About this time the Black Prince performed his last military exploit; and it was one calculated to become an additional brand on his name in France. Limoges, the capital of Limousin, had been betrayed to the Dukes of Anjou and Berri by the bishop and the chief inhabitants. The prince was greatly enraged, both because the bishop had been his personal friend, and because he had conferred many privileges on the citizens. He was now too weak to mount a horse, but he ordered out 1,200 lancers and 2,000 archers and, being borne in an open litter at the head of his troops, advanced to take vengeance on Limoges. The garrison treated with scorn his summons to surrender. But his sappers soon undermined the wall, though Du Guesclin did all he could by a flying force to draw off his attention. Some authors say that he there used gunpowder, lately introduced, to blow up the mine, as they contend that his father used cannon in the battle of Creçy. Others say that he threw down the wall by burning the props which supported the excavation while in progress. Whatever was now the mode, he made a breach, and his troops, rushing in, perpetrated the most ruthless and indiscriminate slaughter. The poor people, men, women, and children, knelt in the streets, and threw themselves down before the prince, crying, "Mercy! mercy, for God's sake!" But the inexorable prince turned a deaf ear to these moving prayers from the innocent people who had nothing whatever to do with the surrender of the city, and 4,000 were put to death. The only pity which he showed was to the bishop who gave up the place, and to a knot of brave knights whom he found standing with their backs to a wall, engaged in mortal combat with his brothers the Dukes of Lancaster and Cambridge, and Pembroke, his brother-in-law. After watching their gallant defence some time in high admiration, he consented to accept their submission, and dismissed them with praises. This extraordinary man could still feel delight in the spectacle of a brave feat of arms, though his soul was become utterly callous to every sentiment of pity for his fellow men in general. He gave up the city to be sacked, and it was burnt to the ground.
In the early part of the following year he lost his eldest son, and his own health being now completely broken, he returned to England, quitting for ever the country where he had gained so much glory, and on which he had inflicted such extensive calamities. He left the Duke of Lancaster, his lieutenant, who maintained a court at Bordeaux as brilliant as that of the prince himself. At this court were residing the two daughters of the late Don Pedro the Cruel; and John of Gaunt, now a widower, but in the prime of his life, married Donna Constance, the eldest, and in her right assumed the title of King of Castile and Leon; and his brother, the Earl of Cambridge, married, at the same time, the second sister. This, as we have said of the Black Prince's expedition into Castile to reinstate the tyrant Don Pedro, was a most false and calamitous policy, for it made a firm ally of Enrique, now reigning king of Castile, to Charles of France; and of this the effect was speedily felt.
John of Gaunt went over to England to introduce his royal bride at court there; and the Earl of Pembroke going out to supply his place in June, 1372, with a fleet of forty ships, was encountered off the port of La Rochelle by a powerful navy belonging to King Enrique. The battle was fiercely contested; but the Spanish ships were not only much larger than those of the English, but provided with cannon, now for the first time employed at sea. The English were completely defeated; the greater part of their ships were taken, burnt, or sunk, including one carrying the military chest, with £20,000. The Earl of Pembroke, with many other men of rank, remained prisoners.
Such was the immediate effect of the English alliance with the family of such a monster as Don Pedro; and nothing showed more completely the degree to which the English had made themselves detested in France than the eagerness with which the people of La Rochelle and its neighbourhood, though still English subjects, aided the Spaniards by every means in their power.
This defeat and loss laid open the country to the attacks of the King of France, through his valiant and wise constable, Du Guesclin, who took town after town. The Duke of Lancaster set sail from England with a fresh army, accompanied by the Earls of Suffolk, Warwick, Stafford, and Lord Edward Spencer, to repel the French forces. But these forces, divided into three hosts, under the Dukes of Burgundy and Bourbon, and Du Guesclin, still avoided any engagement, but watched the English army, harassed its rear, and cut off its foraging parties everywhere. In vain the Duke of Lancaster marched from Bordeaux to Calais and back; everywhere the enemy fled before him, and yet everywhere he suffered loss; so that the king, his father, declared, with irrepressible vexation "that there never was a monarch at once so little of a soldier and who contrived to give so much trouble." The last town possessed by the English in Gascony was Thouars, then a considerable place. The constable invested it, and the English lords shut up in it—the best of those whom the long series of skirmishes and sieges had left—agreed to surrender it at the next Michaelmas, if the King of England or one of his sons did not relieve them within that period. Edward, on hearing this, put to sea with a considerable army; but winds and waves were steadily opposed to him, and he was compelled to put back and leave Thouars to its fate. The last ally of Edward, the Count de Montfort, was driven from his duchy by Du Guesclin and Oliver de Clisson, and compelled to take refuge in England. The Duke of Lancaster marched to and fro, but gained no signal advantage; and Charles V., thinking that Edward's fortunes were too low again to reinstate the Count of Brittany, proposed to the estates of France to confiscate his territory, and annex it to the French crown; but this the nobles of Brittany opposed, and recalled John de Montfort from his exile in England.
In 1374, but two years previous to the death of the Black Prince, and three to the death of Edward himself, a truce was signed at Bruges between France and England for one year. The Pope, by his legates, who followed both armies, and attended both courts, had never remitted his Christian endeavours to put a stop to the barbarities of the war; but it was not till France had won almost all that it had lost that he could succeed. The truce was concluded, and was maintained till the death of the King of England; at which time all that was left of his French possessions were Bordeaux, Bayonne, a few towns on the Dordogne, and Calais in the north. Such were the miserable fruits of all the human blood and lives expended, and all the miseries inflicted in these unjust and impolitic wars of more than forty years' duration.
When the Black Prince returned to England, broken down in constitution, he found things far from agreeable. The king was become feeble, and ruled by favourites. Great abuses had sprung up and were carried on in the king's name. The Duke of Lancaster had created a strong party for himself, and exercised the principal power. The prince, still growing weaker, yet roused himself to restrain the domination of Lancaster, and remove his creatures from about the person of the king. The Commons, as is supposed, by direct encouragement of the prince, impeached nearly all the ministers. They removed the chamberlain, Lord Latimer, from the king's council, and put him in prison. They deprived Lord Neville of the offices which he held, and arrested several farmers of the customs. They even censured Alice Perrers, the King's mistress. The excellent Philippa had been dead several years, and this Alice Perrers, who had been a lady of the bedchamber to the queen, had acquired the most complete influence over the old king. She was now banished from court. This Parliament was known as "The Good Parliament," but its efforts were, for the most part, fruitless.
JOHN WYCLIFFE APPEARING IN ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL TO ANSWER THE CHARGE OF HERESY. (See p. [446.])