THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR FROM THE TREATY OF CALAIS TO THE TRUCE OF
BRUGES.
It was an easier matter to conclude the treaty of Calais than to carry
it out. Troubles followed the release of the French king and the
expiration of the year during which the two parties were to yield up
the ceded territory and effect the renunciations of their respective
claims. John did his best to keep faith in both these matters. He
ordered his vassals to submit themselves to their new lord, and
appointed commissioners to hand over the lost provinces to the agents
of the English king. In July, 1361, Sir John Chandos, Edward's
lieutenant in France, received the special mission of taking possession
of the new acquisitions in the name of his master. Chandos' reputation
as a soldier made him acceptable to the French, and being recognised by
the treaty as lord of Saint-Sauveur in the Côtentin, he was interested
in maintaining good relations between the two realms. He began his work
by taking possession of Poitiers and Poitou, but found that many of the
descendants of the greedy lords, who, more than a hundred years before,
had played off Henry III against St. Louis, abandoned the rule of John
with undisguised reluctance. It was worse with the towns, where
national sentiment was stronger. La Rochelle held out for months, and,
when its notables at last submitted, they declared: "We will accept the
English with our lips but never with our hearts". Much patriotic
feeling was manifested in Quercy. The consuls of Cahors made their
submission, weeping and groaning. "Alas!" they declared, "how odious it
is to lose our natural lord, and to pass over to a master we know not.
But it is not we who abandon the King of France. It is he who, against
our wishes, hands us over, like orphans, to the hands of the stranger."
It was not until two years after the signing of the treaty that Edward
entered into possession of the bulk of the lands granted to him. Even
then there were districts in Poitou, notably Belleville, which never
became English at all. One of the last districts to yield was Rouergue,
whose count, John of Armagnac, only made his submission under the
compulsion of irresistible necessity.
It was even more difficult to get the English out of the lands which
the treaty had assigned to the French. These districts were largely
held by companies of mercenaries, little under Edward's control and
indisposed to yield up the conquests won by their own hands because
their nominal lord had thought fit to make a treaty with the French
king. Despite the orders of Edward, the English garrisons in the north
and centre of France flatly refused to surrender their strongholds. In
Maine, Hugh Calveley took Bertrand du Guesclin prisoner when he sought
to receive the submission of his castles, and only released him on
payment of a heavy ransom. In Normandy, Du Guesclin had to buy off
James Pipe, who dominated all the central district from the fortified
abbey of Cormeilles, and to crush John Jowel in a pitched battle near
Lisieux. Even when the castles were surrendered, the garrisons joined
with each other to establish societies of warriors that now inflicted
terrible woes on France. The exploits of these free companies hardly
belong to English history, though many of their leaders and a large
proportion of the rank and file were Englishmen. Cruel, fierce, and
uncouth, they still preserved in all military dealings the strict
discipline which had taught the English armies the way to victory. The
combination of the order of a settled host with the rapacity of a gang
of freebooters made them as irresistible as they were destructive.
Though Edward formally repudiated them, it was more than suspected that
they were secretly playing his game.
Before long, this guerilla warfare became consolidated into military
operations on a large scale. Charles of Navarre once more profited by
the disorder of France to bring himself to the front. In 1361 John had
availed himself of the death of Philip of Rouvres to treat the duchy of
Burgundy as a lapsed fief, and conferred it on his youngest son, Philip
the Bold. Charles then claimed to be the heir of Burgundy, and while he
personally directed the forces of disorder in the south, his agents
united with the English _condottieri_ in Normandy. John Jowel still
held tight to his Norman conquests, and was, by Edward's direction,
fighting openly for Charles of Navarre. The Captal de Buch, the hero of
Poitiers, hurried from Gascony to protect the Navarrese lands from the
invasion of Bertrand du Guesclin. On May 16, 1364, the little armies of
the Captal and the Breton partisan met at Cocherel on the Eure, where
Du Guesclin cleverly won the first important victory gained by the
French in the open field during the whole course of the war. The Captal
was taken prisoner, and the establishment of Du Guesclin in some of
Charles of Navarre's Norman fiefs deprived the intriguer of his
opportunities to do mischief in the north. Charles of Navarre's career
was not yet over; but henceforth his chief field was his southern
kingdom.
The victorious Du Guesclin turned his attention to his native Brittany,
where the war of Blois and Montfort still went on, for Joan of
Penthièvre insisted so strongly upon her rights that the efforts of
Edward and John to end the contest had been without result. In 1362
John de Montfort was at last entrusted with the government of Brittany,
and Du Guesclin quitted the service of France for that of Charles of
Blois, that the treaty of 1360 might remain unbroken. But as in the
early wars, the army of Blois was mainly French, and the host of
Montfort was commanded by the Englishman, John Chandos, and largely
consisted of English men-at-arms and archers. Calveley, Knowles, and
the Breton Oliver de Clisson were among the captains of Duke John's
forces.
The decisive engagement took place on September 29, 1364, on the
plateau, north of Auray, which is still marked by the church of St.
Michael, erected as a thank-offering by the victor. It was another
Poitiers on a small scale. The Anglo-Breton army held a good defensive
position, facing northwards, with its back on the town of Auray. The
troops of Charles of Blois and Du Guesclin advanced to attack them with
more ardour than discipline or skill. Both sides fought on foot. The
French knights had at last learnt to meet the storm of English arrows
by strengthening their armour and by protecting themselves by large
shields. Thus, as at Poitiers, they had little difficulty in making
their way up to the enemy's ranks. But their order was confused, and
they thought of nothing but the fierce delights of the _mêlée_. The
Montfort party showed more intelligence, and Chandos, like the captal
at Poitiers, fell suddenly upon the flank of one of the enemy's
divisions. This settled the fight; Charles of Blois was slain, Du
Guesclin taken prisoner, and their army utterly scattered. Auray ended
the war of the Breton succession. Even Joan of Penthièvre was at last
willing to treat. In 1365 the treaty of Guérande was signed, by which.
Montfort was recognised as John IV. of Brittany, and did homage to the
French crown. Joan was consoled by remaining in possession of the
county of Penthièvre and the viscounty of Limoges. Practically her
defeat was an English victory, and Montfort remained in his duchy so
long only as English influence prevailed. A second step towards the
pacification of the north was made when the troubles in Brittany were
ended within a few months of the destruction of the power of Charles
the Bad in Normandy.
The free companies lost their chief hunting-grounds; and a further
relief came when some of them, like the White Company, found a better
market for their swords in Italy. With all their faults, the companies
opened out a career to talent such as had seldom been found before. John
Hawkwood, the leader of the White Company, was an Essex man of the
smaller landed class. He had played but a subordinate figure beside
Knowles, Calveley, Pipe, and Jowel; but in Italy he won for himself the
name of the greatest strategist of his age. Thus, though at the cost of
murder and pillage, the English made themselves talked about all over
the western world. "In my youth," wrote Petrarch, "the Britons, whom we
call Angles or English, had the reputation of being the most timid of
the barbarians. Now they are the most warlike of peoples. They have
overturned the ancient military glory of the French by a series of
victories so numerous and unexpected that those, who were not long since
inferior to the wretched Scots, have so crushed by fire and sword the
whole realm that, on a recent journey, I could hardly persuade myself
that it was the France that I had seen in former years."[1]
[1] _Epistolæ Familiares_, iii., Ep. 14, p. 162, ed.
Fracassetti.
It was to little purpose that King John laboured to redeem his plighted
word and make France what it had been before the war. Though in
November, 1361, neither he nor Edward sent commissioners to Bruges,
where, according to the treaty of Calais, the charters of renunciation
were to be exchanged, John offered in 1362 to carry out his promise.
Edward, however, for reasons of his own, made no response to his
advances. The result was that the renunciations were never made, and so
the essential condition of the original settlement remained
unfulfilled. The matter passed almost unnoticed at the time as a mere
formality, but in later years Edward's lack of faith brought its own
punishment in giving the French king a plausible excuse for still
claiming suzerainty over the ceded provinces. Perhaps Edward still
cherished the ambition of resuscitating his pretensions to the French
crown. He found it as hard to give up a claim as ever his grandfather
had done.
John's good faith was conspicuously evinced by the efforts he made to
raise the instalments of his ransom. His payments were in arrears: some
of the hostages left in free custody by Edward's generosity broke their
parole and escaped; and among them was his own son, Louis, Duke of
Anjou. The father felt it his duty to step into the place thus left
vacant. In 1363 he returned to his English prison, where he died in
1364, surrounded with every courtesy and attention that Edward could
lavish upon him. During the last months of his life, England received
visits from two other kings, David of Scotland and the Lusignan lord of
Cyprus, who still called himself King of Jerusalem, and was wandering
through the courts of Europe to stir up interest in the projected
crusade.
Charles of Normandy then became Charles V. He was no knight-errant like
his father, and his diplomatic gifts, tact, and patience made him much
better fitted than John for outwitting his English enemies and for
restoring order to France. Slowly but surely he grappled with the
companies, and at last an opening was found for their skill in the
civil war which broke out in Castile. Peter the Cruel, since 1350 King
of Castile, had made himself odious to many of his subjects. At last
his bastard brother, Henry of Trastamara, rose in revolt against him.
Peter, however, was capable and energetic, and not without support from
certain sections of the Castilians. Moreover, he was friendly with
Charles of Navarre, and allied with Edward III. On the other hand Henry
found powerful backing from the King of Aragon, and made an appeal to
the King of France. This gave Charles V. the chance he wanted. He hated
Peter, who was reputed to have murdered his own wife, Blanche of
Bourbon sister of the Queen of France, and in 1365 he agreed to give
Henry assistance. Du Guesclin welded the scattered companies into an
army and led them against the Spanish king. The pope fell in with the
scheme as an indirect way of realising his crusading ambition. When
Henry had become King of Castile, the companies would go on to attack
the Moors of Granada. English and French mercenaries flocked gladly
together under Du Guesclin's banner. Edward in vain ordered his
subjects not to take part in an invasion of the lands of his friend and
cousin, Peter of Castile. Though Chandos declined at the last moment to
follow Du Guesclin into the peninsula, Sir Hugh Calveley would not
desist from the quest of fresh adventure, even at the orders of his
lord. Professional and knightly feeling bound Calveley to Du Guesclin
more closely than their difference of nationality separated them, so
that Calveley took his part in the Castilian campaign with perfect
loyally to his ancient enemy. In December, 1365, Du Guesclin and his
followers made their way through Roussillon and Aragon into Castile.
The spring of 1366 saw Peter a fugitive in Aquitaine, and Henry of
Trastamara crowned Henry II. of Castile. Most of the companies then
went home, though Du Guesclin and Calveley remained to support the new
king's throne.
The deposed tyrant went to Bordeaux, where since 1363 the Black Prince
had been resident as Prince of Aquitaine; for in 1362 Edward had erected
his new possessions into a principality and conferred it on his eldest
son, in the hope of conciliating the Gascons by some pretence of
restoring their independence. At Bordeaux Peter persuaded the prince to
restore him to his throne by force. Edward also agreed to support Peter,
and sent his third son, John of Gaunt, to march through Brittany and
Poitou with a powerful English reinforcement to his brother's resources,
while the lord of Aquitaine assembled the whole, strength of his new
principality for the expedition. At the bidding of his lord, Calveley
cheerfully abandoned Du Guesclin, and thenceforth fought as courageously
on the one side as he had previously done on the other. Charles of
Navarre professed great desire to help forward the invaders, and his
offers of friendship opened up to the prince the easiest way into Spain
by way of the pass of Roncesvalles from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to
Pamplona, the capital of Navarre. In February, 1367, the prince's army
made its way in frost and snow through the valleys famous in romance.
From Pamplona two roads diverged to Burgos, the ancient Castilian
capital. The easier way ran south-westwards through Navarrese territory
to the Ebro at Logroño, where beyond the river lay the Castilian
frontier. The more difficult route went westwards through rugged
mountains and high valleys by way of Salvatierra and Vitoria to a
passage over the upper Ebro at Miranda. The Black Prince chose the
latter route, and reached Vitoria in safely. Beyond the town King
Henry's army held a position so strong that Edward found it impossible
to dislodge him.
The winter weather still held the upland valleys in its grip when March
was far advanced. Men and horses suffered terribly from cold and
hunger, and the prince, seeing that he could not long maintain his
position, boldly resolved to transfer himself to the southern route. A
flank march over snow-clad sierras brought him to the vale of the Ebro,
and, crossing the stream at Logroño, he took up his position a few
miles south-west of that town, near the Castilian village of Navarrete.
On the prince's change of front King Henry also moved southward,
crossing the Ebro a few miles above Logroño, and then advanced to
Nájera, a village about six miles west of Navarrete, where he once more
blocked the English path. The prince, however, had the advantage of
position and could afford to wait until the Castilians attacked. On
April 3 Henry advanced over the little river Najarilla against the
enemy. The Spanish host fought after a different fashion from that
practised by both sides in the French wars. Only Du Guesclin and the
small remnant of the companies which still abode in Spain dismounted.
The mass of the Castilians remained on their horses. Their cavalry was
of two sorts: besides a large number of men-at-arms bestriding armoured
steeds, there were swarms of light horsemen, unencumbered by heavy
armour and called _genitours_, from being mounted on the fleet Spanish
steeds called jennets. The desperate valour of Du Guesclin and his
followers could not prevent utter disaster. Henry fled in panic from
the scene; Du Guesclin was again a prisoner, and the Najarilla was
reddened by the blood of the thousands of fugitive Spaniards, for,
caught as in a trap at the narrow bridge which offered the _sole_ means
of retreat, they were massacred without difficulty by the prince's
troops. The victors marched on to Burgos, and, Don Henry having fled to
France, Peter was restored with little further trouble to the Castilian
throne.
The Black Prince remained in Castile all through the summer, waiting
for the rewards which Don Peter had promised him. His army melted away
through fever and dysentery, and the prince himself contracted the
beginnings of a mortal disorder. Thus the crowning victory of his
career was the last of his triumphs. Like many other leaders of
chivalry, he had not understood the limitations of his resources, and
had dissipated on this bootless Spanish campaign means scarcely
sufficient to grapple with the spirit of disaffection already
undermining his power in Aquitaine. With shattered health and the mere
skeleton of his gallant army, he made his way back over the Pyrenees.
Henceforth misfortune dogged every step of his career.
Since 1363 the constant residence of the Black Prince and his wife, Joan
of Kent, in Gascony, had been broken only by his Castilian expedition.
It was a wise policy to send the prince to hold a permanent court in
Aquitaine, such as the land had never seen since Richard Coeur de Lion.
All that affability, magnificence, and chivalry could do to make his
domination attractive might be confidently anticipated from so brilliant
and high-minded a knight as the prince of Aquitaine. The court of
Bordeaux was as brilliant as the court of Windsor. "Never," boasted the
Chandos Herald,[1] "was such good entertainment as his; for every day at
his table he had more than four-score knights and four times as many
squires. There was found all nobleness, merriment, freedom, and honour.
His subjects loved him, for he did them much good." The sulky magnates
of the south-west, such as John of Armagnac and Gaston Phoebus of Foix,
found their bitterness tempered by the prince's courtesy, while the
boastful knights of Gascony looked forward to a career of honourable
service under the descendant of their ancient dukes. Feastings and
tournaments were not enough to win all his subjects' hearts; and the
Black Prince strove with some energy to show that he was a ruler of men
as well as the centre of a court. It is to his credit that he cleared
his inheritance from the free companies, so that Poitou and Limousin
enjoyed far more prosperity and tranquillity than in the days of French
ascendency. Such new taxation as Gascon custom allowed was only levied
after grants from the three estates. Great pains were taken to improve
the administration, the judicial system, and the coinage. Edward saw
that his best policy was to rely upon the people of Gascony, and to look
with suspicion on the great lords. But he did not understand how limited
was the authority which tradition gave to the dukes of Aquitaine, and he
was too stiff, too pedantic, too insular, to get on really cordial terms
with his subjects. He never, like Gaston Phoebus or Richard Coeur de
Lion, threw himself into the local life, language, and traditions of the
country.
[1] _Le Prince Noir, poème du héraut d'Armes Chandos_, pp.
107-108, ed. F. Michel.
The Black Prince's greatest successes were with the towns, and
especially with those which had been continuously subject to English
rule. The citizens of Bordeaux, who had feared lest Edward's claim to
the French crown should involve them in more complete subjection, were
appeased by promises that they should in any case remain subject to the
English monarchy. Their liberties were increased and their wine trade
was fostered, even to the loss of English merchants. The other towns
were equally contented. Edward relied upon them as a counterpoise to
the feudal lords, and their liberties exempted them from the
extraordinary taxes by which he strove to restore the equilibrium of
his finances. The half-independent magnates were soon convinced that
their chivalrous lord was no friend of aristocratic privilege. Edward,
even when using their services in war, carefully excluded them from the
administration. They saw with disgust the chief offices monopolised by
Englishmen. An English bishop, John Harewell of Bath, was Edward's
chancellor and confidential adviser. An English knight, Thomas Felton,
was seneschal of Aquitaine and head of the administration. The
constableship was assigned to Chandos. The seneschalships of the
several provinces were mainly in English hands. With English notions of
the rights of the supreme power, the prince paid little attention to
the franchises of either lord or prelate. He mortally offended John of
Armagnac by requiring a direct oath of fealty from the Bishop of Rodez,
who held all his lands of Armagnac as Count of Rouergue. Clerks of
lesser degree were outraged by the prince's attempts to hinder students
from attending the university of Toulouse.
The Spanish expedition immensely increased the Black Prince's
difficulties. He exhausted his finances to equip his army, and both on
their coming and going his soldiers cruelly pillaged the country.
Edward now dismissed most of his troops and urged them to betake
themselves to France. In January, 1368, he obtained from the estates of
Aquitaine a new hearth tax of ten _sous_ a hearth for five years. The
tax was freely voted and collected from the great majority of the
payers without trouble. The towns were mainly exempt from it by reason
of their liberties; and the lesser lords were as yet not averse from
English rule. But the greater feudatories saw in the new hearth-tax a
pretext for revolt. They had no special zeal for the French monarchy,
but the house of Valois was weak and far removed from their
territories. Their great concern was the preservation of their
independence, which seemed more threatened by a resident prince than by
a distant overlord at Paris. Even before the imposition of the
hearth-tax, the Count of Armagnac entered into a secret treaty with
Charles V., who promised to increase his territories and respect his
franchises, if he would return to the French allegiance. The lord of
Albret married a sister of the French queen and followed Armagnac's
lead. A little later the Counts of Périgord and Comminges and other
lords associated themselves with this policy. Thus the rule of the
Black Prince in Aquitaine, acquiesced in by the mass of the people, was
threatened by a feudal revolt. Armagnac appealed to the parliament of
Paris against the hearth-tax. Charles V. accepted the appeal on the
ground of the non-exchange of the renunciations which should have
followed the treaty of Calais. Cited before the parliament in January,
1369, the Black Prince replied that he would go to Paris with helmet on
head and with sixty thousand men at his back. His father once more
assumed the title of King of France, and war broke out again.
The relative positions of France and England were different from what
they had been nine years before. Edward III. was sinking into an
unhonoured old age, and the Prince of Aquitaine suffered from dropsy,
and was incapable of taking the field. Of their former comrades some,
like Walter Manny, were dead, and others too old for much more
fighting. On the other side was Charles V., who had tamed Navarre and
the feudal lords, had cleared the realm of the companies, had put down
faction and disorder, and had made himself the head of a strong
national party, resolved to effect the expulsion of the foreigner. His
chief military counsellors were Du Guesclin, and Du Guesclin's old
adversary in the Breton wars, Oliver de Clisson, now the zealous
servant of the king. A wonderful outburst of French patriotism
facilitated the reconquest of the lands that had passed to English rule
nine years before. Even the tradition of military superiority availed
little against commanders who were learning by their defeats how to
meet their once invincible enemies.
There was a like modification in the foreign alliances of the two
kingdoms. Dynastic changes in the Netherlands had robbed Edward of
supporters who, though costly and ineffective, had been imposing in
outward appearance. Even after the dissolution of the alliances of the
early years of the war, the temporising policy of Louis de Male at
least neutralised the influence of Flanders. During the peace both
Edward and Charles did their best to win the goodwill of the Flemish
count. Louis' relation to the two rivals was the more important since
his only child was a daughter named Margaret. In 1356, this lady, to
Edward's great disgust, was promised in marriage to Philip de Rouvre,
Duke and Count of Burgundy, and Count of Artois. The death of Philip in
1361 saved Edward from the danger of a great state with one arm in the
Burgundies and the other in Flanders and Artois; and the irritation of
Louis de Male at Charles V.'s grant of the Burgundian duchy to his
youngest son, Philip the Bold, gave the English king a new chance of
winning his favour. At last, in 1364, Edward concluded a treaty with
Flanders according to his dearest wishes. Edmund of Langley, Earl of
Cambridge, his youngest son, was betrothed to the widowed Margaret,
with Ponthieu, Guînes, and Calais as their appanage. Great as were
Edward's sacrifices, they were worth making if a permanent union could
be established between England and Flanders, equally threatening to
France and to the lords of the Netherlands. Charles persuaded Urban V.
to refuse the necessary dispensations for the marriage. Edward and
Louis, irritated at the success of this countermove, waited patiently
and renewed their alliance.
No sooner was his understanding with Armagnac completed than Charles
strove to secure the support of northern as well as of southern
feudalism against Edward. He offered his brother, Philip of Burgundy,
to Margaret, along with the restoration of the districts of French
Flanders, which he still held. In June, 1369, the marriage took place.
Edmund of Cambridge lost his last chance of the great heiress, and
Charles V. bought off the enmity of the Count of Flanders at the price
of that union of Burgundy and Flanders which, in the next century, was
to make the descendants of Philip and Margaret the most formidable
opponents of the French monarchy. For the moment, however, Charles
gained little. Flemish ships, indeed, fought against the English at
sea, notably in Bourgneuf Bay in 1371, but next year Louis made peace
with them. Despite his daughter's marriage, the Count of Flanders still
showed that his sympathies were with England. The other princes of the
Netherlands were much more decidedly on the French side than the Count
of Flanders. Margaret of Hainault, Queen Philippa's sister, had, after
the death of her husband the Emperor Louis of Bavaria, in 1347 fought
with her son William for the possession of her three counties of
Hainault, Holland, and Zealand, to which Philippa also had pretensions,
naturally upheld by her husband. William obtained such advantages over
his mother that Margaret was obliged to invoke the assistance of her
brother-in-law. Eager to regain his influence in the Netherlands,
Edward willingly agreed to be arbiter between Margaret and her son, and
at his suggestion the disputed lands were divided between them. William
was married to Maud of Lancaster, Duke Henry's elder daughter, and thus
secured to the English alliance. On Margaret's death William inherited
all the three counties: but Maud died, and William became insane,
whereupon his brother and heir invoked the support of the Emperor
Charles IV., and was duly established in his fiefs. The claims of
Philippa were ignored, and the Lancaster marriage with the lord of
Holland, like the projected union of Edmund with the heiress of
Flanders, failed to fulfil Edward's hopes.
Meanwhile Edward had to face the constant hostility of the emperor.
Wenceslaus of Luxemburg, brother of Charles IV., had married the
daughter and heiress of John III of Brabant, with the result of solidly
establishing the house of Luxemburg in the strongest of the duchies of
the Low Countries. With the Luxemburger as with the Bavarian, Edward's
relations were unfriendly. Two only of the Low German lords, the dukes
of Gelderland and Jülich, were willing to take his pay. Early in the
war they were assailed by the Luxemburgers, and the contest occupied
all their energies. Thus Edward re-entered the struggle against France
with no help save that of his own subjects. Urban V. died at Avignon in
1370, and his successor, Gregory XI., was as little friendly to English
claims in France as his predecessors had been. Pope, emperor, and the
Netherlandish princes, were all either French or neutral. And in 1369
Peter of Castile lost his throne, and soon afterwards perished at his
brother's hands. Henry of Trastamara, henceforth King of Castile,
became the firm ally of the French, who had already the support of
Aragon. Even Charles the Bad thought it prudent to declare for France.
At each stage of the war the French took the initiative. The appeal of
the southern nobles was the beginning of a national movement which,
before March, 1369, was supported by more than 900 towns, castles, and
fortified places in Edward's allegiance. In April the French invaded
Ponthieu and were welcomed as deliverers at Abbeville and the other
towns of the county. John of Gaunt led an army during the summer from
Calais southwards. He marched through Ponthieu, crossed the Somme at
Blanchetaque, and ravaged the country up to the Seine. Then he retired
exhausted, having gained no real advantage by this mere foray. Charles
announced that, as Edward had supported the free companies, he fell
under the excommunication threatened by the pope against the abettors
of these pests of society, and that the vassals of the English crown
were therefore relieved from allegiance to him. Soon afterwards he
declared that Edward had forfeited all his possessions in France.
Quercy and Rouergue, which had submitted last, were the first districts
of Aquitaine to revolt. Cahors declared for France as soon as the Black
Prince was cited to Paris. By the end of 1369 all Quercy had
acknowledged Charles V., and John of Armagnac ruled Rouergue as his
vassal. It was the same in the Garonne valley, where towns which had no
quarrel with English rule, were swept away by the strong tide of
national feeling that surged round their walls. A systematic attack was
made upon the English power in Aquitaine. Charles V. fitted out new
armies in which the townsmen and the country-folk fought side by side
with the nobility. Two of his brothers, John, Duke of Berri, and Louis,
Duke of Anjou, prepared to assail the intruders, Berri in the central
uplands, Anjou in the Garonne valley. It was not enough to recover what
was lost. Aggression must be met by aggression, and the Duke of
Burgundy, Charles' third brother, equipped a fleet in Norman ports,
either to invade England or at least to cut off the Black Prince from
his base. Portsmouth was burnt, before England had made any effort to
defend her shores.
The English were strangely inactive. The Black Prince lay sick at
Cognac, and of his subordinates Chandos, now seneschal of Poitou, alone
showed vigour. Chandos, finding the lords of Poitou much more loyal to
the English connexion than those of the south, was able to take the
aggressive by invading Anjou. He was, however, soon recalled to protect
Poitou, and on January 1, 1370, was mortally wounded at the bridge of
Lussac. James Audley had already died of disease in another Poitevin
town. While England was losing her best soldiers, Du Guesclin began a
fresh series of raids in the Garonne valley. Soon the banner of the
lilies waved within a few leagues of Bordeaux, and ancient towns of the
English obedience, like Bazas and Bergerac, fell into the enemy's
hands. With the capture of Périgueux, the Limousin was isolated from
Gascon succour. In August the Duke of Berri appeared before the walls
of the _cité,_ or episcopal quarter, of Limoges, and the bishop
promptly handed it over to him.
Disasters at last stirred up the English to action. In 1370 John of
Gaunt was sent with one army to Gascony and Sir Robert Knowles with
another to Calais. The Black Prince, though unable to ride, was eager
to command. It was arranged that while Lancaster led one force from
Bordeaux to Limoges, Edward should accompany another that marched from
Cognac towards the same destination. To resist this combination Du
Guesclin strove to combine the separate armies of the Dukes of Anjou
and Berri. However, he failed to prevent the junction of Lancaster and
Edward, and their advance to Limoges. On September 19, the anniversary
of Poitiers, the city of Limoges opened its gates after a five days'
siege. The English took a terrible revenge. Not a house in the _cité_
was spared, and the cathedral rose over a mass of ruins. The whole
population was put to the sword, the Black Prince in his litter
watching grimly the execution of his orders. A few gentlemen alone were
saved for the sake of their ransoms. Among them was the brother of Pope
Gregory XI., who not unnaturally became a warm friend of the patriotic
party. The sack of Limoges was the last exploit of the Black Prince.
Early in 1371, he returned to England, partly because of his state of
health, and partly because he had no money to pay his soldiers. It is
not unlikely that he was already on bad terms with John of Gaunt, who
had necessarily taken the chief share in the campaign and was nominated
his successor. Too late, efforts were made to conciliate the Gascons;
in 1370 a supreme court was set up at Saintes to save the necessity of
appeals to London which had become as onerous as the ancient frequency
of resort to the parliament of Paris; and the hearth-tax, the
ostensible cause of the rising, was formally renounced.
Sir Robert Knowles's expedition of 1370 was as futile as that of
Lancaster. He advanced from Calais into the heart of northern France.
Taught by long experience the danger of joining battle, the French
allowed him to wander where he would, plundering and ravaging the
country. Roughly following the line of march of Edward III. in 1360,
the English advanced through Artois and Vermandois to Laon and Reims,
and thence southwards through Champagne. Then striking northwards from
the Burgundian border, they appeared, at the end of September, before
the southern suburbs of Paris. To dissipate the alarm felt at the
presence of the English, Du Guesclin was summoned from the south and
made constable of France. Before his arrival Knowles had moved on
westwards 'towards the Beauce, intending to reach his own estates in
Brittany for winter quarters. But his young captains got out of
control. Led by a Gloucestershire knight, Sir John Minsterworth, "ready
in hand but deceitful and perverse in mind," a considerable section of
the troops refused to follow the old "tomb-robber" to Brittany, and
determined to spend the winter where they were, under Minsterworth's
leadership. Knowles would not give place to his subordinate, and made
his way to Brittany with the part of his army which was still faithful
to him. No sooner was he well started than Du Guesclin, after a march
of ninety miles in three days, fell upon his rearguard at Pontvallain
in southern Maine and overwhelmed it on December 4, 1370. Knowles
managed to reach Brittany with the bulk of his forces, and
Minsterworth, the real cause of the disaster, ventured to go to England
and denounce his leader as a traitor. He was forced to flee to France,
where he openly joined the enemy. Seven years later he was captured and
executed.
Minsterworth was not the only traitor. In the earlier part of the war,
there had fought on the English side a grand-nephew of the last
independent Prince of Wales, Sir Owen ap Thomas ap Rhodri,[1] whose
grandfather, Rhodri or Roderick, the youngest brother of the princes
Llewelyn and David, had after the ruin of his house lived obscurely as
a small Cheshire and Gloucestershire landlord. In 1365 Owen was in
France, engaged, no doubt, in one of the free companies, and on his
father's death he returned to defend his inheritance from the claims of
the Charltons of Powys. Having succeeded in this, he returned to
France, and nothing more is heard of him until after the renewal of the
war. In 1370 he appeared as a strenuous partisan of the French. Mindful
of his ancestry he posed as the lawful Prince of Wales, and established
communications with his countrymen, both in France and in Wales.
Anxious to stir up discord in Edward's realm, the French king gladly
upheld his claims. A gallant knight and an impulsive, energetic
partisan, Sir Owen of Wales soon won a place of his own in the history
of his time. In Gwynedd he was celebrated as Owain _Lawgoch,_ Owen of
the Red Hand. Conspiracies in his favour were ruthlessly stamped out,
and a halo of legend and poetry soon encircled his name. In France
Charles entrusted him and another Welshman, named John Wynn, with the
equipment of a fleet at Rouen with which the champion was to descend on
the principality and excite arising. Bad weather caused the complete
destruction of the expedition of the Welsh pretender. Two years later,
however, another fleet was fitted out on his behalf, and in June, 1372,
Owen took possession of Guernsey.
[1] The place of Owen of Wales in history was for the first
time clearly shown by Mr. Edward Owen in _Y Cymmrodor,_
1899-1900, pp. 1-105.
At that time the fortune of war was strongly in favour of France,
though the initial successes of Charles V. were damped by the doubtful
results of the petty struggles which filled the year 1371. During that
year Du Guesclin, the soul of the French attack, ejected the English
from many places in Normandy and Poitou. On the other hand, the English
won the hard fought battle over a Flemish fleet in Bourgneuf Bay, which
has already been mentioned. They also showed some power of recovery in
Aquitaine, where their recapture of Figeac in upper Quercy gave them a
base for renewing their attacks on Rouergue. On the whole then, the
year left matters much as they had been.
The occupation of Guernsey by Owen of Wales was the beginning of a new
series of French victories. Up to that time the northern coastlands of
Aquitaine, lower Poitou, Saintonge, and Angoumois had remained almost
entirely under their English lords. In the hope of resisting attack,
the English projected the invasion of France both from Calais and from
Guienne. To carry out the latter plan John Hastings, Earl of Pembroke,
was despatched with a fleet and army from England, with a commission to
succeed John of Gaunt as the king's lieutenant in Aquitaine. The
Franco-Spanish alliance then began to bear its fruits. Henry of
Trastamara equipped a strong Spanish fleet to meet the invaders in the
Bay of Biscay. On June 23, 1372, the two fleets fought an action off La
Rochelle. The light Spanish galleys out-manoeuvred the heavy English
ships, laden deep in the water with stores and filled with troops and
horses. The Spaniards set on fire some of the English transports, which
became unmanageable owing to the fright of the horses embarked upon
them. The English fought valiantly, and night fell before the battle
was decided. Next day, the Spaniards attacked again, and won a complete
victory. The English fleet was destroyed, and Pembroke was taken a
prisoner to Santander.
The news of Pembroke's defeat encouraged the French to attempt the
conquest of Poitou. Du Guesclin invaded the county from the north in
co-operation with the Spaniards at sea, Owen of Wales abandoned the
siege of Cornet castle, in Guernsey, which still held out against him,
and hurried to join the Spaniards. At Santander he met the captive
Pembroke, and bitterly reproached the marcher earl with the part his
house had taken in driving the Welsh from their lands. In August Owen
and the Spaniards were lying off La Rochelle. Sir Thomas Percy,
seneschal of Poitou, and the Captal de Buch were with a considerable
force at Soubise, near the mouth of the Charente. Owen ascended the
river and fell unexpectedly on the English at night. The English were
utterly defeated and both leaders were taken prisoners, Thomas Percy,
the future ally of Owen Glendower, being captured by one of Sir Owen's
Welsh followers. Meanwhile, Du Guesclin, after receiving the surrender
of Poitiers on August 7, pressed forward to the coast and was soon in
touch with Owen and the Spaniards. On the same September day Angoulême
and La Rochelle opened their gates to the French. In the course of the
same month all the other towns of the district declared for the winning
side. The nobles of Poitou were still to some extent English in
sympathy, and a considerable band of them and their followers took
refuge in Thouars. On December 1 this last stronghold of Poitevin
feudalism surrendered. The tidings of disaster roused the old English
king to his final martial effort. A fleet was raised and sailed from
Sandwich, having on board the king, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of
Lancaster, and many other magnates. Contrary winds kept the vessels
near the English coast, and the vast sums lavished on the equipment of
the expedition were wasted. In despair the Black Prince surrendered to
his father his principality of Aquitaine. When the king begged the
commons for a further war subsidy, he was told that the navy had been
ruined by his harsh impressment of seamen, and his refusal to give them
pay when detained in port waiting for orders. When the command of the
sea passed to the French and their Spanish allies, all hope of
retaining Aquitaine was lost.
The final stages in the ruin of the English power in France need not
detain us long. Despite his successes, Du Guesclin persevered in his
policy of wearing down the English by delays and by avoiding pitched
battles. He turned his attention to Brittany, where Duke John, in
difficulties with his subjects, had invoked the aid of an English army.
Thereupon the Breton barons called the French king to take possession
of the duchy, whose lord was betraying it to the foreigner. The old
party struggle was at an end: Celtic Brittany joined hands with French
Brittany. Before the end of 1373, Duke John was a fugitive, and only a
few castles with English garrisons upheld his cause. Of these Brest was
the most important, and despite the Spaniards and Owen of Wales, the
English were still strong enough at sea to retain possession of the
place.
In July, 1373, John of Gaunt marched out of Calais with one of the
strongest armies with which an English invader had ever entered France.
Pursuing a general south-easterly direction, the English pitilessly
devastated Artois, Picardy, and Champagne. Du Guesclin hastened back
from Brittany to command the army engaged in watching Lancaster. He
still continued his defensive tactics, but gave the enemy little rest.
Lancaster was no match for so able a general as the Breton constable.
At the end of September he moved from Troyes to Sens, and thence pushed
into Burgundy. Then he turned westwards through the Nivernais and the
Bourbonnais, and led his army through the uplands of Auvergne. By the
end of the year he had traversed the Limousin, and made his way to
Bordeaux. Half his army had perished of hunger, cold, and in petty
warfare. The horses had suffered worse than the men, and the baggage
train was almost destroyed. Without fighting a battle Du Guesclin had
put the enemy out of action. Experience now showed how useless were the
prolonged plundering raids which ten years before had filled all France
with terror.
Even in Gascony Lancaster could not hold his own. After declining
battle with the Duke of Anjou, he returned to England, leaving Sir
Thomas Felton as seneschal. The enemy had penetrated to the very heart
of the old English district. La Réole opened its gates to them;
Saint-Sever, the seat of the Gascon high court, followed its example,
By 1374 the English duchy was reduced to the coast lands around Bayonne
and Bordeaux. That year the French laid siege to Chandos's castle of
Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte. The siege was as long and as elaborately
organised as the great siege of Calais. A ring of _bastilles_ was
erected round the doomed town, and cannon discharged huge balls of
stone against its ramparts. After nearly a year's siege the garrison
agreed to surrender on condition of a heavy payment. With the fall of
the old home of the Harcourts the English power in Normandy perished.
There was still, it is true, the influence of Charles of Navarre; but
that desperate intriguer had compromised himself so much with both
parties that no confidence could be placed in him.
The misfortunes of the English inclined them to listen to proposals of
peace. Though the papacy was more frankly on the French side than ever,
it had not lost its ancient solicitude to put an end to the war. With
that object Gregory XI, though eager to return to Rome, tarried in the
Rhone valley. Two of his legates appeared in Champagne at the time of
John of Gaunt's abortive expedition. From that moment offers of peace
were constantly pressed on both sides. Lancaster was at Calais, and
Anjou was not far off at Saint-Omer, when definite proposals were
exchanged. Before long it was found more convenient that the envoys
should meet face to face, and for this reason the two dukes accepted
the hospitality of Louis de Male, and held personal interviews at
Bruges. More than once the negotiations broke down altogether. At no
time was there much hope of a permanent peace. The English insisted on
the terms of 1360, and the French demanded the cession of Calais and
the release of the unpaid ransom of King John. However, on June 27,
1375, a truce for a year was signed at Bruges, which was further
extended until June, 1377, just long enough to allow the old king to
end his days in peace. France had once more to wrestle with the
companies set free by the truce, so that England could still enjoy
possession of Calais, Bordeaux, Bayonne, Brest, and the other scanty
remnants of the cessions of the treaty of Calais. Satisfied at putting
an end to the war, Gregory XI betook himself to Rome. Thus the truce
outlasted the Babylonish captivity of the papacy as well as the life of
Edward III.