THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR.
1. Wars of Edward III.--By the Salic law, as the lawyers called it,
the crown was given, on the death of Charles IV., to _Philip, Count of
Valois_, son to a brother of Philip IV., but it was claimed by Edward
III. of England as son of the daughter of Philip IV. Edward contented
himself, however, with the mere assertion of his pretensions, until
Philip exasperated him by attacks on the borders of Guienne, which the
French kings had long been coveting to complete their possession of the
south, and by demanding the surrender of Robert of Artois, who, being
disappointed in his claim to the county of Artois by the judgment of the
Parliament of Paris, was practising by sorcery on the life of the King
of France. Edward then declared war, and his supposed right caused a
century of warfare between France and England, in which the broken,
down-trodden state of the French peasantry gave England an immense
advantage. The knights and squires were fairly matched; but while the
English yeomen were strong, staunch, and trustworthy, the French were
useless, and only made a defeat worse by plundering the fallen on each
side alike. The war began in Flanders, where Philip took the part of the
count, whose tyrannies had caused his expulsion. Edward was called in to
the aid of the citizens of Ghent by their leader Jacob van Arteveldt;
and gained a great victory over the French fleet at Sluys, but with no
important result. At the same time the two kings took opposite sides in
the war of the succession in Brittany, each defending the claim most
inconsistent with his own pretensions to the French crown--Edward
upholding the male heir, John de Montfort, and Philip the direct female
representative, the wife of Charles de Blois.
2. Creçy and Poitiers.--Further difficulties arose through Charles the
Bad, King of Navarre and Count of Evreux, who was always on the watch to
assert his claim to the French throne through his mother, the daughter
of Louis X., and was much hated and distrusted by Philip VI. and his son
John, Duke of Normandy. Fearing the disaffection of the Norman and
Breton nobles, Philip invited a number of them to a tournament at Paris,
and there had them put to death after a hasty form of trial, thus
driving their kindred to join his enemies. One of these offended
Normans, Godfrey of Harcourt, invited Edward to Normandy, where he
landed, and having consumed his supplies was on his march to Flanders,
when Philip, with the whole strength of the kingdom, endeavoured to
intercept him at _Creçy_ in Picardy, in 1348. Philip was utterly
incapable as a general; his knights were wrong-headed and turbulent, and
absolutely cut down their own Genoese hired archers for being in their
way. The defeat was total. Philip rode away to Amiens, and Edward laid
siege to Calais. The place was so strong that he was forced to blockade
it, and Philip had time to gather another army to attempt its relief;
but the English army were so posted that he could not attack them
without great loss. He retreated, and the men of Calais surrendered,
Edward insisting that six burghers should bring him the keys with ropes
round their necks, to submit themselves to him. Six offered themselves,
but their lives were spared, and they were honourably treated. Edward
expelled all the French, and made Calais an English settlement. A truce
followed, chiefly in consequence of the ravages of the Black Death,
which swept off multitudes throughout Europe, a pestilence apparently
bred by filth, famine, and all the miseries of war and lawlessness, but
which spared no ranks. It had scarcely ceased before Philip died, in
1350. His son, _John_, was soon involved in a fresh war with England by
the intrigues of Charles the Bad, and in 1356 advanced southwards to
check the Prince of Wales, who had come out of Guienne on a plundering
expedition. The French were again totally routed at Poitiers, and the
king himself, with his third son, Philip, were made prisoners and
carried to London with most of the chief nobles.
3. The Jacquerie.--The calls made on their vassals by these captive
nobles to supply their ransoms brought the misery to a height. The salt
tax, or _gabelle_, which was first imposed to meet the expenses of the
war, was only paid by those who were neither clergy nor nobles, and the
general saying was--"Jacques Bonhomme (the nickname for the peasant) has
a broad back, let him bear all the burthens." Either by the king, the
feudal lords, the clergy, or the bands of men-at-arms who roved through
the country, selling themselves to any prince who would employ them, the
wretched people were stripped of everything, and used to hide in holes
and caves from ill-usage or insult, till they broke out in a rebellion
called the Jacquerie, and whenever they could seize a castle revenged
themselves, like the brutes they had been made, on those within it.
Taxation was so levied by the king's officers as to be frightfully
oppressive, and corruption reigned everywhere. As the king was in
prison, and his heir, Charles, had fled ignominiously from Poitiers,
the citizens of Paris hoped to effect a reform, and rose with their
provost-marshal, Stephen Marcel, at their head, threatened Charles, and
slew two of his officers before his eyes. On their demand the
States-General were convoked, and made wholesome regulations as to the
manner of collecting the taxes, but no one, except perhaps Marcel, had
any real zeal or public spirit. Charles the Bad, of Navarre, who had
pretended to espouse their cause, betrayed it; the king declared the
decisions of the States-General null and void; and the crafty management
of his son prevented any union between the malcontents. The gentry
rallied, and put down the Jacquerie with horrible cruelty and revenge.
The burghers of Paris found that Charles the Bad only wanted to gain the
throne, and Marcel would have proclaimed him; but those who thought him
even worse than his cousins of Valois admitted the other Charles, by
whom Marcel and his partisans were put to death. The attempt at reform
thus ended in talk and murder, and all fell back into the same state of
misery and oppression.
4. The Peace of Bretigny.--This Charles, eldest son of John, obtained
by purchase the imperial fief of Vienne, of which the counts had always
been called Dauphins, a title thenceforth borne by the heir apparent of
the kingdom. His father's captivity and the submission of Paris left
him master of the realm; but he did little to defend it when Edward III.
again attacked it, and in 1360 he was forced to bow to the terms which
the English king demanded as the price of peace. The Peace of Bretigny
permitted King John to ransom himself, but resigned to England the
sovereignty over the duchy of Aquitaine, and left Calais and Ponthieu in
the hands of Edward III. John died in 1364, before his ransom was paid,
and his son mounted the throne as _Charles V_. Charles showed himself
from this time a wary, able man, and did much to regain what had been
lost by craftily watching his opportunity. The war went on between the
allies of each party, though the French and English kings professed to
be at peace; and at the battle of Cocherel, in 1364, Charles the Bad was
defeated, and forced to make peace with France. On the other hand, the
French party in Brittany, led by Charles de Blois and the gallant Breton
knight, Bertrand du Guesclin, were routed, the same year, by the English
party under Sir John Chandos; Charles de Blois was killed, and the house
of Montfort established in the duchy. These years of war had created a
dreadful class of men, namely, hired soldiers of all nations, who, under
some noted leader, sold their services to whatever prince might need
them, under the name of Free Companies, and when unemployed lived by
plunder. The peace had only let these wretches loose on the peasants.
Some had seized castles, whence they could plunder travellers; others
roamed the country, preying on the miserable peasants, who, fleeced as
they were by king, barons, and clergy, were tortured and murdered by
these ruffians, so that many lived in holes in the ground that their
dwellings might not attract attention. Bertrand du Guesclin offered the
king to relieve the country from these Free Companies by leading them to
assist the Castilians against their tyrannical king, Peter the Cruel.
Edward, the Black Prince, who was then acting as Governor of Aquitaine,
took, however, the part of Peter, and defeated Du Guesclin at the battle
of Navarete, on the Ebro, in 1367.
5. Renewal of the War.--This expedition ruined the prince's health,
and exhausted his treasury. A hearth-tax was laid on the inhabitants of
Aquitaine, and they appealed against it to the King of France, although,
by the Peace of Bretigny, he had given up all right to hear appeals as
suzerain. The treaty, however, was still not formally settled, and on
this ground Charles received their complaint. The war thus began again,
and the sword of the Constable of France--the highest military dignity
of the realm--was given to Du Guesclin, but only on condition that he
would avoid pitched battles, and merely harass the English and take
their castles. This policy was so strictly followed, that the Duke of
Lancaster was allowed to march from Brittany to Gascony without meeting
an enemy in the field; and when King Edward III. made his sixth and last
invasion, nearly to the walls of Paris, he was only turned back by
famine, and by a tremendous thunderstorm, which made him believe that
Heaven was against him. Du Guesclin died while besieging a castle, and
such was his fame that the English captain would place the keys in no
hand but that of his corpse. The Constable's sword was given to Oliver
de Clisson, also a Breton, and called the "Butcher," because he gave no
quarter to the English in revenge for the death of his brother. The
Bretons were, almost to a man, of the French party, having been offended
by the insolence and oppression of the English; and John de Montfort,
after clinging to the King of England as long as possible, was forced to
make his peace at length with Charles. Charles V. had nearly regained
all that had been lost, when, in 1380 his death left the kingdom to his
son.
6. House of Burgundy.--_Charles VI._ was a boy of nine years old,
motherless, and beset with ambitious uncles. These uncles were Louis,
Duke of Anjou, to whom Queen Joanna, the last of the earlier Angevin
line in Naples, bequeathed her rights; John, Duke of Berry, a weak
time-server; and Philip, the ablest and most honest of the three. His
grandmother Joan, the wife of Philip VI., had been heiress of the duchy
and county of Burgundy, and these now became his inheritance, giving him
the richest part of France. By still better fortune he had married
Margaret, the only child of Louis, Count of Flanders. Flanders contained
the great cloth-manufacturing towns of Europe--Ghent, Bruges, Ypres,
etc., all wealthy and independent, and much inclined to close alliance
with England, whence they obtained their wool, while their counts were
equally devoted to France. Just as Count Louis II. had, for his lawless
rapacity, been driven out of Ghent by Jacob van Arteveldt, so his son,
Louis III., was expelled by Philip van Arteveldt, son to Jacob. Charles
had been disgusted by Louis's coarse violence, and would not help him;
but after the old king's death, Philip of Burgundy used his influence in
the council to conduct the whole power of France to Flanders, where
Arteveldt was defeated and trodden to death in the battle of Rosbecque,
in 1382. On the count's death, Philip succeeded him as Count of Flanders
in right of his wife; and thus was laid the foundation of the powerful
and wealthy house of Burgundy, which for four generations almost
overshadowed the crown of France.
7. Insanity of Charles VI.--The Constable, Clisson, was much hated by
the Duke of Brittany, and an attack which was made on him in the
streets of Paris was clearly traced to Montfort. The young king, who was
much attached to Clisson, set forth to exact punishment. On his way, a
madman rushed out of a forest and called out, "King, you are betrayed!"
Charles was much frightened, and further seems to have had a sunstroke,
for he at once became insane. He recovered for a time; but at Christmas,
while he and five others were dancing, disguised as wild men, their
garments of pitched flax caught fire. Four were burnt, and the shock
brought back the king's madness. He became subject to fits of insanity
of longer or shorter duration, and in their intervals he seems to have
been almost imbecile. No provision had then been made for the
contingency of a mad king. The condition of the country became worse
than ever, and power was grasped at by whoever could obtain it. Of the
king's three uncles, the Duke of Anjou and his sons were generally
engrossed by a vain struggle to obtain Naples; the Duke of Berry was
dull and weak; and the chief struggle for influence was between Philip
of Burgundy and his son, John the Fearless, on the one hand, and on the
other the king's wife, Isabel of Bavaria, and his brother Louis, Duke of
Orleans, who was suspected of being her lover; while the unhappy king
and his little children were left in a wretched state, often scarcely
provided with clothes or food.
8. Burgundians and Armagnacs.--Matters grew worse after the death of
Duke Philip in 1404; and in 1407, just after a seeming reconciliation,
the Duke of Orleans was murdered in the streets of Paris by servants of
John the Fearless. Louis of Orleans had been a vain, foolish man,
heedless of all save his own pleasure, but his death increased the
misery of France through the long and deadly struggle for vengeance that
followed. The king was helpless, and the children of the Duke of Orleans
were young; but their cause was taken up by a Gascon noble, Bernard,
Count of Armagnac, whose name the party took. The Duke of Burgundy was
always popular in Paris, where the people, led by the Guild of Butchers,
were so devoted to him that he ventured to have a sermon preached at the
university, justifying the murder. There was again a feeble attempt at
reform made by the burghers; but, as before, the more violent and
lawless were guilty of such excesses that the opposite party were called
in to put them down. The Armagnacs were admitted into Paris, and took a
terrible vengeance on the Butchers and on all adherents of Burgundy, in
the name of the Dauphin Louis, the king's eldest son, a weak, dissipated
youth, who was entirely led by the Count of Armagnac.
9. Invasion of Henry V.--All this time the war with England had
smouldered on, only broken by brief truces; and when France was in this
wretched state Henry V. renewed the claim of Edward III., and in 1415
landed before Harfleur. After delaying till he had taken the city, the
dauphin called together the whole nobility of the kingdom, and advanced
against Henry, who, like Edward III., had been obliged to leave Normandy
and march towards Calais in search of supplies. The armies met at
Agincourt, where, though the French greatly outnumbered the English, the
skill of Henry and the folly and confusion of the dauphin's army led to
a total defeat, and the captivity of half the chief men in France of the
Armagnac party--among them the young Duke of Orleans. It was Henry V.'s
policy to treat France, not as a conquest, but as an inheritance; and he
therefore refused to let these captives be ransomed till he should have
reduced the country to obedience, while he treated all the places that
submitted to him with great kindness. The Duke of Burgundy held aloof
from the contest, and the Armagnacs, who ruled in Paris, were too weak
or too careless to send aid to Rouen, which was taken by Henry after a
long siege. The Dauphin Louis died in 1417; his next brother, John, who
was more inclined to Burgundy, did not survive him a year; and the third
brother, Charles, a mere boy, was in the hands of the Armagnacs. In 1418
their reckless misuse of power provoked the citizens of Paris into
letting in the Burgundians, when an unspeakably horrible massacre took
place. Bernard of Armagnac himself was killed; his naked corpse, scored
with his red cross, was dragged about the streets; and men, women, and
even infants of his party were slaughtered pitilessly. Tanneguy
Duchatel, one of his partisans, carried off the dauphin; but the queen,
weary of Armagnac insolence, had joined the Burgundian party.
10. Treaty of Troyes.--Meanwhile Henry V. continued to advance, and
John of Burgundy felt the need of joining the whole strength of France
against him, and made overtures to the dauphin. Duchatel, either fearing
to be overshadowed by his power, or else in revenge for Orleans and
Armagnac, no sooner saw that a reconciliation was likely to take place,
than he murdered John the Fearless before the dauphin's eyes, at a
conference on the bridge of Montereau-sur-Yonne (1419). John's wound was
said to be the hole which let the English into France. His son Philip,
the new Duke of Burgundy, viewing the dauphin as guilty of his death,
went over with all his forces to Henry V., taking with him the queen and
the poor helpless king. At the treaty of Troyes, in 1420, Henry was
declared regent, and heir of the kingdom, at the same time as he
received the hand of Catherine, daughter of Charles VI. This gave him
Paris and all the chief cities in northern France; but the Armagnacs
held the south, with the Dauphin Charles at their head. Charles was
declared an outlaw by his father's court, but he was in truth the leader
of what had become the national and patriotic cause. During this time,
after a long struggle and schism, the Pope again returned to Rome.
11. The Maid of Orleans.--When Henry V. died in 1422, and the unhappy
Charles a few weeks later, the infant Henry VI. was proclaimed King of
France as well as of England, at both Paris and London, while _Charles
VII._ was only proclaimed at Bourges, and a few other places in the
south. Charles was of a slow, sluggish nature, and the men around him
were selfish and pleasure-loving intriguers, who kept aloof all the
bolder spirits from him. The brother of Henry V., John, Duke of Bedford,
ruled all the country north of the Loire, with Rouen as his
head-quarters. For seven years little was done; but in 1429 he caused
Orleans to be besieged. The city held out bravely, all France looked on
anxiously, and a young peasant girl, named Joan d'Arc, believed herself
called by voices from the saints to rescue the city, and lead the king
to his coronation at Rheims. With difficulty she obtained a hearing of
the king, and was allowed to proceed to Orleans. Leading the army with a
consecrated sword, which she never stained with blood, she filled the
French with confidence, the English with fear as of a witch, and thus
she gained the day wherever she appeared. Orleans was saved, and she
then conducted Charles VII. to Rheims, and stood beside his throne when
he was crowned. Then she said her work was done, and would have returned
home; but, though the wretched king and his court never appreciated her,
they thought her useful with the soldiers, and would not let her leave
them. She had lost her heart and hope, and the men began to be angered
at her for putting down all vice and foul language. The captains were
envious of her; and at last, when she had led a sally out of the
besieged town of Compiègne, the gates were shut, and she was made
prisoner by a Burgundian, John of Luxembourg. The Burgundians hated her
even more than the English. The inquisitor was of their party, and a
court was held at Rouen, which condemned her to die as a witch. Bedford
consented, but left the city before the execution. Her own king made no
effort to save her, though, many years later, he caused enquiries to be
made, established her innocence, ennobled her family, and freed her
village from taxation.
12. Recovery of France (1434--1450).--But though Joan was gone, her
work lasted. The Constable, Artur of Richmond, the Count of Dunois, and
other brave leaders, continued to attack the English. After seventeen
years' vengeance for his father's death, the Duke of Burgundy made his
peace with Charles by a treaty at Arras, on condition of paying no more
homage, in 1434. Bedford died soon after, and there were nothing but
disputes among the English. Paris opened its gates to the king, and
Charles, almost in spite of himself, was restored. An able merchant,
named Jacques Cœur, lent him money which equipped his men for the
recovery of Normandy, and he himself, waking into activity, took Rouen
and the other cities on the coast.
13. Conquest of Aquitaine (1450).--By these successes Charles had
recovered all, save Calais, that Henry V. or Edward III. had taken from
France. But he was now able to do more. The one province of the south
which the French kings had never been able to win was Guienne, the duchy
on the river Garonne. Guienne had been a part of Eleanor's inheritance,
and passed through her to the English kings; but though they had lost
all else, the hatred of its inhabitants to the French enabled them to
retain this, and Guienne had never yet passed under French rule. It was
wrested, however, from Eleanor's descendants in this flood-tide of
conquest. Bordeaux held out as long as it could, but Henry VI. could
send no aid, and it was forced to yield. Two years later, brave old Lord
Talbot led 5000 men to recover the duchy, and was gladly welcomed; but
he was slain in the battle of Castillon, fighting like a lion. His two
sons fell beside him, and his army was broken. Bordeaux again
surrendered, and the French kings at last found themselves master of the
great fief of the south. Calais was, at the close of the great Hundred
Years' War, the only possession left to England south of the Channel.
14. The Standing Army (1452).--As at the end of the first act in the
Hundred Years' War, the great difficulty in time of peace was the
presence of the bands of free companions, or mercenary soldiers, who,
when war and plunder failed them, lived by violence and robbery of the
peasants. Charles VII., who had awakened into vigour, thereupon took
into regular pay all who would submit to discipline, and the rest were
led off on two futile expeditions into Switzerland and Germany, and
there left to their fate. The princes and nobles were at first so much
disgusted at the regulations which bound the soldiery to respect the
magistracy, that they raised a rebellion, which was fostered by the
Dauphin Louis, who was ready to do anything that could annoy his father.
But he was soon detached from them; the Duke of Burgundy would not
assist them, and the league fell to pieces. Charles VII. by thus
retaining companies of hired troops in his pay laid the foundation of
the first standing army in Europe, and enabled the monarchy to tread
down the feudal force of the nobles. His government was firm and wise;
and with his reign began better times for France. But it was long before
it recovered from the miseries of the long strife. The war had kept back
much of progress. There had been grievous havoc of buildings in the
north and centre of France; much lawlessness and cruelty prevailed; and
yet there was a certain advance in learning, and much love of romance
and the theory of chivalry. Pages of noble birth were bred up in castles
to be first squires and then knights. There was immense formality and
stateliness, the order of precedence was most minute, and pomp and
display were wonderful. Strange alternations took place. One month the
streets of Paris would be a scene of horrible famine, where hungry dogs,
and even wolves, put an end to the miseries of starving, homeless
children of slaughtered parents; another, the people would be gazing at
royal banquets, lasting a whole day, with allegorical "subtleties" of
jelly on the table, and pageants coming between the courses, where all
the Virtues harangued in turn, or where knights delivered maidens from
giants and "salvage men." In the south there was less misery and more
progress. Jacques Cœur's house at Bourges is still a marvel of household
architecture; and René, Duke of Anjou and Count of Provence, was an
excellent painter on glass, and also a poet.