Since the treaty of Brétigny, King Edward and his son had no longer recognized the superiority of France. "I will go," said the Black Prince, "but with sixty thousand lances." His father was better aware of the difficulty of the undertaking; he made moderate proposals to Charles V., simply claiming the sovereignty of Aquitaine; but Charles V., seeing the English Parliament wearied of the wars, King Edward aged and tired, and the Black Prince ill, maintained his pretension, and the French troops entered into Poitou, Guienne, and Limousin. The discontented and capricious inhabitants almost always lent their support to the French. King Edward sent his second son, the Duke of Lancaster, with considerable reinforcements, to the assistance of the Black Prince; but, while he was overrunning the northern provinces. King Charles not permitting any important engagement to take place, the conquests of the French extended in the South, and the Prince of Wales, dangerously ill, found himself compelled to take the field upon a litter. The Dukes of Anjou and Berry did not await him; they had left garrisons in the towns, but had retired when the prince advanced against Limoges. He had formerly lavished his favors upon that town, which the Bishop had surrendered to the French, and he had sworn, by the soul of his father, not to move thence nor do any thing until he should recapture it. The siege progressed slowly, the citizens bravely supporting the garrison, for they feared the vengeance of the prince. The latter conducted the military operations with a savage fury which he had never before manifested. At length, at the end of a month, a large mine opened a breach in the walls of the town; the besiegers sprang inside, and the massacre began. Women, children, and old men fell upon their knees, crying, "Mercy! such poor folks could not have been concerned in defending the town," but none received quarter. The knights and men at arms of the garrison still defended themselves heroically in the streets; three of them planted themselves against a wall, and made such good use of their swords that the Prince of Wales, while passing by in his litter, was struck with admiration, and received them as prisoners to be ransomed. The humble people, "who were really martyrs," says Froissart, were all dead; the town was fired, and the Prince of Wales had retired. He had exhausted his strength, and, in the hope of regaining his health under his native sky, set out for England, leaving to his brother John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the care of prosecuting the war. The military career of the Black Prince was ended; six years of illness and languor were to bring to its close this life so brilliantly begun, but unhappily sullied by a last act of cruelty, more consistent with the general morals of the time than with the character hitherto displayed by the son of King Edward.
The Duke of Lancaster had recently married Constance, the eldest daughter of Peter the Cruel, and, upon this ground, he aspired to the crown of Castile, an imprudent pretension which strengthened the union of the king, Don Henry, with France. The Earl of Pembroke was bringing reinforcements to the Duke in June, 1372, when a Spanish fleet stationed between La Rochelle and the Isle of Ré, barred the passage. An engagement took place, and the English were completely beaten, their vessels being either captured or scuttled. This disaster was an unmistakeable blow to King Edward and to the English nation, which was beginning to look upon the sea as its legitimate empire. The successes of King Charles V. were increasing; he had placed Bertrand du Guesclin at the head of his armies, and had made him Constable of France; but the remembrance of Crécy and Poictiers was always before his eyes; he did not permit any pitched battles to be fought. From siege to siege, from skirmish to skirmish, Du Guesclin was still marching forward, sometimes surprising the enemy, passing through their ranks, as it is said in his memoirs, by a stratagem, which consisted in striking with the point and with the edge of the sword; but when the English presented themselves in a body, the Constable would fall back upon the fortresses, and allow a passage to the enemy, who overran the country but could not surround either the large towns or fortified castles. "Never has king fought so little, and given so much trouble," said Edward angrily, for his French possessions were diminishing day by day. Bordeaux and Bayonne, with a narrow piece of territory, alone remained in his hands in the south, and Calais only in the north; so, if the faithful ally of England, the young Count of Montfort, was everywhere recognized in Brittany, since the death of Charles of Blois, in 1364, his authority was too well contested by Oliver de Clisson to allow of supporting English interests beyond his duchy. John of Gaunt returned to England, and once more, the legates of the Pope playing the part of peacemakers, a truce of one year was concluded at Bruges in 1374, to be prolonged almost until the death of King Edward.
So many reverses after so much glory, had undermined in England the popularity of the king. The finances of the country were in default; every resource had been exhausted to support a war which had borne so little fruit. Complaints, which people did not dare to address to the king, reached his ministers, and even his son, the Duke of Lancaster, who had gradually secured the power, in consequence of the weakness of his father and the illness of the Prince of Wales. The latter remained the idol of the nation, and, either through jealousy of his brother, or through dissatisfaction at the state of affairs, he lent his support to the opposition. The Parliament of 1376, long known under the title of "The Good Parliament," addressed to the king a remonstrance concerning the waste of the public money, and demanded the dismissal of several of the ministers. Lord Latimer and Lord Nevil were deprived of all their offices; but the object of the public hatred and mistrust was especially a woman, named Alice Perrers, formerly a lady of the bed-chamber to Queen Philippa, but who, since the death of the latter, had acquired such an influence over King Edward that he had presented her with the jewels of his wife, and frequently permitted her to dispense at her pleasure the favors of the crown. The Commons publicly demanded that she should be banished from the kingdom.
Amidst this work of reform, the Parliament suddenly lost its firmest support.
The Black Prince died on the 8th of June, 1376. For a long time he had been ailing, and unable to assume in the government of his country the position which by right belonged to him; but the nation had always reckoned upon his wisdom and justice no less than on his brilliant valor; a prosperous and happy reign had been hoped for, and the grief was general and protracted. "The good fortune of England seemed bound up in his person," says the chronicler Walsingham; "it had flourished in his health, it languished in his illness, and died at his death; in him expired all the hopes of the English. For during his lifetime neither an invasion of the enemy nor an encounter in battle had been feared." He was interred with great pomp in Canterbury Cathedral, where he had formerly erected a chapel in memory of his marriage. At the especial request of Parliament, his eldest son Richard was thereupon declared heir to the throne. Fears were entertained concerning the pretensions of the Duke of Lancaster, who had resumed all his authority. Sir Peter de la Mare, who had impeached the ministers in the name of Parliament, was arrested. The Bishop of Winchester, William of Wykeham, formerly at the head of the opposition, was divested of his revenues. A Parliament favorable to John of Gaunt was convoked; it proposed the recall of Alice Perrers, the rehabilitation of Lord Latimer, and other measures so unpopular that the palace of the duke was assailed by the citizens of London, and his friend Lord Percy, a Marshal of England, was pursued by the mob, so that the prince was obliged to throw himself into a small boat with Percy, and take refuge at Kennington, in the castle inhabited by the young Prince Richard and his mother. All the remonstrances of the Bishop of London scarcely succeeded in calming the disturbance. The arms of the Duke of Lancaster, at the gate of his palace, were inverted by the people as the escutcheon of a traitor. When the duke returned shortly afterwards to London, all the magistrates of the city were dismissed and replaced by his creatures. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the reign of Edward III., a general amnesty was proclaimed; the Bishop of Winchester alone was excluded from it.
It was the last public act of King Edward; this body so active and robust, this spirit so bold, this will so firm, had nevertheless undergone the effects of premature old age. The ministers were ranging themselves beside the Duke of Lancaster; the opposition was grouped around the young Prince Richard and the Princess of Wales; the old king was dying alone, with Alice Perrers. It is even said that she deserted him in his agony, after having taken the royal ring from him. The king lay in this isolation; the servants having dispersed in the manor of Shene, to plunder at their leisure. A monk entered, crucifix in hand; he approached the unhappy monarch, praying beside him, and supporting his expiring head until the last sigh. Thus died, on the 21st of June, 1377, the great Edward III., who had at one time appeared destined to unite upon his head the two crowns of France and England. He died alone, in the sixty-fifth year of his age, leaving to his grandson, a child, instead of the whole of Aquitaine, which he had received from his father, a few towns only upon that soil of France of which he claimed possession. The blood of the two nations had flowed during more than thirty years, and the struggle was as yet only at its beginning.
Chapter XII.
Bolingbroke.
Richard II. (1377-1398).
Henry IV. (1398-1413).
The little King Richard was much fatigued on the 16th of July, 1377; it was found necessary to place him in a litter to bring him back to the palace, after his coronation. All the former popularity of his grandfather Edward III., all the affection which his father the Black Prince had inspired, appeared to have accumulated upon his head, by reason of the fear and aversion which were felt towards John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. The prelates and barons assembled on the morrow of the coronation, and selected a council of regency of twelve members. The uncles of the king did not form part of this body, and John of Gaunt retired to his castle of Kenilworth; but several members of the council remained devoted to him, and his influence soon began to be complained of.