brothers were present. A numerous throng filled the hall. The Bishop of Laon, Robert Lecoeq, the spokesman of the party, made a long and vehement statement of all the public grievances, and declared that twenty-two of the king’s officers should be deprived forever of all offices, that all the officers of the kingdom should be provisionally suspended, and that reformers, chosen by the estates, and commissioned by the dauphin himself, should go all over France, to hold inquiries as to these officers, and, according to their deserts, either reinstate them in their offices or condemn them. At the same time, the estates bound themselves to raise thirty thousand men-at- arms, whom they themselves would pay and keep; and as the produce of the impost voted for this purpose was very uncertain, they demanded their adjournment to the fortnight of Easter, and two sessions certain, for which they should be free to fix the time, before the 15th of February in the following year. This was simply to decree the permanence of their power. To all these demands the dauphin offered no resistance. In the month of March following, a grand ordinance, drawn up in sixty-one articles, enumerated all the grievances which had been complained of, and prescribed the redress for them. A second ordinance, regulating all that appertained to the suspension of the royal officers, was likewise, as it appears, drawn up at the same time, but has not come down to us. At last a grand commission was appointed, composed of thirty-six members, twelve elected by each of the three orders. “These thirty-six persons,” says Froissart, “were bound to often meet together at Paris, for to order the affairs of the kingdom, and all kinds of matters were to be disposed of by these three estates, and all prelates, all lords, and all commonalties of the cities and good towns were bound to be obedient to what these three estates should order.” Having their power thus secured in their absence, the estates adjourned to the 25th of April.
The rumor of these events reached Bordeaux, where, since the defeat at Poitiers, King John had been living as the guest of the Prince of Wales, rather than as a prisoner of the English. Amidst the galas and pleasures to which he abandoned himself, he was indignant to learn that at Paris the royal authority was ignored, and he sent three of his comrades in captivity to notify to the Parisians that he rejected all the claims of the estates, that he would not have payment made of the subsidy voted by them, and that he forbade their meeting on the 25th of April following. This strange manifesto on the part of imprisoned royalty excited in Paris such irritation amongst the people, that the dauphin hastily sent out of the city the king’s three envoys, whose lives might have been threatened, and declared to the thirty-six commissioners of the estates that the subsidy should be raised, and that the general assembly should be perfectly free to meet at the time it had appointed.
And it did meet towards the end of April, but in far fewer numbers than had been the case hitherto, and with more and more division from day to day. Nearly all the nobles and ecclesiastics were withdrawing from it; and amongst the burgesses themselves many of the more moderate spirits were becoming alarmed at the violent proceedings of the commission of the thirty-six delegates, who, under the direction of Stephen Marcel, were becoming a small oligarchy, little by little usurping the place of the great national assembly. A cry was raised in the provinces “against the injustice of those chief governors who were no more than ten or a dozen;” and there was a refusal to pay the subsidy voted. These symptoms and the disorganization which was coming to a head throughout the whole kingdom made the dauphin think that the moment had arrived for him to seize the reins again. About the middle of August, 1357, he sent for Marcel and three sheriffs, accustomed to direct matters at Paris, and let them know “that he intended thence-forward to govern by himself, without curators.” He at the same time restored to office some of the lately dismissed royal officers. The thirty-six commissioners made a show of submission; and their most faithful ecclesiastical ally, Robert Lecocq, Bishop of Laon, returned to his diocese. The dauphin left Paris and went a trip into some of the provinces, halting at the principal towns, such as Rouen and Chartres, and everywhere, with intelligent but timid discretion, making his presence and his will felt, not very successfully, however, as regarded the re-establishment of some kind of order on his route in the name of the kingship.
[Illustration: Stephen Marcel—-342]
Marcel and his partisans took advantage of his absence to shore up their tottering supremacy. They felt how important it was for them to have a fresh meeting of the estates, whose presence alone could restore strength to their commissioners; but the dauphin only could legally summon them. They, therefore, eagerly pressed him to return in person to Paris, giving him a promise that, if he agreed to convoke there the deputies from twenty or thirty towns, they would supply him with the money of which he was in need, and would say no more about the dismissal of royal officers, or about setting at liberty the king of Navarre. The dauphin, being still young and trustful, though he was already discreet and reserved, fell into the snare. He returned to Paris, and summoned thither, for the 7th of November following, the deputies from seventy towns, a sufficient number to give their meeting a specious resemblance to the states-general. One circumstance ought to have caused him some glimmering of suspicion. At the same time that the dauphin was sending to the deputies his letters of convocation, Marcel himself also sent to them, as if he possessed the right, either in his own name or in that of the thirty-six delegate-commissioners, of calling them together. But a still more serious matter came to open the dauphin’s eyes to the danger he had fallen into. During the night between the 8th and 9th of November, 1357, immediately after the re-opening of the states, Charles the Bad, King of Navarre, was carried off by a surprise from the castle of Arleux in Cambresis, where he had been confined; and his liberators removed him first of all to Amiens and then to Paris itself, where the popular party gave him a triumphant reception. Marcel and his sheriffs had decided upon and prepared, at a private council, this dramatic incident, so contrary to the promises they had but lately made to the dauphin. Charles the Bad used his deliverance like a skilful workman; the very day after his arrival in Paris he mounted a platform set against the walls of St. Germain’s abbey, and there, in the presence of more than ten thousand persons, burgesses and populace, he delivered a long speech, “seasoned with much venom,” says a chronicler of the time. After having denounced the wrongs which he had been made to endure, he said, for eighteen months past, he declared that the would live and die in defence of the kingdom of France, giving it to be understood that “if he were minded to claim the crown, he would soon show by the laws of right and wrong that he was nearer to it than the King of England was.” He was insinuating, eloquent, and an adept in the art of making truth subserve the cause of falsehood. The people were moved by his speech. The dauphin was obliged not only to put up with the release and the triumph of his most dangerous enemy, but to make an outward show of reconciliation with him, and to undertake not only to give him back the castles confiscated after his arrest, but “to act towards him as a good brother towards his brother.” These were the exact words made use of in the dauphin’s name, “and without having asked his pleasure about it,” by Robert Lecocq, Bishop of Laon, who himself also had returned from his diocese to Paris at the time of the recall of the estates.
The consequences of this position were not slow to exhibit themselves. Whilst the King of Navarre was re-entering Paris and the dauphin submitting to the necessity of a reconciliation with him, several of the deputies who had but lately returned to the states-general, and amongst others nearly all those from Champagne and Burgundy, were going away again, being unwilling either to witness the triumphal re-entry of Charles the Bad or to share the responsibility for such acts as they foresaw. Before long the struggle, or rather the war, between the King of Navarre and the dauphin broke out again; several of the nobles in possession of the castles which were to have been restored to Charles the Bad, and especially those of Breteuil, Pacy-sur-Eure, and Pont-Audemer, flatly refused to give them back to him; and the dauphin was suspected, probably not without reason, of having encouraged them in their resistance. Without the walls of Paris it was really war that was going on between the two princes. Philip of Navarre, brother of Charles the Bad, went marching with bands of pillagers over Normandy and Anjou, and within a few leagues of Paris, declaring that he had not taken, and did not intend to take, any part in his brother’s pacific arrangements, and carrying fire and sword all through the country. The peasantry from the ravaged districts were overflowing Paris. Stephen Marcel had no mind to reject the support which many of them brought him; but they had to be fed, and the treasury was empty. The wreck of the states-general, meeting on the 2d of January, 1358, themselves had recourse to the expedient which they had so often and so violently reproached the king and the dauphin with employing: they notably depreciated the coinage, allotting a fifth of the profit to the dauphin, and retaining the other four fifths for the defence of the kingdom. What Marcel and his party called the defence of the kingdom was the works of fortification round Paris, begun in October, 1356, against the English, after the defeat of Poitiers, and resumed in 1358 against the dauphin’s party in the neighboring provinces, as well as against the robbers that were laying them waste. Amidst all this military and popular excitement the dauphin kept to the Louvre, having about him two thousand men-at-arms, whom he had taken into his pay, he said, solely “on account of the prospect of a war with the Navarrese.” Before he went and plunged into a civil war outside the gates of Paris, he resolved to make an effort to win back the Parisians themselves to his cause. He sent a crier through the city to bid the people assemble in the market-place, and thither he repaired on horseback, on the 11th of January, with five or six of his most trusty servants. The astonished mob thronged about him, and he addressed them in vigorous language. He meant, he said, to live and die amongst the people of Paris; if he was collecting his men-at-arms, it was not for the purpose of plundering and oppressing Paris, but that he might march against their common enemies; and if he had not done so sooner, it was because “the folks who had taken the government gave him neither money nor arms; but they would some day be called to strict account for it.” The dauphin was small, thin, delicate, and of insignificant appearance; but at this juncture he displayed unexpected boldness and eloquence; the people were deeply moved; and Marcel and his friends felt that a heavy blow had just been dealt them.
They hastened to respond with a blow of another sort. It was everywhere whispered abroad that if Paris was suffering so much from civil war and the irregularities and calamities which were the concomitants of it, the fault lay with the dauphin’s surroundings, and that his noble advisers deterred him from measures which would save the people from their miseries.
“Provost Marcel and the burgesses of Paris took counsel together and decided that it would be a good thing if some of those attendants on the regent were to be taken away from the midst of this world. They all put on caps, red on one side and blue on the other, which they wore as a sign of their confederation in defence of the common weal. This done, they reassembled in large numbers on the 22d of February, 1358, with the provost at their head, and marched to the palace where the duke was lodged.” This crowd encountered on its, way, in the street called Juiverie (Jewry), the advocate-general Regnault d’Aci, one of the twenty-two royal officers denounced by the estates in the preceding year; and he was massacred in a pastry-cook’s shop. Marcel, continuing his road, arrived at the palace, and ascended, followed by a band of armed men, to the apartments of the dauphin, “whom he requested very sharply,” says Froissart, “to restrain so many companies from roving about on all sides, damaging and plundering the country. The duke replied that he would do so willingly if he had the wherewithal to do it, but that it was for him who received the dues belonging to the kingdom to discharge that duty. I know not why or how,” adds Froissart, “but words were multiplied on the part of all, and became very high.” “My lord duke,” suddenly said the provost, “do not alarm yourself; but we have somewhat to do here;” and turning towards his fellows in the caps, he said, “Dearly beloved, do that for the which ye are come.” Immediately the Lord de Conflans, Marshal of Champagne, and Robert de Clermont, Marshal of Normandy, noble and valiant gentlemen, and both at the time unarmed, were massacred so close to the dauphin and his couch, that his robe was covered with their blood. The dauphin shuddered; and the rest of his officers fled. “Take no heed, lord duke,” said Marcel; “you have nought to fear.” He handed to the dauphin his own red and blue cap, and himself put on the dauphin’s, which was of black stuff with golden fringe. The corpses of the two marshals were dragged into the court-yard of the palace, where they remained until evening without any one’s daring to remove them; and Marcel with his fellows repaired to the mansion-house, and harangued from an open window the mob collected on the Place de Greve. “What has been done is for the good and the profit of the kingdom,” said he; “the dead were false and wicked traitors.” “We do own it, and will maintain it!” cried the people who were about him.
[Illustration: The Murder of the Marshals—-345]
The house from which Marcel thus addressed the people was his own property, and was called the Pillar-house. There he accommodated the town-council, which had formerly held its sittings in divers parlors.
For a month after this triple murder, committed with such official parade, Marcel reigned dictator in Paris. He removed from the council of thirty-six deputies such members as he could not rely upon, and introduced his own confidants. He cited the council, thus modified, to express approval of the blow just struck; and the deputies, “some from conviction and others from doubt (that is, fear), answered that they believed that for what had been done there had been good and just cause.” The King of Navarre was recalled from Nantes to Paris, and the dauphin was obliged to assign to him, in the king’s name, “as a make-up for his losses,” ten thousand livres a year on landed property in Languedoc. Such was the young prince’s condition that, almost every day, he was reduced to the necessity of dining with his most dangerous and most hypocritical enemy. A man of family, devoted to the dauphin, who was now called regent, Philip de Repenti by name, lost his head on the 19th of March, 1358, on the market-place, for having attempted, with a few bold comrades, “to place the regent beyond the power and the reach of the people of Paris.” Six days afterwards, however, on the 25th of March, the dauphin succeeded in escaping, and repaired first of all to Senlis, and then to Provins, where he found the estates of Champagne eager to welcome him. Marcel at once sent to Provins two deputies with instructions to bind over the three orders of Champagne “to be at one with them of Paris, and not to be astounded at what had been done.” Before answering, the members of the estates withdrew into a garden to parley together, and sent to pray the regent to come and meet them. “My lord,” said the Count de Braine to him in the name of the nobility, “did you ever suffer any harm or villany at the hands of De Conflans, Marshal of Champagne, for which he deserved to be put to death as he hath been by them of Paris? “The prince replied that he firmly held and believed that the said marshal and Robert de Clermont had well and loyally served and advised him. “My lord,” replied the Count de Braine, “we Champagnese who are here do thank you for that which you have just said, and do desire you to do full justice on those who have put our friend to death without cause;” and they bound themselves to support him with their persons and their property, for the chastisement of them who had been the authors of the outrage.
The dauphin, with full trust in this manifestation and this promise, convoked at Compiegne, for the 4th of May, 1858, no longer the estates of Champagne only, but the states-general in their entirety, who, on separating at the close of their last session, had adjourned to the 1st of May following. The story of this fresh session, and of the events determined by it, is here reproduced textually, just as it has come down to us from the last continuer of the Chronicle of William of Nangis, the most favorable amongst all the chroniclers of the time to Stephen Marcel and the popular party in Paris. “All the deputies, and especially the friends of the nobles slain, did with one heart and one mind counsel the lord Charles, Duke of Normandy, to have the homicides stricken to death; and, if he could not do so by reason of the number of their defenders, they urged him to lay vigorous siege to the city of Paris, either with an armed force or by forbidding the entry of victuals thereinto, in such sort that it should understand and perceive for a certainty that the death of the provost of tradesmen and of his accomplices was intended. The said provost and those who, after the regent’s departure, had taken the government of the city, clearly understood this intention, and they then implored the University of studies at Paris to send deputies to the said lord-regent, to humbly adjure him, in their name and in the name of the whole city, to banish from his heart the wrath he had conceived against their fellow-citizens, offering and promising, moreover, a suitable reparation for the offence, provided that the lives of the persons were spared. The University, concerned for the welfare of the city, sent several deputies of weight to treat about the matter. They were received by the lord Duke Charles and the other lords with great kindness; and they brought back word to Paris that the demand made at Compiegne was, that ten or a dozen, or even only five or six, of the men suspected of the crime lately committed at Paris should be sent to Compiegne, where there was no design of putting them to death, and, if this were done, the duke-regent would return to his old and intimate friendship with the Parisians. But Provost Marcel and his accomplices, who were afeard for themselves, did not believe that if they fell into the hands of the lord duke they could escape a terrible death, and they had no mind to run such a risk. Taking, therefore, a bold resolution, they desired to be treated as all the rest of the citizens, and to that end sent several deputations to the lord-regent either to Compiegne or to Meaux, whither he sometimes removed; but they got no gracious reply, and rather words of bitterness and threatening. Thereupon, being seized with alarm for their city, into the which the lord-regent and his noble comrades were so ardently desirous of re-entering, and being minded to put it out of reach from the peril which threatened it, they began to fortify themselves therein, to repair the walls, to deepen the ditches, to build new ramparts on the eastern side, and to throw up barriers at all the gates. . . . As they lacked a captain, they sent to Charles the Bad, King of Navarre, who was at that time in Normandy, and whom they knew to be freshly embroiled with the regent; and they requested him to come to Paris with a strong body of men-at-arms, and to be their captain there and their defender against all their foes, save the lord John, King of, France, a prisoner in England. The King of Navarre, with all his men, was received in state, on the 15th of June, by the Parisians, to the great indignation of the prince-regent, his friends, and many others. The nobles thereupon began to draw near to Paris, and to ride about in the fields of the neighborhood, prepared to fight if there should be a sortie from Paris to attack them. . . . On a certain day the besiegers came right up to the bridge of Charenton, as if to draw out the King of Navarre and the Parisians to battle. The King of Navarre issued forth, armed, with his men, and drawing near to the besiegers, had long conversations with them without fighting, and afterwards went back into Paris. At sight hereof the Parisians suspected that this king, who was himself a noble, was conspiring with the besiegers, and was preparing to deal some secret blow to the detriment of Paris; so they conceived mistrust of him and his, and stripped him of his office of captain. He went forth sore vexed from Paris, he and his; and the English especially, whom he had brought with him, insulted certain Parisians, whence it happened that before they were out of the city several of them were massacred by the folks of Paris, who afterwards confined themselves within their walls, carefully guarding the gates by day, and by night keeping up strong patrols on the ramparts.”
Whilst Marcel inside Paris, where he reigned supreme, was a prey, on his own account and that of his besieged city, to these anxieties and perils, an event occurred outside which seemed to open to him a prospect of powerful aid, perhaps of decisive victory. Throughout several provinces the peasants, whose condition, sad and hard as it already was under the feudal system, had been still further aggravated by the outrages and irregularities of war, not finding any protection in their lords, and often being even oppressed by them as if they had been foes, had recourse to insurrection in order to escape from the evils which came down upon them every day and from every quarter.
They bore and would bear anything, it was said, and they got the name of Jacques Bonhomme (Jack Goodfellow); but this taunt they belied in a terrible manner. We will quote from the last continuer of William of Nangis, the least declamatory and the least confused of all the chroniclers of that period: “In this same year 1358,” says he, “in the summer [the first rising took place on the 28th of May], the peasants in the neighborhood of St. Loup de Cerent and Clermont, in the diocese of Beauvais, took up arms against the nobles of France. They assembled in great numbers, set at their head a certain peasant named William Karle [or Cale, or Callet], of more intelligence than the rest, and marching by companies under their own flag, roamed over the country, slaying and massacring all the nobles they met, even their own lords. Not content with that, they demolished the houses and castles of the nobles; and, what is still more deplorable, they villanously put to death the noble dames and little children who fell into their hands; and afterwards they strutted about, they and their wives, bedizened with the garments they had stripped from their victims. The number of men who had thus risen amounted to five thousand, and the rising extended to the outskirts of Paris. They had begun it from sheer necessity and love of justice, for their lords oppressed instead of defending them; but before long they proceeded to the most hateful and criminal deeds. They took and destroyed from top to bottom the strong castle of Ermenonville, where they put to death a multitude of men and dames of noble family who had taken refuge there. For some time the nobles no longer went about as before; none of them durst set a foot outside the fortified places.” Jacquery had taken the form of a fit of demagogic fury, and the Jacks [or Goodfellows] swarming out of their hovels were the terror of the castles.
Had Marcel provoked this bloody insurrection? There is strong presumption against him; many of his contemporaries say he had; and the dauphin himself wrote on the 30th of August, 1359, to the Count of Savoy, that one of the most heinous acts of Marcel and his partisans was exciting the folks of the open country in France, of Beauvaisis and Champagne, and other districts, against the nobles of the said kingdom; whence so many evils have proceeded as no man should or could conceive.” It is quite certain, however, that, the insurrection having once broken out, Marcel hastened to profit by it, and encouraged and even supported it at several points. Amongst other things he sent from Paris a body of three hundred men to the assistance of the peasants who were besieging the castle of Ermenonville. It is the due penalty paid by reformers who allow themselves to drift into revolution, that they become before long accomplices in mischief or crime which their original design and their own personal interest made it incumbent on them to prevent or repress.
The reaction against Jaequery was speedy and shockingly bloody. The nobles, the dauphin, and the King of Navarre, a prince and a noble at the same time that he was a scoundrel, made common cause against the Goodfellows, who were the more disorderly in proportion as they had become more numerous, and believed themselves more invincible. The ascendency of the masters over the rebels was soon too strong for resistance. At Meaux, of which the Goodfellows had obtained possession, they were surprised and massacred to the number, it is said, of seven thousand, with the town burning about their ears. In Beauvaisis, the King of Navarre, after having made a show of treating with their chieftain, William Karle or Callet, got possession of him, and had him beheaded, wearing a trivet of red-hot iron, says one of the chroniclers, by way of crown. He then moved upon a camp of Goodfellows assembled near Montdidier, slew three thousand of them, and dispersed the remainder. These figures are probably very much exaggerated, as nearly always happens in such accounts; but the continuer of William of Nangis, so justly severe on the outrages and barbarities of the insurgent peasants, is not less so on those of their conquerors. “The nobles of France,” he says, “committed at that time such ravages in the district of Meaux that there was no need for the English to come and destroy our country those mortal enemies of the kingdom could not have done what was done by the nobles at home.”
Marcel from that moment perceived that his cause was lost, and no longer dreamed of anything but saving himself and his, at any price; “for he thought,” says Froissart, “that it paid better to slay than to be slain.” Although he had more than once experienced the disloyalty of the King of Navarre, he entered into fresh negotiation with him, hoping to use him as an intermediary between himself and the dauphin, in order to obtain either an acceptable peace or guarantees for his own security in case of extreme danger. The King of Navarre lent a ready ear to these overtures; he had no scruple about negotiating with this or that individual, this or that party, flattering himself that he would make one or the other useful for his own purposes. Marcel had no difficulty in discovering that the real design of the King of Navarre was to set aside the house of Valois and the Plantagenets together, and to become King of France himself, as a descendant, in his own person, of St. Louis, though one degree more remote. An understanding was renewed between the two, such as it is possible to have between two personal interests fundamentally different, but capable of being for the moment mutually helpful. Marcel, under pretext of defence against the besiegers, admitted into Paris a pretty large number of English in the pay of the King of Navarre. Before long, quarrels arose between the Parisians and these unpopular foreigners; on the 21st of July, 1358, during one of these quarrels, twenty-four English were massacred by the people; and four hundred others, it is said, were in danger of undergoing the same fate, when Marcel came up and succeeded in saving their lives by having them imprisoned in the Louvre. The quarrel grew hotter and spread farther. The people of Paris went and attacked other mercenaries of the King of Navarre, chiefly English, who were occupying St. Denis and St. Cloud. The Parisians were beaten; and the King of Navarre withdrew to St. Denis. On the 27th of July, Marcel boldly resolved to set at liberty and send over to him the four hundred English imprisoned in the Louvre. He had them let out, accordingly, and himself escorted them as far as the gate St. Honore, in the midst of a throng that made no movement for all its irritation. Some of Marcel’s satellites who formed the escort cried out as they went, “Has anybody aught to say against the setting of these prisoners at liberty?” The Parisians remembered their late reverse, and not a voice was raised. “Strongly moved as the people of Paris were in their hearts against the provost of tradesmen,” says a contemporary chronicle, there was not a man who durst commence a riot.”
Marcel’s position became day by day more critical. The dauphin, encamped with his army around Paris, was keeping up secret but very active communications with it; and a party, numerous and already growing in popularity, was being formed there in his favor. Men of note, who were lately Marcel’s comrades, were now pronouncing against him; and John Maillart, one of the four chosen captains of the municipal forces, was the most vigilant. Marcel, at his wit’s end, made an offer to the King of Navarre to deliver Paris up to him on the night between the 31st of July and the 1st of August. All was ready for carrying out this design. During the day of the 31st of July, Marcel would have changed the keepers of the St. Denis gate, but Maillart opposed him, rushed to the Hotel de Ville, seized the banner of France, jumped on horseback and rode through the city shouting, “Mountjoy St. Denis, for the king and the duke!” This was the rallying-cry of the dauphin’s partisans. The day ended with a great riot amongst the people. Towards eleven o’clock at night Marcel, followed by his people armed from head to foot, made his way to the St. Anthony gate, holding in his hands, it is said, the keys of the city. Whilst he was there, waiting for the arrival of the King of Navarre’s men, Maillart came up “with torches and lanterns and a numerous assemblage. He went straight to the provost and said to him, ‘Stephen, Stephen, what do you here at this hour?’ ‘John, what business have you to meddle? I am here to take the guard of the city of which I have the government.’ ‘By God,’ rejoined Maillart, ‘that will not do; you are not here at this hour for any good, and I’ll prove it to you,’ said he, addressing his comrades. ‘See, he holds in his hands the keys of the gates, to betray the city.’
[Illustration: “In his Hands the Keys of the Gates.”—-354]
‘You lie, John,’ said Marcel. ‘By God, you traitor, ’tis you who lie,’ replied Maillart: ‘death! death! to all on his side!’ “And he raised his battle-axe against Marcel. Philippe Giffard, one of the provost’s friends, threw himself before Marcel and covered him for a moment with his own body; but the struggle had begun in earnest. Maillart plied his battle-axe upon Marcel, who fell pierced with many wounds. Six of his comrades shared the same fate; and Robert Lecocq, Bishop of Laon, saved himself by putting on a Cordelier’s habit. Maillart’s company divided themselves into several bands, and spread themselves all over the city, carrying the news everywhere, and despatching or arresting the partisans of Marcel. The next morning, the 1st of August, 1358, “John Maillart brought together in the market-place the greater part of the community of Paris, explained for what reason he had slain the provost of tradesmen and in what offence he had detected him, and pointed out quietly and discreetly how that on this very night the city of Paris must have been overrun and destroyed if God of His grace had not applied a remedy. When the people who were present heard these news they were much astounded at the peril in which they had been, and the greater part thanked God with folded hands for the grace He had done them.” The corpse of Stephen Marcel was stripped and exposed quite naked to the public gaze, in front of St. Catherine du Val des Beoliers, on the very spot where, by his orders, the corpses of the two marshals, Robert de Clermont and John de Conflans, had been exposed five months before. He was afterwards cast into the river in the presence of a great concourse. “Then were sentenced to death by the council of prud’hommes of Paris, and executed by divers forms of deadly torture, several who had been of the sect of the provost,” the regent having declared that he would not re-enter Paris until these traitors had ceased to live.
Thus perished, after scarcely three years’ political life, and by the hands of his former friends, a man of rare capacity and energy, who at the outset had formed none but patriotic designs, and had, no doubt, promised himself a better fate. When, in December, 1355, at the summons of a deplorably incapable and feeble king, Marcel, a simple burgher of Paris and quite a new man, entered the assembly of the states-general of France, itself quite a new power, he was justly struck with the vices and abuses of the kingly government, with the evils and the dangers being entailed thereby upon France, and with the necessity for applying some remedy. But, notwithstanding this perfectly honest and sound conviction, he fell into a capital error; he tried to abolish, for a time at least, the government he desired to reform, and to substitute for the kingship and its agents the people and their elect. For more than three centuries the kingship had been the form of power which had naturally assumed shape and development in France, whilst seconding the natural labor attending the formation and development of the French nation; but this labor had as yet advanced but a little way, and the nascent nation was not in a condition to take up position at the head of its government. Stephen Marcel attempted by means of the states-general of the fourteenth century to bring to pass what we in the nineteenth, and after all the advances of the French nation, have not yet succeeded in getting accomplished, to wit, the government of the country by the country itself. Marcel, going from excess to excess and from reverse to reverse in the pursuit of his impracticable enterprise, found himself before long engaged in a fierce struggle with the feudal aristocracy, still so powerful at that time, as well as with the kingship. Being reduced to depend entirely during this struggle upon such strength as could be supplied by a municipal democracy incoherent, inexperienced, and full of divisions in its own ranks, and by a mad insurrection in the country districts, he rapidly fell into the selfish and criminal condition of the man whose special concern is his own personal safety. This he sought to secure by an unworthy alliance with the most scoundrelly amongst his ambitious contemporaries, and he would have given up his own city as well as France to the King of Navarre and the English had not another burgher of Paris, John Maillart, stopped him, and put him to death at the very moment when the patriot of the states-general of 1355 was about to become a traitor to his country. Hardly thirteen years before, when Stephen Marcel was already a full-grown man, the great Flemish burgher, James Van Artevelde, had, in the cause of his country’s liberties, attempted a similar enterprise, and, after a series of great deeds at the outset and then of faults also similar to those of Marcel, had fallen into the same abyss, and had perished by the hand of his fellow-citizens, at the very moment when he was laboring to put Flanders, his native country, into the hands of a foreign master, the Prince of Wales, son of Edward III., King of England. Of all political snares the democratic is the most tempting, but it is also the most demoralizing and the most deceptive when, instead of consulting the interests of the democracy by securing public liberties, a man aspires to put it in direct possession of the supreme power, and with its sole support to take upon himself the direction of the helm.
One single result of importance was won for France by the states-general of the fourteenth century, namely, the principle of the nation’s right to intervene in their own affairs, and to set their government straight when it had gone wrong or was incapable of performing that duty itself. Up to that time, in the thirteenth century and at the opening of the fourteenth, the states-general had been hardly anything more than a temporary expedient employed by the kingship itself to solve some special question, or to escape from some grave embarrassment. Starting from King John, the states-general became one of the principles of national right; a principle which did not disappear even when it remained without application, and the prestige of which survived even its reverses. Faith and hope fill a prominent place in the lives of peoples as well as of individuals; having sprung into real existence in 1355, the states-general of France found themselves alive again in 1789; and we may hope that, after so long a trial, their rebuffs and their mistakes will not be more fatal to them in our day.
CHAPTER XXII.—-THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR.–CHARLES V.
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.
[Illustration: Charles V.—-371]
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.
[Illustration: Big Ferre—-376]
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