CHAPTER VI. JOHN THE GOOD AND CHARLES THE WISE

[Sidenote: [1350-1380 A.D.]]

The new king John was between thirty-one and thirty-two years of age. It was long since a king of France had ascended the throne in such critical circumstances. All the internal maladies which, ever since the days of Philip the Fair, had been undermining the constitution of the state had burst out at the first shock of external violence. The weakness of this monarchy, arbitrary without order, fiscal without finances, military without an army, which had failed to create for itself any other instrument or any other support than a body of legists; the fragility of this colossus with feet of clay was now revealed both to the foreigner and to France herself. A country desolated by plague, impoverished by a disastrous war and by a government more ruinous than plague and war, where the lowest depths of society were stirred by those dull mutterings which announce the distant tempest; a royalty despoiled, by deserved misfortunes, of the prestige of birth and grandeur which had survived its popularity; finally a war which set at stake not the position of some frontier but the existence of the dynasty and the independence of the nation: such was the inheritance which the first of the Valois had bequeathed to his son.[b]

King John inaugurated his reign by debasing the coinage to meet the expenses of the coronation which was celebrated at Rheims, on the 26th of September, 1350, with all the accustomed splendour. The brilliant train of princes who accompanied him drew upon themselves not only the glances but the hopes of the entire population.

Treachery, however, was on all sides. Already Philip of Valois had attempted to deal with it outside the regular forms of judicial procedure; the newly made king followed in his footsteps. Raoul, count of Eu and of Guines, constable of France, obtained of Edward III, whose prisoner he was, liberty on parole, and returned to Paris to present himself at court. John caused him to be arrested and confined in the Louvre. A few days afterwards the constable was beheaded, and his property given to John of Artois, who assumed the title of count of Eu.

[Sidenote: [1350-1352 A.D.]]

The office of constable was conferred upon a certain De la Cerda, Charles of Spain, brother of that Louis of Spain who had upheld the party of Blois in Brittany. The new constable, being the personal favourite of the king, found many rivals at court, and thus arose contentions that were to be the source of further troubles. For the purpose of anticipating acts of treason and of strengthening the attachment and devotion to himself of the most powerful nobles, John created a new order of chivalry; or, as Froissart[g] says, “A fine company, high and noble, after the manner of the Round Table which existed in the time of King Artus [Arthur].” He also had another model, the order of the Garter, recently created by Edward III. Thus was instituted the order of the Star, which had for emblem a star in gold, silver, gilt, or pearls, and which the king bestowed on the three hundred knights who had proved themselves “the most valiant at arms and the most useful to the kingdom.” He imposed upon them an oath that they would never flee before the enemy to a distance of over four arpents. On the first occasion the king designated the recipients of the order himself, but later the choice was decided by the majority of the members. This was the first time that a court order of chivalry had been created in France. The new institution was destined to be of but short duration, however, as its dissolution immediately followed the captivity of its founder.

Preparations were begun for a renewal of the war with England, and in expectation of this event John displayed great activity. Financial aid, which was to be a portion of the profits on the sale of beverages and merchandise, was voted to him by the provinces of Vermandois and Normandy, the city of Paris, and the bailiwick of Amiens, the assemblies stipulating in exchange the confirmation of certain privileges and the suppression of various abuses; among others the right of lodgment and of _prise en vertu_ by which the king caused his expenses and those of his household to be defrayed by anyone with whom he chose to lodge.

We can form some idea of the deplorable state of the finances from the fact that during the course of the year 1351 John issued no less than eighteen ordinances altering monetary values, although neither the help of such expedients nor the subsidies voted by the provinces availed to bring about an equilibrium between receipts and expenditures. The treasury continued, as in the preceding reign, to pay annually only a part of the officers’ wages and of the interest on the debt. There were also ordinances regulating the order in which the public expenses were to be met, just as to-day, in cases of bankruptcy, the succession in which creditors are to be paid is determined by law. In the case of certain outlays the government was extremely tardy in making payment, taking for its model the nobility, to the members of which great latitude was allowed. “Let no one,” said King John, “wonder or be ill-pleased, for we take account of the respites and delays accorded to the nobles in the payment of their debts, and it would not be seemly that we should be in a worse condition than they.”

The truces, although renewed from year to year, were imperfectly kept; hostilities continued to break out from time to time at different points, and there was not a campaign during which special engagements did not take place between parties of English or French knights. There were frequent skirmishes during 1351 in the neighbourhood of St. Jean d’Angély, and in 1352 between Guines and St. Omer. The war in Brittany had been kept up in desultory fashion since the capture of Charles of Blois in 1347, when his wife, Joan de Penthièvre, took up the cause. The most celebrated of these minor combats was the _combat des trente_, fought in Brittany, August 1352, on the moor of Mi-Voie, between Josselin and Ploërmel.[c]

[Sidenote: [1352-1354 A.D.]]

Robert de Beaumanoir, governor of the castle of Josselin, challenged the English captain Richard Bamborough who commanded at Ploërmel. They met on the lands of Josselin each with twenty-nine companions. The sixty champions fought on foot with short swords. “Such a combat,” says Froissart, “had not been recorded for over a hundred years.” It did not cease until all the combatants were either killed or badly wounded--four French and nine English, Bamborough among them, lay dead on the field. The rest of the English gave themselves up to the French. But such contests did not help matters, and so the war dragged on.[a]

TROUBLE WITH CHARLES OF NAVARRE

[Illustration: JOHN THE GOOD

(From an old French print)]

To the exterior dangers with which France was menaced was now added the calamity of civil war. The cause for this fresh trouble was to be found in the pretensions held by the king of Navarre, and the jealousy which he conceived against the new constable, Charles of Spain. This king of Navarre was Charles the Bad, so named for the rigour with which he had put down a sedition in Pamplona. A prince of the royal house of France on the side of his father, Philip of Évreux, he succeeded in 1349 not only to the kingdom of the Pyrenees, but to the county of Évreux, and the possession of several fiefs in Normandy. He was young, ambitious, enterprising, as were also his two younger brothers, Philip and Louis; and to attach him more securely to his interests, John betrothed to him one of his daughters, then a child, to whom he promised as marriage portion an income raised from the counties of Angoulême and Mortain. These counties having been ravaged by the English, Charles of Navarre demanded another dowry, and at the same time claimed indemnity for Champagne and Brie, former possessions of his mother which had been ceded to the crown during the preceding reign, but by treaty of which all the clauses had not been put regularly in execution. John refused to acknowledge these claims, or at any rate was in no hurry to satisfy them, and gave Angoulême and Mortain to Charles of Spain.

The king of Navarre laid all the blame for this real or pretended breach of faith to the constable, and the two held a spirited altercation together in the presence of King John. With the king of Navarre was his brother Philip of Navarre, count of Longueville, who on being given the lie by the constable swore to be revenged. On leaving the scene of the quarrel he defied the constable and warned him to be on his guard against the infantes of Navarre. Charles of Spain paid so little heed to these menaces that he betook himself, insufficiently attended, to Laigle, the latest evidence of the royal favour, which was situated not six leagues from Évreux, where dwelt his enemies. As soon as the count of Longueville learned of this move he left his home at night, accompanied by a troop of men-at-arms, and entering the hôtel of the constable, murdered the latter in his bed (1354).

[Sidenote: [1354-1355 A.D.]]

The infantes of Navarre wrote letters of self-justification to several cities of France, and to the council of the king. At the same time they stocked their castles with supplies, assembled all their nobles, and opened up relations with the English, who were only too pleased to have a foothold thus established for them in Normandy. John, determined not to leave unpunished an act of personal vengeance that infringed seriously upon his own authority, marched in person against Évreux, and sent orders to the count d’Armagnac, his representative in Toulouse, to occupy Navarre with the whole strength of the southern troops.

This civil war, breaking forth so unexpectedly, was certain to renew the war with England, since it offered that country an unexampled opportunity to re-enter the lists. In fear of this event, the princes and princesses of the house of France, aided by the legate cardinal of Boulogne, offered their mediation and succeeded in bringing about an arrangement at Nantes, the 22nd of February, 1354. Payment of all that was due him, and the satisfaction of his legitimate claims were assured the king of Navarre, on condition that he should so far humiliate himself as to ask the king’s pardon in open parliament. This he consented to do, but demanded that certain hostages be sent him. “And in the presence of all he asked pardon of the king for the deed wrought upon the said constable, for he had had just and sufficient cause thereto, all of which he was ready to reveal to the king then or at any time. Furthermore he declared and swore that he had not committed the act out of contempt for the king nor for the office of constable, and that nothing would afflict him so sorely as to be in the evil graces of the king.” John accepted the excuse and took the offender back into favour.

This understanding retarded further hostilities, but only for a little time. John, who had been unaware of the secret relations entered into with the English, soon learned of them; whereupon Charles the Bad, fearing for his own safety, retired to Avignon, where he besought protection of the pope. In the month of November John entered Normandy, took possession of and sequestrated the estates of the king of Navarre, and commanded the officers who were in charge of the various castles to deliver them up to him. Six of the defenders refused to obey, among others those in charge of the castles of Cherbourg and Évreux.

The court of Avignon had not ceased its efforts to negotiate a treaty between England and France, and as it was necessary that this treaty should be a final one the king of Navarre must be included in its terms; hence the papal protection had not been refused him in his need. The negotiations were carried on actively during the winter of 1354-1355, but fell through like all preceding ones, and in the spring came definitely to an end. Edward demanded that his full sovereignty should be recognised over Guienne and Ponthieu, which provinces should be separated from the French crown. He also refused to continue to pay homage to France, and tried to stipulate for a semi-independence for Brittany. John refused to consider propositions so injurious, and in a legitimate spirit of national pride resolved to try once more the fortunes of war.

On all sides preparations for war were being carried on. The king of Navarre, having passed through Pamplona and English Guienne, embarked in July, 1355, at Cherbourg, which port it was his intention to open to Edward III. The English sovereign manned a fleet for the purpose of descending upon the north coast of France; but contrary winds held him for a long time in the Channel, in sight of Jersey, and finally obliged him to return to the harbour of Plymouth.

In spite of this mischance the English remained full of ardour, and built great hopes upon the assistance of the Navarrese. John’s counsellors represented to him that he could not with safety allow his enemies to retain allies of such energy and power, and that at any cost the interests of Charles the Bad must be separated from those of Edward III. With great repugnance, therefore, the king consented to grant certain concessions to the king of Navarre, who joyfully accepted them. A second treaty was signed at Valognes, by the terms of which Charles the Bad was reinstated in his French domains on consideration that he should make formal apology for having allied himself with the enemies of the kingdom (September 10th, 1355). He hastened to fulfil his promise, and for the second time came to the Louvre to ask public pardon of the king. His brother Philip, count of Longueville, could not be induced to follow his example, but remained true to the English side.

By depriving the English of the Navarrese alliance King John robbed them of their chief support, and obliged them to change their plan of campaign. Edward III landed at Calais, and in October made several incursions into Artois; but John marched against him in person, and prevented him from crossing the French frontier, thus paralysing all his efforts.

The English were more successful in the south, where they had sent a large army headed by the prince of Wales and the celebrated John Chandos. This army made a rapid and fruitful passage through Languedoc--pillaging Castelnaudary, Carcassonne, and a number of towns and castles--as far as the very gates of Montpellier without meeting with the least resistance. The cities were all entered, and the whole district, one of the richest in France, laid waste as Normandy had been in 1346. The English returned with five thousand prisoners and a thousand wagons laden with silver, objects of worth and merchandise, particularly cloths and velvets taken from Narbonne and Limoux. In order to transport safely all this booty to Guienne it was necessary to cross the Garonne at a distance of only three leagues from Toulouse. The count d’Armagnac, commander of Languedoc, was shut up in this town with forces more considerable than those of the English; he refused, however, to sally forth and arrest them as they passed by, in spite of the orders which had been brought to him by the new constable James de Bourbon, successor to Charles of Spain.

To meet the needs of the war, and to provide himself with a still greater force for the coming campaign, John resorted to all sorts of financial expedients. He ordered his treasurers to adjourn all payments out of the public funds, be they for what purpose they might; he made treaties for subsidies with several provinces, Auvergne, Normandy, Maine, and Anjou, and lastly convened the states-general at Paris.[c]

THE STATES-GENERAL OF 1355 A.D.

The estates of the north, or of the Languedoïl, convoked on the 30th of November, showed no tractable temper. It was necessary to promise them the abolition of that direct robbery called the right of seizure, and of the indirect one which was practised through the coinage. The king declared that the new impost should extend to all persons, and that it should be paid by himself, the queen, and the princes. These fair words did not reassure the estates. They put no trust in the royal word, or in the royal tax-gatherers. They required that the money should be received by themselves, through collectors chosen by them; that accounts should be laid before them, and that they should meet again on the 1st of March, and again, after the lapse of a year, on St. Andrew’s day.

[Sidenote: [1355-1356 A.D.]]

To vote and receive taxes is to reign. No one in those days was aware of the full import of this bold demand of the estates, probably not even Étienne Marcel, the famous provost of the merchants, whom we see at the head of the deputies of the towns. The assembly purchased this royalty by the enormous concession of 6,000,000 livres parisis for the pay of thirty thousand men-at-arms. This money was to be raised by two imposts, on salt and on sales--bad imposts, no doubt, and bearing heavily on the poor; but what other could be devised in so pressing an emergency, when the whole south was at the enemy’s mercy?

Normandy, Artois, and Picardy sent no deputies to these estates. The Normans were encouraged by the king of Navarre, the count d’Harcourt, and others, who declared that the gabelle should not be levied on their lands: that there should not be found a man so bold on the part of the king of France, who should enforce it, nor sergeant who should levy a fine, but should pay for it with his body. The estates gave way. They suppressed the two imposts, and substituted for them a tax on income: five per cent. on the poorest classes, four per cent. on middling fortunes, and two per cent. on the rich. The more one had the less he paid. The king, bitterly offended by the resistance of the king of Navarre and his friends, said that he should never have perfect joy so long as they were alive. He set out from Orleans with some cavaliers, rode for thirty hours, and surprised them in the castle of Rouen, where they were at table, having been invited by the dauphin. He had D’Harcourt and three others beheaded; the king of Navarre was thrown into prison, and threatened with death (April 16th, 1356). A rumour was set afloat that they had urged the dauphin to escape to the emperor, and make war on the king, his father.[e]

A third session of the states-general was held in Paris on the 8th of May, under the shadow of these tragic events, and new subsidies from the revenues were granted the king. John was particular to mislead the public as to the causes of the recent affair at Rouen, and it was everywhere given out that he had seized letters that furnished evidence of a conspiracy between the Navarrese and the king of England. Nevertheless the people suspected that the “real treason” of Charles of Navarre lay in his resistance to taxation, and this opinion joined to the current rumours as to the harsh treatment the captive had received, won him the compassion and the interest of the masses.

The people as a whole regarded in the same manner the captivity of the Navarrese, the execution of D’Harcourt, and the vengeance which King John took upon the authors of a revolt at Arras, which occurred almost simultaneously with the arrest of Charles the Bad. On the 27th of April the marshal D’Audeneham had entered Arras without resistance and had seized those guilty of rebellion. Twenty of these were decapitated in the market-place.[b]

King John, who had begun the campaign by seizing those strongholds of the king of Navarre in Normandy into which he might have introduced the English, at last advanced with a great army, as numerous as France ever lost. The whole country was covered with his runners; the English could no longer find means of subsistence. Neither of the two hostile forces knew its own position. John thought the English were before him, and was hastening to overtake them, whilst they were really behind him. The prince of Wales, no better informed, thought the French were in his rear. This was the second and not the last time the English entangled themselves blindly in the enemy’s country. Only a miracle could have saved them, and John’s blundering rashness was no less.

THE BATTLE OF POITIERS (SEPTEMBER 18TH, 1356)

[Sidenote: [1356 A.D.]]

The army of the prince of Wales, partly English, partly Gascon, numbered 2,000 men-at-arms, 4,000 archers, and 2,000 light troops, brigands hired in the south. John was at the head of the great feudal gathering of the ban and arrière-ban, making fully 50,000 men. There were John’s four sons, 26 dukes or counts, and 140 knights-banneret, with their banners displayed; a magnificent spectacle, but the army was none the better for all that.

Two cardinal legates, one of whom was a Talleyrand, interfered to prevent the effusion of Christian blood. The prince of Wales offered to give up all he had taken, and to swear he would not serve for seven years to come against France. John refused the offer, as was natural; it would have been shameful to let those plunderers escape. He insisted that, at least, the prince of Wales should yield himself prisoner, with one hundred knights.

The English had fortified themselves on the Coteau de Maupertuis, a steep hill near Poitiers, planted with vines, and flanked with hedges and thorny thickets. Their archers covered all the summit. There was no need of attacking them. No more was requisite than to keep them there; hunger and thirst would have quelled them in two days. But John thought it more chivalric to subdue his enemy by force of arms. There was but one narrow path by which access could be obtained to the English position. The king of France sent horsemen forward to the charge. The archers shot down clouds of arrows, wounded and scared the horses, and threw them in confusion one on the other. The English seized this moment to charge down from the hill, and presently all that great army was in disorder. Three sons of the king of France retired from the field, by their father’s command,[24] taking away with them an escort of eight hundred lances.

[Illustration: A FRENCH KNIGHT OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY]

Meanwhile, the king stood fast. He had employed horsemen to charge up the hill; and with equal good sense, he ordered those about him to dismount, and fight on foot against the English, who were coming upon them on horseback. John’s resistance was as injurious to his realm as the flight of his sons. His brethren of the order of the Star were, like himself, true to their vow, and did not retreat. “And they fought by troops and by companies, as they chanced to meet and fall in together.” But the multitude fled to Poitiers, which closed its gates. “So there was on the road and before the gate such a horrible spectacle of men slaughtered and trampled down as is wonderful to think of; and the French surrendered the moment they caught sight of an Englishman ever so far off.”

Meanwhile, the field was still contested. “King John himself did wonders; he was armed with a battle-axe, with which he fought and defended himself. By his side was his youngest son, who well deserved the surname of the Bold, who guided his blind valour, crying out to him every moment: ‘Look to your right, father! to your left!’ But the throng of assailants continually increased, all being eager to make so rich a capture. The English and Gascons poured in so fast on the king’s division that they broke through the ranks by force; and the French were so intermixed with their enemies that at times there were five men attacking one gentleman. There was much pressing at this time, through eagerness of taking the king; and those that were nearest to him, and knew him, cried out: ‘Surrender yourself, or you are a dead man.’ In that part of the field was a young knight from St. Omer, who was engaged by a salary in the service of the king of England; his name was Denys de Morbeyne, who for five years had attached himself to the English, on occasion of his having been banished in his younger days from France, for a murder committed in an affray at St. Omer. It fortunately happened for this knight that he was at the time near to the king of France, when the latter was so much pulled about; he, by dint of force--for he was very strong and robust--pushed through the crowd, and said to the king in good French: ‘Sir, sir, surrender yourself.’ The king, who found himself very disagreeably situated, turning to him, asked: ‘To whom shall I surrender myself--to whom? Where is my cousin, the prince of Wales? If I could see him, I would speak to him.’ ‘Sir,’ replied Sir Denys, ‘he is not here; but surrender yourself to me, and I will lead you to him.’ ‘Who are you?’ said the king. ‘Sir, I am Denys de Morbeyne, a knight from Artois; but I serve the king of England, because I cannot belong to France, having forfeited all I possessed there.’ The king then gave him his right hand glove, and said: ‘I surrender myself to you.’ There was much crowding and pushing about, for everyone was eager to cry out: ‘I have taken him.’ Neither the king nor his youngest son, Philip, was able to get forward and free himself from the throng.”

The prince of Wales did honour to the unparalleled good fortune that had placed such a pledge in his hands. He took good care not to treat his captive otherwise than as a king; in his eyes that captive was the true king of France, and not John of Valois, as the English had been used to call him. It was of the last importance to the prince that John should be king in reality, so that the kingdom might seem itself taken captive in the person of its sovereign, and should ruin itself to ransom him. He waited on John at table, after the battle; and when he made his entry into London, he set him on a tall white horse (an emblem of suzerainty), whilst he himself followed on a little black hackney.

The English were not less courteous to the other prisoners. They had twice as many of them as there were men to guard them, and dismissed the greater part of them on parole, pledging them to come at Christmas, and pay the enormous ransoms they set upon them. The prisoners were too good knights to fail. In this war between gentlemen, the worst that could happen to the beaten party was to go and take their part in the festivities of the victors, to hunt and joust in England, and enjoy the courtesy of the English; a noble war, doubtless, which crushed none but the villein.

Great was the dismay in Paris when the fugitives from Poitiers, with the dauphin at their head, brought news that there was no longer a king or barons in France, but all were killed or taken.[25] The English, who had withdrawn for a moment to secure the captives, would, doubtless, speedily return. This time it might be expected that they would take, not Calais, but Paris and the realm.[e]

THE STATES-GENERAL OF 1356-1357 A.D.

[Sidenote: [1356-1357 A.D.]]

The king a captive, the nobles prisoners or destroyed--the people alone remained to save France. This younger member, disinherited in the political family of the Middle Ages, took in hand the government of the realm, now falling to pieces through the incapacity of its elder brothers. It was not this one that had been vanquished at Crécy and Poitiers. These defeats, on the contrary, brought it forward, for it was evident that, scorned as it was by the nobility, at least it had not conducted itself worse, and perhaps even may have made a better show against the English archers than the knights. The people ruling--that was a novel and extraordinary thing. Nevertheless they were not, at least in their leaders, totally inexperienced in the conduct of affairs. Former progress had prepared them somewhat; the common people were in parliament, the church, and the universities; they had control of all commerce and had formed vast industrial corporations. The clergy and commerce (which was soon to become the aristocracy of the third estate) both furnished a leader to the new movement started after the battle of Poitiers--Robert Lecoq, bishop of Laon and president of the parliament, and Étienne Marcel, provost of the merchants of Paris.

Marcel’s first care at the news of the disaster was to finish the fortifications of the capital, to place cannon on them, and to barricade the streets. The dauphin Charles arrived ten days after the battle, but the people did not make much of this young prince. His conduct at Poitiers had been decidedly equivocal; he had been one of the first to flee. He took the title of lieutenant of the king of France and convoked the states-general at Paris for the Languedoïl, at Toulouse for the Languedoc (October 17th, 1356). The assembly at Paris had eight hundred members, of which four hundred came from the cities and towns; Marcel presided over the third estate and Robert Lecoq over the clergy. The nobles were few in number; their principal leader was John de Pecquigny, lord of Vermandois, and a friend of the king of Navarre. The three orders deliberated separately, but to bring unity into their actions nominated a mixed commission of eighty members. It formulated the wishes of the states-general and demanded for the reform of the kingdom the summons and trial, before judges nominated by the states-general, of the king’s chief officers of finance and justice, accused of having perverted and sold judgments; the deliverance of the king of Navarre; the establishment of a council of four prelates, twelve lords, and twelve bourgeois elected by the states-general, without which the dauphin could give no orders and which would control the entire government. On these terms they granted the dauphin one and a half tenths for one year of the revenues of the three orders. In truth, by their revolutionary changes the people placed themselves on the throne and undertook the burden of public affairs and the public welfare. The states-general of the Languedoc, less radical, voted a levy of fifteen thousand men with the necessary money to maintain them.

The dauphin would not listen to an agreement with these conditions. He played skilfully with the deputies of the third estate, in persuading them to consult their constituents once more, while he himself would go to ask help of his uncle the emperor of Germany. Charles IV was then putting forward his famous “golden bull” in the Diet of Nuremberg. The dauphin appeared there. He had strong hopes that on his return he would find the deputies dispersed and discouraged. Far from that, the provincial councils had reassembled, approved the measures of the states-general, and the whole country declared itself in the same fashion (1357). On the 3rd of March the dauphin was obliged to call a general assembly at the palace. The bishop of Laon acted as spokesman. He demanded that the prince dismiss twenty-two of his councillors or servitors and authorise the formation of a council of thirty-six members elected by the states-general “to provide for the needs of the kingdom, and which everyone would be compelled to obey.” Commissioners at first had to be sent into all the provinces, but the states finally acquired the faculty of handling the government of its own creation by endowing itself with the power to meet twice a year without convocation. As to reforms, relating for the most part to finances and justice, the dauphin provided for them in the “grand ordinance of reformation.” By this memorable charter he promised to impose no taxes without the vote of the states-general, to divert no money from the treasury, and to leave the levy and expenditure of taxes to the states-general’s delegates, to make justice impartial and prompt, to sell judiciary offices no longer, and not to alter the coinage from a model which the provost of the merchants was to furnish. The right of seizure, forced loans, judgments by commissioners, and alienation of the crown domains were some of the abuses corrected by the ordinance which at the end declared the members of the states-general inviolable and authorised armed resistance to all illegal procedure.

[Sidenote: [1357-1358 A.D.]]

The popular government of 1357 unfortunately did not have in its bosom sufficient harmony, strength, and experience to maintain the important conquest the people had just made. Moreover its situation was one of the most difficult; its credit was shaken by King John, who from his prison forbade the states-general to assemble and the people to pay the taxes they themselves had voted. The rural committees were in the most deplorable state. Overburdened by taxes, by the heavy ransoms which their captive lords extracted by torture, the peasants could no longer cultivate a land that had moreover been ravaged in the war. They developed into vagabonds and preferred to become the accomplices rather than victims of the bands of discharged soldiers from every country, which the war had left upon French soil.[f]

In the fourteenth century the name brigand was given to this licensed soldiery, nearly all of whom, as we are aware, fought on foot, and were, as a general rule, but slenderly equipped; they carried, as a part of their equipment, a small fine coat of mail, which took its name of brigantine from them. The pay of the mercenaries being stopped in time of truce or between the different expeditions, they turned to the daily practice of rapine and plunder for their means of subsistence, which brought them in more than their pay. A crowd of adventurers and loafers joined forces with them, among the number being many noblemen. As to the rest, the following passage from Froissart[g] sets forth vividly the methods by which the brigands carried on their terrible profession:

[Illustration: A FRENCH NOBLEMAN OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY]

“And the poor brigands always succeeded in sacking and pillaging towns and castles, and got thence such wealth as was marvellous, and some of them became rich, especially those who had made themselves leaders and captains of other brigands; there were among them some who even had as much as forty thousand crowns. Indeed and in truth right marvellous were the things they did. When--and this happened very frequently--they espied a large town or a fine castle, distant a day’s journey or two, twenty or thirty brigands would band themselves together and travel night or day by secret ways, and just as day broke they would enter the town or castle they had descried and set fire to a house. The townspeople, fearing that an army of a thousand warriors had come to burn their town, escaped each as best he might, and the brigands sacked houses, coffers, and libraries, seizing whatsoever they could find and departing laden with booty.”

In spite of such horrors no profession was more lucrative or held in greater honour in the fourteenth century than that of the brigand. Even royalty, whose duty it was to protect the peasants, showed itself eager to make advances to the brigands and to reward their strange exploits. Philip of Valois proposed to Croquart, the famous chief of the brigands settled in Brittany, to knight him, marry him well, and pay him an annual income of two thousand pounds, if he would place himself at his disposal. This same king, hearing of the extraordinary cleverness by which one Bacon, a brigand who harassed Languedoc, had surprised the castle of Chambon in the Limousin, wished to keep by his side so daring and crafty a captain; so he made him his sergeant-at-arms and loaded him with honours. Too often the kings did not even attempt to protect the unhappy victims of the brigands. On the contrary they helped to complete the ruin of the peasants by authorising the abuse of _le droit de prise_ (the right of seizure), and above all by arbitrarily raising or lowering the money standard, according to whether the question was one of levying taxes or of paying debts.[h]

THE DAUPHIN REPUDIATES THE _GRANDE ORDONNANCE_ (1358 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1358-1360 A.D.]]

Under such existing conditions the dauphin believed himself powerful enough to declare that he would no longer tolerate trustees. February 8th, 1358, he revoked the _grande ordonnance_, and thus destroyed the popular government. This was a complete rupture with the states-general and the resumption of absolute power by the crown.

Against the dauphin the people called Charles of Navarre, who was dragged from his prison. This ambitious prince, skilful and eloquent, became the orator of the market-places, promising to defend the country and letting it be understood that he was not without some claim to the throne of France. The dauphin hoped to balance this new kind of influence with the same means. He went to the Pré-aux-Clercs; and Paris, as if by a magical transformation, suddenly beheld herself in the midst of the Middle Ages adorned with two forums. But the dauphin lost again, by his unfortunate alteration in the coinage, the sole means indeed of raising money without calling the states-general together. Marcel had armed the bourgeoisie at once and given them, as a rallying sign, caps part red and part blue. At the head of a company of this militia he made his way into the dauphin’s palace, and had the marshals of Champagne and Normandy, the two principal officials, put to death; with his own hand he placed the red and blue cap upon the prince’s head as a pledge of security and said to him, as the two bodies were thrown to the crowd, “I demand that you sanction the deaths of these traitors, for it is by the will of the people that this has been done”--of a small portion of the people, it might be added--the Parisian bourgeoisie (1358).

Indeed, the further they went the more the revolution they undertook lost its general character. The provincial deputies separated from their constituents lost their enthusiasm, while the commune of Paris, never away from their own hearths, remained numerous, ardent, and popular. The states-general, jealous of the commune’s influence, permitted itself in part to be removed to Compiègne by the dauphin. The nobles gathered about the prince. He had seven thousand lances with whom he lived freely on the country between the Seine and the Marne, ravaging the whole land as far as Paris, which was suffering from famine. This maddened the peasantry of the Beauvoisis, of Brie, of Valois, Laon, and Soissons.[f]

THE _JACQUERIE_ (1358 A.D.)

It is quite unnecessary to lay stress upon the sufferings of the villeins here. The days were no more, as we have seen, when the lords of the manor, although they considered themselves of different clay from their serfs, defended them at the peril of their lives. Of the feudal institutions, nothing remained but the oppression. Ruined by the love of luxury, by gambling, by debauchery, by the necessity of paying a heavy ransom--preferring to run into debt rather than to impose privations upon themselves, and to wrest from those around them by means of blows, imprisonment, or the pillory the miserable savings they had laid by for bad times rather than to pay their debts, which would have prevented their contracting new ones--they used and abused the right to command so far as to make all testaments, all marrying, on their estates, dependent on their express permission. They even scoffed at their victims, giving them the name of “Jacques Bonhomme” in derision, on account of their awkwardness in carrying weapons, and of their patience in enduring all things. “Save a villain from hanging, he’ll cut your throat; show a villain the steel, and he kneels,” says a proverb of these times (_Oignez vilain, il vous poindra: poignez vilain, il vous oindra_).

To these permanent, and in some respects regular evils, aggravated still more by the caprices, the exactions of the kings, or at least, of their officers, were added, to render them more intolerable, the accidental evils of life and war. A series of bad years had brought famine and the plague. The Navarrese of Philip of Longueville, the brigands of James Pipes, and other generals devastated all that the English had spared, and that a few only too uncommon inhabitants had not allowed to lie fallow. The Navarrese, the brigands, and the English inspired them with such terror that the unhappy villeins would leave their dwellings and fields, spend the nights on the islands or in boats moored in the middle of the river, and place one of their number in the church belfry in order that he might ring the tocsin, while they hid themselves in the bowels of the earth, in those subterranean places which were still to be found in the eighteenth century, along the Somme, from Péronne to its mouth.

Thus the hardships which nature and warfare imposed upon those living in country places made them more sensitive to those which their masters, if better advised or more humane, might have spared them. Their original devotedness had disappeared, as had their protection, of which they were no longer the object, and given place to muttered imprecations, to a vague and far-away desire to shake off the yoke. The hatred increased every day, but it still resembled a fire smouldering beneath the ashes. In order that it should burst forth, change into violence and activity, it was only necessary that a new exigency, a lesser one perhaps than many others to which they were subject, but more startling to their simple good sense, should arise in some wise to place the weapons in their hands. The occasion for movement was the fifth article of the ordinance, issued at Compiègne, which enjoined all those whom it might concern to put the strongholds in a state of defence at their own cost and expense. They whom it concerned were the unfortunate peasants, who were thus forced to pay for out of their savings, and to rebuild with their own hands, those citadels which when restored would make the oppression more intolerable than ever. This it is that caused a contemporary to say that the rebellion began with a protest against injustice.[i]

About a hundred of the peasants met at Clermont first, and raised the cry of “Death to gentlemen!” They elected a leader, called William Karl, or Callet, and rushed to the attack and destruction of the houses of the nobles. These hundreds soon swelled to thousands, and there was no excess of which they were not guilty: they slew the nobles themselves, with their wives and children, first treating the women with every indignity, their avowed purpose being to extinguish the race. They roasted a noble before the eyes of his family, and sought to make its members eat the flesh of the victim. Saracen or Christian, says Froissart,[g] never committed such iniquities.

There remains a doubt as to how far the townsfolk may have excited their rustic brethren to this revolt; but it does not appear that any great town made common cause with them. They were repulsed from Compiègne, though they entered Senlis. Marcel endeavoured to make use of the Jacques in humbling the noblesse and destroying their strongholds, without the infamy of outraging women and slaying children. But whilst Marcel was politic enough to make this attempt, the king of Navarre could not but sympathise with the noblesse, and fly to their aid. The Jacques, knowing his liberal reputation, were inclined to negotiate with him, which enabled the king of Navarre to entice the chief and some of his officers to parley. While thus engaged, they were surprised, bound, and decapitated. This is not the last instance of a magnate betraying those who trusted, and massacring those who could have best supported him. Charles afterwards attacked the army of Jacques, and slew three thousand of them.

The regent, after holding the estates of Champagne and Vermandois, and procuring their adhesion, took his principal military post at Meaux in order to straiten Paris. To this place not only did his troops repair, but the ladies of the court--the duchesses of Normandy and Orleans, as well as the wives of the noblesse--betook themselves to Meaux as to a place of safety. The market of this town, surrounded by walls and by water, had been rendered a fortress by the regent. The Jacques attacked the town, in concert with a few Parisians, and easily made themselves masters of all save the market. The count of Foix, and the captal De Buch, Gascon nobles, were returning from a campaign with the Teutonic knights of Prussia against the pagans, when they heard of the peril of the noble ladies at Meaux. Though the captal was a subject of King Edward, he nevertheless flew with De Foix to the rescue of the three hundred ladies menaced by the Jacques; and these were routed and driven into the Maine with great slaughter. The victors of Meaux then attacked Senlis; there the citizens and Jacques fought together, and made a most obstinate resistance. But the nobles, reinforced by knights and nobles from Brabant, Hainault, and the Gascon hordes, annihilated the peasantry, notwithstanding their numbers; and the insurrection of the Jacques was drowned in blood.[j]

DEATH OF MARCEL

The effects of the _Jacquerie_ reached Marcel; discord appeared in the commune. Obliged to seek outside help, the provost of the merchants called upon the king of Navarre and agreed to prepare the way for him to the throne of France. On the night of July 31st, 1358, as Marcel was changing the guard at the Porte St. Denis through which Charles of Navarre was to enter, he was massacred, together with those who were with him, by the alderman, John Maillart, who had discovered the plot.[26] The dauphin returned to Paris with an army and had Marcel’s chief companions decapitated or exiled.[f]

It is necessary to dwell upon the memorable part played by Étienne Marcel and the municipality of Paris in the political and social crisis which followed the disaster of Poitiers and the captivity of King John. In the middle of this fourteenth century, so uncivilised and sombre, a man appeared who, by wonderful instinct, laid down and nearly succeeded in obtaining the adoption of the essential principles on which modern society is founded; that is, the government of the country by elected representatives, taxes voted by the representatives of the taxpayers, the abolition of privileges founded upon right of birth, the extension of political rights to all citizens, and the subordination of traditional sovereignty to that external sovereign known as the nation. Marcel was that man.

Doubtless there are blots in Marcel’s life. His siding with the Jacques is to be reproached against him as well as his friendship with the king of Navarre, “the third aspirant in the midst of the rival ambitions of France and England.” But it was a question of putting down an absolute, unlimited power. If the aim is the entire remodelling of the organisation of society, when the end in view is the high ambition of snatching the direction of public affairs from the hands of an entire class, history shows that such objects have never been reached without bloodshed. When, four centuries later, the substitution of a representative government for a monarchy founded upon divine right caused so many heads to fall and entailed so much agony, is it to be wondered at that the revolution undertaken by Marcel should follow the same course and suffer the same fate? After all, if the bold provost shed the blood of his adversaries, he was playing a losing game, and staking his own life against the dominion of the nobility. Which is the more illustrious victim, the marshal or himself? Which executioner should be blamed? Marcel failed apparently, because the time was not yet ripe; he had, by a great bound into the future, put himself ahead of his epoch. But he threw an external lustre over the provosts of Paris, and as an eminent historian said, when he demanded that statues should be raised in memory of Marcel, “he is the greatest personage of the fourteenth century.”[k]

PEACE NEGOTIATIONS; EDWARD IN FRANCE (1359 A.D.)

The dauphin had returned to Paris, but the state of the kingdom seemed desperate. People, however, spoke of peace. Weary of the sumptuous hospitality he had received at Windsor, John had treated with the king of England. He had abandoned to him the shores of the Channel, that is to say Calais, Montreuil, Boulogne, Ponthieu, and Normandy; the whole of Aquitaine, which included Gascony, Bordelais, Agénois, Quercy, Périgord, the Limousin, Poitou, Saintonge, and Aunis; also Touraine and Anjou; and besides this four million gold crowns for the king’s personal ransom. It was the greatest and best part of France, including the entrances to all