[1] On the importance of Penthièvre, see A. de la Borderie, La Géographie feodale de la Brétagne (1889), pp. 60-65.
The fight was not waged in Brittany only. Montfort had to contend against the general sentiment of the French nobility and the strong interest and affection which bound Philip VI. to uphold the claims of Charles of Blois. After a few months the parliament of Paris decided in favour of the king's nephew against Montfort. Charles's wife was the nearest heir of the deceased duke, and had therefore a prior claim over her uncle. Montfort urged in vain that the superior rights of the male, which had made the Count of Valois King of France, equally gave the Count of Montfort the duchy of Brittany. He had to fight for his duchy. John, Duke of Normandy, the heir of France, marched to Brittany with a strong force, to secure the establishment of his cousin in accordance with the decree of parliament. The union of the royal troops, with the levies of Penthièvre and the great feudatories of Brittany, was too powerful a combination to withstand. Montfort was shut up in Nantes, was forced to capitulate, and sent prisoner to Paris. His place was taken by his wife, Joan of Flanders, a daughter of Louis of Nevers. This lady shewed "the heart of a man and of a lion," as Froissart says. Her efforts, however, did not prevail against her formidable enemies. Bit by bit she was driven from one stronghold to another, until at last she was closely besieged in Hennebont by Charles of Blois. Before that, she had recognised Edward as King of France, and offered him the homage of her husband and son. Edward III. readily took up the cause of Montfort. He recked little of the inconsistency involved in the prince, who claimed France through his mother, supporting in Brittany a duke, whose pretensions were based upon grounds similar to the claim advanced by Philip of Valois on the French throne. As in Flanders, he found two rival nations contending in the bosom of a single French fief. He at once supported the Celtic party in Brittany as he had supported the Flemish party in Flanders. Both his allies had the same enemies in feudalism, the French monarchy, and the pretensions of high clericalism. Afraid to renew the attack in France without allies, Edward welcomed the support of the Montfort party, as giving him a chance of renewing his assaults on his adversary of Valois. He invested Montfort with the earldom of Richmond, of which John III had died possessed. He sent Sir Walter Manny with a force sufficient to raise the siege of Hennebont. The heroic Joan of Flanders was almost at the end of her resources, when on an early June morning, in 1342, she espied the white sails of Manny's fleet working its way from the sea up the estuary of the Blavet, which bathes the walls of Hennebont. After the arrival of the English, Charles of Blois abandoned the siege in despair. For the rest of the year the war was waged on a more equal footing. In August Edward sent to Brest an additional force under William Bohun, Earl of Northampton, who attempted, though with little success, to invade the domains of the house of Penthièvre. A hard-won victory against great odds near Morlaix was made memorable by Northampton's first applying the tactics of Halidon Hill to a pitched battle on the continent.[1] But the earl's troops were so few that they were forced to withdraw after their success into more friendly regions. Leon and Cornouailles then resumed allegiance to the house of Montfort. In the midst of the struggle Robert of Artois received a wound which soon ended his tempestuous career.
[1] Baker, p.76, gives the place, Knighton, ii., 25, the details. See also my note in Engl. Hist. Review, xix. (1904), 713-15.
Edward was eager to enter the field in person. Since his return to England in 1340, his only military experience had been a luckless winter campaign in the Lothians against King David. In October, 1342, he left the Duke of Cornwall as warden of England during his absence, and took ship at Sandwich for Brittany. He remained in the country until the early months of 1343, raiding the land from end to end, receiving many of the greater barons into his obedience, and striving in particular to conquer the regions included in the modern department of the Morbihan. There he besieged Vannes, the strongest and largest city of Brittany, says Froissart, after Nantes. The triumphs of his rival at last brought Philip VI. into Brittany. While Edward laboriously pursued the siege of Vannes, amidst the hardships of a wet and stormy winter, Philip watched his enemy from Ploermel, a few miles to the north. For a third time the situation of Buironfosse and Tournai was renewed. The rivals were within striking distance, but once more both Edward and Philip were afraid to strike. History still further repeated itself; for the cardinal-bishops of Palestrina and Frascati, sent by Clement VI. to end the struggle, travelled from camp to camp with talk of peace. The sufferings of both armies gave the kings a powerful reason for listening to their advances. At last, on January 19, 1343, a truce for nearly four years was signed at Malestroit, midway between Ploermel and Vannes, "in reverence of mother church, for the honour of the cardinals, and that the parties shall be able to declare their reasons before the pope, not for the purpose of rendering a judicial decision, but in order to make a better peace and treaty". Scotland and the Netherlands were included in the truce, and it was agreed that each belligerent should continue in the enjoyment of the territories which he held at the moment. Vannes, the immediate apple of discord, was put into the hands of the pope.
The spring of 1343 saw Edward back in England. The scene of interest shifted to the papal court at Avignon, where ambassadors from Edward and Philip appeared to declare their masters' rights. The protracted negotiations were lacking in reality. The English, distrusting Clement as a French partisan, did their best to complicate the situation by complaints against papal provisions in favour of aliens "not having knowledge of the tongue nor condition of those whose governance and care should belong to them". English indignation rose higher when, despite the terms of the truce and the promise of the cardinals, Montfort remained immured in his French prison, while Breton nobles of his faction were kidnapped and put to death by Philip. Clement declared himself against Edward's claims to the French throne, and, long before the negotiations had reached a formal conclusion, it was clear that nothing would come of them. At last in 1345 the English King denounced the truce and prepared to renew the war. His first concern was, necessarily finance, and he had already exhausted all his resources as a borrower. The financial difficulties, which had stayed his career in the Netherlands five years before, had reached their culmination. Stratford was avenged for the outrages of 1340, for Edward was in worse embarrassments than on that winter night when the glare of torches illuminated the sovereign's sudden return to the Tower. The king's Netherlandish, Rhenish, and Italian creditors would trust him no longer and vainly clamoured for the repayment of their advances. "We grieve," he was forced to reply to the Cologne magistrates, "nay, we blush, that we are unable to meet our obligations at the due time." Edward's anxiety to prepare for fresh campaigns made him careless as to his former obligations. His wholesale neglect to repay his debts drove the great banking houses of the Bardi and the Peruzzi into bankruptcy, and the failure of the English king's creditors plunged all Florence into deep distress. One good result came from the king's dishonour. The foreign sources of supply having dried up, Edward was forced to lean more exclusively upon his English subjects. A wealthy family of Hull merchants, recently transferred to London, became very flourishing. Its head, William de la Pole, who had financed every government scheme since the days of Mortimer, became a knight, a judge, a territorial magnate, and the first English merchant to found a baronial house. And as the credit of the English merchants was limited, Edward was forced more and more to rely upon parliamentary grants. The memory of the king's want of faith to the estates of 1341 had died away, and a parliament, which met in 1344, once more made Edward liberal contributions. Secure of his subjects' support, the frivolous king largely employed his resources in the chivalrous pageantry which stirred up the martial ardour of his barons and made the war popular. It was then that he resolved to set up a "round table" at Windsor after the fabled fashion of King Arthur. From this came the foundation of the Round Tower which Edward was to erect in his favourite abode, and the organised chivalry that was soon to culminate in the Order of the Garter. In the summer of 1345 Edward made that journey to Sluys, which has already been noted, and he held on ship-board his last interview with James van Artevelde. His immediate return to England showed that he had no mind to renew his Flemish alliances. In the same year the death of the queen's brother, William of Avesnes, established the rule of Louis of Bavaria in the three counties of Holland, Zealand, and Hainault in the right of his wife, Philippa's elder sister. Edward put in a claim on behalf of his queen, which further embittered his already uneasy relations with Louis, and led him to seek his field of combat anywhere rather than in the Netherlands. In Brittany the murder of the nobles of Montfort's faction had given an excuse for the renewal of partisan warfare as early as 1343, but Montfort was still under surveillance in France, even after his release from Philip's prison, and Joan of Flanders, the heroic defender of Hennebont, was hopelessly insane in England. At last in 1345 Montfort ventured to flee from France to England, where he did homage to Edward as King of France for the duchy which he claimed. He then went to Brittany, and there shortly afterwards died. The new Duke of Brittany, also named John, was a mere boy when he was thus robbed of both his parents' care, and his cause languished for want of a head. Edward took upon himself the whole direction of Brittany as tutor of the little duke. Northampton was once more sent thither, but for a time the war degenerated into sieges of castles and petty conflicts.
While action was thus impracticable in the Netherlands, and ineffective in Brittany, Gascony became, for the first time during the struggle, the scene of military operations of the first rank. The storm of warfare had hitherto almost spared the patrimony of the English king in southern France. No great effort was made either by the French to capture the last bulwarks of the Aquitanian inheritance, or by Edward to extend his duchy to its ancient limits. Cut off from other fields of expansion, Edward threw his chief energies into the enlargement of his power in southern France. He won over many of those Gascon nobles, including the powerful lord of Albret, who had been alienated by his former indifference. All was ready for action, and in June, 1345, Henry of Grosmont, Earl of Derby, the eldest son of Henry of Lancaster, landed at Bayonne with a sufficient English force to encourage the lords of Gascony to rally round the ducal banner. Soon after his landing, the death of his blind father made Derby Earl of Lancaster. During the next eighteen months, the earl successfully led three raids into the heart of the enemies' territory.[1] The first, begun very soon after his landing, occupied the summer of 1345. Advancing from Libourne, the limit of the Anglo-Gascon power, Henry made his way up the Dordogne, a fleet of boats co-operating with his land forces. He took the important town of Bergerac, and thence, mounting the stream as far as Lalinde, he crossed the hills separating the Dordogne from the Isle, and unsuccessfully assaulted Périgueux. Thence he advanced still further, and captured the stronghold of Auberoche, dominating the rocky valley of the Auvézère. Leaving a garrison at Auberoche, Henry returned to his base, but upon his withdrawal the French closely besieged his conquest, and the earl made a sudden move to its relief. On October 21 he won a brisk battle outside the walls of Auberoche before the more sluggish part of his army had time to reach the scene of action. This famous exploit again established the Gascon duke in Périgord.
[1] For these campaigns, see Ribadieu, Les Campagnes du Comté de Derby en Guyenne, Saintonge et Poitou (1865).
Early in 1346 the victor of Auberoche led his forces up the Garonne valley. La Réole, lost since 1325, was taken in January, and thence Earl Henry marched to the capture of many a town and fortress on the Garonne and the lower Lot. His most important acquisition was Aiguillon, commanding the junction of the Lot and the Garonne, for its possession opened up the way for the reconquest of the Agenais, the rich fruit of the last campaign of Charles of Valois. Duke John of Normandy then appeared upon the scene, and Henry of Lancaster withdrew before him to the line of the Dordogne. Aiguillon stood a siege from April to August, when the Duke of Normandy, then at the end of his resources, solicited a truce. News having come to Lancaster at Bergerac that Edward had begun his memorable invasion of Normandy, he contemptuously rejected the proposal. Before long, Duke John raised the siege and hurried to his father's assistance. Thereupon Lancaster returned to the Garonne and revictualled Aiguillon. Immediately after he started on his third raid. This time he bent his steps northwards, and late in September was at Châteauneuf on the Charente, whence he threatened Angoulême, and finally obtained its surrender. Crossing the Charente, he entered French Saintonge, where the important town of Saint-Jean-d'Angely opened its gates and took oaths to Edward as duke and king. Then he boldly dashed into the heart of Poitou, marching by Lusignan to Poitiers. "We rode before the city," wrote Lancaster, "and summoned it, but they would do nothing. Thereupon on the Wednesday after Michaelmas we stormed the city, and all those within were taken or slain. And the lords that were within fled away on the other side, and we tarried full eight days. Thus we have made a fair raid, God be thanked, and are come again to Saint-Jean, whence we propose to return to Bordeaux." This exploit ended Lancaster's Gascon career. In January, 1347, he was back in England, having restored the reputation of his king in Gascony, and set an example of heroism soon to be emulated by his cousin, the Black Prince.
Edward resolved to take the field in person in the summer of 1346. Special efforts were made to equip the army, and lovers of ancient precedent were dismayed when the king called upon all men of property to equip archers, hobblers, or men-at-arms, according to their substance, that they might serve abroad at the king's wages. But the nation responded to the king's call, and a host of some 2,400 cavalry and 10,000 archers and other infantry collected at Portsmouth between Easter and the early summer.[1] There were the usual delays of a medieval muster, and it was not until July was well begun that Edward, having constituted his second son Lionel of Antwerp, a boy of six, as regent, took ship at Portsmouth with his eldest son, then sixteen years of age, and, since 1343, Prince of Wales as well as Duke of Cornwall. The destination of the army was a secret, but Edward's original idea seems to have been to join Henry of Lancaster in Gascony, though we may well believe that the resources of medieval transport were hardly adequate to convey so large a force for so great a distance. Moreover, a persistent series of south-westerly winds prohibited all attempts to round the Breton peninsula, while Godfrey of Harcourt, a Norman lord who had incurred the wrath of Philip VI. and had been driven into exile, persistently urged on Edward the superior attractions of his native coast. When the fleet set sail from Portsmouth, it was directed to follow in the admiral's track; and as soon as the open sea was gained, the ships were instructed to make their way to the Côtentin. On July 12 the English army reached Saint-Vaast de la Hougue, and spent five days in disembarking and ravaging the neighbourhood.[2] Immediately on landing, Edward dubbed the Prince of Wales a knight, along with other young nobles, one of whom was Roger Mortimer, the grandson and heir of the traitor Earl of March. At last, on July 18, the English army began to move by slow stages to the south. It met with little resistance, and plundered and burnt the rich countryside at its discretion. The English marvelled at the fertility of the country and the size and wealth of its towns. Barfleur was as big as Sandwich, Carentan reminded them of Leicester, Saint-Lo was the size of Lincoln, and Caen was more populous than any English city save London.
[1] On the details of this force, see Wrottesley, Crecy and Calais, in Collections for a History of Staffordshire, vol. xviii. (1897); cf. J.E. Morris in Engl. Hist. Review, xiv., 766-69.