Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/230

 218 THE LATER MIDDLE AGES The early campaigns were notable for the English capture of Calais, following eleven months after the famous battle of Crecy The Hundred (*34 6 )> m which the huge French force was corn- Years' War, pletely wrecked by an English army of less than 1337. one-third of its numbers. The battle was a de- cisive demonstration, that a skilful use of archery utterly destroyed the effectiveness of cavalry charging in masses. Horse and man went down before the clothyard shafts which hailed upon the flanks of the charging column, and the defeat became a slaughter. Some sixty years later precisely the same lesson in war was repeated under very similar conditions with the English when Henry v. shattered the French army at Agincourt. Shortly after the capture of Calais there was a truce. But there was a contest in Brittany for the succession to the duke- dom; so English and French found excuse for fighting each other, taking opposite sides in their quarrel. Moreover, as neither party carried out the conditions of the truce, they soon fell to fighting again in Guienne, where it must be remembered that the population were siding with their own over-lord in a feudal quarrel against his over-lord, the King of France, Here was fought the famous battle of Poictiers, in which the Black Prince made King John of France prisoner. The result of this was Treaty of that the whole of Aquitaine was severed from the Bretigny, French Crown, and became a separate principality under the Black Prince, while the King of Eng- land resigned his claim to the French Crown, under what is generally known as the treaty of Bretigny. Again the treaty terms were not carried out; the extortions of the Black Prince in Aquitaine, forced on him by his immense expenditure on a civil war in Spain in which he chose to take part, turned the population of the province against him; and in the latter years Expulsion of of Edward in. the English were driven almost com- the English, pletely out of France, and Aquitaine was again brought into the feudal dominion of the French king. While the war with England was at its height two insurrections took place, which seemed to give a foretaste of troubles which beset France four hundred years afterwards. One was the revolt of Paris, which, with the other great towns, was now be-