XII. CHAP. well and generously treated by Edward. This monarch allowed four of the French prisoners to inhabit Calais, and to make excursions from it of three and four days at a time. These prisoners were the Dukes of Orleans, of Anjou, of Berri, and of Bourbon. The Duke of Anjou seized the opportunity of one of these excursions to make his escape and return no more to resume his place as hostage. Such a forfeiture of his faith and word was highly displeasing to King John, who made his evasion a pretext for paying a visit to the English court. Some of his barons sought to dissuade him from a step so imprudent. But John declared the King of England and his family, one and all, too full of loyalty and honour to take advantage of such an act. John, therefore, journeyed to England at the commencement of 1364, and met with the welcome and the feasting which he loved, at the Savoy and at the palace of Westminster. In the midst of these festivities the French king was seized with illness, and expired in the April after his arrival. With John departed the spirit of chivalry from the breast and councils of the French monarchs for a long interval. Such a sentiment, indeed, rarely actuated the Capetian princes even in the most chivalrous age. But the first kings of the House of Valois had re-introduced it; they had lived, fought, and thought with their noblesse; and could they have applied and observed the feudal principles of justice to those nobles, their reigns would not have been marked by disaster and convulsion. But Philip the Fair had bequeathed to his namesake of Valois the great wrong of despoiling Robert of Artois. Then followed the equally unfair treatment of the House of Navarre; and finally, the murder, without trial or explanation, of any powerful enemy that displeased the prince. Philip of Valois caused Olivier de Clisson and his brother Bretons to be thus massacred. Charles of Navarre followed the example; John retaliated upon Harcourt, and murder thus became the law and practice of the land. Such crimes were the very negation of chivalry and honour, and proceeded from that overweening idea of royal right which the legists had introduced from Byzantium, and which placed the monarch above every law of feudal or of civil justice. The Church, or its chiefs, which should have been able to interfere and recall the rulers of Europe to principles of humanity and the habits of civilisation, had unfortunately itself practised wholesale murder, and avenged itself upon its foes both without law and without mercy. It could, therefore, no longer preach that Christian morality and justice of which it had so utterly lost sight. And thus two of the great and destined elements of civilisation-the Christian and the Roman tradition were perverted, to render feudalism more barbarous and man more ruthless and sanguinary. John was sincerely anxious to complete the stipulations of the treaty of Bretigny, and to live, not only on fraternal terms with the kings of England, but even to respect the accord with Navarre, concluded under their auspices. But no sooner had Charles the Fifth, son of John, succeeded to the full authority of king, than he resolved to oust Charles of Navarre from the towns of Mantes and Meulan, which he held on the Seine as part of the county of Evreux. Charles was of retired habits. and weakly temperament. Like Louis the Fat, he had had a malady in youth (some said it was poison), from which he never fully recovered, always remaining pale and sickly. Louis the Fat had shaken off a similar languor by activity in the field; but Charles the Fifth of France betook himself to books, and lived principally in his cabinet. He fitted up three stories in one of the towers of the Louvre, which he filled with books and translations, one of which was the Bible. If astrology formed a portion of his studies, policy alone seemed to dictate his resolves. CHAP. XII. СПАР. The time was little in accordance with these peaceful habits. Its unquiet spirit, the civil war in Brittany, the expeditions of the English, and the enterprises of the Navarrese had made soldiers of almost every gentleman as well as of a great many of the inferior classes. The military seemed to start up as the only profession, that of the Church having considerably declined, and lawyers and civil functionaries being thrown into the shade. To get rid of the companies of mercenary troops did not suffice to quiet the kingdom. The lesser gentry had lived and fraternised with these professional soldiers, and acquired their restless nature as well as their unscrupulous and rapacious habits. Such men were the Captal de Buch, a Gascon in the English service, Bertrand du Guesclin, a Breton gentleman in the service of Charles of Blois. The rules of warfare adopted by such partisans were no longer those of chivalrous and great leaders, like the Black Prince, who marched at the head of large armies, offered and accepted battle at any disadvantage, and disdained to owe victory to falsehood and treachery. Mustering with small bands, the French being then incapable of more than local efforts, these hardy chieftains gained by craft and surprise what force could not enable them to achieve; and partisans like Du Guesclin, though always defeated when they embarked in great war or risked a drawn battle, still won in detail or in small encounters what they lost in more serious war, and recovered for France, by skirmishes and surprises, all the provinces and most of the renown which it lost in battles and campaigns. The first exploit of the new reign was achieved by these partisans. The object was to recover Mantes and Meulan from the King of Navarre. Du Guesclin and Boucicaut, collecting about 500 horse, pretended to attack Rolleboise, also upon the Seine, the castle of which was held by some Belgian mercenaries. Boucicaut, with about 100 of his horse, rode at full speed to the gates of Mantes from Rolleboise, and demanded admittance, in order to save themselves from the mercenaries who, they declared, had defeated them before Rolleboise, and who were pursuing to exterminate them. The Mantois, though at first mistrustful, opened the gates to Boucicaut and his small troop, which took care not to enter all together, till some of Du Guesclin's band had joined them; and these were no sooner in than, to the cry of "St. Yves du Guesclin!" they rushed to master the town, pillaged it from one end to the other, and slew all who made resistance. The people of Meulan, who had no suspicion of a troop of soldiers coming from Mantes, which they did not know had been taken, opened their gates still more readily, and their town. was captured in a similar manner. The King of Navarre no sooner learned this declaration of war than he summoned John de Grailly, Captal de Buch, to Evreux, and hired the services of John Jovel, an English captain of free bands. These, to the number of about 1500, came to an encounter with nearly an equal number of the partisans of France, near Cocherel, in Normandy. There were Gascons on both sides; and while the Captal de Buch led the troops of the King of Navarre, the Sieur d'Albret, and other great Gascon lords, supplied a third of the French, so little was the English monarch master of the province he had conquered or of its noblesse. A trait, equally characteristic of the time, was a dispute in the French ranks as to who should command; for the new king seemed to exercise no power in this respect. The noble knights of the army were for having the Count of Auxerre as commander; the soldiers put more trust in Du Guesclin. Finally, the latter took the command. The captal, being in possession of a hill, was for keeping the advantageous position; but John Jovel would fight, and the captal was obliged to descend and engage the combat with him. It was gallantly fought CHAP. XII. CHAP. on both sides. Du Guesclin had ordered thirty wellmounted knights to direct their efforts towards the one aim that of surrounding and carrying off the Captal de Buch, without striking blows or joining battle. This order they successfully executed; and the partisans of Navarre, who hitherto had stood their ground, so that neither side could boast having the advantage, gave way. John Jovel fell, and the French remained masters of the field. Charles' coronation at Rheims was gladdened by these unusual tidings of military success. He created Du Guesclin Count of Longueville in Normandy, and ordered the war to be prosecuted with vigour both against the King of Navarre and against De Montfort in Brittany. Charles' brother Philip, now Duke of Burgundy, led a large army of his new vassals westward, but troubles in his own duchy recalled him. And the task of deciding the civil strife in Brittany, and finally putting down De Montfort, was entrusted to Bertrand Du Guesclin. This partisan brought a thousand lances to Charles of Blois at Nantes, where they were joined by the nobles of Normandy and the Bretons. When John of Montfort, then engaged in the siege of Auray, heard of the army that was mustering against him, he besought the aid of the Prince of Wales at Angouleme. The Prince, seeing that the French king openly aided Charles of Blois, permitted John Chandos to take two hundred lances to the aid of De Montfort. These armies, of about equal numbers, three thousand knights, with proportionate infantry*, on either side, commanded by John Chandos and Bertrand Du Guesclin, both the competitors for the dukedom, John de Montfort and Charles of Blois, being also present, met on the plain near Auray towards the close of September (1364). Each army was divided into three divisions, *Cuvelier estimates the French at 4000. |