BATTLE OF POICTIERS, SEP. 1356.
The Battle of Poictiers.
Edward's small army was drawn up behind a tall hedgerow and a ditch on the slope of a ridge, with the archers in front lining the hedgerow, and the men-at-arms behind them. All the latter save 300 were dismounted, as at Crécy. The Earls of Salisbury and Warwick had command of the two divisions which formed the front line, while the prince himself stayed behind with the reserve. John of France, remembering the disaster of Crécy, where the English arrows had slain so many horses, dismounted all his knights save a few hundred, and led them on foot up the hill in three divisions. Only a picked body of horsemen, under the two marshals, D'Audrehem and Clermont, pushed forward in front, to endeavour to ride down the English archers, as the Scottish cavalry had done so successfully at Bannockburn.
Rout of the French.—King John a prisoner.
But, whether on foot or on horse, the French made little way with their attack. The cavalry in advance were all shot down as they tried to push through gaps in the hedge. The first division of the dismounted knights then climbed the slope, but, after severe fighting with the front line of the English, recoiled, unable to force their way over the ditch. They fell back on to the second line behind them, and put it into disorder before it could come near the English. Seeing two-thirds of the French army in this plight, the Prince of Wales resolved to strike a bold blow: he brought up his reserve to the front, and bade his whole army charge downhill on to the huddled mass below them. His quick eye had caught the right moment, for the whole of the French van and second division fled right and left without fighting. Only King John, with the rear line of his army, stood firm. With this body, one more numerous than the whole of his own host, Prince Edward had a fierce fight in the valley. But the French were broken in spirit by the sight of the rout of their van, and gave way when they were charged in the flank by a small body of troops whom Edward had detached to his right for that purpose. They all fled save the king and his young son Philip, who stood their ground for a long time with a small company of faithful vassals, and maintained the fight when all the rest had vanished. John's courageous obstinacy had the natural result: he, his son, and the faithful few about him were all surrounded and taken prisoners. When the English came to reckon up the results of the battle, they found that they had slain 2 dukes, 17 barons, and 2800 knights and men-at-arms, and taken captive a king, a prince, 13 counts, 15 barons, and 2000 knights and men-at-arms. Their own loss did not reach 300 men (September 19, 1356).
Edward returned in triumph to Bordeaux, and afterwards crossed to England, to present his all-important prisoner to the king his father. The prince treated John with great gentleness and courtesy, and did all that he could to avoid wounding his feelings. Nevertheless, he saw that in the pressure that could be brought to bear upon his captive, lay the best hope of winning an honourable and profitable peace from the French. John chafed bitterly at his detention in custody, and got little consolation from finding himself in the company of his ally David, King of Scotland, who had been a prisoner in England for ten years, ever since the battle of Neville's Cross.
Misery and anarchy in France.—The Jacquerie.
The difficulty in negociating a peace did not come from King John, but from the regency which replaced him at Paris. The French did not see why they should sign a humiliating treaty merely in order to deliver a harsh and not very popular king from confinement. But a series of disasters at last forced them to submit. The three years 1357-60 were almost the most miserable that France ever knew. The young Dauphin Charles, a mere lad, proved quite unable to keep order in the land; the barons did what they pleased; hordes of disbanded mercenary soldiers, whom the government could not pay, roamed plundering over the countryside side. The people of Paris broke out into sedition, under a bold citizen named Etienne Marcel, and put the Dauphin himself in durance for a time. Last and worst of all, the peasantry of Central France, driven to despair by the general misery of the times, rose in rebellion against all constituted authority, slew every man of gentle blood that they could lay hands on, and roamed about in huge bands, burning castles and manors, and plundering towns and villages. The horrors of the Jacquerie, [22] as this anarchic revolt was called, bid fair to destroy all government in France, and it was only by a desperate rally that those who had anything to lose succeeded in banding themselves together and crushing the insurgents.
Edward again invades France.—Treaty of Bretigny.
When France had suffered so bitterly from its foes within, Edward of England took a great army across the Channel, and in 1359-60 wasted the whole land as far as Paris and Rheims. But as the French refused to meet him in the field, he won no battles, took few towns, and got little profit from his destructive raid. It was at this juncture that he and the Dauphin at last came to terms. To end the war the French were ready to grant whatever conditions Edward chose to exact. He asked for a ransom of 3,000,000 gold crowns for the person of King John, and for the whole of the duchy of Aquitaine, as Duchess Eleanor had held it in 1154. In return, he would give up his claim on the crown of France, and be content to be independent Duke of Aquitaine only. So all the lands in Southern France which John and Henry III. had lost—Poitou, Saintonge, Perigord, Limoges, Quercy, and the rest,—were restored to the Plantagenets, after being 150 years in French hands. Calais and Ponthieu in the north were also formally ceded to King Edward by this celebrated treaty of Bretigny (May, 1360).