England rejoiced at the conclusion of so brilliant a peace, and laid no stress on the subtle change in the conditions which made the treaty far less definitive in reality than in appearance. In France the faithful flocked to the churches to give thanks for deliverance from the long anarchy. The perfect courtesy and good feeling which the two kings had shown to each other gilded the concluding ceremonies with a ray of chivalry. John was released almost at once, and allowed to retain with him in France some of the hostages, including his valiant son Philip, the companion of his captivity. John made Edward's peace with Louis of Flanders, and Edward persuaded John to pardon Charles and Philip of Navarre. At last the two weary nations looked forward to a long period of repose.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR FROM THE TREATY OF CALAIS TO THE TRUCE OF BRUGES.
It was an easier matter to conclude the treaty of Calais than to carry it out. Troubles followed the release of the French king and the expiration of the year during which the two parties were to yield up the ceded territory and effect the renunciations of their respective claims. John did his best to keep faith in both these matters. He ordered his vassals to submit themselves to their new lord, and appointed commissioners to hand over the lost provinces to the agents of the English king. In July, 1361, Sir John Chandos, Edward's lieutenant in France, received the special mission of taking possession of the new acquisitions in the name of his master. Chandos' reputation as a soldier made him acceptable to the French, and being recognised by the treaty as lord of Saint-Sauveur in the Côtentin, he was interested in maintaining good relations between the two realms. He began his work by taking possession of Poitiers and Poitou, but found that many of the descendants of the greedy lords, who, more than a hundred years before, had played off Henry III against St. Louis, abandoned the rule of John with undisguised reluctance. It was worse with the towns, where national sentiment was stronger. La Rochelle held out for months, and, when its notables at last submitted, they declared: "We will accept the English with our lips but never with our hearts". Much patriotic feeling was manifested in Quercy. The consuls of Cahors made their submission, weeping and groaning. "Alas!" they declared, "how odious it is to lose our natural lord, and to pass over to a master we know not. But it is not we who abandon the King of France. It is he who, against our wishes, hands us over, like orphans, to the hands of the stranger." It was not until two years after the signing of the treaty that Edward entered into possession of the bulk of the lands granted to him. Even then there were districts in Poitou, notably Belleville, which never became English at all. One of the last districts to yield was Rouergue, whose count, John of Armagnac, only made his submission under the compulsion of irresistible necessity.
It was even more difficult to get the English out of the lands which the treaty had assigned to the French. These districts were largely held by companies of mercenaries, little under Edward's control and indisposed to yield up the conquests won by their own hands because their nominal lord had thought fit to make a treaty with the French king. Despite the orders of Edward, the English garrisons in the north and centre of France flatly refused to surrender their strongholds. In Maine, Hugh Calveley took Bertrand du Guesclin prisoner when he sought to receive the submission of his castles, and only released him on payment of a heavy ransom. In Normandy, Du Guesclin had to buy off James Pipe, who dominated all the central district from the fortified abbey of Cormeilles, and to crush John Jowel in a pitched battle near Lisieux. Even when the castles were surrendered, the garrisons joined with each other to establish societies of warriors that now inflicted terrible woes on France. The exploits of these free companies hardly belong to English history, though many of their leaders and a large proportion of the rank and file were Englishmen. Cruel, fierce, and uncouth, they still preserved in all military dealings the strict discipline which had taught the English armies the way to victory. The combination of the order of a settled host with the rapacity of a gang of freebooters made them as irresistible as they were destructive. Though Edward formally repudiated them, it was more than suspected that they were secretly playing his game.
Before long, this guerilla warfare became consolidated into military operations on a large scale. Charles of Navarre once more profited by the disorder of France to bring himself to the front. In 1361 John had availed himself of the death of Philip of Rouvres to treat the duchy of Burgundy as a lapsed fief, and conferred it on his youngest son, Philip the Bold. Charles then claimed to be the heir of Burgundy, and while he personally directed the forces of disorder in the south, his agents united with the English condottieri in Normandy. John Jowel still held tight to his Norman conquests, and was, by Edward's direction, fighting openly for Charles of Navarre. The Captal de Buch, the hero of Poitiers, hurried from Gascony to protect the Navarrese lands from the invasion of Bertrand du Guesclin. On May 16, 1364, the little armies of the Captal and the Breton partisan met at Cocherel on the Eure, where Du Guesclin cleverly won the first important victory gained by the French in the open field during the whole course of the war. The Captal was taken prisoner, and the establishment of Du Guesclin in some of Charles of Navarre's Norman fiefs deprived the intriguer of his opportunities to do mischief in the north. Charles of Navarre's career was not yet over; but henceforth his chief field was his southern kingdom.
The victorious Du Guesclin turned his attention to his native Brittany, where the war of Blois and Montfort still went on, for Joan of Penthièvre insisted so strongly upon her rights that the efforts of Edward and John to end the contest had been without result. In 1362 John de Montfort was at last entrusted with the government of Brittany, and Du Guesclin quitted the service of France for that of Charles of Blois, that the treaty of 1360 might remain unbroken. But as in the early wars, the army of Blois was mainly French, and the host of Montfort was commanded by the Englishman, John Chandos, and largely consisted of English men-at-arms and archers. Calveley, Knowles, and the Breton Oliver de Clisson were among the captains of Duke John's forces.
The decisive engagement took place on September 29, 1364, on the plateau, north of Auray, which is still marked by the church of St. Michael, erected as a thank-offering by the victor. It was another Poitiers on a small scale. The Anglo-Breton army held a good defensive position, facing northwards, with its back on the town of Auray. The troops of Charles of Blois and Du Guesclin advanced to attack them with more ardour than discipline or skill. Both sides fought on foot. The French knights had at last learnt to meet the storm of English arrows by strengthening their armour and by protecting themselves by large shields. Thus, as at Poitiers, they had little difficulty in making their way up to the enemy's ranks. But their order was confused, and they thought of nothing but the fierce delights of the mêlée. The Montfort party showed more intelligence, and Chandos, like the captal at Poitiers, fell suddenly upon the flank of one of the enemy's divisions. This settled the fight; Charles of Blois was slain, Du Guesclin taken prisoner, and their army utterly scattered. Auray ended the war of the Breton succession. Even Joan of Penthièvre was at last willing to treat. In 1365 the treaty of Guérande was signed, by which. Montfort was recognised as John IV. of Brittany, and did homage to the French crown. Joan was consoled by remaining in possession of the county of Penthièvre and the viscounty of Limoges. Practically her defeat was an English victory, and Montfort remained in his duchy so long only as English influence prevailed. A second step towards the pacification of the north was made when the troubles in Brittany were ended within a few months of the destruction of the power of Charles the Bad in Normandy.
The free companies lost their chief hunting-grounds; and a further relief came when some of them, like the White Company, found a better market for their swords in Italy. With all their faults, the companies opened out a career to talent such as had seldom been found before. John Hawkwood, the leader of the White Company, was an Essex man of the smaller landed class. He had played but a subordinate figure beside Knowles, Calveley, Pipe, and Jowel; but in Italy he won for himself the name of the greatest strategist of his age. Thus, though at the cost of murder and pillage, the English made themselves talked about all over the western world. "In my youth," wrote Petrarch, "the Britons, whom we call Angles or English, had the reputation of being the most timid of the barbarians. Now they are the most warlike of peoples. They have overturned the ancient military glory of the French by a series of victories so numerous and unexpected that those, who were not long since inferior to the wretched Scots, have so crushed by fire and sword the whole realm that, on a recent journey, I could hardly persuade myself that it was the France that I had seen in former years."[1]