In spite of the discretion he had displayed during his four years of regency (from 1356 to 1360), his reign opened under the saddest auspices. In 1363, one of those contagious diseases, all at that time called the plague, committed cruel ravages in France. “None,” says the contemporary chronicler, “could count the number of the dead in Paris, young or old, rich or poor; when death entered a house, the little children died first, then the menials, then the parents. In the smallest villages, as well as in Paris, the mortality was such that at Argenteuil, for example, where there were wont to be numbered seven hundred hearths, there remained no more than forty or fifty.” The ravages of the armed thieves, or bandits, who scoured the country added to those of the plague. Let it suffice to quote one instance. “In Beauce, on the Orleans and Chartres side, some brigands and prowlers, with hostile intent, dressed as pig-dealers or cow-drivers, came to the little castle of Murs, close to Corbeil, and finding outside the gate the master of the place, who was a knight, asked him to get them back their pigs, which his menials, they said, had the night before taken from them, which was false. The master gave them leave to go in, that they might discover their pigs and move them away. As soon as they had crossed the drawbridge they seized upon the master, threw off their false clothes, drew their weapons, and blew a blast upon the bagpipe; and forthwith appeared their comrades from their hiding-places in the neighboring woods. They took possession of the castle, its master and mistress, and all their folk; and, settling themselves there, they scoured from thence the whole country, pillaging everywhere, and filling the castle with the provisions they carried off. At the rumor of this thievish capture, many men-at-arms in the neighborhood rushed up to expel the thieves and retake from them the castle. Not succeeding in their assault, they fell back on Corbeil, and then themselves set to ravaging the country, taking away from the farm-houses provisions and wine without paying a dolt, and carrying them off to Corbeil for their own use. They became before long as much feared and hated as the brigands; and all the inhabitants of the neighboring villages, leaving their homes and their labor, took refuge, with their children and what they had been able to carry off, in Paris, the only place where they could find a little security.” Thus the population was without any kind of regular force, anything like effectual protection; the temporary defenders of order themselves went over, and with alacrity too, to the side of disorder when they did not succeed in repressing it; and the men-at-arms set readily about plundering, in their turn, the castles and country-places whence they had been charged to drive off the plunderers.
Let us add a still more striking example of the absence of all publicly recognized power at this period, and of the necessity to which the population was nearly everywhere reduced of defending itself with its own hands, in order to escape ever so little from the evils of war and anarchy. It was a little while ago pointed out why and how, after the death of Marcel and the downfall of his faction, Charles the Bad, King of Navarre, suddenly determined upon making his peace with the regent of France. This peace was very displeasing to the English, allies of the King of Navarre, and they continued to carry on war, ravaging the country here and there, at one time victorious and at another vanquished in a multiplication of disconnected encounters. “I will relate,” says the Continuer of William of Nangis, “one of those incidents just as it occurred in my neighborhood, and as I have been truthfully told about it. The struggle there was valiantly maintained by peasants, Jacques Bonhomme (Jack Goodfellows), as they are called. There is a place pretty well fortified in a little town named Longueil, not far from Compiegne, in the diocese of Beauvais, and near to the banks of the Oise. This place is close to the monastery of St. Corneille-de-Compiegne. The inhabitants perceived that there would be danger if the enemy occupied this point; and, after having obtained authority from the lord-regent of France and the abbot of the monastery, they settled themselves there, provided themselves with arms and provisions, and appointed a captain taken from among themselves, promising the regent that they would defend this place to the death. Many of the villagers came thither to place themselves in security, and they chose for captain a tall, fine man, named William a-Larks (aux Alouettes). He had for servant, and held as with bit and bridle, a certain peasant of lofty stature, marvellous bodily strength, and equal boldness, who had joined to these advantages an extreme modesty: he was called Big Ferre. These folks settled themselves at this point to the number of about two hundred men, all tillers of the soil, and getting a poor livelihood by the labor of their hands. The English, hearing it said that these folks were there and were determined to resist, held them in contempt, and went to them, saying, ‘Drive we hence these peasants, and take we possession of this point so well fortified and well supplied.’ They went thither to the number of two hundred. The folks inside had no suspicion thereof, and had left their gates open. The English entered boldly into the place, whilst the peasants were in the inner courts or at the windows, a-gape at seeing men so well armed making their way in. The captain, William a-Larks, came down at once with some of his people, and bravely began the fight; but he had the worst of it, was surrounded by the English, and himself stricken with a mortal wound. At sight hereof, those of his folk who were still in the courts, with Big Ferre at their head, said one to another, ‘Let us go down and sell our lives clearly, else they will slay us without mercy.’ Gathering themselves discreetly together, they went down by different gates, and struck out with mighty blows at the English, as if they had been beating out their corn on the threshing-floor; their arms went up and down again, and every blow dealt out a deadly wound. Big Ferre, seeing his captain laid low and almost dead already, uttered a bitter cry, and advancing upon the English he topped them all, as he did his own fellows, by a head and shoulders. Raising his axe, he dealt about him deadly blows, insomuch that in front of him the place was soon a void; he felled to the earth all those whom he could reach; of one he broke the head, of another he lopped off the arms; he bore himself so valiantly that in an hour he had with his own hand slain eighteen of them, without counting the wounded; and at this sight his comrades were filled with ardor. What more shall I say? All that band of English were forced to turn their backs and fly; some jumped into the ditches full of water; others tried with tottering steps to regain the gates. Big Ferre, advancing to the spot where the English had planted their flag, took it, killed the bearer, and told one of his own fellows to go and hurl it into a ditch where the wall was as not yet finished. ‘I cannot,’ said the other, ‘there are still so many English yonder.’ ‘Follow me with the flag,’ said Big Ferre; and marching in front, and laying about him right and left with his axe, he opened and cleared the way to the point indicated, so that his comrade could freely hurl the flag into the ditch. After he had rested a moment, he returned to the fight, and fell so roughly on the English who remained, that all those who could fly hastened to profit thereby. It is said that on that day, with the help of God and Big Ferre, who, with his own hand, as is certified, laid low more than forty, the greater part of the English who had come to this business never went back from it. But the captain on our side, William a-Larks, was there stricken mortally: he was not yet dead when the fight ended; he was carried away to his bed; he recognized all his comrades who were there, and soon afterwards sank under his wounds. They buried him in the midst of weeping, for he was wise and good.”
“At the news of what had thus happened at Longueil the English were very disconsolate, saying that it was a shame that so many and such brave warriors should have been slain by such rustics. Next day they came together again from all their camps in the neighborhood, and went and made a vigorous attack at Longueil on our folks, who no longer feared them hardly at all, and went out of their walls to fight them. In the first rank was Big Ferre, of whom the English had heard so much talk. When they saw him, and when they felt the weight of his axe and his arm, many of those who had come to this fight would have been right glad not to be there. Many fled or were grievously wounded or slain. Some of the English nobles were taken. If our folks had been willing to give them up for money, as the nobles do, they might have made a great deal; but they would not.
“When the fight was over, Big Ferre, overcome with heat and fatigue, drank a large quantity of cold water, and was forthwith seized of a fever. He put himself to bed without parting from his axe, which was so heavy that a man of the usual strength could scarcely lift it from the ground with both hands. The English, hearing that Big Ferre was sick, rejoiced greatly, and for fear he should get well they sent privily, round about the place where he was lodged, twelve of their men bidden to try and rid them of him. On espying them from afar, his wife hurried up to his bed where he was laid, saying to him, ‘My dear Ferre, the English are coming, and I verily believe it is for thee they are looking; what wilt thou do?’ Big Ferre, forgetting his sickness, armed himself in all haste, took his axe which had already stricken to death so many foes, went out of his house, and entering into his little yard, shouted to the English as soon as he saw them, ‘Ah! scoundrels, you are coming to take me in my bed; but you shall not get me.’ He set himself against a wall to be in surety from behind, and defended himself manfully with his good axe and his great heart. The English assailed him, burning to slay or to take him; but he resisted them so wondrously, that he brought down five much wounded to the ground, and the other seven took to flight. Big Ferre, returning in triumph to his bed, and heated again by the blows he had dealt, again drank cold water in abundance, and fell sick of a more violent fever. A few days afterwards, sinking under his sickness, and after having received the holy sacraments, Big Ferre went out of this world, and was buried in the burial-place of his own village. All his comrades and his country wept for him bitterly, for, so long as he lived, the English would not have come nigh this place.”
There is probably some exaggeration about the exploits of Big Ferre and the number of his victims. The story just quoted is not, however, a legend; authentic and simple, it has all the characteristics of a real and true fact, just as it was picked up, partly from eye-witnesses and partly from hearsay, by the contemporary narrator. It is a faithful picture of the internal state of the French nation in the fourteenth century; a nation in labor of formation, a nation whose elements, as yet scattered and incohesive, though under one and the same name, were fermenting each in its own quarter and independently of the rest, with a tendency to mutual coalescence in a powerful unity, but, as yet, far from succeeding in it.
Externally, King Charles V. had scarcely easier work before him. Between himself and his great rival, Edward III., King of England, there was only such a peace as was fatal and hateful to France. To escape some day from the treaty of Bretigny, and recover some of the provinces which had been lost by it—this was what king and country secretly desired and labored for. Pending a favorable opportunity for promoting this higher interest, war went on in Brittany between John of Montfort and Charles of Blois, who continued to be encouraged and patronized, covertly, one by the King of England, the other by the King of France. Almost immediately after the accession of Charles V. it broke out again between him and his brother-in-law, Charles the Bad, King of Navarre, the former being profoundly mistrustful, and the latter brazen-facedly perfidious, and both detesting one another, and watching to seize the moment for taking advantage one of the other. The states bordering on France, amongst others Spain and Italy, were a prey to discord and even civil wars, which could not fail to be a source of trouble or serious embarrassment to France. In Spain two brothers, Peter the Cruel and Henry of Transtamare, were disputing the throne of Castile. Shortly after the accession of Charles V., and in spite of his lively remonstrances, in 1267, Pope Urban V. quitted Avignon for Rome, whence he was not to return to Avignon till three years afterwards, and then only to die. The Emperor of Germany was, at this period, almost the only one of the great sovereigns of Europe who showed for France and her kings a sincere good will. When, in 1378, he went to Paris to pay a visit to Charles V., he was pleased to go to St. Denis to see the tombs of Charles the Handsome and Philip of Valois. “In my young days,” he said to the abbot, “I was nurtured at the homes of those good kings, who showed me much kindness; I do request you affectionately to make good prayer to God for them.” Charles V., who had given him a very friendly reception, was, no doubt, included in this pious request.