Temporarily worsted at Hennebon, Charles de Blois retired from before it and went to besiege and capture other places in Brittany. Jeanne de Montfort had not sufficient troops to make head against him in these enterprises, and had to look on from Hennebon while he took Dinan, Vannes, Auray, and other places, in spite of the diversions created by Sir Walter de Manny and the English allies. After the capitulation of Carhaix, Charles de Blois returned to the attack upon Hennebon, where he was joined by his lieutenant, Louis of Spain, disgruntled by a recent defeat at Quimperle inflicted by Walter de Manny. The siege was again fruitless, and, during a truce agreed upon between the combatants, the countess obtained a chance to enlist more active assistance.
Jeanne hurried over to England to implore more aid from Edward. At that time the great king was unworthily occupied in his pursuit of the Countess of Salisbury, in whose honor tournaments were held and magnificent feasts given in London. In these gayeties the Countess de Montfort must have shared with but a sad heart; for that heart was set upon securing aid to win back her husband's patrimony in Brittany, now all overrun by the adherents of Charles de Blois. At length Edward did grant her plea, and she set sail for Brittany with a force of men at arms under command of Robert d'Artois.
Louis of Spain, with a fleet of Genoese ships, was waiting for the English off the coast of Guernsey, where a great naval battle was fought. As the ships neared each other, the Genoese crossbowmen hailed arrows upon the English, who hastened to grapple. "And when the lords, knights, and squires came near together, there was a sore battle. The countess that day was worth a man; she had the heart of a lion, and in her hand she wielded a sharp glaive, wherewith she fought fiercely." The English had the better of this hand-to-hand contest, but both sides were glad to draw off in the night. The elements roused to battle, and a great tempest wrought much havoc among the ships. After having some of their stores captured and ships wrecked, the English "took a little haven not far from the city of Vannes, whereof they were right glad."
The first task of the countess and her allies was the capture of Vannes, which was accomplished without serious loss. Leaving Robert d'Artois with a garrison to hold this city, Jeanne and Walter de Manny went to loyal Hennebon, while English forces under the Earls of Pembroke and Salisbury laid siege to Rennes. But Hervé de Leon and Olivier de Clisson, that rough and sturdy knight called "the butcher," recovered Vannes, during the defence of which Robert d'Artois was sorely wounded. He came to Hennebon to recover from his wounds, but grew worse, and finally returned to England, where he died. This ally of the Countess de Montfort was the same Robert d'Artois who had sought to deprive the Countess Mahaut of her heritage. He was a man of most unhappy character, and rested under the cloud of charges of forgery and other malpractices. To conclude briefly the part of his story which connects him with Mahaut d'Artois, we may recall the claim he made upon Artois just before Mahaut's death, based upon documents forged for him by the wicked Jeanne de Divion. When Jeanne was brought up to be interrogated, her whole story broke down the attempts to employ the black art against the king, which she ascribed to Mahaut, and the documents she had pretended to discover in the archives of Thierry d'Hireçon--all was shown to be but puerile fabrication. It was in vain for her to protest that she had acted in these things at the instigation of the wife of Robert d'Artois; she was burned as a witch and a forger. Robert, terrified by the unmasking of his complicity in the forgery, did not await his trial, but fled to Flanders and thence to England, while his wife, Jeanne de Valois, although she was the king's sister, was banished to Normandy. It was the utter wreck of the fortunes of the pair. We regret to find the name of Jeanne de Montfort linked with that of this pitiful, disgraced knight, whom people did not hesitate to accuse of having poisoned his aunt, Mahaut d'Artois, and her daughter, Jeanne, both of whom had died suddenly within a few months of each other.
The war was now to assume proportions far greater than had been at first contemplated; it was become a war between the two kingdoms, and in this greater drama we all but lose sight of Jeanne de Montfort. Michelet remarks that, with curious inconsistency, Philippe VI. was upholding in Brittany the right of the female line, while he denied that right in his own kingdom, and Edward III. espoused the right of the male line in Brittany and maintained that of the female in France. The inconsistency mattered not to either monarch; in each case merely a pretext was sought for increasing the dignity of his own crown.
Jean de Montfort, in whose behalf his countess had been conducting the war in Brittany, escaped from his prison in the Louvre in the spring of 1345, and made his way to England. Furnished with an army by Edward, he returned to Brittany, but was repulsed before Quimper, and died at Hennebon, in September, leaving his claims to his young son and their prosecution to his heroic widow. With the aid of the English, Jeanne continued the struggle, and had the usual fortunes of war, now victor, now vanquished, in a strife that came to be known as the war of the three ladies. The three ladies were Jeanne herself, Jeanne de Clisson, and Jeanne de Penthièvre. Jeanne de Clisson and her boy fled from the French to the Countess of Montfort, after Philippe VI., in 1345, had treacherously seized and executed Olivier de Clisson; Jeanne de Penthièvre was left, like Jeanne de Montfort, to support her own claims, for Charles de Blois, her husband, coming into Brittany and laying siege to the fortress of La Roche-Darien, had been surprised and captured by the Countess de Montfort at the head of her English troops. While he was held prisoner in England, Jeanne de Penthièvre made herself the head of her party, a leader in field and in council not unworthy to rival Jeanne de Montfort.
Fortune favored the cause of the house of Montfort, and Jeanne had the pleasure of seeing her son win first a temporary advantage, then a complete victory over the house of Blois. At the battle of Auray Charles was slain, and the treaty of Guerande, negotiated soon after (1364), finally recognized the young Jean de Montfort as Duke of Brittany, while Jeanne de Penthièvre had to content herself with the county of Penthièvre and the viscounty of Limoges. Brittany was weary of the war which had desolated the land from 1342 to 1364, and the battle of Auray had been the decisive struggle, in which both sides had determined to win or lose all.
Of the private character of Jeanne de Montfort we cannot speak with any degree of assurance, since the information we possess is very slight. Hume has ventured to characterize her as "the most extraordinary woman of the age," which is in some respects true enough. In those qualities admired by chivalry she was unquestionably an extraordinary woman; courageous and personally valiant, with a head to plan daring exploits and a heart to conduct her through the thick of the danger, impulsive and generous, a free-handed ruler, and an admirer of those deeds of chivalrous daring in others which she was only too ready to share herself. No Eleanor of Guienne have we here, masquerading in tinsel armor at the head of a troop of stage amazons, but a gallant lady charging her foes sword in hand. One cannot read her story without enthusiasm; and yet one would gladly know more of the woman before bestowing unreserved praise upon the countess "who was worth a man in the fight," and "who had the heart of a lion."
With all the brilliance and the heroism of these wars between England and France, the glory is not untarnished; for the very patterns of chivalry were too often guilty of most atrocious cruelties. Charles, the saintly Count of Blois, cutting off the heads of the Breton knights and throwing them over the walls of Nantes; Philippe VI. inviting the Bretons to a tourney, and then seizing and executing them; the Count de Lisle hurling from a catapult, over the walls of Auberoche, the miserable servant who had ventured to bear letters from the garrison through his lines; these, and more than these, are the sort of things one finds even in the pages of Froissart, who was so careful to conceal the unpleasant and to bring into the light of genius the chivalrous episodes in his chronicle of the wars. For the weak and the fallen there is little of pity; a word as some brave knight falls, a word of the sorrow of those dependent upon him, and on we go to fresh fields, fresh knightly exploits and pageants. Though the very spirit of chivalry is in the air, how little thought is given to woman! It is only the rare masculine qualities of a Jeanne de Montfort that can win her grudging notice from Froissart.
When such is the spirit animating the great chronicler of the age, it is rather remarkable that we find even three or four women winning such fame as to be remembered. The great war will in time bring forth the greatest heroine of France; yet it may be questioned whether Jeanne d'Arc would have received even fair treatment at the hands of Froissart, if the knight-chronicler had lived to see the glory of this wonderful peasant girl illumine all France. We may guess that Jeanne the saint, even Jeanne the valiant warrior (he loved warriors better than saints), would have been for him but Jeanne the peasant, the miserable child of some more miserable Jacques Bonhomme, to whom the courtly chronicler would have referred with contempt, scorn, or brutal hate.