cities, Paris or elsewhere, everybody knew them and pointed them out, but none durst lay a hand upon them. I saw one night at Paris, in the suburb of St. Germain des Pres, while the people were sleeping, some brigands who were abiding with their chieftains in the city, attempting to sack certain hospices: they were arrested and imprisoned in the Chatelet; but, before long, they were got off, declared innocent, and set at liberty without undergoing the least punishment–a great encouragement for them and their like to go still farther. . . . When the king gave Bertrand du Guesclin the countship of Longueville, in the diocese of Rouen, which had belonged to Philip, brother of the King of Navarre, Du Guesclin promised the king that he would drive out by force of arms all the plunderers and robbers, those enemies of the kingdom; but he did nothing of the sort; nay, the Bretons even of Du Guesclin, on returning from Rouen, pillaged and stole in the villages whatever they found there– garments, horses, sheep, oxen, and beasts of burden and of tillage.”
Charles V. was not, as Louis XII. and Henry IV. were, of a disposition full of affection, and sympathetically inclined towards his people; but he was a practical man, who, in his closet and in the library growing up about him, took thought for the interests of his kingdom as well as for his own; he had at heart the public good, and lawlessness was an abomination to him. He had just purchased, at a ransom of a hundred thousand francs, the liberty of Bertrand du Guesclin, who had remained a prisoner in the hands of John Chandos, after the battle of Auray. An idea occurred to him that the valiant Breton might be of use to him in extricating France from the deplorable condition to which she had been reduced by the bands of plunderers roaming everywhere over her soil. We find in the Chronicle in verse of Bertrand Guesclin, by Cuvelier, a troubadour of the fourteenth century, a detailed account of the king’s perplexities on this subject, and of the measures he took to apply a remedy. We cannot regard this account as strictly historical; but it is a picture, vivid and morally true, of events and men as they were understood and conceived to be by a contemporary, a mediocre poet, but a spirited narrator. We will reproduce the principal features, modifying the language to make it more easily intelligible, but without altering the fundamental character.
“There were so many folk who went about pillaging the country of France that the king was sad and doleful at heart. He summoned his council, and said to them, ‘What shall we do with this multitude of thieves who go about destroying our people? If I send against them my valiant baronage I lose my noble barons, and then I shall never more have any joy of my life. If any could lead these folk into Spain against the miscreant and tyrant Pedro, who put our sister to death, I would like it well, whatever it might cost me.’
[Illustration: Bertrand du Guesclin—-388]
“Bertrand du Guesclin gave ear to the king, and ‘Sir King,’ said he, ‘it is my heart’s desire to cross over the seas and go fight the heathen with the edge of the sword; but if I could come nigh this folk which Both anger you, I would deliver the kingdom from them.’ ‘I should like it well,’ said the king. ‘Say no more,’ said Bertrand to him; ‘I will learn their pleasure; give it no further thought.’
“Bertrand du Guesclin summoned his herald, and said to him, ‘Go thou to the Grand Company and have all the captains assembled; thou wilt go and demand for me a safe-conduct, for I have a great desire to parley with them.’ The herald mounted his horse, and went a-seeking these folk toward Chalon-sur-la-Saone. They were seated together at dinner, and were drinking good wine from the cask they had pierced. ‘Sirs,’ said the herald, ‘the blessing of Jesus be on you! Bertrand du Guesclin prayeth you to let him parley with all in company.’ ‘ By my faith, gentle herald,’ said Hugh de Calverley, who was master of the English, ‘I will readily see Bertrand here, and will give him good wine; I can well give it him, in sooth, I do assure you, for it costs me nothing.’ Then the herald departed, and returned to his lord, and told the news of this company.
“So away rode Bertrand, and halted not; and he rode so far that he came to the Grand Company, and then did greet them. ‘God keep,’ said he, ‘the companions I see yonder!’ Then they bowed down; each abased himself. ‘I vow to God,’ said Bertrand, ‘whosoever will be pleased to believe me; I will make you all rich.’ And they answered, ‘Right welcome here sir, we will all do whatsoever is your pleasure.’ ‘Sirs,’ said Bertrand, ‘be pleased to listen to me; wherefore I am come I will tell unto you. I come by order of the king in whose keeping is France, and who would be right glad, to save his people, that ye should come with me whither I should be glad to go into good company I fain would bring ye. If we would all of us look into our hearts, we might full truly consider that we have done enough to damn our souls; think we but how we have dealt with life, outraged ladies and burned houses, slain men, children, and everybody set to ransom, how we have eaten up cows, oxen, and sheep, drunk good wines, and done worse than robbers do. Let us do honor to God and forsake the devil. Ask, if it may please you, all the companions, all the knights, and all the barons; if you be of accord, we will go to the king, and I will have the gold got ready which we do promise you I would fain get together all my friends to make the journey we so strongly desire.'”
Du Guesclin then explained, in broad terms which left the choice to the Grand Company, what this journey was which was so much desired. He spoke of the King of Cyprus, of the Saracens of Granada, of the Pope of Avignon, and especially of Spain and the King of Castile, Pedro the Cruel, “scoundrel-murderer of his wife (Blanche of Bourbon),” on whom, above all, Du Gueselin wished to draw down the wrath of his hearers. “In Spain,” he said to them, we might largely profit, for the country is a good one for leading a good life, and there are good wines which are neat and clear.” Nearly all present, whereof were twenty-five famous captains, “confirmed what was said by Bertrand.” “Sirs,” said he to them at last, “listen to me: I will go my way and speak to the King of the Franks; I will get for you those two hundred thousand francs; you shall come and dine with me at Paris, according to my desire, when the time shall have come for it; and you shall see the king, who will be rejoiced thereat. We will have no evil suspicion in anything, for I never was inclined to treason, and never shall be as long as I live.” Then said the valiant knights and esquires to him, “Never was more valiant man seen on earth; and in you we have more belief and faith than in all the prelates and great clerics who dwell at Avignon or in France.”
When Du Gueselin returned to Paris, “Sir,” said he to the king, “I have accomplished your wish; I will put out of your kingdom all the worst folk of this Grand Company, and I will so work it that everything shall be saved.” “Bertrand,” said the king to him, “may the Holy Trinity be pleased to have you in their keeping, and may I see you a long while in joy and health!” “Noble king,” said Bertrand, “the captains have a very great desire to come to Paris, your good city.” “I am heartily willing,” said the king; “if they come, let them assemble at the Temple; elsewhere there is too much people and too much abundance; there might be too much alarm. Since they have reconciled themselves to us, I would have nought but friendship with them.”
The poet concludes the negotiation thus: “At the bidding of Bertrand, when he understood the pleasure of the noble King of France, all the captains came to Paris in perfect safety; they were conducted straight to the Temple; there they were feasted and dined nobly, and received many a gift, and all was sealed.”
Matters went, at the outset at least, as Du Guesclin had promised to the king on the one side, and on the other to the captains of the Grand Company. There was, in point of fact, a civil war raging in Spain between Don Pedro the Cruel, King of Castile, and his natural brother, Henry of Transtamare, and that was the theatre on which Du Guesclin had first proposed to launch the vagabond army which he desired to get out of France. It does not appear, however, that at their departure from Burgundy at the end of November, 1365, this army and its chiefs had in this respect any well-considered resolution, or any well-defined aim in their movements. They made first for Avignon, and Pope Urban V., on hearing of their approach, was somewhat disquieted, and sent to them one of his cardinals to ask them what was their will. If we may believe the poet-chronicler, Cuvelier, the mission was anything but pleasing to the cardinal, who said to one of his confidants, “I am grieved to be set to this business, for I am sent to a pack of madmen who have not an hour’s, nay, not even half-an-hour’s conscience.” The captains replied that they were going to fight the heathen either in Cyprus or in the kingdom of Granada, and that they demanded of the pope absolution of their sins and two hundred thousand livres, which Du Guesclin had promised them in his name. The pope cried out against this. “Here,” said he, “at Avignon, we have money given us for absolution, and we must give it gratis to yonder folks, and give them money also: it is quite against reason.” Du Guesclin insisted. “Know you,” said he to the cardinal, “that there are in this army many folks who care not a whit for absolution, and who would much rather have money; we are making them proper men in spite of themselves, and are leading them abroad that they may do no mischief to Christians. Tell that to the pope; for else we could not take them away.” The pope yielded, and gave them the two hundred thousand livres. He obtained the money by levies upon the population of Avignon. They, no doubt, complained loudly, for the chiefs of the Grand Company were informed thereof, and Du Guesclin said, “By the faith that I owe to the Holy Trinity, I will not take a denier of that which these poor folks have given; let the pope and the clerics give us of their own; we desire that all they who have paid the tax do recover their money without losing a doit; “and, according to contemporary chronicles, the vagabond army did not withdraw until they had obtained this satisfaction. The piety of the middle ages, though sincere, was often less disinterested and more rough than it is commonly represented.
On arriving at Toulouse from Avignon, Du Guesclin and his bands, with a strength, it is said, of thirty thousand men, took the decided resolution of going into Spain to support the cause of Prince Henry of Transtamare against the King of Castile his brother, Don Pedro the Cruel. The Duke of Anjou, governor of Languedoc, gave them encouragement, by agreement, no doubt with King Charles V., and from anxiety on his own part to rid his province of such inconvenient visitors. On the 1st of January, 1366, Du Guesclin entered Barcelona, whither Henry of Transtamare came to join him. There is no occasion to give a detailed account here of that expedition, which appertains much more to the history of Spain than to that of France. There was a brief or almost no struggle. Henry of Transtamare was crowned king, first at Calahorra, and afterwards at Burgos. Don Pedro, as much despised before long as he was already detested, fled from Castile to Andalusia, and from Andalusia to Portugal, whose king would not grant him an asylum in his dominions, and he ended by embarking at Corunna for Bordeaux, to implore the assistance of the Prince of Wales, who gave him a warm and a magnificent reception. Edward III., King of England, had been disquieted by the march of the Grand Company into Spain, and had given John Chandos and the rest of his chief commanders in Guienne orders to be vigilant in preventing the English from taking part in the expedition against his cousin the King of Castile; but several of the English chieftains, serving in the bands and with Du Guesclin, set at nought this prohibition, and contributed materially to the fall of Don Pedro. Edward III. did not consider that the matter was any infraction, on the part of France, of the treaty of Bretigne, and continued to live at peace with Charles V., testifying his displeasure, however, all the same. But when Don Pedro had reached Bordeaux, and had told the Prince of Wales that, if he obtained the support of England, he would make the prince’s eldest son, Edward, king of Galicia, and share amongst the prince’s warriors the treasure he had left in Castile, so well concealed that he alone knew where, “the knights of the Prince of Wales,” says Froissart, “gave ready heed to his words, for English and Gascons are by nature covetous.” The Prince of Wales immediately summoned the barons of Aquitaine, and on the advice they gave him sent four knights to London to ask for instructions from the king his father. Edward III. assembled his chief councillors at Westminster, and finally “it seemed to all course due and reasonable on the part of the Prince of Wales to restore and conduct the King of Spain to his kingdom; to which end they wrote official letters from the King and the council of England to the prince and the barons of Aquitaine. When the said barons heard the letters read they said to the prince, ‘My lord, we will obey the command of the king our master and your father; it is but reason, and we will serve you on this journey and King Pedro also; but we would know who shall pay us and deliver us our wages, for one does not take men-at-arms away from their homes to go a warfare in a foreign land, without they be paid and delivered. If it were a matter touching our dear lord your father’s affairs, or your own, or your honor or our country’s, we would not speak thereof so much beforehand as we do.’ Then the Prince of Wales looked towards the Prince Don Pedro, and said to him, ‘Sir King, you hear what these gentlemen say; to answer is for you, who have to employ them.’ Then the King Don Pedro answered the prince, ‘My dear cousin, so far as my gold, my silver, and all my treasure which I have brought with me hither, and which is not a thirtieth part so great as that which there is yonder, will go, I am ready to give it and share it amongst your gentry.’ ‘You say well,’ said the prince, ‘and for the residue I will be debtor to them, and I will lend you all you shall have need of until we be in Castile.’ ‘By my head,’ answered the King Don Pedro, you will do me great grace and great courtesy.'”
When the English and Gascon chieftains who had followed Du Guesclin into Spain heard of the resolutions of their king, Edward III., and the preparations made by the Prince of Wales for going and restoring Don Pedro to the throne of Castile, they withdrew from the cause which they had just brought to an issue to the advantage of Henry of Transtamare, separated from the French captain who had been their leader, and marched back into Aquitaine, quite ready to adopt the contrary cause, and follow the Prince of Wales in the service of Don Pedro. The greater part of the adventurers, Burgundian, Picard, Champagnese, Norman, and others who had enlisted in the bands which Du Guesclin had marched out of France, likewise quitted him, after reaping the fruits of their raid, and recrossed the Pyrenees to go and resume in France their life of roving and pillage. There remained in Spain about fifteen hundred men-at-arms faithful to Du Guesclin, himself faithful to Henry of Transtamare, who had made him Constable of Castile.
Amidst all these vicissitudes, and at the bottom of all events as well as of all hearts, there still remained the great fact of the period, the struggle between the two kings of France and England for dominion in that beautiful country which, in spite of its dismemberment, kept the name of France. Edward III. in London, and the Prince of Wales at Bordeaux, could not see, without serious disquietude, the most famous warrior amongst the French crossing the Pyrenees with a following for the most part French, and setting upon the throne of Castile a prince necessarily allied to the King of France. The question of rivalry between the two kings and the two peoples had thus been transferred into Spain, and for the moment the victory remained with France. After several months’ preparation the prince of Wales, purchasing the complicity of the King of Navarre, marched into Spain in February, 1367, with an army of twenty- seven thousand men, and John Chandos, the most able of the English warriors. Henry of Transtamare had troops more numerous, but less disciplined and experienced. The two armies joined battle on the 3d of April, 1367, at Najara or Navarette, not far from the Ebro. Disorder and even sheer rout soon took place amongst that of Henry, who flung himself before the fugitives, shouting, “Why would ye thus desert and betray me, ye who have made me King of Castile? Turn back and stand by me; and by the grace of God the day shall be ours.” Du Guesclin and his men-at-arms maintained the fight with stubborn courage, but at last they were beaten, and either slain or taken. To the last moment Du Guesclin, with his back against a wall, defended himself heroically against a host of assailants. The Prince of Wales, coming up, cried out, “Gentle marshals of France, and you too, Bertrand, yield yourselves to me.” “Why, yonder men are my foes,” cried the king, Don Pedro; “it is they who took from me my kingdom, and on them I mean to take vengeance.” Du Guesclin, darting forward, struck so rough a blow with his sword at Don Pedro, that he brought him fainting to the ground, and then turning to the Prince of Wales said, “Nathless I give up my sword to the most valiant prince on earth.” The Prince of Wales took the sword, and charged the Captal of Buch with the prisoner’s keeping. “Aha! sir Bertrand,” said the Captal to Du Guesclin, “you took me at the battle of Cocherel, and to-day I’ve got you.” “Yes,” replied Du Guesclin; “but at Cocherel I took you myself, and here you are only my keeper.”
The battle of Najara being over, and Don Pedro the Cruel restored to a throne which he was not to occupy for long, the Prince of Wales returned to Bordeaux with his army and his prisoner Du Guesclin, whom he treated courteously, at the same time that he kept him pretty strictly. One of the English chieftains who had been connected with Du Guesclin at the time of his expedition into Spain, Sir Hugh Calverley, tried one day to induce the Prince of Wales to set the French warrior at liberty. “Sir,” said he, “Bertrand is a right loyal knight, but he is not a rich man, or in estate to pay much money; he would have good need to end his captivity on easy terms.” “Let be,” said the prince; “I have no care to take aught of his; I will cause his life to be prolonged in spite of himself: if he were released, he would be in battle again, and always a-making war.” After supper, Hugh, without any beating about the bush, told Bertrand the prince’s answer. “Sir,” he said, “I cannot bring about your release.” “Sir,” said Bertrand, “think no more of it; I will leave the matter to the decision of God, who is a good and just master.” Some time after, Du Guesclin having sent a request to the Prince of Wales to admit him to ransom, the prince, one day when he was in a gay humor, had him brought up, and told him that his advisers had urged him not to give him his liberty so long as the war between France and England lasted. “Sir,” said Du Guesclin to him, “then am I the most honored knight in the world, for they say, in the kingdom of France and elsewhere, that you are more afraid of me than of any other.” “Think you, then, it is for your knighthood that we do keep you?” said the prince: “nay, by St. George; fix you your own ransom, and you shall be released.” Du Guesclin proudly fixed his ransom at a hundred thousand francs, which seemed a large sum even to the Prince of Wales. “Sir,” said Du Guesclin to him, “the king in whose keeping is France will lend me what I lack, and there is not a spinning wench in France who would not spin to gain for me what is necessary to put me out of your clutches.” The advisers of the Prince of Wales would have had him think better of it, and break his promise; but “that which we have agreed to with him we will hold to,” said the prince; “it would be shame and confusion of face to us if we could be reproached with not setting him to ransom when he is ready to set himself down at so much as to pay a hundred thousand francs.” Prince and knight were both as good as their word. Du Guesclin found amongst his Breton friends a portion of the sum he wanted; King Charles V. lent him thirty thousand Spanish doubloons, which, by a deed of December 27, 1367, Du Guesclin undertook to repay; and at the beginning of 1368 the Prince of Wales set the French warrior at liberty.
The first use Du Guesclin made of it was to go and put his name and his sword at the service first of the Duke of Anjou, governor of Languedoc, who was making war in Provence against Queen Joan of Naples, and then of his Spanish patron, Henry of Transtamare, who had recommenced the war in Spain against his brother, Pedro the Cruel, whom he was before long to dethrone for the second time and slay with his own hand. But whilst Du Guesclin was taking part in this settlement of the Spanish question, important events called him back to the north of the Pyrenees for the service of his own king, the defence of his own country, and the aggrandizement of his own fortunes. The English and Gascon bands which, in 1367, had recrossed the Pyrenees with the Prince of Wales, after having restored Don Pedro the Cruel to the throne of Castile had not disappeared. Having no more to do in their own prince’s service, they had spread abroad over France, which they called “their apartment,” and recommenced, in the countries between the Seine and the Loire, their life of vagabondage and pillage. A general outcry was raised; it was the Prince of Wales, men said, who had let them loose, and the people called them the host (army) of England. A proceeding of the Prince of Wales himself had the effect of adding to the rage of the people that of the aristocratic classes. He was lavish of expenditure, and held at Bordeaux a magnificent court, for which the revenues from his domains and ordinary resources were insufficient; so he imposed a tax for five years of ten sous per hearth or family, “in order to satisfy,” he said, “the large claims against him.” In order to levy this tax legally, he convoked the estates of Aquitaine, first at Niort, and then, successively, at Angouleme, Poitiers, Bordeaux, and Bergerac; but nowhere could he obtain the vote he demanded. “When we obeyed the King of France,” said the Gascons, “we were never so aggrieved with subsidies, hearth-taxes, or gabels, and we will not be, as long as we can defend ourselves.” The Prince of Wales persisted in his demands. He was ill and irritable, and was becoming truly the Black Prince. The Aquitanians too became irritated. The prince’s more temperate advisers, even those of English birth, tried in vain to move him from his stubborn course. Even John Chandos, the most notable as well as the wisest of them, failed, and withdrew to his domain of St. Sauveur, in Normandy, that he might have nothing to do with measures of which he disapproved. Being driven to extremity, the principal lords of Aquitaine, the Counts of Comminges, of Armagnac, of Perigord, and many barons besides, set out for France, and made complaint, on the 30th of June, 1368, before Charles V. and his peers, “on account of the grievances which the Prince of Wales was purposed to put upon them.” They had recourse, they said, to the King of France as their sovereign lord, who had no power to renounce his suzerainty or the jurisdiction of his court of peers and of his parliament.
Nothing could have corresponded better with the wishes of Charles V. For eight years past he had taken to heart the treaty of Bretigny, and he was as determined not to miss as he was patient in waiting for an opportunity for a breach of it. But he was too prudent to act with a precipitation which would have given his conduct an appearance of a premeditated and deep-laid purpose for which there was no legitimate ground. He did not care to entertain at once and unreservedly the appeal of the Aquitanian lords. He gave them a gracious reception, and made them “great cheer and rich gifts;” but he announced his intention of thoroughly examining the stipulations of the treaty of Bretigny, and the rights of his kingship. “He sent for into his council chamber all the charters of the peace, and then he had them read on several days and at full leisure.” He called into consultation the schools of Boulogne, of Montpellier, of Toulouse, and of Orleans, and the most learned clerks of the papal court. It was not until he had thus ascertained the legal means of maintaining that the stipulations of the treaty of Bretigny had not all of them been performed by the King of England, and that, consequently, the King of France had not lost all his rights of suzerainty over the ceded provinces, that on the 25th of January, 1369, just six months after the appeal of the Aquitanian lords had been submitted to him, he adopted it, in the following terms, which he addressed to the Prince of Wales, at Bordeaux, and which are here curtailed in their legal expressions: —
“Charles, by the grace of God King of France, to our nephew the Prince of Wales and of Aquitaine, greeting. Whereas many prelates, barons, knights, universities, communes, and colleges of the country of Gascony and the duchy of Aquitaine, have come thence into our presence, that they might have justice touching certain undue grievances and vexations which you, through weak counsel and silly advice, have designed to impose upon them, whereat we are quite astounded, . . . we, of our kingly majesty and lordship, do command you to come to our city of Paris, in your own person, and to present yourself before us in our chamber of peers, for to hear justice touching the said complaints and grievances proposed by you to be done to your people which claims to have resort to our court. . . And be it as quickly as you may.”
“When the Prince of Wales had read this letter,” says Froissart, “he shook his head, and looked askant at the aforesaid Frenchmen; and when he had thought a while, he answered, ‘We will go willingly, at our own time, since the King of France doth bid us, but it shall be with our Basque on our head, and with sixty thousand men at our back.'”
This was a declaration of war; and deeds followed at once upon words. Edward III., after a short and fruitless attempt at an accommodation, assumed, on the 3d of June, 1369, the title of King of France, and ordered a levy of all his subjects between sixteen and sixty, laic or ecclesiastical, for the defence of England, threatened by a French fleet which was cruising in the Channel. He sent re-enforcements to the Prince of Wales, whose brother, the Duke of Lancaster, landed with an army at Calais; and he offered to all the adventurers with whom Europe was teeming possession of all the fiefs they could conquer in France. Charles V. on his side vigorously pushed forward his preparations; he had begun them before he showed his teeth, for as early as the 19th of July, 1368, he had sent into Spain ambassadors with orders to conclude an alliance with Henry of Transtamare against the King of England and his son, whom he called “the Duke of Aquitaine.” On the 12th of April, 1369, he signed the treaty which, by a contract of marriage between his brother, Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, and the Princess Marguerite of Flanders, transferred the latter rich province to the House of France. Lastly he summoned to Paris Du Guesclin, who since the recovery of his freedom had been fighting at one time in Spain, and at another in the south of France, and announced to him his intention of making him constable. “Dear sir and noble king,” said the honest and modest Breton, “I do pray you to have me excused; I am a poor knight and petty bachelor. The office of constable is so grand and noble that he who would well discharge it should have had long previous practice and command, and rather over the great than the small. Here are my lords your brothers, your nephews, and your cousins, who will have charge of men-at-arms in the armies, and the rides afield, and how durst I lay commands on them? In sooth, sir, jealousies be so strong that I cannot well but be afeard of them. I do affectionately pray you to dispense with me, and to confer it upon another who will more willingly take it than I, and will know better how to fill it.” “Sir Bertrand, Sir Bertrand,” answered the king, “do not excuse yourself after this fashion; I have nor brother, nor cousin, nor nephew, nor count, nor baron in my kingdom, who would not obey you; and if any should do otherwise, he would anger me so that he would hear of it. Take, therefore, the office with a good heart, I do beseech you.” Sir Bertrand saw well, says Froissart, “that his excuses were of no avail, and finally he assented to the king’s opinion; but it was not without a struggle, and to his great disgust. . . . In order to give him further encouragement and advancement the king did set him close to him at table, showed him all the signs he could of affection, and gave him, together with the office, many handsome gifts and great estates for binelf and his heirs.” Charles V. might fearlessly lavish his gifts on the loyal warrior, for Du Guesclin felt nothing more binding upon him than to lavish them, in his turn, for the king’s service. He gave numerous and sumptuous dinners to the barons, knights, and soldiers of every degree whom he was to command.
“At Bertrand’s plate gazed every eye, So massive, chased so gloriously,”
says the poet-chronicler Cuvelier; but Du Guesclin pledged it more than once, and sold a great portion of it, in order to pay “without fail the knights and honorable fighting-men of whom he was the leader.”
The war thus renewed was hotly prosecuted on both sides. A sentiment of nationality became, from day to day, more keen and more general in France. At the commencement of hostilities, it burst forth particularly in the North; the burghers of Abbeville opened their gates to the Count of St. Poi, and in a single week St. Valery, Crotoy, and all the places in the countship of Ponthieu followed this example. The movement made progress before long in the South. Montauban and Milhau hoisted on their walls the royal standard; the Archbishop of Toulouse “went riding through the whole of Quercy, preaching and demonstrating the good cause of the King of France; and he converted, without striking a blow, Cahors and more than sixty towns, castles, or fortresses.” Charles V. neglected no means of encouraging and keeping up the public impulse. It has been remarked that, as early as the 9th of May, 1369, he had convoked the states-general, declaring to them in person that “if they considered that he had done anything he ought not, they should say so, and he would amend it, for there was still time for reparation if he had done too much or not enough.” He called a new meeting on the 7th of December, 1369, after the explosion of hostilities, and obtained from them the most extensive subsidies they had ever granted. They were as stanch to the king in principle as in purse, and their interpretations of the treaty of Bretigny went far beyond the grounds which Charles had put forward to justify war. It was not only on the upper classes and on political minds that the king endeavored to act; he paid attention also to popular impressions; he set on foot in Paris a series of processions, in which he took part in person, and the queen also, “barefoot and unsandaled, to pray God to graciously give heed to the doings and affairs of the kingdom.”
But at the same time that he was thus making his appeal, throughout France and by every means, to the feeling of nationality, Charles remained faithful to the rule of conduct which had been inculcated in him by the experience of his youth; he recommended, nay, he commanded, all his military captains to avoid any general engagement with the English. It was not without great difficulty that he wrung obedience from the feudal nobility, who, more numerous very often than the English, looked upon such a prohibition as an insult, and sometimes withdrew to their castles rather than submit to it; and even the king’s brother, Philip the Bold, openly in Burgundy testified his displeasure at it. Du Guesclin, having more intelligence and firmness, even before becoming constable, and at the moment of quitting the Duke of Anjou at Toulouse, had advised him not to accept battle, to well fortify all the places that had been recovered, and to let the English scatter and waste themselves in a host of small expeditions and distant skirmishes constantly renewed. When once he was constable, Du Guesclin put determinedly in practice the king’s maxim, calmly confident in his own fame for valor whenever he had to refuse to yield to the impatience of his comrades.
This detached and indecisive war lasted eight years, with a medley of more or less serious incidents, which, however, did not change its character. In 1370, the Prince of Wales laid siege to Limoges, which had opened its gates to the Duke of Berry. He was already so ill that he could not mount his horse, and had himself carried in a litter from post to post, to follow up and direct the operations of the siege. In spite of a month’s resistance the prince took the place, and gave it up as a prey to a mob of reckless plunderers, whose excesses were such that Froissart himself, a spectator generally so indifferent, and leaning rather to the English, was deeply shocked. “There,” said he, “was a great pity, for men, women, and children threw themselves on their knees before the prince, and cried, ‘Mercy, gentle sir!’ but he was so inflamed with passion that he gave no heed, and none, male or female, was listened to, but all were put to the sword. There is no heart so hard but, if present then at Limoges and not forgetful of God, would have wept bitterly, for more than three thousand persons, men, women, and children, were there beheaded on that day. May God receive their souls, for verily they were martyrs!” The massacre of Limoges caused, throughout France, a feeling of horror and indignant anger towards the English name. In 1373 an English army landed at Calais, under the command of the Duke of Lancaster, and overran nearly the whole of France, being incessantly harassed, however, without ever being attacked in force, and without mastering a single fortress. “Let them be,” was the saying in the king’s circle; “when a storm bursts out in a country, it leaves off afterwards and disperses of itself; and so it will be with these English.” The sufferings and reverses of the English armies on this expedition were such, that, of thirty thousand horses which the English had landed at Calais, “they could not muster more than six thousand at Bordeaux, and had lost full a third of their men and more. There were seen noble knights, who had great possessions in their own country, toiling along a-foot, without armor, and begging their bread from door to door without getting any.” In vain did Edward III. treat with the Duke of Brittany and the King of Navarre in order to have their support in this war. The Duke of Brittany, John IV., after having openly defied the King of France, his suzerain, was obliged to fly to England, and the King of Navarre entered upon negotiations alternately with Edward III. and Charles V., being always ready to betray either, according to what suited his interests at the moment. Tired of so many ineffectual efforts, Edward III. was twice obliged, between 1375 and 1377, to conclude with Charles V. a truce, just to give the two peoples, as well as the two kings, breathing-time; but the truces were as vain as the petty combats for the purpose of putting an end to this great struggle.
The great actors in this historical drama did not know how near were the days when they would be called away from this arena, still so crowded with their exploits or their reverses. A few weeks after the massacre of Limoges the Prince of Wales lost, at Bordeaux, his eldest son, six years old, whom he loved with all the tenderness of a veteran warrior, so much the more affected by gentle impressions as they were a rarity to him; and he was himself so ill that “his doctors advised him to return to England, his own land, saying that he would probably get better health there.” Accordingly he left France, which he would never see again, and, on returning to England, he, after a few months’ rest in the country, took an active part in Parliament in the home-policy of his country, and supported the opposition against the government of his father, who since the death of the queen, Philippa of Hainault, had been treating England to the spectacle of a scandalous old age closing a life of glory. Parliamentary contests soon exhausted the remaining strength of the Black Prince, and he died on the 8th of June, 1376, in possession of a popularity that never shifted, and was deserved by such qualities as showed a nature great indeed and generous, though often sullied by the fits of passion of a character harsh even to ferocity. “The good fortune of England,” says his contemporary Walsingham, “seemed bound up with his person, for it flourished when he was well, fell off when he was ill, and vanished at his death. As long as he was on the spot the English feared neither the foe’s invasion nor the meeting on the battle-field; but with him died all their hopes.” A year after him, on the 21st of June, 1377, died his father, Edward III., a king who had been able, glorious, and fortunate for nearly half a century, but had fallen, towards the end of his life, into contempt with his people and into forgetfulness on the continent of Europe, where nothing was heard about him beyond whispers of an indolent old man’s indulgent weaknesses to please a covetous mistress.
Whilst England thus lost her two great chiefs, France still kept hers. For three years longer Charles V. and Du Guesclin remained at the head of her government and her armies. The truce between the two kingdoms was still in force when the Prince of Wales died, and Charles, ever careful to practise knightly courtesy, had a solemn funeral service performed for him in the Sainte-Chapelle; but the following year, at the death of Edward III., the truce had expired. The Prince of Wales’s young son, Richard II., succeeded his grandfather, and Charles, on the accession of a king who was a minor, was anxious to reap all the advantage be could hope from that fact. The war was pushed forward vigorously, and a French fleet cruised on the coast of England, ravaged the Isle of Wight, and burned Yarmouth, Dartmouth, Plymouth, Winchelsea, and Lewes. What Charles passionately desired was the recovery of Calais; he would have made considerable sacrifices to obtain it, and in the seclusion of his closet he displayed an intelligent activity in his efforts, by war or diplomacy, to attain this end. “He had,” says Froissart, “couriers going a-horseback night and day, who, from one day to the next, brought him news from eighty or a hundred leagues’ distance, by help of relays posted from town to town.” This labor of the king had no success; on the whole the war prosecuted by Charles V. between Edward III.’s death and his own had no result of importance; the attempt, by law and arms, which he made in 1378, to make Brittany his own and reunite it to the crown, completely failed, thanks to the passion with which the Bretons, nobles, burgesses, and peasants, were attached to their country’s independence. Charles V. actually ran a risk of embroiling himself with the hero of his reign; he had ordered Du Guesclin to reduce to submission the countship of Rennes, his native land, and he showed some temper because the constable not only did not succeed, but advised him to make peace with the Duke of Brittany and his party. Du Guesclin, grievously hurt, sent to the king his sword of constable, adding that he was about to withdraw to the court of Castile, to Henry of Transtamare, who would show more appreciation of his services. All Charles V.’s wisdom did not preserve him from one of those deeds of haughty levity which the handling of sovereign power sometimes causes even the wisest kings to commit, but reflection made him promptly acknowledge and retrieve his fault. He charged the Dukes of Anjou and Bourbon to go and, for his sake, conjure Du Guesclin to remain his constable; and, though some chroniclers declare that Du Guesclin refused, his will, dated the 9th of July, 1380, leads to a contrary belief, for in it he assumes the title of constable of France, and this will preceded the hero’s death only by four days. Having fallen sick before Chateauneuf-Randon, a place he was besieging in the Gevaudan, Du Guesclin expired on the 13th of July, 1380, at sixty-six years of age, and his last words were an exhortation to the veteran captains around him “never to forget that, in whatsoever country they might be making war, churchmen, women, children, and the poor people were not their enemies.” According to certain contemporary chronicles, or, one might almost say, legends, Chateauneuf-Randon was to be given up the day after Du Guesclin died. The marshal De Sancerre, who commanded the king’s army, summoned the governor to surrender the place to him; but the governor replied that he had given his word to Du Guesclin, and would surrender to no other. He was told of the constable’s death: “Very well,” he rejoined, “I will carry the keys of the town to his tomb.” To this the marshal agreed; the governor marched out of the place at the head of his garrison, passed through the besieging army, went and knelt down before Du Guesclin’s corpse, and actually laid the keys of Chateauneuf-Randon on his bier.
[Illustration: Putting the Keys on Du Guesclin’s Bier—-407]
This dramatic story is not sufficiently supported by authentic documents to be admitted as an historical fact; but there is to be found in an old chronicle concerning Du Guesclin [published for the first time at the end of the fifteenth century, and in a new edition by M. Francisque Michel in 1830] a story which, in spite of many discrepancies, confirms the principal fact of the keys of Chateauneuf-Randon being brought by the garrison to the bier. “At the decease of Sir Bertrand,” says the chronicler, “a great cry arose throughout the host of the French. The English refused to give up the castle. The marshal, Louis de Sancerre, had the hostages brought to the ditches, for to have their heads struck off. But forthwith the people in the castle lowered their bridge, and the captain came and offered the keys to the marshal, who refused them, and said to him, ‘Friends, you have your agreements with Sir Bertrand, and ye shall fulfil them to him.’ ‘God the Lord!’ said the captain, ‘you know well that Sir Bertrand, who was so much worth, is dead: how, then, should we surrender to him this castle? Verily, lord marshal, you do demand our dishonor when you would have us and our castle surrendered to a dead knight.’ ‘Needs no parley hereupon,’ said the marshal, ‘but do it at once, for, if you put forth more words, short will be the life of your hostages.’ Well did the English see that it could not be otherwise; so they went forth all of them from the castle, their captain in front of them, and came to the marshal, who led them to the hostel where lay Sir Bertrand, and made them give up the keys and place them on his bier, sobbing the while: ‘Let all know that there was there nor knight, nor squire, French or English, who showed not great mourning.'”
The body of Du Guesclin was carried to Paris to be interred at St. Denis, hard by the tomb which Charles V. had ordered to be made for himself; and nine years afterwards, in 1389, Charles V.’s successor, his son Charles VI., caused to be celebrated in the Breton warrior’s honor a fresh funeral, at which the princes and grandees of the kingdom, and the young king himself, were present in state. The Bishop of Auxerre delivered the funeral oration over the constable; and a poet of the time, giving an account of the ceremony, says,
“The tears of princes fell, What time the bishop said,
‘Sir Bertrand loved ye well; Weep, warriors, for the dead!
The knell of sorrow tolls For deeds that were so bright: God save all Christian souls,
And his–the gallant knight: ‘
The life, character, and name of Bertrand du Guesclin were and remained one of the most popular, patriotic, and legitimate boasts of the middle ages, then at their decline.
Two months after the constable’s death, on the 16th of September, 1380, Charles V. died at the castle of Beaute-sur-Marne, near Vincennes, at forty-three years of age, quite young still after so stormy and hard-working a life. His contemporaries were convinced, and he was himself convinced, that he had been poisoned by his perfidious enemy, King Charles of Navarre. His uncle, Charles IV., Emperor of Germany, had sent him an able doctor, who “set him in good case and in manly strength,” says Froissart, by effecting a permanent issue in his arm. “When this little sore,” said he to him, “shall cease to discharge and shall dry up, you will die without help for it, and you will have at the most fifteen days’ leisure to take counsel and thought for the soul.” When the issue began to dry up, Charles knew that death was at hand; and “like a wise and valiant man as he was,” says Froissart, “he set in order all his affairs, and sent for his three brothers, in whom he had most confidence, the Duke of Berry, the Duke of Burgundy, and the Duke of Bourbon, and he left in the lurch his second brother, the Duke of Anjou, because he considered him too covetous. ‘My dear brothers,’ said the king to them, ‘I feel and know full well that I have not long to live. I do commend and give in charge to you my son Charles. Behave to him as good uncles should behave to their nephew. Crown him as soon as possible after my death, and counsel him loyally in all his affairs. The lad is young, and of a volatile spirit; he will need to be guided and governed by good doctrine; teach him or have him taught all the kingly points and states he will have to maintain, and marry him in such lofty station that the kingdom may be the better for it. Thank God, the affairs of our kingdom are in good case. The Duke of Brittany [John IV., called the Valiant] is a crafty and a slippery man, and he hath ever been more English than French; for which reason keep the nobles of Brittany and the good towns affectionate, and you will thus thwart his intentions. I am fond of the Bretons, for they have ever served me loyally, and helped to keep and defend my kingdom against my enemies. Make the lord Clisson constable, for, all considered, I see none more competent for it than he. As to those aids and taxes of the kingdom of France, wherewith the poorer folks are so burdened and aggrieved, deal with them according to your conscience, and take them off as soon as ever you can, for they are things which, although I have upheld them, do grieve me and weigh upon my heart; but the great wars and great matters which we have had on all sides caused me to countenance them.”
Of all the dying speeches and confessions of kings to their family and their councillors, that which has just been put forward is the most practical, precise, and simple. Charles V., taking upon his shoulders at nineteen years of age, first as king’s lieutenant and as dauphin, and afterwards as regent, the government of France, employed all his soul and his life in repairing the disasters arising from the wars of his predecessors and preventing any repetition. No sovereign was ever more resolutely pacific; he carried prudence even into the very practice of war, as was proved by his forbidding his generals to venture any general engagement with the English, so great a lesson and so deep an impression had he derived from the defeats of Crecy and Poitiers, and the causes which led to them. But without being a warrior, and without running any hazardous risks, he made himself respected and feared by his enemies. “Never was there king,” said Edward III., “who handled arms less, and never was there king who gave me so much to do.” When the condition of the kingdom was at the best, and more favorable circumstances led Charles to believe that the day had come for setting France free from the cruel conditions which had been imposed upon her by the treaty of Bretigny, he entered without hesitation upon that war of patriotic reparation; and, after the death of his two powerful enemies, Edward III. and the Black Prince, he was still prosecuting it, not without chance of success, when he himself died of the malady with which he had for a long while been afflicted. At his death he left in the royal treasury a surplus of seventeen million francs, a large sum for those days. Nor the labors of government, nor the expenses of war, nor far-sighted economy had prevented him from showing a serious interest in learned works and studies, and from giving effectual protection to the men who devoted themselves thereto. The University of Paris, notwithstanding the embarrassments it sometimes caused him, was always the object of his good-will. “He was a great lover of wisdom,” says Christine de Pisan, “and when certain folks murmured for that he honored clerks so highly, he answered, ‘So long as wisdom is honored in this realm, it will continue in prosperity; but when wisdom is thrust aside, it will go down.'” He collected nine hundred and fifty volumes (the first foundation of the loyal Library), which were deposited in a tower of the Louvre, called the library tower, and of which he, in 1373, had an inventory drawn up by his personal attendant, Gilles de Presle. His taste for literature and science was not confined to collecting manuscripts. He had a French translation made, for the sake of spreading a knowledge thereof, of the Bible in the first place, and then of several works of Aristotle, of Livy, of Valerius Maximus, of Vegetius, and of St. Augustine. He was fond of industry and the arts as well as of literature. Henry de Vic, a German clock-maker, constructed for him the first public clock ever seen in France, and it was placed in what was called the Clock Tower in the Palace of Justice; and the king even had a clock-maker by appointment, named Peter de St. Beathe. Several of the Paris monuments, churches, or buildings for public use were undertaken or completed under his care. He began the building of the Bastille, that fortress which was then so necessary for the safety of Paris, where it was to be, four centuries later, the object of the wrath and earliest excesses on the part of the populace. Charles the Wise, from whatever point of view he may be regarded, is, after Louis the Fat, Philip Augustus, St. Louis, and Philip the Handsome, the fifth of those kings who powerfully contributed to the settlement of France in Europe, and of the kingship in France. He was not the greatest nor the best, but, perhaps, the most honestly able. And at the same time he was a signal example of the shallowness and insufficiency of human abilities. Charles V., on his death-bed, considered that “the affairs of his kingdom were in good case;” he had not even a suspicion of that chaos of war, anarchy, reverses and ruin into which they were about to fall, in the reign of his son, Charles VI.
END OF VOLUME II.