Cassell's History of England, Vol. 1 (of 8) / From the Roman Invasion to the Wars of the Roses

by Anonymous

The battle of Poitiers filled up the measure of the calamities of France. Creçy was a decisive blow; the loss of Calais was another. But these were still only a minor portion of the losses and miseries which had been crowding upon her through ten years of invasion. Normandy, Artois, Picardy, and the southern provinces of France had been repeatedly traversed by hostile armies, their fields laid waste, their cattle driven off or destroyed, their crops trodden under foot, their cities, towns, and villages burnt or pillaged. By sea and by land France had suffered defeat and heavy loss of men, ships, and property. At Sluys, in mid-Channel, and on various parts of the coast, the English had destroyed her fleets. In defending her ally of Brittany, Charles of Blois, her treasures had been largely drawn upon; and now came this desolating overthrow, in which the flower of her nobility was crushed or made captive with their king.

That captivity let loose all the elements of disorder which had been accumulating through these terrible years. The people were impoverished, and numbers of them utterly ruined; all were wretched and discontented. The nobles were grown arrogant with the weakness of the state, and the country was overrun with bands of armed marauders, calling themselves "Free Companies," who preyed at will on the already sorely fleeced people, committing every species of outrage, and thus aggravating awfully the miseries of the nation.

The dauphin was only a youth of eighteen, and, though possessed of superior talents, and unusual prudence and spirit for his age, was necessarily destitute of that authority and that experience which such a crisis required, and his two younger brothers could afford him no assistance in so difficult a position. Besides the want of support from members of his own family, he had a most dangerous and indefatigable enemy in his relative, the King of Navarre, who possessed that determined disposition to mischief which most truly entitled him to the name given him by the people, Charles the Bad.

The latter was still in prison, but he found means through stone walls to exercise his talents for intrigue, treachery, and malicious machinations. Pretending even to the crown, he had all the seditious arts and fiery recklessness of the demagogue; and he stooped to ally himself with any malcontent class, or to work with any dirty tool. Accordingly, when the dauphin called together the States-General of the kingdom, to enable him to obtain supplies, and reasonably imagining that he should find all classes, under the calamitous condition of the country, ready to unite with him for the restoration of the king and the re-establishment of order, he was met by demands for the limitation of the royal prerogative, the punishment of past offenders, and, especially, for the release of the King of Navarre.

Undoubtedly there were many evils to redress, and abuses of the royal power to complain of; but this was not the time when honourable men would have sought to enforce these objects. It was taking a cowardly advantage of the unfortunate position of a mere youth, to wrest from him what he had no legal authority to yield. Brave and upright men would have brought back the monarch, and from him demanded those measures which justice and the circumstances of the kingdom required. But what should have been reform was dastardly and lawless faction, and the very naming of the King of Navarre, the evil genius of France, betrayed its real origin. Marcel, the provost of the merchants, was the determined tool of Charles of Navarre; he put himself at the head of the mob, and endeavoured to terrify the dauphin into submission to his demands. The States-General, influenced by the same spirit, demanded the entire change of the king's ministers, and the punishment of several of them; and, dividing itself into separate committees, attempted to usurp the different departments of the executive. The dauphin was only to act under the control of a council of thirty-six members of the States-General, in which were to reside the powers of the whole body, and the King of Navarre was at once to be liberated. The dauphin temporised with the art of a much older man, till he had obtained some supplies, with which he proposed to put down disorders in the provinces, and then he dissolved the States, in spite of the citizens of Paris, headed by Marcel.

Freed from this millstone about his neck, Charles despatched Robert de Clermont, a brave commander, into Normandy against Godfrey de Harcourt, who was again gone over to the English, in resentment for the execution of his brother, Count Harcourt, as one of the adherents of the factious King of Navarre.

Robert de Clermont came up with Godfrey near Coutances, in November, 1356, and not only routed his forces, but slew him. Soon after this a truce was made with the English in Normandy; but still the captains of Edward pursued their predatory career in Brittany and Gascony. To complete the mischief, the King of Navarre was released from his prison, and received with rapture by the disaffected people of Amiens and Paris. He harangued the people in those cities, and seemed, by the drift of his speeches, to aim at a republic. His brother, Philip of Navarre, remained in the English camp, and denounced the idea of a republic as pregnant with disorder, mutability, and bloodshed.

Charles, the dauphin, was compelled to call the States-General together again, to demand fresh taxes for the prosecution of the war; but Marcel, the democratic provost, uniting with the King of Navarre, opposed all his measures, and excited the people to violence. He caused them to assume red caps, as a badge of their adherence to his party, which, from its co-operation with Charles of Navarre, was also called the Navarrese party.

Matters now ripened apace from anarchy into civil war. In February, 1358, a man of the name of Macé, having murdered the treasurer of France, took refuge in a church. The dauphin ordered him to be fetched thence, and put to death. But when Robert de Clermont and John de Conflans, the marshals of Champagne and Normandy went to execute this command, the Bishop of Paris protested against it as a violation of the sanctuary of the church; and Marcel, seizing so admirable an opportunity for bearding the dauphin, marched with the whole mob of Paris to his palace, then called the Palais de Justice. Entering without any regard to the person of the dauphin, he seized the two marshals and put them to death so close to the prince that his dress was sprinkled with their blood. "How now," cried the dauphin; "will you shed the blood royal of France?" Marcel replied, "No;" and, to show his pacific intentions, he clapped his own red cap on the head of the dauphin. The bodies of the murdered marshals were dragged through the streets.

Thus the capital of France was reduced to the utmost anarchy. The dauphin returned into Picardy and Champagne, where he assembled the estates of those provinces, and was aided by them to the best of their ability. But all France was one scene of discord, insurrection, violence, and crime. The mercenary and predatory bands of the Companies, many of whom, or, at least, their leaders, were English, were engaged by the King of Navarre to carry out his projected revolution. The dauphin, on the other side, assembled forces to oppose him; and now broke out one of the most frightful calamities which can afflict a nation—that of a peasants' war. In the reign of Richard II. in England, some few years after this time, our own country was on the verge of such a horrible state of things, under Wat Tyler and Jack Straw. At the time of the Reformation, Germany experienced its unspeakable atrocities, under the name of the Bauern Krieg, or War of the Peasantry, and France now was doomed to drink deeply of its demon horrors, under the name of the Jacquerie, from the gentry being used to call the peasant Jacques Bonhomme, or Goodman James.