The accession of Philip of Valois—His relations with Navarre and England—Robert of Artois—Philip’s action in Gascony, Scotland, and Flanders brings on War with England—Edward III. and Jacob van Artevelde—Edward III. claims the French Crown—Beginning of the Hundred Years’ War—English Expedition into Picardy—The succession in Brittany followed by a war—The Murder of Artevelde—The battle of Crecy and siege of Calais—Annexation of Dauphiné to France—Accession of King John and renewal of the war with England—Battle of Poitiers—Etienne Marcel and the States-General of 1355 and 1357—The Ordinance of March 3, 1357—Anarchy in France—The Murder of the Marshals—Royalist reaction—The Jacquerie—The Murder of Marcel and the capture of Paris—English Invasion of 1359 followed by the Treaty of Bretigni—The succession to Burgundy—Charles V/’s Government—Success of his policy in Brittany and Spain—The reconquest of the English Provinces—Last years of Charles V/—Du Guesclin and de Clisson.

The first result of the accession of Philip VI. was the severance |Accession of Philip of Valois, 1328.| of the crowns of France and Navarre, which had been united since the marriage of Philip the Fair (see p. 48). Navarre was now given up to Jeanne, the daughter of Louis X., and her husband, Philip of Evreux. In return Jeanne abandoned all other claims, either to the French crown or to the provinces of Champagne and Brie. By this bargain Philip secured his throne against one possible claimant, and confirmed the exclusion of female succession in France. Another rival, Edward III. of England, who could contend that females might transmit a claim to a male heir, was not at the moment very formidable. He was very young, he had obtained the throne through his father’s deposition in 1327, and for the time he was under the tutelage of his mother Isabella and her paramour Mortimer. So far from putting forward a claim to the French crown, Edward III. came over to Amiens in 1329, and recognised Philip VI. by doing homage to him for his inherited possessions in Aquitaine.

So confident was Philip in the strength of his position that he did not hesitate to provoke enemies both at home and abroad, and this recklessness ultimately led to a quarrel with England, and to the outbreak of a war which lasted more than a hundred years, and exercised the most decisive influence upon the development of both nations. Among the nobles who had contributed most to bring about Philip VI.’s accession was his brother-in-law, Robert of Artois. He was a grandson of Count Robert of |Robert of Artois.| Artois, who had fallen in the battle of Courtrai in 1302. In spite of the normal preference for male succession, the grandson had been excluded in favour of his aunt Matilda, whose daughter Jeanne had married Philip V. Robert had made several efforts to vindicate his claim to Artois, but without success. On the accession of Philip VI., however, he was confident of obtaining justice, and at once commenced a suit for the purpose of proving that the inheritance had been unlawfully withheld from him. Matilda and Jeanne came to Paris to defend their rights, and both of them died within a short interval of each other, not without strong suspicions of foul play. Their claims now passed to Margaret, the daughter of Jeanne and Philip V. Robert of Artois found himself accused, not only of employing poison to rid himself of his rivals, but also of forging documents in support of his claims, and of employing magic arts against the king himself. His supposed accomplices were tortured into some sort of confession, and Robert, finding that he had lost the royal favour on which he had reckoned, fled from the court. The suit was decided against him (1332), and he himself sentenced to banishment. He found a refuge in England, and in his eagerness for revenge set himself to urge Edward III. to claim the French throne on the ground of his mother’s descent from Philip IV.

Edward III. might have paid little attention to such obviously interested advice had not events elsewhere brought him into hostile relations with France. Philip VI. was suspected, with some justice, of desiring to imitate his uncle’s policy in Gascony, and to bring that province directly under his rule. More serious still was his conduct in regard to |War in Scotland.| Scotland. The treaty of Northampton in 1328, by which the independence of Scotland had been recognised, had stipulated for the restoration of their lands to those nobles who had supported England in the war. Robert Bruce died in 1329 without carrying out this part of the treaty, and the nobles who ruled during the minority of his son David were not likely to give up possessions which had fallen into their own hands. The dispossessed nobles determined to maintain their own cause in arms, and a successful battle at Dupplin Moor enabled them to place Edward Balliol upon the Scottish throne. Edward III. had given no aid to this expedition, but now that the revolution was accomplished, he was willing to profit by it and to receive Edward Balliol’s homage. But the partisans of David Bruce rallied from their first defeat and drove Balliol from the throne. Edward III. now led an army into Scotland, won the battle of Halidon Hill (1333), captured Berwick, and restored Balliol. The result was a renewal of the Scottish war, and the party of independence appealed for aid to France. Philip VI. did not hesitate to secure such a useful ally in case of future difficulties with England. French troops were despatched to Scotland, and the safety of the young Scottish king was secured by sending him to France. From this time may be dated the permanent alliance between France and Scotland, which was at once a grievance and a source of serious embarrassment to English rulers.

English and French troops were now fighting each other as auxiliaries on Scottish soil, and it was obvious that the two countries must soon be involved in open strife. The final impulse was supplied by events in Flanders. In the fourteenth |Flanders.| century Flanders was the most important trading and manufacturing country in western Europe. Ghent was the Manchester, and Bruges the Liverpool, of that day. In Bruges we are told that merchants from seventeen kingdoms had settled homes, while strangers journeyed thither from all parts of the known world. It was the great centre-point of mediæval commerce, where the products of north, south, and east were brought together and exchanged against each other. Still more important to the Flemings themselves and to their relations with England was the manufacture of wool. England produced the longest and finest wool, which was woven into cloth and worsted on the looms of Ghent and Ypres. With France, on the other hand, the relations of the Flemings were purely political. The Count of Flanders, who found his subjects very difficult to govern, was the vassal of the French king, and his authority could hardly be maintained without the aid of his suzerain. To the material interests of the Flemings France was almost wholly alien. France, as contrasted with the other states of Europe, was little affected by the commercial spirit of the age. While Edward III. and the Black Prince, who appear in the pages of Froissart as mirrors of chivalry, were yet sufficiently practical to encourage the industrial interests of their subjects, the Valois kings pursued a totally different policy. They crushed industry by excessive and ill-judged imposts. They maintained no police to give safety to the foreign merchant, and foreign wares were kept out of France by the insecurity of the roads and the heavy duties upon imports. This difference is paralleled by the difference in the military system of the two countries. The English king, supported by the growing wealth of his subjects, was able to leave the majority of his people at home, and to make war with a well-paid and equipped mercenary army. The King of France, after extorting all he could wring from the pockets of his subjects, compelled them to serve in the old feudal array, and led them to be butchered by opponents who were numerically inferior, but had been trained to war, and were not distracted from the work before them by the sense that they were neglecting their material interests at home.

Philip VI. had been involved in a Flemish war at the very beginning of his reign. The citizens of West Flanders, headed by Bruges and Ypres, rose in revolt against their Count, Lewis, who appealed for aid to the French king. A feudal army was led to his assistance, and the citizens, weakened by the abstention of Ghent, were crushed at the battle of Cassel (1328). The Flemings had to suffer, not only for their unsuccessful rebellion, but also for their previous victory at Courtrai, which had now been so ruinously reversed. Their leaders were mercilessly hunted to death, the town charters were confiscated, and their fortifications razed to the ground. The authority of the count was restored, but he was more than ever the dependent vassal of the French king. In 1336, at the command of Philip VI., he ordered the imprisonment of all Englishmen in Flanders. Edward III. promptly retaliated by prohibiting the exportation of English wool and the import of foreign cloth. Flemish artisans were induced to emigrate to England, and to lay the foundations of a prosperous woollen manufacture in Norfolk.

These events, which may be taken as the actual origin of the hundred years’ war, illustrate the folly and recklessness of |Alliance of England with the Flemings.| Philip VI. So far his quarrel with Edward III. in Aquitaine and in Scotland had been a personal quarrel; and the English people, though reluctant to lose the profitable trade with Bordeaux, were by no means enthusiastic either for the continental dominions of their king, or even for the establishment of his suzerainty over Scotland. But to strike at English trade with Flanders was to inflict a mortal blow at the most sensitive of English interests. From this time the quarrel with France became a national as well as a royal quarrel, and Edward could count upon the unanimous support of his subjects. Still more serious was the effect of Philip’s action in Flanders. In the fourteenth century, as in the Napoleonic wars at the beginning of the nineteenth century, England had the stronger position in a trade dispute with the Continent. The Flemish market was important to England, but English wool was indispensable to Flanders. The reprisals of Edward III., forced upon him by the action of the French king, threatened the Flemings with the ruin of their most important industry. A new rising, more formidable than that of 1328, was at once planned. Ghent, which had then held aloof, was now prepared to play its part; and in Ghent arose a leader, Jacob van |Jacob van Artevelde.| Artevelde, whose eloquence and decision gave him for a time practical omnipotence, while his guidance gave to the movement a unity and consistency which previous rebellions had too often lacked. His avowed object was to restore the supply of wool to the Flemish looms, and for this purpose to establish friendly relations with England. He assembled at Ghent the men of the chief cities, and ‘showed them that they could not live without the King of England; for all Flanders was supported by cloth-making, and without wool one could not make cloth; therefore he urged them to keep the English king their friend.’ At the same time he was anxious to avoid any needless infraction of feudal law, and therefore suggested that Edward should claim the French crown, pointing out that the Flemings could not lawfully serve the King of England against the King of France, but that they could serve the lawful King of France against the usurper.

Edward III. saw that war was inevitable; and the arguments of Artevelde convinced him, if any conviction were needed, |Edward III. claims the French crown.| that by putting forward a claim to the crown he would gain powerful supporters, and in the end more substantial advantages. In 1337 he published his claim before a parliament, and set to work to form continental alliances. The Emperor, Lewis the Bavarian, indignant at Philip’s dictation to the Pope, Benedict XII., was willing to support the English king. In September, 1338, he met Edward at Coblentz, and formally invested him with the office of imperial vicar in the provinces on the left bank of the Rhine. The Duke of Brabant and several other princes of the Netherlands were persuaded or bribed to promise contingents to the English army. Edward’s position seemed to be of overwhelming strength. He could attack France on both sides, from Flanders and Artois on the north-east, and from Guienne and Gascony on the south-west.

But the English successes were by no means so great as had been confidently expected. Edward’s first expedition |Opening of hostilities.| into Picardy in 1339 was a complete failure. The Emperor, vacillating as ever, would give no effective aid, the Flemings were content with the recovery of the wool supply, and it was only the sluggishness of Philip VI. which enabled the English forces to retire without serious loss. In 1340 the enterprise was renewed. A French and Genoese fleet had been collected off Sluys to dispute the landing. The Genoese commander refused to fight in a position which made it impossible to manœuvre, and left the French vessels to be utterly destroyed in the first important encounter of the war. But this naval victory was the solitary triumph of the campaign. Although the Flemings, under the influence of Artevelde, gave more active assistance than in the previous year, Edward was repulsed from the walls of St. Omer and Tournai. In September he concluded a truce for nine months with Philip VI. The only gainers by the war were the Flemings, who had practically abrogated the authority of their count, and had organised an independent federation of communes.

It seemed for the moment as if the war might collapse altogether in 1340. Edward’s allies had either deserted him or were obviously lukewarm in his cause. He had spent vast sums of money without having any substantial result to show for it. His subjects were discontented, and Edward chose this moment for a violent quarrel with his chief minister, Archbishop Stratford, who was backed up by the English parliament. But the dwindling flames of the war were rekindled into a blaze by a quarrel about the succession in Brittany. Duke John III. died in 1340, |Succession quarrel in Brittany.| leaving no children. Of his two brothers, the elder was dead, but had left a daughter, Jeanne, who was married to Charles of Blois, a nephew of Philip VI. The younger brother was John de Montfort, who claimed the vacant duchy as the nearest male heir. The Count of Blois appealed, on behalf of his wife, to the Parliament of Paris, and that court decided in her favour. The result was a civil war between the French and the Celtic population of Brittany, the Celts supporting de Montfort and rejecting the rule of Charles of Blois as an alien. Philip VI. determined to support the cause of his nephew and the decision of his parliament. De Montfort crossed over to England and recognised Edward III. by doing homage to him for Brittany. Thus in the case of Brittany, as in that of Artois, the two kings were committed to principles which ran counter to their own claims. The French king, who owed his crown to the so-called Salic law,^[5] appeared as the champion of female succession; while Edward III., who claimed to be King of France through his mother, contended for the exclusive right of the male heir.

The war in Brittany offered to Edward III. ‘the finest |War in Brittany.| possible entry for the conquest of the kingdom of France,’ but his intervention served rather to prolong than to decide the struggle. Charles of Blois, with the aid of John of Normandy, the heir to the French crown, began by gaining important successes. Nantes was captured, and John de Montfort sent prisoner to Paris. But the heroic Countess of Montfort, a sister of the Count of Flanders, supported her husband’s cause with masculine energy and courage, and the arrival of English succour restored the balance of forces in Brittany. But Edward III. still found himself confronted by superior numbers, and in 1343 papal mediation succeeded in arranging a general truce for three years. The truce, however, was not allowed to run its full term. John de Montfort escaped from his prison, and the severity with which Philip VI. punished some nobles in Brittany and Normandy for suspected treason led to a renewal of hostilities in 1345. Edward III. determined to make greater efforts than ever, and to attack France on three sides—from Guienne, Brittany, and Flanders. In Guienne Henry of Lancaster gained a considerable victory at Auberoche, and captured several fortresses which were held by the French. In Brittany John de Montfort died, leaving his claims to his son, and his death prevented any important operations from being undertaken. Meanwhile Edward himself prepared to co-operate with the Flemings on the north-east. But his plans were interrupted by what appeared to be a great disaster to his cause. Jacob van Artevelde had incurred the distrust of his fellow-citizens. |Murder of Artevelde.| He had found it increasingly difficult to reconcile the jarring pretensions of the rival cities, or to compose the jealous divisions of the fullers and weavers of Ghent. In his alliance with England he had gone further than the majority of the Flemings desired. They would have been content to impose conditions upon their count, whereas Artevelde had schemed to depose him altogether, and to transfer the direct government of Flanders to the Prince of Wales. But the final accusation against the once popular leader was that he had placed the great treasure of Flanders at the disposal of the English king. In a rising of the infuriated mob, Artevelde’s house was stormed and he himself slain. For the moment Edward feared that he might lose his hold upon Flanders. But Artevelde’s policy survived him. The Flemings were not prepared to make unconditional submission to their count, and to extort conditions the alliance with England must be maintained. They hastened to excuse their conduct to the English king, to assure him of the continuance of their support. But Edward had received the news of another loss, which checked his advance in 1345. This was the death of his brother-in-law, William IV. of Holland, Hainault, and Zealand. As he left no children, his territories were seized by Lewis the Bavarian and conferred upon one of his younger sons (see p. 108). The Emperor had already deserted the English alliance, and the establishment of the House of Wittelsbach in the dominions of William IV. broke up the coalition which Edward III. had formed on the borders of France.

These checks induced Edward, not to relax his efforts, but to alter his plans. The military interest of 1346 seemed likely to |Campaign of 1346.| be concentrated in the south-west. A large French army under Philip’s eldest son, John of Normandy, entered Guienne, recovered many of the places lost in the previous year, and besieged the inferior English troops in Aiguillon. Edward III. collected a large army at Southampton, and set sail on July 2. His intention was to land at Bordeaux, and march to the relief of Aiguillon. But his voyage was hindered by storms, and the advice of some of his French followers induced him to make for the coast of Normandy. The province was wholly unprepared for attack, and the English met with little resistance on their devastating march. Along the valley of the Seine they advanced as far as Poissi, where the flames of the burning houses were seen from the walls of Paris. Meanwhile, Philip VI. had strained every nerve to collect a second army for the defence of his capital. Among the allies who came to his aid were John of Bohemia and the newly elected King of the Romans, Charles IV. But Edward declined to assault Paris, or to face an army which was now larger than his own. Misleading Philip by a feint in the direction of Tours, he crossed the Seine at Poissi, and marched at full speed towards Picardy, in order to effect a junction with the Flemings. Philip followed with his enormous force, and the destruction of the bridges over the Somme seemed to shut the English in a trap. But a captured peasant guided Edward to a comparatively unguarded ford at Blanche Taque, and the French arrived just as the last of the enemy had crossed. The battle, however, was only postponed, though the crossing of the river enabled Edward to choose his own ground, instead of fighting at a disadvantage with an impassable river behind him. To continue the retreat with an exhausted army pursued by superior numbers must have ended in disaster, and Edward drew up his troops at Crecy, near Abbeville, |Battle of Crecy, 1346.| to try the hazard of the first pitched battle of the war. The result was to teach the world a lesson in the art of warfare which had only been imperfectly suggested by the battles of Stirling Bridge, Bannockburn, and Courtrai. It was a combat of infantry against cavalry, of missile weapons against heavy armour and lances, of trained professional soldiers against a combination of foreign mercenaries with disorderly feudal levies. And the inevitable result was made the more decisive by the utter want of generalship on the part of the French king. Obeying a momentary impulse of rage, he ordered his troops to engage when they were exhausted by a long march. The Genoese crossbows were wetted by rain, and their bolts fell harmless, while they were exposed to a hail of arrows from the English longbows. Then the men-at-arms charged over the unfortunate Genoese, and were already in disorder before they could reach the enemy. There was individual prowess in plenty, but no organisation or discipline, and the bravest of the assailants only rushed upon a certain fate. Philip fled in despair, but the King of Bohemia, the Counts of Flanders and Alençon, and many lesser princes and nobles, were left dead upon the field. Edward III. made no attempt to turn back upon France. It would have been difficult for him to feed his soldiers in a district which had been already swept bare by the requisitions and the pillage of two great armies. After allowing three days for rest and the burying of the dead, he continued his march northwards, and laid siege to Calais. His victory had decisive results both in the west and the south. The siege of Aiguillon was raised, and the retirement of the Duke of Normandy left Guienne at the mercy of the English. Henry of Lancaster recovered the places lost at the beginning of the year, and, entering Poitou, took and sacked Poitiers. In Brittany the French cause met with almost equal disasters. Charles of Blois was captured and carried a prisoner to England, and, though his wife continued the struggle, the party of de Montfort had for a time a secure predominance. To complete the list of failures, an attempted diversion by David of Scotland, who invaded England in the autumn of 1346, ended in the king’s defeat and capture at the battle of Nevill’s Cross.

Meanwhile Edward III. was engaged in the blockade of Calais, where Jean de Vienne held out with heroic obstinacy |Siege of Calais, 1346-7.| for nearly a whole year. The death of Lewis of Flanders at Crecy seemed to open the prospect of a reconciliation of the Flemings with France, and if this could have been effected, the siege would probably have ended in failure. The young Count, Lewis de Mâle, had done nothing to incur the enmity of his subjects, and they welcomed his return with enthusiasm. But in their treaty with Edward III. the Flemings had agreed that their new ruler should marry an English princess. This stipulation Lewis refused to fulfil, and when the citizens tried to coerce him, he escaped from subjects who had become his gaolers and returned to the French court. His departure left the Flemings bound to the English alliance, and to Philip VI.’s lavish offers of bribes they turned a deaf ear. The siege could only be raised by force, and Philip collected an army for that purpose. But when he approached he found the English too strongly entrenched, and retired without risking a battle. Thus, deprived of all hope of succour from outside, the defenders were forced to accept Edward’s terms, and to hand over the town, with six of the principal burghers, to his mercy. The burghers were spared on the entreaty of Queen Philippa, but the whole population of Calais was expelled to make room for English settlers. Gradually, as Edward’s wrath at the prolonged resistance died away, some of the original inhabitants were allowed to return, but the population of Calais continued to be preponderantly English during the two centuries that it remained subject to England.

The fall of Calais was the last military disaster of Philip VI.’s reign. Both England and France were exhausted by the strain of the contest, and the outbreak of the terrible Black Death, which ravaged western Europe in 1348 and 1349, diverted men’s minds from international quarrels. A truce, originally concluded for ten months, was prolonged by mutual consent for several years. Philip concluded his reign in peace, and before his death (August 22, 1350) he was able to add an important province to France, and thus to gain some consolation for the losses |Dauphiné annexed to France.| of the English war. Among the largest fragments of the old kingdoms of Arles was Dauphiné, ruled as a fief of the Empire by the Dauphins of Vienne. The last of these princes, Humbert, had supported Lewis the Bavarian in his struggles against France and the Avignon Popes. But like so many of the Emperor’s allies, he was alienated by Lewis’s weakness and selfishness, and pecuniary troubles forced him to change his policy and to draw closer to France. In 1343 he concluded a treaty with Philip VI. by which Dauphiné, in default of lawful issue to himself, was to fall to a younger son of the French king. In the next year this treaty was modified to secure the inheritance to the heirs to the French crown; and finally in 1349 Humbert’s life-interest in the province was bought out by payment of a large sum, and Dauphiné was handed over to the House of Valois, and in the course of the next generation became the regular appanage of the eldest son of the reigning king. About the same time, France acquired another advantage on the side of Flanders. In 1348 Lewis de Mâle recovered his county, and by encouraging internal quarrels among his subjects, he not only evaded the hated obligation of an English marriage, but also restored some measure of authority over the turbulent Flemings. As long as his power could be maintained, it might be hoped that France would escape the dangers of Flemish co-operation with the English.

John the Good, as he is called by the caprice of historical nomenclature, was no better a ruler than his father, and was even more unfortunate. He had already been active both in military and civil affairs, but had |Accession of King John, 1350.| profited little by his experience. War, in his eyes, was nothing but a tournament on a large scale. Of orderly finance he had no conception; and as to the welfare of his subjects he had neither interest nor insight. He was a reckless spendthrift, imbued with the chivalrous ideals of the day, and subject to sudden gusts of passion, alternating with fitful and uncalculating acts of generosity. His accession marks the appearance on the scene of a new generation of actors. The Black Death had been most fatal to the lower classes, but it had by no means spared those of higher rank. In a single year John had lost his mother, Jeanne of Burgundy; his first wife, the sister of Charles IV.; his uncle Eudes IV., who had added Franche-Comté to the duchy of Burgundy, and now left both Burgundies to an infant grandson, Philip de Rouvre; and his cousin, Jeanne of Navarre, whose kingdom and possessions in France passed to her son, deservedly known in history as Charles the Bad, and destined to be the evil genius of France in the hour of her worst misfortunes. In England there had been a similar clearance of prominent personages. Edward III. still lived, but he played little further part in the French war, where his place was taken by the Black Prince.

The truce with England expired in 1351, but for some years the revived hostilities were only local and unimportant. So great was the mutual exhaustion of the two states, that the new Pope, Innocent VI., elected in 1352, almost succeeded in negotiating a general peace. But, as before, it was internal disturbances in France which led to a renewal of the war. Charles of Navarre had been invested with the county of Evreux and with the large possessions of his |Renewed war with the English.| mother in Normandy and the Ile-de-France. He had also received in 1352 the hand of the king’s daughter, Jeanne. But his ambition was still unsatisfied, and John took no further pains to conciliate a prince who could advance claims to Champagne and Brie, and might, under favourable circumstances, become a rival candidate for the crown. In 1354 the king’s favourite, Charles of Spain, was assassinated by the emissaries of the King of Navarre. John was induced to pardon his son-in-law; but the reconciliation was only hollow, and Charles was impelled by real or imaginary grievances to open negotiations with Edward III. The English king could not resist the temptation of invading France with the aid of so powerful an ally, and prepared to enter Normandy through Calais in 1355. This danger compelled John once more to make overtures to his rebellious son-in-law, and Edward found himself deprived of the promised aid. He landed at Calais, ravaged the neighbouring districts, and then withdrew to repel a Scottish invasion. The Black Prince was more successful. Starting from Bordeaux, he marched through Languedoc, treating that province as Edward III. had treated Normandy in 1346. But the French king was as reckless as ever. Early in 1356 he surprised Charles of Navarre as he was banqueting with the Dauphin at Rouen, put his chief supporters to death, and carried the king a prisoner to Paris. The result of this violent act was to excite general disaffection. Charles’s brother, Philip of Navarre, promptly took up arms, and appealed for English support. The Black Prince was not slow to respond. His plan was to march northward through the most fertile districts of France, cross the Loire, and advance through Maine to join the rebels in Normandy. But his force was insufficient for such an enterprise. John hastily collected an army, the Loire valley was blocked, and Prince Edward had to retire before vastly superior numbers.

John hurried eagerly in pursuit, and actually reached Poitiers before the enemy. A battle was now inevitable. So hopeless |Battle of Poitiers, 1356.| were the odds that the Black Prince was willing to accept any honourable terms, but John declined to let the enemy escape. All the advantages, however, of superior numbers were thrown away by the egregious folly of the French king. He sent a small detachment of men-at-arms to attack the English position on the hill, while he ordered the bulk of his army to dismount on the plain. The men-at-arms, who had to advance by a narrow lane under the arrows of the English archers, were speedily routed, and the English cavalry followed up this success by butchering the dismounted host, who could neither stand their charge nor fly. The king, after fighting bravely to the last, was taken prisoner with his youngest son Philip, and the flower of the French nobility either shared his captivity or escaped it only by death on the field. As at Crecy, the English made no attempt to profit by their victory. The Black Prince was content to carry his illustrious prisoner to Bordeaux, whence he subsequently despatched him to London.

The crushing defeat at Poitiers and the captivity of the king marked the climax of a long series of disasters, of which |Discontent in France.| the cause was to be sought in the continued maladministration of French kings and ministers. No country could be brought into such a plight as that to which France was reduced without giving rise to serious and dangerous discontent, and this discontent had already found expression before the campaign of 1356. From 1350 to 1355 frequent assemblies of local estates had been held for the raising of supplies, and these had not been voted without ominous grumbling and demands for redress of grievances. At last, in November 1355, King John had found it necessary to convoke the States-General of Languedoil, |States-General of 1355.| in order to deliberate on the best mode of resisting the national foes. The ‘deputies of the three estates’—for nobles and clergy could only attend when elected by their order—met in Paris on November 30. The orator of the third estate, in the formal reply to the chancellor’s opening speech, was Etienne Marcel, provost of the merchants in Paris, and for the next four years one of the most important men in France. After deliberating on the matters submitted to them, the States drew up the great ordinance of December 28, 1355. They granted to the king a gabelle upon salt, and a tax of eight deniers the pound on the sale of all commodities. These are to be levied upon all classes—clergy, nobles, non-nobles, and even the members of the royal family. The collection of the taxes is to be superintended by delegates chosen by the estates, and the expenditure is to be controlled by a council of nine, three from each estate. Purveyance and the arbitrary alteration of the money-standard were forbidden. Finally, the dates were fixed for two subsequent sessions—one in March and the other in November of the next year.

It is obvious that the States-General acted, whether consciously or unconsciously, in imitation of the English Parliament, and took advantage of the financial difficulties of the crown to impose constitutional checks upon the royal power. But, unfortunately, the financial skill of the estates was by no means equal to |Financial blunders of the States.| the importance of their objects, or to their energy in striving after them. The gabelle on salt has in all ages been the most unpopular tax in France, and the tax upon sales breaks all the canons of taxation which modern economists have agreed to accept. Great disaffection was excited by the attempt to collect the tax, and in some provinces serious disturbances took place. When the States-General met in March they yielded at once to the expression of public opinion, repealed the obnoxious taxes, and imposed in their place an extraordinary income-tax, which was so adjusted that the percentage increased as the income diminished. After taking steps to control the collection and expenditure of the revenue, the estates adjourned till May 6. They then discovered that the amount raised was wholly insufficient to defray the necessary expenditure, and in their ignorance and perplexity they reimposed the unpopular taxes on salt and sales, and ordered the levy in June and August of two extra charges upon incomes.

After the battle of Poitiers matters seemed more hopeless than ever. The king’s eldest son, Charles,^[6] assumed the government on his father’s imprisonment, but he displayed little of the wisdom or capacity for which he was afterwards renowned. His first act was to convene the States-General |States-General of Oct. 1356.| on October 17. The assembly was unusually large, the third estate being represented by exceptional numbers. Of the nobles, however, the attendance was very small. Large numbers of them had perished at Poitiers, and the survivors were discredited. Thus the balance of classes, so necessary for the success of constitutional changes, was overthrown. The third estate became preponderant in the assembly, and its leader, Marcel, obtained considerable support from the clergy through his ally Robert Lecoq, Bishop of Laon. The demands of the estates were far more extreme than those of the earlier assemblies. They were no longer content to impose checks upon the government, but determined to take it into their own hands. The royal ministers were to be dismissed, and thirty-six delegates—twelve from each estate—were to be appointed to manage the affairs of the kingdom. At the same time, outspoken complaints were made of the failure to carry out promised reforms, especially in the matter of the coinage, and the release of the King of Navarre was demanded. But the Dauphin, encouraged by the grant of a considerable subsidy from the estates of Languedoc, was not prepared to hand over his authority to the States-General. He prorogued the assembly, endeavoured to raise money from the provincial estates, and even ventured on a new debasement of the currency. The reforming party was driven by this obstinacy to revolutionary methods. The mob rose in Paris, and Marcel ordered the royal officials to cease minting the inferior coins. The Dauphin, who had gone to Metz to demand the mediation of Charles IV. with England, returned to find his capital in open revolt. Unable to resist the popular demands, he was forced to hold a new meeting of the States-General on February 5, and to accept the ordinance which they drew up of March 3, 1357. In |Ordinance of March 3, 1357.| this the policy which had been proposed in the earlier session was carried out, and the royal power was subordinated to that of the States. The commission of thirty-six was definitely appointed to superintend every branch of the administration. An aid was granted for the maintenance of 3000 men-at-arms, but it was to be collected and spent, not by royal officials, but by nominees of the States. The predominance of the third estate is conspicuous in the articles directed against the nobles. They were forbidden to carry on private wars, and if they disregarded the prohibition, the local authorities or the people might arrest them and compel them to desist by fines or imprisonment. Not only was purveyance forbidden, but it was permitted to the people to assemble at the ringing of a bell, and to oppose its collectors by force.

King John, who was about to start from Bordeaux to London, sent a message to Paris to annul an ordinance which dealt so shrewd a blow at the royal authority. But the Parisians were not prepared to submit to a distant and captive king, the Dauphin was forced to promulgate the ordinance, and the revolution in the government of France was completed. |Anarchy in France.| The thirty-six showed their power by purging the royal council and the magistracy of all who were suspected of hostility to the popular party. But any hopes that the change of rulers would bring prosperity to France were doomed to disappointment. The revolutionary government was no more successful than that which it had superseded. The provinces were not prepared to submit to the dictation of Paris, and their discontent encouraged the Dauphin to wait for an opportunity of recovering power. The nobles became more and more indignant at the predominance of the bourgeois. The English, still exulting in their triumph of the previous year, were content to accept a truce for two years; but the mercenary troops, deprived of their legitimate occupation, wandered about the country pillaging or levying blackmail on the people. Conscious that their position was insecure, and that the Dauphin might at any moment become actively hostile, Marcel and his associates endeavoured to secure a powerful ally by releasing Charles of Navarre (November, 1357). The only result was to kindle a civil war. The Dauphin had been compelled to promise the restoration of all his cousin’s possessions, but his lieutenants would not give up the strong places, and Charles the Bad took up arms. For the moment he was the ally of the bourgeois, but he had no real sympathy with the cause of reform, and sought to fish in troubled waters for his own gain. The disasters of the ruling dynasty seemed to offer him a fair chance of establishing a right to the throne. In his speeches to the people he was careful to point out that his own claim was much stronger than that of Edward III.

As the reforming movement became weaker and more discredited, it began to adopt more violent and revolutionary methods. The career of Marcel is marked by increasing narrowness and selfishness. He had begun by advocating measures for the regeneration of France, then he had become the champion of the third estate; within that estate he was driven to maintain the preponderance of Paris and its mob; and at last he had to fight in Paris for his own personal ascendency. At the beginning of 1358 his adherents adopted as their ensign a red and blue cap. The Dauphin was raising an army against the King of Navarre, and had recalled many of his former ministers. A new exhibition of mob violence was necessary to intimidate him into submission. Marcel forced his way into the Louvre, |Murder of the marshals.| where the marshals of Normandy and Champagne were murdered in their master’s presence. The unfortunate prince fell on his knees to beg for his own life, and had to submit to the indignity of wearing the parti-coloured cap, which was placed on his head by Marcel himself. For the moment this deplorable act seemed to have achieved its end. The Dauphin was cowed into submission; his unpopular advisers were dismissed, and Charles of Navarre was admitted to Paris and formally reconciled with his cousin.

But the murder of the marshals was really as impolitic as it was criminal. The open dictation of the mob, and the failure of the bourgeois government to remedy the misfortunes of France, provoked a violent reaction in |Royalist reaction.| favour of the monarchy which had been so insultingly defied. With fatal self-confidence Marcel allowed the Dauphin, who now assumed the title of regent, to leave Paris and to throw himself upon the loyalty of the provinces. Charles summoned the States-General to meet in May 1358, at Compiègne instead of in Paris. The meeting was not very numerous, but it expressed the prevalent sentiment of France in favour of royalty. Marcel endeavoured to strengthen himself by forming a league of towns for the maintenance of common interests, but it was only joined by the towns in the immediate neighbourhood of Paris. Civil war was inevitable, and the new fortifications which Marcel had built to protect the capital against English attack were now to be employed for the defence of the citizens against their fellow-countrymen.

At this critical moment the evils of France were suddenly multiplied by the rising of a class for which neither king, nobles, nor citizens had done anything. The |The Jacquerie.| serfs or villeins of France had suffered terrible hardships within the last decade. Their numbers had been decimated by the Black Death, and the survivors had to add to their own tasks the work of those who had perished. Their hard-won savings had been wrung from them to pay the ransom of their lords, who had fallen into the hands of the English at Poitiers or elsewhere. The lands from which they extracted a scanty living were devastated by the mercenary soldiers in peace as well as in war. Despairing of redress, they determined, at any rate, to avenge their sufferings. The story of their revolt is one of almost unredeemed horror. It began in the district of Beauvais, and rapidly spread over Champagne, Picardy, and the Ile-de-France. Castles were burned; men, women, and even children were tortured and put to death. But the nobles soon recovered from the first panic, and took arms against enemies whom they now loathed as much as they had previously despised them. The ill-armed peasants were unable to face the trained men-at-arms, and the suppression of the revolt was as murderous and destructive as its outbreak.

There was little real sympathy between peasants and bourgeois. They had, it is true, a common enemy in the nobles, and Marcel had tried to use the Jacquerie as a diversion in his own favour. But he gave no efficient aid to his allies, and his half-hearted connection only brought upon himself the discredit and disaster of their ruinous defeat. From the victorious troops of the nobles the regent was able to form an army for the reduction of his rebellious capital. The citizens were bellicose, but they were not warlike, and it was necessary to bring trained troops to |Siege of Paris.| the aid of their undisciplined valour. Charles of Navarre was appointed captain-general of Paris, and brought a mercenary army for its defence. But the king’s aims were as purely selfish as ever. While professing to defend the city, he was negotiating with the regent for its surrender. Such proceedings excited serious mistrust, which was increased by quarrels between the citizens and the soldiers of Navarre. At last the king left Paris for St. Denis, and further resistance seemed almost hopeless. The citizens were willing to make terms, but the Dauphin would not negotiate with the murderer of the marshals. Marcel felt that in such a dilemma he could no longer trust his followers. A party was already formed within the city which was hostile to his continued ascendency, and in favour of restoring the royal authority. If the citizens had to choose between their own safety and the interests of their provost, their choice could not be long delayed. There was only one apparent means of escape, and Marcel clutched at it. He offered to surrender Paris to Charles of Navarre, and to proclaim him King of France. But on the very night when this treacherous design was to be carried out, Marcel was assassinated by one of his |Murder of Marcel.| own followers (July 31, 1358). It is easy to see and condemn the errors of his later career, but his name will always be memorable in French history as the leader of the most notable attempt, before 1789, to give to France a constitutional form of government.

Two days after the death of Marcel the regent Charles entered Paris, and the restoration of the royal authority was signalised by the severe punishment of its chief opponents. In the next year Charles bought off the King of Navarre, who had lost all hopes of gaining the crown with the collapse of the bourgeois revolution. There still remained the war with England. During the truce John had been negotiating for his release, and in 1359 he agreed to the cession of nearly the whole of northern and western France. But the Dauphin was of opinion that the mutilation of his inheritance was too high a price to pay for his father’s liberty. He convened the States-General, now the docile instrument of the prince whose authority had been so recently defied by its predecessors. The so-called treaty of London was unanimously rejected, and Edward III. had no alternative but to renew the war. He collected an enormous army for the invasion of France in October, 1359. But the Dauphin had learned a lesson from experience, and would fight no more battles like Crecy and Poitiers. The English army |English invasion, 1359.| advanced to Rheims, but found the city too strongly defended. An attack upon Burgundy was repelled, not by arms, but by the payment of a large sum of money. Edward marched against Paris, but the Dauphin refused to quit the shelter of the walls, and the invaders had to turn westwards to Chartres. The country had been so desolated by war and pestilence that it was difficult to feed the army, the season was wet and unfavourable, and Edward III., finding that his army was wasting away without gaining any success, agreed to negotiate. By the treaty of Bretigni (May 8, 1360) he renounced |Treaty of Bretigni.| his claims to the French throne and to the Norman and Plantagenet provinces north of the Loire. In return he was to enjoy full sovereignty, without any homage to the French king, in his own conquest of Calais, and in the possessions which Eleanor had brought to Henry II., viz. Guienne, Gascony, Poitou, Saintonge, and a number of smaller territories. France was to renounce the Scottish, and England the Flemish alliance. The ransom of King John was fixed at three million crowns, to be paid in six yearly instalments. On receipt of the first instalment the king was to be released, but hostages were to be given for the payment of the remainder. It was not easy to raise the ransom from exhausted France; but Galeazzo Visconti was opportunely willing to pay six hundred thousand gold florins to gain for his son the hand of a French princess, and this bargain with the Milanese despot enabled John to return to his kingdom. He seems, however, to have found the cares of government a disagreeable burden after the comparative gaiety of his imprisonment in London. In 1363 his second son, Louis of Anjou, escaped from Calais, whither he had gone as one of his father’s hostages. John seized the opportunity to parade a chivalrous regard for his plighted word, and at the same time to abandon duties which had become difficult and distasteful. Leaving the regency once more to his eldest son, he sailed to England in January 1364, and died in London three months later. Before his departure he had done one act which is of cardinal importance in the history of France. In 1361 a return of the plague had carried off Philip de Rouvre, the childless ruler of Burgundy, Franche-Comté, and Artois. The two latter provinces, which had come to Philip through the female line, passed to Margaret of Flanders, but the duchy |Duchy of Burgundy.| of Burgundy escheated to the crown. A prudent king would have retained the direct rule of so valuable a possession; but John, with reckless generosity, gave it away to his fourth son Philip, who had fought boldly by his side at Poitiers, and had shared his captivity. This Philip the Bold is the founder of the great line of the Valois Dukes of Burgundy.

The new king, Charles V., had been the practical ruler of France since the battle of Poitiers. During those eight years |Government of Charles V.| he had learned from harsh experience many lessons which stood him in good stead when circumstances enabled him to gain some success. The very weakness of his bodily health, which contemporaries attributed to poison administered by Charles of Navarre during their early friendship, debarred him from the active exercises of chivalry, and impelled him to cultivate his mental faculties. Fragile, timid, a stranger to the joys of the tournament and the battle-field, he seems strangely out of place in the days of the Black Prince and Bertrand du Guesclin, of John Chandos and the Captal de Buch. Yet Charles V. is the greatest of the Valois kings before Louis XI., and must be reckoned among the founders of modern France. His chief task was to restore the despotic power of the crown, which had been so rudely shaken between 1355 and 1358. Arbitrary taxation was to supersede the grant of supplies by the estates; military and civil officials were to be royal nominees; even the local assessors and collectors of taxes were to be under the supervision and control of the crown. Only once did the States-General meet during the reign, and then they were summoned merely to strengthen the king’s hands. But the despotism of Charles V. was a capable and orderly government, wholly different from that of his predecessors. It is curious to note how this absolute king adopts and turns to his own advantage the expedients of his enemies. He reimposed the gabelle on salt, and the aides or taxes on the sale of commodities, the two financial expedients of the States of 1355. He retained the élus, the local collectors whom the States had nominated to levy these charges, though he was careful to take their appointment into his own hands. He gave tardy expression to the will of the estates by putting an end to the debasement of the currency, the worst of all grievances, and by imposing strict limitations on the right of purveyance. When his brother, Louis of Anjou, provoked discontent by his brutal administration in Languedoc, Charles did not hesitate to dismiss him from the governorship, and to grant redress to the complainants. Such a government was a great and a novel boon in the fourteenth century, and it is only on its financial side that it is open to hostile criticism. The expenses, both civil and military, were enormous, and the people were subjected to a heavier burden of taxation than they had ever experienced before. And the taxes were not only excessive in amount and arbitrary in their imposition, they were also oppressive and unequal. To increase the receipts from the gabelle, Charles V. introduced the practice of requiring every family to purchase at least a fixed amount of salt from the royal granaries; and the principle of equality, which is enjoined in his ordinances, was infringed by the frequent grant or sale of exemptions, sometimes to a class, sometimes to a district or a corporation. It is these exemptions, multiplied as time goes on, which make the financial system of France, down to the Revolution, so unjust, so disorderly, and so inefficient. And Charles V. was also responsible for a disastrous innovation. His predecessors had received a revenue from customs duties levied on the frontiers of their kingdom. Charles was the first to hamper domestic trade by imposing customs on the transit from one province to another.

But in spite of these drawbacks the administration of Charles V. was eminently successful, and it was this success which led his subjects to approve, or even to welcome, the |The French welcome absolute rule.| arbitrary character of his rule. A people which had suffered from every kind of misfortune, from foreign invasion, pestilence, and civil strife, as the French had done in the middle of the fourteenth century, is never very eager to limit the power of a capable ruler. What it needs is a government which will maintain order at home, and retrieve the national honour by victories over foreign foes; and to such a government much will be forgiven. If the English had reason to approve the personal rule of the Tudor sovereigns, the French a century earlier had infinitely more reason to support a king who gratified their most imperious desires. For not only did Charles V. remedy the most glaring defects of his predecessors’ administration, but this most unmilitary of kings was able to gain triumphs over the hated English which a few years before must have seemed impossible.

The first opportunity for an indirect renewal of the strife with England was offered by affairs in Brittany. The treaty |War in Brittany.| of Bretigni had left unsettled the long struggle between John de Montfort and Charles of Blois, and England and France were not pledged to abandon the cause of their respective candidates. In the very year of his accession Charles V. determined to strike a vigorous blow in favour of the House of Blois, and sent Bertrand du Guesclin, whose military genius he had already detected, to lead a considerable force into Brittany. But this first enterprise was not crowned with success. The superior discipline of the English mercenaries enabled them to gain a decisive victory in the hard-fought battle of Aurai (September 29, 1364). Charles of Blois was slain, and Bertrand du Guesclin was left a prisoner in the hands of John Chandos. To prevent a complete transfer of the allegiance of Brittany to the English king Charles V. found it necessary to negotiate, and in April, 1365, John de Montfort was recognised as duke, with the proviso that if he died without male issue the duchy should pass to the eldest son of Charles of Blois.

More important in its ultimate results was French intervention in Castile. The government of Peter the Cruel had excited the bitter enmity of his subjects, who |War in Castile.| found a champion in the king’s bastard half-brother, Henry of Trastamara. Henry appealed for aid to France, and Charles V. welcomed the opportunity to rid his country of the hated free companies. Bertrand du Guesclin, who had been ransomed from his captors, raised an army among these professional soldiers, and crossed the Pyrenees at the end of 1365. The task of the invaders was facilitated by a general revolt of the Castilians. Henry of Trastamara was crowned king, and Peter fled to Bordeaux to implore English assistance. The Black Prince was conscious that French ascendency in the Spanish peninsula threatened his duchy of Aquitaine, and chivalrous motives impelled him to support a legitimate king against a usurper. Peter made the most lavish promises of pay to his auxiliaries, and the Black Prince became surety for the good faith of his guest. In 1367 all preparations were complete, and the treacherous Charles of Navarre gave a passage through his kingdom to the invaders. Between Najara and Navarrette, not far from the later battle-field of Vittoria, a complete victory was won over the French and Castilian forces. Du Guesclin was once more a captive, Peter the Cruel recovered his crown, and Henry of Trastamara had to seek safety in exile. But Peter proved to be as faithless as he was cruel. He declined to fulfil his promises to allies who seemed to be no longer necessary, and the English prince was in great straits to satisfy the soldiers who had trusted in his surety. To make matters worse the troops were wasted with disease, and the Black Prince himself contracted a fever which remained in his blood and led to his early death. With his temper embittered and his health broken, he led the remnants of his army back to Gascony. His departure was followed by a new revolution in Castile. Henry of Trastamara returned to reclaim the crown, and du Guesclin, whom the Black Prince imprudently allowed to pay a second ransom, once more entered his service. In 1369 the French troops won the battle of Montiel, and in a personal interview which followed Peter was stabbed to the heart by his half-brother. Thus all the fruits of the battle of Najara were lost, and a king was seated in Castile who was pledged to the French alliance.

These events in Castile encouraged Charles V. to carry out a long-cherished design for the reconquest of the English |Renewal of English war.| provinces. A pretext for a rupture was found in the discontent which was excited in Aquitaine by the heavy taxes levied by the Black Prince to defray the expenses of his Spanish expedition. In 1368 several of the Gascon nobles, regardless of the treaty of Bretigni, appealed to Charles V., as their suzerain, to redress their grievances. Charles delayed a final rupture until he had made his preparations, and had heard of the triumph of his ally in Castile. In 1369 he summoned the Black Prince to appear in Paris to answer the complaints of his subjects before the court of peers. Edward replied grimly that he would willingly go to Paris, but with sixty thousand men in his company. It was easier, however, to utter the threat than to carry it out. The conditions which had enabled the English to gain some conspicuous successes in the earlier war were now altered, and to some extent reversed. The wise government of Charles V. had already removed many of the administrative evils which had crippled France under his grandfather and his father. Thanks to du Guesclin, the French king could now put into the field a professional army under capable leaders, in place of the disorderly feudal levies which had been cut to pieces at Crecy and Poitiers. The Black Prince was no longer the active and resolute commander that he had shown himself before his illness, and he lost some of his most capable lieutenants, notably Chandos, who died in 1370. The provinces ceded at Bretigni had had some years’ experience of English rule, and their discontent was stimulated by a growing sense of national sympathy with the rest of France. Another very prominent cause of the reversal of military success in the years following 1369 is to be found in the cautious tactics deliberately adopted and enforced by Charles V. himself. For an invading army victory is imperatively necessary; for the defenders it is enough not to be defeated. Charles forbade his generals, no matter what provocation they received, to risk an engagement in the open field. They were to shut their troops in the strong towns, and to leave the English armies to be wasted by disease, by want of provisions, and by the difficulty of coercing a |English disasters.| hostile population. As the invaders departed, the French could harass their march, cut off stragglers and supplies, and occupy the territory which the enemy was compelled to evacuate. These tactics were eminently successful, and they were immensely aided by the support of the Castilian fleet, which enabled the French to gain a temporary naval ascendency. This deprived the English of direct communication with the coast of Aquitaine, and forced them to carry on military operations at a disastrous distance from their ultimate base of supplies. Almost the only English success was the capture of Limoges in 1370 by the Black Prince, who blackened his own reputation by ordering an indiscriminate massacre of the inhabitants. Soon afterwards he was compelled by illness to return to England, and to resign his duchy of Aquitaine, which he never revisited. In 1372 the English fleet, which was carrying an army under the Earl of Pembroke to Bordeaux, was destroyed off La Rochelle by the combined naval forces of France and Castile. A new and larger force was prepared in 1373 under John of Gaunt, but in consequence of this maritime disaster it was necessary to land the troops at Calais. Thence John of Gaunt marched right across France, but he found no enemy to beat in the field, and he could not take a single fortress. Meanwhile his troops melted away through desertion, disease, and famine. A defeated army could hardly have been in a more lamentable condition than that of which a scanty and impoverished remnant succeeded in reaching Bordeaux. The failure of this great effort on the part of England was decisive. Already several provinces had been practically lost, and by 1374, of all the vast possessions which had been gained at Bretigni, there remained only Calais in the north, and the strip of land stretching from Bordeaux to Bayonne. In 1375 the Pope succeeded in negotiating a truce for two years, and before its expiry both the Black Prince and Edward III. had died, and England, bitterly chagrined at such complete and unexpected disasters, had passed under the rule of a child.

In 1378 hostilities were resumed, though the English wished to prolong the truce, and it seemed almost inevitable that Charles V. would complete his task of expelling |Last years of Charles V.| the foreigner from French soil. The English had no longer any allies in France. John de Montfort, who had clung to his old protectors ever since the outbreak of war in 1369, had been expelled from Brittany, which was now almost wholly occupied by royal troops. Charles of Navarre, who had been a traitor to both sides in turn, discovered his mistake in allowing the English power to be so completely depressed, and opened negotiations with John of Gaunt for a joint effort to recover the lost provinces. But between France and Castile the King of Navarre found himself powerless. The royal troops seized the strong places which he possessed in France, while the Castilians entered Navarre and laid siege to Pampeluna. Charles the Bad was deserted even by his own son, and was forced to make a humiliating peace in 1378. If the French forces had now been concentrated on the reduction of Bordeaux and Bayonne, and if the Castilian fleet had been employed to cut off reinforcements by sea, the English must have lost their last strongholds in Aquitaine. But Charles V. was tempted by his successes to undertake a more ambitious project—the annexation of the duchy of Brittany to the royal domain. Such a plan at once raised the whole of Brittany against him. The supporters of the House of Blois, who had fought for the king against de Montfort, were resolute to defend the independence of their province. The great soldiers of France, Bertrand du Guesclin and Olivier de Clisson, were Bretons by birth, and though they obeyed the royal orders, their action in Brittany was reluctant and inefficient. The rebellion was wholly successful; John de Montfort was restored to his duchy, and was even welcomed by the widowed Countess of Blois, who had so long championed the cause of her husband against him. This failure in Brittany was a bitter disappointment to Charles V., and his chagrin was increased by the death of Bertrand du Guesclin. The king himself did not long survive his most brilliant and faithful servant, and at the time of his death (September 16, 1380), the English still possessed a foothold in the north and south of France, which enabled them to make disastrous use of the disorders of the next reign.