His successor, John II., called the Good, on no other ground than that he was gay, prodigal, credulous, and devoted to his favorites, did nothing but reproduce, with aggravations, the faults and reverses of his father. He had hardly become king when he witnessed the arrival in Paris of the Constable of France, Raoul, Count of Eu and of Guines, whom Edward III. had made prisoner at Caen, and who, after five years’ captivity, had just obtained, that is, purchased, his liberty. Raoul lost no time in hurrying to the side of the new king, by whom he believed himself to be greatly beloved. John, as soon as he perceived him, gave him a look, saying, “Count, come this way with me; I have to speak with you aside.” “Right willingly, my lord.” The king took him into an apartment, and showing him a letter, asked, “Have you ever, count, seen this letter anywhere but here?” The constable appeared astounded and troubled. “Ah! wicked traitor,” said the king, “you have well deserved death, and, by my father’s soul, it shall assuredly not miss you;” and he sent him forthwith to prison in the tower of the Louvre. “The lords and barons of France were sadly astonished,” says Froissart, “for they held the count to be a good man and true, and they humbly prayed the king that he would be pleased to say wherefore he had imprisoned their cousin, so gentle a knight, who had toiled so much and so much lost for him and for the kingdom. But the king would not say anything, save that he would never sleep so long as the Count of Guines was living; and he had him secretly beheaded in the castle of the Louvre, whether rightly or wrongly; for which the king was greatly blamed, behind his back, by many of the barons of high estate in the kingdom of France, and the dukes and counts of the border.” Two months after this execution, John gave the office of constable and a large portion of Count Raoul’s property to his favorite, Charles of Spain, a descendant of King Alphonso of Castille and naturalized in France; and he added thereto before long some lands claimed by the King of Navarre, Charles the Bad, a nickname which at eighteen years of age he had already received from his Navarrese subjects, but which had not prevented King John from giving him in marriage his own daughter, Joan of France. From that moment a deep hatred sprang up between the King of Navarre and the favorite. The latter was sometimes disquieted thereby. “Fear nought from my son of Navarre,” said John; “he durst not vex you, for, if he did, he would have no greater enemy than myself.” John did not yet know his son-in-law. Two years later, in 1354, his favorite, Charles of Spain, arrived at Laigle in Normandy. The King of Navarre, having notice thereof, instructed one of his agents, the Bastard de Mareuil, to go with a troop of men-at-arms and surprise him in that town; and he himself remained outside the walls, awaiting the result of his design. At break of day, he saw galloping up the Bastard de Mareuil, who shouted to him from afar, “‘Tis done.” “What is done?” asked Charles. “He is dead,” answered Mareuil. King John’s favorite had been surprised and massacred in his bed. John burst out into threats; he swore he would have vengeance, and made preparations for war against his son-in-law. But the King of England promised his support to the King of Navarre. Charles the Bad was a bold and able intriguer; he levied troops and won over allies amongst the lords; dread of seeing the recommencement of a war with England gained ground; and amongst the people, and even in the king’s council, there was a cry of “Peace with the King of Navarre!” John took fright and pretended to give up his ideas of vengeance; he received his son-in-law, who thanked him on bended knee. But the king gave him never a word. The King of Navarre, uneasy but bold as ever, continued his intrigues for obtaining partisans and for exciting troubles and enmities against the king. “I will have no master in France but myself,” said John to his confidant: “I shall have no joy so long as he is living.” His eldest son, the young Duke of Normandy, who was at a later period Charles V., had contracted friendly relations with the King of Navarre. On the 16th of April, 1356, the two princes were together at a banquet in the castle of Rouen, as well as the Count d’Harcourt and some other lords. All on a sudden King John, who had entered the castle by a postern with a troop of men-at-arms, strode abruptly into the hall, preceded by the Marshal Arnoul d’Audenham, who held a naked sword in his hand, and said, “Let none stir, whatever he may see, unless he wish to fall by this sword.” The king went up to the table; and all rose as if to do him reverence. John seized the King of Navarre roughly by the arm, and drew him towards him, saying, “Get up, traitor; thou art not worthy to sit at my son’s table; by my father’s soul I cannot think of meat or drink so long as thou art living.” A servant of the King of Navarre, to defend his master, drew his cutlass, and pointed it at the breast of the King of France, who thrust him back, saying to his sergeants, “Take me this fellow and his master too.” The King of Navarre dissolved in humble protestations and repentant speeches over the assassination of the Constable Charles of Spain. “Go, traitor, go,” answered John: “you will need to learn good rede or some infamous trick to escape from me.” The young Duke of Normandy had thrown himself at the feet of the king his father, crying, “Ah! my lord, for God’s sake have mercy; you do me dishonor; for what will be said of me, having prayed King Charles and his barons to dine with me, if you do treat me thus? It will be said that I betrayed them.” “Hold your peace, Charles,” answered his father: “you know not all I know.” He gave orders for the instant removal of the King of Navarre, and afterwards of the Count d’Harcourt and three others of those present under arrest. “Rid us of these men,” said he to the captain of the Ribalds, forming the soldiers of his guard; and the four prisoners were actually beheaded in the king’s presence outside Rouen, in a field called the Field of Pardon. John was with great difficulty prevailed upon not to mete out the same measure to the King of Navarre, who was conducted first of all to Gaillard Castle, then to the tower of the Louvre, and then to the prison of the Chatelet: “and there,” says Froissart, “they put him to all sorts of discomforts and fears, for every day and every night they gave him to understand that his head would be cut off at such and such an hour, or at such and such another he would be thrown into the Seine . . . whereupon he spoke so finely and so softly to his keepers that they who were so entreating him by the command of the King of France had great pity on him.”
With such violence, such absence of all legal procedure, such a mixture of deceptive indulgence and thoughtless brutality, did King John treat his son-in-law, his own daughter, some of his principal barons, their relations, their friends, and the people with whom they were in good credit. He compromised more and more seriously every day his own safety and that of his successor, by vexing more and more, without destroying, his most dangerous enemy. He showed no greater prudence or ability in the government of his kingdom. Always in want of money, because he spent it foolishly on galas or presents to his favorites, he had recourse, for the purpose of procuring it, at one time to the very worst of all financial expedients, debasement of the coinage; at another, to disreputable imposts, such as the tax upon salt, and upon the sale of all kinds of merchandise. In the single year of 1352 the value of a silver mark varied sixteen times, from four livres ten sous to eighteen livres. To meet the requirements of his government and the greediness of his courtiers, John twice, in 1355 and 1356, convoked the states-general, to the consideration of which we shall soon recur in detail, and which did not refuse him their support; but John had not the wit either to make good use of the powers with which he was furnished, or to inspire the states-general with that confidence which alone could decide them upon continuing their gifts. And, nevertheless, King John’s necessities were more evident and more urgent than ever: war with England had begun again.
The truth is that, in spite of the truce still existing, the English, since the accession of King John, had at several points resumed hostilities. The disorders and dissensions to which France was a prey, the presumptuous and hare-brained incapacity of her new king, were, for so ambitious and able a prince as Edward III., very strong temptations. Nor did opportunities for attack, and chances of success, fail him any more than temptations. He found in France, amongst the grandees of the kingdom, and even at the king’s court, men disposed to desert the cause of the king and of France to serve a prince who had more capacity, and who pretended to claim the crown of France as his lawful right. The feudal system lent itself to ambiguous questions and doubts of conscience: a lord who had two suzerains, and who, rightly or wrongly, believed that he had cause of complaint against one of them, was justified in serving that one who could and would protect him. Personal interest and subtle disputes soon make traitors; and Edward had the ability to discover them and win them over. The alternate outbursts and weaknesses of John in the case of those whom he suspected; the snares he laid for them; the precipitancy and cruel violence with which he struck them down, without form of trial, and almost with his own hand, forbid history to receive his suspicious and his forcible proceedings as any kind of proof; but amongst those whom he accused there were undoubtedly traitors to the king and to France. There is one about whom there can be no doubt at all. As early as 1351, amidst all his embroilments and all his reconciliations with his father-in-law, Charles the Bad, King of Navarre, had concluded with Edward III. a secret treaty, whereby, in exchange for promises he received, he recognized his title as King of France. In 1355 his treason burst forth. The King of Navarre, who had gone for refuge to Avignon, under the protection of Pope Clement VI., crossed France by English Aquitaine, and went and landed at Cherbourg, which he had an idea of throwing open to the King of England. He once more entered into communications with King John, once more obtained forgiveness from him, and for a while appeared detached from his English alliance. But Edward III. had openly resumed his hostile attitude; and he demanded that Aquitaine and the courtship of Ponthieu, detached from the kingdom of France, should be ceded to him in full sovereignty, and that Brittany should become all but independent. John haughtily rejected these pretensions, which were merely a pretext for recommencing war. And it recommenced accordingly, and the King of Navarre resumed his course of perfidy. He had lands and castles in Normandy, which John put under sequestration, and ordered the officers commanding in them to deliver up to him. Six of them, the commandants of the castles of Cherbourg and Evreux, amongst others, refused, believing, no doubt, that in betraying France and her king, they were remaining faithful to their own lord.
At several points in the kingdom, especially in the northern provinces, the first fruits of the war were not favorable for the English. King Edward, who had landed at Calais with a body of troops, made an unsuccessful campaign in Artois and Picardy, and was obliged to re-embark for England, falling back before King John, whom he had at one time offered and at another refused to meet and fight at a spot agreed upon. But in the south-west and south of France, in 1355 and 1356, the Prince of Wales, at the head of a small picked army, and with John Chandos for comrade, victoriously overran Limousin, Perigord, Languedoc, Auvergne, Berry, and Poitou, ravaging the country and plundering the towns into which he could force an entrance, and the environs of those that defended themselves behind their walls. He met with scarcely any resistance, and he was returning by way of Berry and Poitou back again to Bordeaux, when he heard that King John, starting from Normandy with a large army, was advancing to give him battle. John, in fact, with easy self-complacency, and somewhat proud of his petty successes against King Edward in Picardy, had been in a hurry to move against the Prince of Wales, in hopes of forcing him also to re-embark for England. He was at the head of forty or fifty thousand men, with his four sons, twenty-six dukes or counts, and nearly all the baronage of France; and such was his confidence in this noble army, that on crossing the Loire he dismissed the burgher forces, “which was madness in him and in those who advised him,” said even his contemporaries. John, even more than his father Philip, was a king of courts, ever surrounded by his nobility, and caring little for his people. Jealous of the order of the Garter, lately instituted by Edward III. in honor of the beautiful Countess of Salisbury, John had created, in 1351, by way of following suit, a brotherhood called Our Lady of the Noble House, or of the Star, the knights of which, to the number of five hundred, had to swear, that if they were forced to recoil in a battle they would never yield to the enemy more than four acres of ground, and would be slain rather than retreat. John was destined to find out before long that neither numbers nor bravery can supply the place of prudence, ability, and discipline. When the two armies were close to one another, on the platform of Maupertuis, two leagues to the north of Poitiers, two legates from the pope came hurrying up from that town, with instructions to negotiate peace between the Kings of France, England, and Navarre. John consented to an armistice of twenty-four hours. The Prince of Wales, seeing himself cut off from Bordeaux by forces very much superior to his own,—for he had but eight or ten thousand men,—offered to restore to the King of France “all that he had conquered this bout, both towns and castles, and all the prisoners that he and his had taken, and to swear that, for seven whole years, he would bear arms no more against the King of France;” but King John and his council would not accept anything of the sort, saying that “the prince and a hundred of his knights must come and put themselves as prisoners in the hands of the King of France.” Neither the Prince of Wales nor Chandos had any hesitation in rejecting such a demand: “God forbid,” said Chandos, “that we should go without a fight! If we be taken or discomfited by so many fine men-at-arms, and in so great a host, we shall incur no blame; and if the day be for us, and fortune be pleased to consent thereto, we shall be the most honored folk in the world.” The battle took place on the 19th of September, 1356, in the morning. There is no occasion to give the details of it here, as was done but lately in the case of Crecy; we should merely have to tell an almost perfectly similar story. The three battles which, from the fourteenth to the fifteenth century, were decisive as to the fate of France, to wit, Crecy, on the 26th of August, 1346; Poictiers, on the 19th of September, 1356; and Azincourt, on the 25th of October, 1415, considered as historical events, were all alike, offering a spectacle of the same faults and the same reverses, brought about by the same causes. In all three, no matter what was the difference in date, place, and persons engaged, it was a case of undisciplined forces, without co-operation or order, and ill-directed by their commanders, advancing, bravely and one after another, to get broken against a compact force, under strict command, and as docile as heroic. From the battle of Poictiers we will cull but that glorious feat which was peculiar to it, and which might be called as unfortunate as glorious if the captivity of King John had been a misfortune for France. Nearly all his army had been beaten and dispersed; and three of his sons, with the eldest, Charles, Duke of Normandy, at their head, had left the field of battle with the wreck of the divisions they commanded. John still remained there with the knights of the Star, a band of faithful knights from Picardy, Burgundy, Normandy, and Poitou, his constable, the Duke of Artois, his standard-bearer, Geoffrey de Charny, and his youngest son Philip, a boy of fourteen, who clung obstinately to his side, saying, every instant, “Father, ware right! Father, ware left!”
The king was surrounded by assailants, of whom some did and some did not know him, and all of whom kept shouting, “Yield you! yield you! else you die.” The banner of France fell at his side; for Geoffrey de Charny was slain. Denis de Morbecque, a knight of St. Omer, made his way up to the king, and said to him, in good French, “Sir, sir, I pray you, yield!” “To whom shall I yield me?” said John: “where is my cousin, the Prince of Wales?” “Sir, yield you to me; I will bring you to him.” “Who are you?” “Denis de Morbecque, a knight of Artois; I serve the King of England, not being able to live in the kingdom of France, for I have lost all I possessed there.” “I yield me to you,” said John: and he gave his glove to the knight, who led him away “in the midst of a great press, for every one was dragging the king, saying, ‘I took him!’ and he could not get forward, nor could my lord Philip, his young son. . . . The king said to them all, Sirs, conduct me courteously, and quarrel no more together about the taking of me, for I am rich and great enough to make every one of you rich.’” Hereupon, the two English marshals, the Earl of Warwick and the Earl of Suffolk, “seeing from afar this throng, gave spur to their steeds, and came up, asking, ‘What is this yonder?’ And answer was made to them, ‘It is the King of France who is taken, and more than ten knights and squires would fain have him.’ Then the two barons broke through the throng by dint of their horses, dismounted and bowed full low before the king, who was very joyful at their coming, for they saved him from great danger.” A very little while afterwards, the two marshals “entered the pavilion of the Prince of Wales, and made him a present of the King of France; the which present the prince could not but take kindly as a great and noble one, and so truly he did, for he bowed full low before the king, and received him as king, properly and discreetly, as he well knew how to do. . . . When evening came, the Prince of Wales gave a supper to the King of France, and to my lord Philip, his son, and to the greater part of the barons of France, who were prisoners. . . . And the prince would not sit at the king’s table for all the king’s entreaty, but waited as a serving-man at the king’s table, bending the knee before him, and saying, ‘Dear sir, be pleased not to put on so sad a countenance because it hath not pleased God to consent this day to your wishes, for assuredly my lord and father will show you all the honor and friendship he shall be able, and he will come to terms with you so reasonably that ye shall remain good friends forever.”
Henceforth it was, fortunately, not on King John, or on peace or war between him and the King of England, that the fate of France depended.