Authors: Thomas B. Costain
The English army remained on the bleak plains for several months, waiting for the payment promised by Pedro to cover the expenses of the campaign. No word came from him. Not a single coin was received. As for the fabulous secret treasure, its hiding place was never revealed; probably it had no actual existence. The offer of a crown to Edward’s son was withdrawn. When the prince sent three knights to demand satisfaction, they brought back nothing but a letter; a furtive and muddled communication which gave no satisfaction.
The English losses in the battle had been small, four knights and a few hundred soldiers. But after the unhealthy camp conditions and the rigors of the return march, only one fifth of them were alive when they reached France.
As the Black Prince led his hungry and disappointed troops back over the dangerous defile of Roncesvalles, he had much time for reflection. It is doubtful, however, if the treachery of the Spanish king had caused him to change his mind. He had certain fixed beliefs and ideals, and these he held to in spite of everything. It was as clear to him as ever that kings should never be deposed, no matter how villainously they had behaved. Pedro was almost a homicidal maniac. He was treacherous and as much to be feared as a poisonous snake under a rock. But he was the legitimate king and it had been to Edward a sacred duty to go to his assistance. What would his thoughts have been had he known the fate reserved for the little three-day-old son he had left with his wife in Bordeaux?
The aftermath of the situation created by Edward in thus adhering to his unshakable belief in monarchy can best be told by a brief mention of certain unusual occurrences. The Princess of Wales, out of admiration for the bravery of Du Guesclin, contributed ten thousand florins to his ransom. John Chandos, that fine old warrior, offered to loan him the same amount. In spite of his youth and comparatively humble antecedents, the King of France appointed Du Guesclin constable of France. The two younger brothers of the Black Prince, John of Gaunt and Edmund of Cambridge, married the two daughters of Pedro a few years later. John of Gaunt strove for eleven years to make himself King of Castile because his spouse, Constance, was the eldest child of Pedro.
Hurrying back to Spain, Du Guesclin joined forces again with Henry of Trastamara and surrounded the restored ruler in the castle of Montiel. Pedro, trying to escape under cover of darkness, was detected and in a scuffle with his brother was stabbed to the heart. So Henry the illegitimate became king after all.
Prince Edward had made no effort to assist the ungrateful Pedro a second time. He had been a sick man when he started on his march through the mountains to Navarrete. On the return he found it hard to retain his
seat in the saddle. His face was as gray as the wind-swept plains along the Ebro, and he moved with the greatest difficulty. The nature of the disease which had fastened upon him was never diagnosed accurately, but no one needed more than a glance to realize that the days of the prince who had been the idol of England all his life were numbered.
The prince was guilty of two great errors during his term as suzerain of Aquitaine and Gascony. The first was getting himself involved in the Castilian adventure. This left him in such financial straits that his second great mistake followed quickly. He imposed a
fouage
, a hearth tax, on the people. The taxes were already so high that there was bitter discontent, and this new exaction caused the resentment of the people to boil over. It happened when all France was in a turmoil and a renewal of the war with England seemed certain.
No one alone can be blamed for the troubles which followed the peace of Bretigny. It was impossible to cut a great country in two and turn one large part of it over to a foreign power with any expectation of making it permanent. The English were blamed for the horrors of Free Company depredations, particularly after Edward ordered them out of Aquitaine, thus driving them over into the Loire country. The terms of the treaty, moreover, had not been fulfilled by either side. When the captive King John returned to his throne and found his people unwilling to five up to their part of the agreement, he went back voluntarily to England and took up again the role of royal prisoner. Some regarded this act as a shining example of chivalry at its best. Others, more realistic about it, considered that he had crowned a career notable for its folly with a final and supremely idiotic gesture. Some believe that he knew the end was near and by arranging to die in England he made it unnecessary for France to continue paying his ransom. Perhaps it is only fair to assume that this was back of his action. When John died in the luxury of the Savoy Palace in 1364, his oldest son succeeded him as Charles V and, for a change, the country found it had a practical and vigorous king. The new ruler brought to the throne one fixed resolve, to break the treaty and drive the English out of France.
To break the treaty was not hard, for neither country had lived up to the most important clauses. To make the agreement binding, both sides had to give up certain fortresses and to exchange official letters. Some of the fortresses had not been given up and the letters had not been exchanged. The French seemingly could not bring themselves to give away the western and southern provinces and Edward found himself unable
to forswear formally and finally his right to the throne of France. When things became tense later, he maintained that he had not abandoned his rights.
Charles V took the first overt step by sending an embassy of two members to wait on the prince at Bordeaux. When they appeared at the Abbey of St. Andrew, where the prince held court, there was astonishment and indignation over the French king’s choice of representatives, a mere knight and a lawyer. The lawyer, who acted as spokesman, insisted on reading aloud the communication he carried, which was a command to Edward to appear before the French king and answer for his oppression of the people of Aquitaine. “Let there be no delay in obeying this summons,” Charles had written, “but set out as speedily as possible after hearing this order read.”
The indignation of the prince was so great that at first he could not utter a word. Finally he said in ominously low tones, “We shall willingly attend on the appointed day at Paris, since the King of France sends for us; but it will be with our helmet on our head and accompanied by sixty thousand men.”
When the two ambassadors had withdrawn (they were later arrested for having left without obtaining passports), the prince had at first nothing to say. The scene had drawn heavily on his small store of strength. Finally he remarked to those about him, “By my faith, the French must think me dead already.”
It was clear to his people that his days for action were numbered. The prince managed to retain his hold on life for six years after the malady first settled upon him, but there was never any doubt of the ultimate result. Some medical men held it to be a fever, others declared it a serious attack of dysentery. It was almost certainly one of the slow degenerative diseases, perhaps of a cancerous nature, about which the doctors of the day knew absolutely nothing.
After this step the French king moved swiftly to prepare the way for war. Offers were made to the Free Companies to join the service of France at high pay, and some accepted. The Low Countries were won away from their English alliance. Scotland and Aragon were notified to be ready to act. To mask his intentions, however, he sent an embassy to London to discuss the situation and to present the English king with fifty pipes of wine. On one day three things happened: the French plenipotentiaries departed from Dover, Edward returned the fifty pipes of wine, and a scullion of the French king arrived with a formal declaration of war. The French king seemed to take a bitter satisfaction in thus belittling his opponents.
The Black Prince now found that he had need of all the help he could get. His first move was to summon back Sir John Chandos, who had left
when his advice against the hearth tax had been unceremoniously brushed aside. Appointed seneschal of Poitou, Chandos found it impossible to accomplish much. Another force under the Earl of Pembroke, who was an aristocrat to the tips of his steel gloves, being married to a daughter of the king, and who probably knew little about war (he succeeded in losing the whole English navy in an engagement with the Spanish), refused to co-operate with Chandos because he was only a knight bachelor. Chandos, with a tiny force, was killed at the bridge of Lussac. A third English force under Sir Simon Burley was defeated at Lusignan. The war was going so wrong and the condition of the Black Prince was so obviously bad that King Edward sent out John of Gaunt to take control. When the brothers met at Cognac, where the Black Prince arrived in a litter and in a sinking condition, the transfer was effected without any hard feeling.
But when the Bishop of Limoges handed that city over to the French, the sick warrior roused himself to a final act of retaliation; and in doing so left a blot on his reputation that nothing could erase. Still in his litter, he led an army against Limoges, breathing defiance. After a siege of a month, a mine was sprung under the French walls which opened a great breach in the masonry. The prince was borne through the breach, crying out orders for the city to be sacked.
The order was carried out. Even Froissart was startled out of his partiality in reporting what followed. The innocent people of the city were brutally murdered in the streets while the prince, his wasted face convulsed with rage, refused to allow mercy. The heritage of Tortulf and Fulk, his Angevin ancestors who were noted for their savagery, had him in its grip. Still, he responded to the teachings of chivalry when he saw three French knights defending themselves with great courage in the streets. He cried out that they were to be spared, and later he pardoned the bishop who had been responsible for the whole thing. But, according to Froissart, three thousand common people were slain in cold blood.
Soon thereafter the prince returned to England to die, leaving his brother to carry on the almost hopeless task of holding back the French. John of Gaunt, a rather indifferent leader at best, was not able to accomplish much.
T
HE peace of Bretigny did not end the war in France. It left the soldiers who had been engaged in it without any gainful occupation. The Frenchmen as well as the English and the Gascons proceeded to form themselves into large bodies known as Free Companies for the purpose of indiscriminate looting of the French countryside. Never before had an unfortunate land suffered as much as France in the long black years that the Free Companies were at large.
Two outstanding Englishmen who turned themselves into brigands were Sir John Hawkwood and Sir Robert Knollys. Hawkwood played a short part in the saga of French despair before taking his famous organization, known as the White Company, to Italy, where they sold their swords and their longbows to the warring cities on the Lombardy plain. Knollys, who had risen from the ranks, stands second in prestige to stout John Hawkwood. All France feared him, and he did his work so thoroughly that he returned to a peaceful manor in Norfolk with a large fortune and died at a ripe old age.
King Edward did not openly countenance the activities of the Free Companies, but he did not hesitate to share in their ill-gotten gains. He sent ships with supplies to Knollys—fresh bows and arrows, and armor, and gunpowder—and received back cargoes of loot and French wines, a businesslike arrangement which enabled Knollys to continue his depredations and at the same time filled the pockets of both men. It was fortunate for the English king that such an opportunity arose to supplement his income. After Bretigny, he again stood on the threshold of bankruptcy.
There were other men among the Free Companies who played bold and aggressive parts. The best of them, after the remarkable pair already mentioned, was quite clearly Sir Hugh Calveley. He had fought well all through the wars. He had the head of a giant, with a strong jaw and a
receding forehead (the face, in fact, of a born fighting man), with red hair and long teeth like tusks. It was said of Sir Hugh that he could eat as much as four men and drink as much as ten. Calveley was a full partner with Knollys in many spectacular exploits and was always noted for a fearless impetuosity which made him irresistible in the field. He lacked, however, the cool judgment of a good general and so during the campaigns he was never entrusted with an independent command. In the years of the Free Companies, he deferred to the wisdom of Knollys.
Other names which are sprinkled throughout the records of these grim days are Sir James Pipe, Sir Nicholas Dagworth, Sir William Elmham, and a picturesque knight from the Poitevin country named Sir Perducas d’Albret. None of them quite achieved a position with the leaders.
Then there was that loyal and brave Gascon who would not descend to loot and who comes continuously into the history of that time, the Captal de Buch. Jean de Grailly was the perfect knight-errant, particularly in his undeviating adherence to the oath of allegiance he had sworn to the English overlords of Gascony. The Captal was a confidant and invariable companion of the Black Prince and had fought in most of the battles of the long war. It will be recalled that he played a great part in the victory at Poictiers by his bold charge into the French flank with a mere handful of mounted men.
The title of Captal originated in Gascony, where it had a rather loose application, used only by men of the highest rank but referring to degree rather than position. In other words, it meant a great count or an illustrious viscount; a perfect application, therefore, for a man as courageous and fine as Jean de Grailly.
The Captal de Buch wielded a deadly battle-ax in conflict but was unfortunate in his one chance to direct an independent force. It came about this way. He was in command of a considerable body of Gascons and at Cocherel he encountered the redoubtable French constable, Bertrand du Guesclin. The constable was a shrewd leader. After studying the battlefield with a keen eye, he raised his mailed fist and pointed at the open space in front of the Captal de Buch, where the dreaded battle-ax of the mighty Gascon had caused the French to draw back.