Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/583

 HUNDRED YEARS WAR.] FRANCE 547 Lecocq, seeing the critical state of things, obtained the release of Charles of Navarre, then a prisoner. The result was that ere long the dauphin-regent was at open war with Navarre and with Paris. The outbreak of the miserable peasantry, the Jacquerie, who fought partly for revenge against the nobles, partly to help Paris, darkened the time ; they were repressed with savage bloodshed, and in 1358 the dauphin s party in Paris assassinated the only great man France had seen for long. With Etienne Marcel s death all hope of a constitutional life died out from France ; the dauphin entered Paris, and set his foot on the conquered liberties of his country. Paris had stood almost alone ; civic strength is wanting in France ; the towns but feebly supported Marcel ; they compelled the movement to lose its popular and general character, and to become a first attempt to govern France from Paris alone. After some insincere negotiations, and a fear of desultory warfare, in which Edward III. traversed France without meeting with a single foe to fight, peace was at last agreed to at Bretigny in May 1360. By this act Edward III. renounced the French throne, and gave up all he claimed or held north of the Loire, while he was secured in the lordship of the south and west, as well as of that part of northern Picardy which included Calais, Guines, and Ponthieu. The treaty also fixed the ransom to be paid by King John. France was left smaller than she had been under Philip Augustus, yet she received this treaty with infinite thank fulness ; worn out with war and weakness, any diminution of territory seemed better to her than a continuance of her unbearable misfortunes. Under Charles, first as regent, then as king, she enjoyed an uneasy rest and peace for 20 years. The monarchy was disgraced by failure and captivity; the nobles weakened and discredited in war and peace, headed by factious and self-seeking lords, could offer no hope for France ; the cities had shown, during the effort of Marcel, that rare man of energy and genius, that they were unfit to take the command ; the Jacquerie had declared the peasantry to be wretched and powerless ; the black death with equal hand had smitten all, and had shown with lurid light the scandalous manners of the Avignon papacy, the want of patriotic or religious energy in the clergy ; the country was pitilessly ravaged by the free companies, the inheritance of the war. In all Europe ifc was a dark and gloomy time ; in France men might well despair. King John, after returning for a brief space to France, went back into his pleasant captivity in England, leaving his country to be ruled by the regent the dauphin. In 1364 he died, and Charles V., &quot;the Wise,&quot; became king in name, as he had now been for some years in fact. This cold, prudent, sickly prince, a scholar who laid the foundations of the great library of Paris by placing 900 MSS. in three chambers in the Louvre, had nothing to dazzle the ordinary eye ; to the timid spirits of that age he seemed to be a malevolent wizard, and his name of &quot; Wiso &quot; had in it more of fear than of love* Yet he was a successful prince for the times ; he discerned that nothing could be gained by fighting battles, that Ennius had given him the clue to victory in describing Fabius as one who &quot;cunctando restituit rein;&quot; and he had the passive cold ness of heart needful to carry out such a plan. He also is notable for two things : he reformed the current coin, and recognized the real worth of Du Guesclin, the first great leader of mercenaries in France, a grim fighting-man, aostile to the show of feudal warfare, and herald of a new ige of contests, in which tho feudal levies would fall into entury, tho incapacity of the great lords, the rise of free unces and mercenary troops, all told that a new era had irrived. It was by the hand of Du Guesclin that Charles vercame his cousin and namesake Charles of Navarre, and compelled him to peace. On the other hand, in the Breton 1364-80. war which folio wed just after, he was defeated by Sir John Chandos and the partisans of John of Montfort, who made him prisoner ; the treaty of Guerande which followed gave them the dukedom of Brittany ; and Charles V., unable to resist, was fain to receive the new duke s homage, and to confirm him in the duchy. The king did not rest till ho had ransomed Du Guesclin from the hands of Chandos ; he then gave him commission to raise a paid army of free booters, the scourge of France, and to march with them to support, against the Black Prince, the claims of Henry of Trastamare to the crown of Castile. Successful at first, by help of the king of Aragon, he was made constable of Spain at the coronation of Henry at Burgos ; Edward the Black Prince, however, intervened, and at the battle of Najara (1367) Du Guesclin was again a prisoner in English hands, and Henry lost his throne. Fever destroyed the victorious host, and the Black Prince, withdrawing into Gascony, carried with him the seeds of the disorder which shortened his days. Du Guesclin soon got his liberty again; an:l Charles V., seeing how much his great rival of England was weakened, determined at last on open war. He allied himself with Henry of Trastamare, listened to the grievances of the Aquitanians, summoned the Black Prince to appear and answer the complaints. In 1369 Henry defeated Pedro, took him prisoner, and murdered him in a brawl ; thus perished the hopes of the English party in the south. About the same time Charles V. sent open defiance and declaration of war to England. Without delay he surprised the English in the north, recovering all Ponthieu at once; the national pride was aroused; Philip, duke of Burgundy, who had, through the prudent help of Charles, lately won as a bride the heiress of Flanders, was stationed at Eouen, to cover the western approach to Paris, with strict orders not to fight; the Aquitanians were more than half French at heart. The record of the war is as the smoke of a furnace. We see the reek of burnt and plundered towns; there were no brilliant feats of arms ; the Black Prince, gloomy and sick, abandoned the struggle, and returned to England to die ; the new governor, the earl of Pembroke, did not even succeed in landing: he was attacked and defeated off Piochelle by Henry of Castille, his whole fleet with all its treasure and stores taken or sunk, and he himself was a prisoner in Henry s hands. Du Guesclin had already driven the English out of the west into Brittany; he now overran Poitou, which received him gladly ; all the south seemed to be at his feet. The attempt of Edward III. to relieve the little that remained to him in France failed utterly, and by 1372 Poitou was finally lost to England. Charles set himself to reduce Brittany with considerable success ; a diversion from Calais caused plentiful misery in the open country; but, as the French again refused to fight, it did nothing to restore the English cause. By 1375 England held nothing in France except Calais, Cherbourg, Bayonne, and Bordeaux. Edward III., utterly worn out with war, agreed to a truce, through intervention of the pope; it was signed in 1375. In 1377, on its expiry, Charles, who in the two years had sedulously improved the state of France, renewed the war. By sea and land the English were utterly overmatched, and by 1378 Charles was master of the situation on all hands. Now, however, he pushed his advantages too far; and the cold skill which had overthrown the English was used in vain against the Bretons, whose duchy he desired to absorb. Languedoc and Flanders also revolted against him. France was heavily burdened with taxes, and the future was dark and threatening. In the midst of these things, death over took the coldly-calculating monarch in September 1380. Little had France to hope from the boy who was now
 * he background. The invention of gunpowder in this