These measures proved him no statesman, whatever his generalship. In the early days of the Hundred Years’ War Guienne had looked coldly on Paris, and appreciated a distant ruler who secured her liberty of action; now, victim of a policy of mingled pillage and exactions, she soon came to regard her English rulers as foreign tyrants. Thus an appeal was made by the men of Guienne to Charles V, and he, in defiance of the terms of the Treaty of Bretigni, summoned Prince Edward to Paris—as though he were his vassal—to answer the charges made against him. ‘Gladly we will answer our summons,’ replied the Prince, when he heard. ‘We will go as the King of France has ordered us, but with helm on head and sixty thousand men.’
They were bold words; but the haughty spirit that dictated them spoke from the mouth of a dying man, and the Black Prince never lived to fulfil his boast. His place in France was taken by his younger brother, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, who proved himself an indifferent general. In 1373 Duke John marched from Calais into the heart of France, his army burning villages as it went; but though he pressed deeper and ever deeper into the enemy’s country, he met no open foes nor towns that he could take without a siege. ‘Let them be,’ said Charles ‘the Wise’, when his indignant nobles pleaded for leave to fight a pitched battle; ‘by burnings they shall not seize our heritage. Though a storm and tempest rage together over a land they disperse themselves: so will it be with these English.’
Ever since the Treaty of Bretigni Charles had been planning profitable alliances with foreign rulers that would leave the English friendless; while, like Henry the Fowler of Germany, he had fortified his cities against invasion. With the advent of winter Lancaster and his men could find no food nor succour from any local barons; and when at last the remnant of his once proud army reached Bordeaux, it was without a single horse, and leaving a track of sick and dying to be cut off by guerrilla bands. He had not lost a single battle, but he was none the less defeated, and had imperilled the English cause in France.
The truce of 1375 that practically closed the first period of the Hundred Years’ War left to Edward III and his successors no more than the coast towns of Calais, Cherbourg, Brest, Bayonne, and Bordeaux.
* * * * *
Henry V in France
When in 1415 Henry V of England formally claimed the throne of France, and by so doing renewed the war that had languished since 1375, he had no satisfactory argument save his sword to uphold his demands. Grandson of John of Gaunt, and son of the royal usurper Henry IV, who had deposed and killed his cousin Richard II, Henry V hoped by a successful campaign to establish the popularity of the Lancastrian dynasty. He wished also, like most mediaeval rulers, to find a battle-ground for his barons in any territory except his own. It is only fair to add that of the modern belief that the one possible excuse for shedding human blood is a righteous cause he had not the faintest conception.
‘War for war’s sake’ might have been the motto of this most mediaeval of all English sovereigns; but if his purpose is indefensible to-day in its selfish callousness, he at any rate chose an admirable time in which to put it into execution; for France, that had begun to recover a semblance of nationality under the rule of Charles ‘the Wise’, had degenerated into anarchy under his son Charles ‘the Mad’.
First as a minor, for he was only eleven at the time of his accession, and later when he developed frequent attacks of insanity, Charles VI was destined to be some one else’s tool, while round his person raged those factions for which Louis VIII had shortsightedly prepared when he set the example of creating appanages.[29] First one ‘Prince of the Lilies’ and then another strove to control the court and government in their own interests; but the most formidable rivals at the beginning of the fifteenth century were the Houses of Burgundy and Armagnac.
The latter centred in the person of the young Charles, Duke of Orleans, the King’s nephew and a son-in-law of Count Bernard of Armagnac, who gave his name to the party: the other was his cousin, John ‘the Fearless’, Duke of Burgundy, who was also by inheritance from his mother Count of Flanders, and therefore ruler of that great middle province lying between France and the Empire.