"Let them not," he said, "go and tell their prattle to the Duke of Anjou, who loves us little, and say how they have summoned us personally in our own palace."
The King of France was indignant when he heard of the answer of the Black Prince, and of the treatment which his commissioners had met with. He made immediate preparations for war. He sent a challenge to the King of England by a common valet, a kitchen-boy, that he might make it as insulting as possible.
Both England and its King were sunk in the enjoyments of peace. The King was growing old, and loved ease and luxury. The country was weary of war, and absorbed in trade and manufacture. Still the challenge of the King of France stung their pride, and threw Edward III. into a mighty passion. He determined to reassert his claim to the crown of France, and opened the war with vigour. He sent the Duke of Lancaster with an army to Calais to invade the north of France, and his son Edmund, Duke of Cambridge, with troops to assist the Black Prince in Aquitaine. The Black Prince established his camp at Angoulême. The services of the various Free Companies were eagerly bid for by both the combatants, and many were engaged on either side.
The French soon began their inroads upon the Prince's territory. He lay at Angoulême helpless from illness, and almost wild with vexation at hearing of the advances of his enemies. A desultory warfare began, in which neither side gained any considerable advantage; but the French seemed to be pressing on further, whilst the disaffection of the chief nobles and the illness of the Prince tended more and more to break up the unity of the English provinces.
In the north the Duke of Lancaster did nothing but burn and ravage the enemy's country. The French army, which had been sent against him, had been expressly ordered not to engage battle; the remembrance of the English victories was still too vivid in the minds of the French.
The death, in a chance skirmish, of his valued friend and wise counsellor, Sir John Chandos, was a serious blow to the Prince. He was seneschal of Poitou, and was very anxious to drive back the French, who had taken some strong places there. He attacked a body of the enemy much superior in number to his own force, and fell upon them with scoffs and jeers. But as he was advancing on foot, he slipped on the ground, made slippery by the frost. He was entangled in the long robe of white samite, which he wore under his armour according to the fashion of those days, and stumbled. A French squire seized this opportunity to make a thrust at him; Sir John had lost an eye five years before, and the thrust being made on his blind side, he could not see to ward it off. To the dismay of his followers, he fell back rolling in death-agony on the ground. They fought desperately, eager to revenge his fall, but owing to their small number were obliged to surrender to the French. Soon after they were released by the arrival of a large body of English troops, to whom the French in their turn had to yield. Chandos was discovered lying so severely wounded that he was unable to speak. Great were the lamentations of the English; for all loved and revered him. There was no knight more valiant or courteous than he. His servants gently disarmed him, and he was laid on a litter made of shields and targets, and so was slowly carried at a foot-pace to Mortemer, the nearest fort. He only lived one day and night, and was buried by his friends at Mortemer. On his tomb was written this epitaph in French:
I, John Chandos, an English knight,
Seneschal of all Poitou,
Against the French king oft did fight,
On foot and horseback many slew.
Bertrand du Guesclin prisoner too
By me was taken in a vale,
At Lensac did the foe prevail;
My body then at Mortemer
In a fair tomb did my friends inter,
In the year of grace divine,
Thirteen hundred sixty-nine.
Froissart says of Chandos, that never since a hundred years did there exist one more courteous, nor fuller of every virtue and good quality. What the English cause lost by his death can hardly be estimated. His valour and wisdom might have prevented the loss of Aquitaine.
It was early in 1370 that Chandos was slain. That year Charles V. determined to strike a decisive blow. Two armies, under his brothers the Dukes of Anjou and Berry, the former assisted by the great General Du Guesclin, were to invade Aquitaine at the same time. They advanced with great success, taking one city after another. Limoges, the capital of Limousin, was surrendered into their hands by its bishop, who turned traitor. News of the loss of this important city was brought to the Black Prince as he lay upon his bed of sickness. In a frenzy of rage he sat up in his bed, and exclaimed, "The French hold me dead; but if God give me relief, and I can once leave this bed, I will again make them feel."