[1] Epistolæ Familiares, iii., Ep. 14, p. 162, ed. Fracassetti.

It was to little purpose that King John laboured to redeem his plighted word and make France what it had been before the war. Though in November, 1361, neither he nor Edward sent commissioners to Bruges, where, according to the treaty of Calais, the charters of renunciation were to be exchanged, John offered in 1362 to carry out his promise. Edward, however, for reasons of his own, made no response to his advances. The result was that the renunciations were never made, and so the essential condition of the original settlement remained unfulfilled. The matter passed almost unnoticed at the time as a mere formality, but in later years Edward's lack of faith brought its own punishment in giving the French king a plausible excuse for still claiming suzerainty over the ceded provinces. Perhaps Edward still cherished the ambition of resuscitating his pretensions to the French crown. He found it as hard to give up a claim as ever his grandfather had done.

John's good faith was conspicuously evinced by the efforts he made to raise the instalments of his ransom. His payments were in arrears: some of the hostages left in free custody by Edward's generosity broke their parole and escaped; and among them was his own son, Louis, Duke of Anjou. The father felt it his duty to step into the place thus left vacant. In 1363 he returned to his English prison, where he died in 1364, surrounded with every courtesy and attention that Edward could lavish upon him. During the last months of his life, England received visits from two other kings, David of Scotland and the Lusignan lord of Cyprus, who still called himself King of Jerusalem, and was wandering through the courts of Europe to stir up interest in the projected crusade.

Charles of Normandy then became Charles V. He was no knight-errant like his father, and his diplomatic gifts, tact, and patience made him much better fitted than John for outwitting his English enemies and for restoring order to France. Slowly but surely he grappled with the companies, and at last an opening was found for their skill in the civil war which broke out in Castile. Peter the Cruel, since 1350 King of Castile, had made himself odious to many of his subjects. At last his bastard brother, Henry of Trastamara, rose in revolt against him. Peter, however, was capable and energetic, and not without support from certain sections of the Castilians. Moreover, he was friendly with Charles of Navarre, and allied with Edward III. On the other hand Henry found powerful backing from the King of Aragon, and made an appeal to the King of France. This gave Charles V. the chance he wanted. He hated Peter, who was reputed to have murdered his own wife, Blanche of Bourbon sister of the Queen of France, and in 1365 he agreed to give Henry assistance. Du Guesclin welded the scattered companies into an army and led them against the Spanish king. The pope fell in with the scheme as an indirect way of realising his crusading ambition. When Henry had become King of Castile, the companies would go on to attack the Moors of Granada. English and French mercenaries flocked gladly together under Du Guesclin's banner. Edward in vain ordered his subjects not to take part in an invasion of the lands of his friend and cousin, Peter of Castile. Though Chandos declined at the last moment to follow Du Guesclin into the peninsula, Sir Hugh Calveley would not desist from the quest of fresh adventure, even at the orders of his lord. Professional and knightly feeling bound Calveley to Du Guesclin more closely than their difference of nationality separated them, so that Calveley took his part in the Castilian campaign with perfect loyally to his ancient enemy. In December, 1365, Du Guesclin and his followers made their way through Roussillon and Aragon into Castile. The spring of 1366 saw Peter a fugitive in Aquitaine, and Henry of Trastamara crowned Henry II. of Castile. Most of the companies then went home, though Du Guesclin and Calveley remained to support the new king's throne.

The deposed tyrant went to Bordeaux, where since 1363 the Black Prince had been resident as Prince of Aquitaine; for in 1362 Edward had erected his new possessions into a principality and conferred it on his eldest son, in the hope of conciliating the Gascons by some pretence of restoring their independence. At Bordeaux Peter persuaded the prince to restore him to his throne by force. Edward also agreed to support Peter, and sent his third son, John of Gaunt, to march through Brittany and Poitou with a powerful English reinforcement to his brother's resources, while the lord of Aquitaine assembled the whole, strength of his new principality for the expedition. At the bidding of his lord, Calveley cheerfully abandoned Du Guesclin, and thenceforth fought as courageously on the one side as he had previously done on the other. Charles of Navarre professed great desire to help forward the invaders, and his offers of friendship opened up to the prince the easiest way into Spain by way of the pass of Roncesvalles from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Pamplona, the capital of Navarre. In February, 1367, the prince's army made its way in frost and snow through the valleys famous in romance. From Pamplona two roads diverged to Burgos, the ancient Castilian capital. The easier way ran south-westwards through Navarrese territory to the Ebro at Logroño, where beyond the river lay the Castilian frontier. The more difficult route went westwards through rugged mountains and high valleys by way of Salvatierra and Vitoria to a passage over the upper Ebro at Miranda. The Black Prince chose the latter route, and reached Vitoria in safely. Beyond the town King Henry's army held a position so strong that Edward found it impossible to dislodge him.

The winter weather still held the upland valleys in its grip when March was far advanced. Men and horses suffered terribly from cold and hunger, and the prince, seeing that he could not long maintain his position, boldly resolved to transfer himself to the southern route. A flank march over snow-clad sierras brought him to the vale of the Ebro, and, crossing the stream at Logroño, he took up his position a few miles south-west of that town, near the Castilian village of Navarrete. On the prince's change of front King Henry also moved southward, crossing the Ebro a few miles above Logroño, and then advanced to Nájera, a village about six miles west of Navarrete, where he once more blocked the English path. The prince, however, had the advantage of position and could afford to wait until the Castilians attacked. On April 3 Henry advanced over the little river Najarilla against the enemy. The Spanish host fought after a different fashion from that practised by both sides in the French wars. Only Du Guesclin and the small remnant of the companies which still abode in Spain dismounted. The mass of the Castilians remained on their horses. Their cavalry was of two sorts: besides a large number of men-at-arms bestriding armoured steeds, there were swarms of light horsemen, unencumbered by heavy armour and called genitours, from being mounted on the fleet Spanish steeds called jennets. The desperate valour of Du Guesclin and his followers could not prevent utter disaster. Henry fled in panic from the scene; Du Guesclin was again a prisoner, and the Najarilla was reddened by the blood of the thousands of fugitive Spaniards, for, caught as in a trap at the narrow bridge which offered the sole means of retreat, they were massacred without difficulty by the prince's troops. The victors marched on to Burgos, and, Don Henry having fled to France, Peter was restored with little further trouble to the Castilian throne.

The Black Prince remained in Castile all through the summer, waiting for the rewards which Don Peter had promised him. His army melted away through fever and dysentery, and the prince himself contracted the beginnings of a mortal disorder. Thus the crowning victory of his career was the last of his triumphs. Like many other leaders of chivalry, he had not understood the limitations of his resources, and had dissipated on this bootless Spanish campaign means scarcely sufficient to grapple with the spirit of disaffection already undermining his power in Aquitaine. With shattered health and the mere skeleton of his gallant army, he made his way back over the Pyrenees. Henceforth misfortune dogged every step of his career.

Since 1363 the constant residence of the Black Prince and his wife, Joan of Kent, in Gascony, had been broken only by his Castilian expedition. It was a wise policy to send the prince to hold a permanent court in Aquitaine, such as the land had never seen since Richard Coeur de Lion. All that affability, magnificence, and chivalry could do to make his domination attractive might be confidently anticipated from so brilliant and high-minded a knight as the prince of Aquitaine. The court of Bordeaux was as brilliant as the court of Windsor. "Never," boasted the Chandos Herald,[1] "was such good entertainment as his; for every day at his table he had more than four-score knights and four times as many squires. There was found all nobleness, merriment, freedom, and honour. His subjects loved him, for he did them much good." The sulky magnates of the south-west, such as John of Armagnac and Gaston Phoebus of Foix, found their bitterness tempered by the prince's courtesy, while the boastful knights of Gascony looked forward to a career of honourable service under the descendant of their ancient dukes. Feastings and tournaments were not enough to win all his subjects' hearts; and the Black Prince strove with some energy to show that he was a ruler of men as well as the centre of a court. It is to his credit that he cleared his inheritance from the free companies, so that Poitou and Limousin enjoyed far more prosperity and tranquillity than in the days of French ascendency. Such new taxation as Gascon custom allowed was only levied after grants from the three estates. Great pains were taken to improve the administration, the judicial system, and the coinage. Edward saw that his best policy was to rely upon the people of Gascony, and to look with suspicion on the great lords. But he did not understand how limited was the authority which tradition gave to the dukes of Aquitaine, and he was too stiff, too pedantic, too insular, to get on really cordial terms with his subjects. He never, like Gaston Phoebus or Richard Coeur de Lion, threw himself into the local life, language, and traditions of the country.

[1] Le Prince Noir, poème du héraut d'Armes Chandos, pp. 107-108, ed. F. Michel.

The Black Prince's greatest successes were with the towns, and especially with those which had been continuously subject to English rule. The citizens of Bordeaux, who had feared lest Edward's claim to the French crown should involve them in more complete subjection, were appeased by promises that they should in any case remain subject to the English monarchy. Their liberties were increased and their wine trade was fostered, even to the loss of English merchants. The other towns were equally contented. Edward relied upon them as a counterpoise to the feudal lords, and their liberties exempted them from the extraordinary taxes by which he strove to restore the equilibrium of his finances. The half-independent magnates were soon convinced that their chivalrous lord was no friend of aristocratic privilege. Edward, even when using their services in war, carefully excluded them from the administration. They saw with disgust the chief offices monopolised by Englishmen. An English bishop, John Harewell of Bath, was Edward's chancellor and confidential adviser. An English knight, Thomas Felton, was seneschal of Aquitaine and head of the administration. The constableship was assigned to Chandos. The seneschalships of the several provinces were mainly in English hands. With English notions of the rights of the supreme power, the prince paid little attention to the franchises of either lord or prelate. He mortally offended John of Armagnac by requiring a direct oath of fealty from the Bishop of Rodez, who held all his lands of Armagnac as Count of Rouergue. Clerks of lesser degree were outraged by the prince's attempts to hinder students from attending the university of Toulouse.