Chapter VI · JOHN THE GOOD AND CHARLES THE WISE (continued 2)

These were Charles V’s implements of war. Among those cities whose doors the royal ordinances failed to open prowled his captains with their stratagems of war, cajoling and negotiating. Du Guesclin treated in secret with the inhabitants of Poitiers, who like those of many other towns had remained French at heart, and they allowed him to enter with three hundred lances within their walls (1372). Charles at once granted titles to all those who afterwards exercised the functions of mayor or alderman in that city.

Philip Mansel with one hundred English held La Rochelle. One day while dining with the mayor, John Caudourier, he received a letter from the king of England. The governor, recognising the royal seal, but being in his quality of gentleman unable to read, requested his host to read it for him. The mayor read out a message composed by himself to the effect that on the following day, August 15th, 1372, the citizens and the garrison should pass in review before the square. As soon as Mansel had drawn his men from the château, a troop placed in ambush by the mayor occupied the citadel. Du Guesclin was there with two hundred lances, ready to take possession in the name of France. Some weeks previously the Castilian fleet had destroyed an English fleet before La Rochelle.

Nevertheless the confident enemy tried again in 1373. Landing at Calais with thirty thousand men, the duke of Lancaster set forth to conquer France: he only crossed it. The journey was prosperous as long as it lay through the rich provinces of the north; but in the poor and meagre central districts deprivation and illness were encountered. At Auvergne not a horse remained; at Bordeaux only six thousand men were left: the cavaliers as well as foot soldiers had to beg their bread from door to door.

The English, disgusted with such warfare, remained away the following year; and the year after that they demanded a truce, which lasted up to the death of Edward III in 1377. Charles then broke the truce and struck a blow. He fitted out five armies and conquered all Guienne, while a Castilian fleet manned by French troops ravaged the English counties of Kent and Sussex. In 1380 there remained to the enemy only five French towns—Bayonne, Bordeaux, Brest, Cherbourg, and Calais. At the same time Charles the Bad was overwhelmed and saved his Pyrenean kingdom only by the ceding of twenty places as a pledge of peace (1379).

LAST YEARS OF CHARLES V AND OF DU GUESCLIN

The king of France attempted in Brittany what had served him so well in Guienne. June 20th, 1378, he summoned the duke John IV to appear before the court of nobles; the duke not appearing, his fief was declared forfeit to the crown. The Gascons gave themselves up to France. The Bretons would not hear of the alliance. Barons, knights, and esquires signed at Rennes, April 26th, 1379, an act of confederation that the citizens themselves subscribed.

John IV, although expelled from the country, was recalled. All the Bretons in the service of the king—and there was a great number of them—abandoned him; even those who had previously promised to second his projects turned against him. The old Du Guesclin sent him the constable’s sword; and on March 1st, 1380, a treaty of alliance was signed at Westminster between England and Brittany. Again an English army landed at Calais under the earl of Buckingham, and again it journeyed with impunity across the north of France. It had not reached Brittany when Charles V died at Vincennes, September 16th, 1380.l

Many things had conduced to weaken the health of the too thoughtful king. Dissensions among his brothers renewed in Paris the scenes of falsehood and partisanship which were going on in London. The influence he possessed over Europe as long as the pope resided in Avignon was taken from him, first by the removal of Gregory XI to Rome; and, in a short time after that, the usefulness of the papal chair in his schemes of advancement was altogether destroyed by the schism which broke out at the election of the next pope.

France accepted the Frenchman, Clement VII, who resided at Avignon as his predecessor had done; and half the rest of Christendom, including England, adhered to his Italian rival. This is the commencement of the great schism which afforded such vantage-ground, not only to the enemies of priestcraft but of Christianity itself. Charles felt the blow equally as Christian and king. While mourning this unhappy event, his grief was increased by the fall of the constable. Bertrand was besieging one of the strong castles in Auvergne which was rebellious against the royal authority and strengthened with an English garrison. The commander had agreed to surrender if not relieved within a certain time. Fever, pain, and anxiety laid Du Guesclin low; and when the appointed day came he was lying on his bier, and preparations were making to carry him to the grave. The governor, true to his word, hauled down the flag of independence, and marched out with all his men, head bare and sword drawn, and laid the keys of the fortress on the hero’s coffin. So died the best soldier and truest gentleman of France. His last words to his comrades who bent over his couch were these: “Remember that whenever you are at war, the churchmen, the women, the children, and the poor are not your enemies.”n

The modern editors of the works of the sieur Le Fevre give the following exaggerated estimate of Du Guesclin’s merits:

“Bertrand was the man selected by providence as the instrument by which France was to be saved. Such a man deserved to take his place beside the kings among the tombs of St. Denis. He has been compared to Turenne; both brave and generous, they were like fathers to the men fighting under them; and when they were in want, Turenne sold his silver service for the benefit of his troops, as Bertrand sold his lands; there is some resemblance between these two characters, and the parallel might truthfully be carried further. But in reviewing the history of the Middle Ages, we find two heroes who much more strongly resemble Du Guesclin—Tancred and Richard Cœur de Lion. Examine carefully these three men, Tancred, Richard, and Du Guesclin, and you will find the same courage, the same boldness, the same rashness, the same contempt for danger, the same self-abnegation in victory; you will see three men who, on the battle-field, kill men as easily as an autumn wind blows down the leaves from the trees, and who, on their return to their tents, are as mild and docile as children; for them there is no intoxication in triumph, they show no pride in the hour of victory; their brows are humble, and you would think them unconscious of their own greatness. Bertrand du Guesclin swore ‘by God who suffered on the cross and rose again the third day’; Tancred and Richard swore by the Holy Sepulchre, and trusting in the justice of their cause, the three knights would rush on the enemy with as much confidence as if God himself were speaking to them and urging them on. Does not the disinterestedness of Du Guesclin remind one of Tancred? How many knights were fed and paid by them—how many times they took off their own cloaks to conceal the poverty of some needy nobleman! Du Guesclin has all the characteristics of a hero of the Crusades; he would figure worthily in the Christian Iliad of the poet of Sorrento.”o

The entire secret of Charles’ success was reliance on his people; and perhaps the most valuable portion of this reliance was in the fact that in the word “people” he included the whole population of France. This great word was not limited, in his interpretation of it, to the taxpaying inhabitants of the towns or free labourers on the farms. The very serfs on the soil were fellow-countrymen of the great successor of St. Louis. His laws had reference as often to the interests of the lowest of his subjects as to the rights of the richest cities. He was the first and the last to put arms into the hands of the whole nation. Each man had his bow and quiver of arrows, his short sword or iron-pointed staff. He was openly practised in the use of them, and was taught that it was dishonourable for a Frenchman to be unable to defend his wife and children with his own hands. The experiment was so successful against even such generals as Chandos and the Black Prince, that it might be expected to continue one of the standing institutions of the kingdom. But these feelings of self-respect were only useful against a foreign enemy, and might be dangerous against a domestic master. So, ere many years elapsed, the system was abolished; the butts were destroyed, the bows and swords withdrawn, for fear the “small people” should find themselves too powerful; and the result was—as we shall see—Henry V of England and the battle of Agincourt. It was not more in the formation of new establishments that Charles showed his wisdom than in the purification and improvement of the old. The legalism so strongly encouraged by Philip the Fair, as a preservative against the power of the nobles, had now become an oppression to the people. The civil servants of the crown absorbed a vast portion of the taxes they were employed to raise, and the paid offices about the provincial courts and local parliaments were innumerable. He diminished them both in number and amount of salary, and tried to save his subjects from the intricacies of technical pleadings, as almost an equal evil with the violence of lawless force. The only people, indeed, he could not bring within the rules of mercy and justice were the lords and gentlemen, who were the ornaments of chivalry and the strength of his armies. Feudalism, in fact, was dissolving, and chivalry, which was its poetic ideal, could not stand the trial of actual war. Knights were still mere gladiators—sometimes more for show than action; and gentlemen, in our sense of the word, were not yet in existence.n

FOOTNOTES