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Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
 XVIII

THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR

During fourteen years, from 1314 to 1328, three sons of Philip

IV reigned in rapid succession; but with the death of the last the
main line of the House of Capet came to an end, and the crown
26
passed to his nephew and namesake Philip of Valois. The latter
declared that his claims were based on a clause of the old Salic
27
Law forbidding a woman to inherit landed property, because as it
happened Philip IV had left a daughter Isabel, who had married
Edward II of England, and their son Edward III loudly protested
that his right to the throne of France was stronger than that of the
Valois. The Salic Law, Edward maintained, might prevent a woman
from succeeding to the throne, but there was nothing in this
restriction to forbid the inheritance passing to her male heirs.
Causes of the The question of the Salic Law is important because
Hundred Years’ its different interpretations were the immediate
War
excuse for opening hostilities between England and
France in that long and weary struggle called the ‘Hundred Years’
War’. There were of course other and far deeper reasons. One of
these reasons was that English kings had never forgotten or
forgiven John’s expulsion from Normandy. They wanted to avenge
this ignominious defeat and also Philip IV’s encroachments in the
Duchy of Guienne, that, united to his policy of supporting the
Scottish chieftains in their war of independence, had been a steady
source of disaster to England since the beginning of the fourteenth
century.
Because of his failure in Scotland and the revolts of his
turbulent barons Edward II was murdered; and Edward III, taking
warning from his father’s fate, welcomed the war with France, not
merely in the hope of revenge and glory, but still more in order to
find an occupation for the hot English blood that might otherwise in
the course of its embittered feuds murder him.
He rode forth to battle, the hero of his court and of the chivalry
of England; but no less, as it happened, the champion of her
middle classes, who cheerfully put their hands in their pockets to
pay for his first campaigns. The reason of their enthusiasm for this
war was that Philip of Valois, in order to annoy his rival, had
commanded his Flemish subjects to trade no longer with the
English. Now English sheep were the best in Europe (so valuable
that their export was forbidden lest another nation should obtain
the breed), and English wool was the raw material of all others on
which Flanders depended for the wealth and prosperity gained by
her looms and factories. Before this time English kings had
encouraged Flemish trade, establishing ‘Staple’ markets in certain
towns under their protection, where merchants of both countries
could meet and bargain over their wares. Wishing to retaliate on
Philip VI, however, Edward III stopped the export of wool, though
at the same time he offered good terms and advantages to any of
the manufacturers of Bruges and Ghent who might care to settle in
Norfolk or on the East Coast and set up factories there as English
subjects.
Such a suggestion could not satisfy the Flemish national spirit,
and in the large towns discontent with the French king grew daily.
At last one of the popular leaders, Jacob van Artevelde, ‘the Brewer
of Ghent’, began to rouse his countrymen by inflammatory
speeches. ‘He showed them’, says the chronicler, ‘that they could
not live without the King of England’; and his many commercial
arguments he strengthened with others intended to win those who
might hesitate to break their oath of allegiance, assuring them that
Edward III was in truth by right of birth King of France.
Rebellion sprang up on all sides in response; and when, in 1338,
Edward III actually embarked on the war, he had behind him not
only the English wool-farmers, but also the majority of Flemish
merchants and artisans, alike convinced that his victory would open
Flemish markets to trade across the Channel.
The Hundred Years’ War falls into two distinct periods: the first,
the contest waged by the Angevin Edward III against the House of
Valois, a struggle that lasted until 1375; the second, a similar effort
begun by the Lancastrian Kings of England in 1415 after a time of
almost suspended hostilities under Richard II. In each period there
is the same switchback course to the campaigns, as they rise
towards a high-water mark of English successes only to sink away
to final French achievement.
The first of the great English victories was fittingly a naval
battle, destined to avenge long years during which French raiders
had harried the south coast, penetrated up the Solent, and even
set fire to large towns like Southampton. In June 1340, near the
entrance to the port of Sluys, some two hundred English vessels of
all makes and sizes came upon the French fleet, drawn up in four
lines closely chained together so as to form a kind of bulwark to the
harbour. On the decks of the tall ships, the turrets of which were
piled with stones and other missiles, were hundreds of Genoese
archers; but the English bowmen at this time had no match in
Europe for long-distance accuracy and steadiness, and the whistling
fire of their arrows soon drove their hired rivals into hiding and
enabled the English men-at-arms to board the vessels opposite
them almost unopposed.
From this moment panic set in along the French lines, and the
greater number of ships, unable to escape because of the chains
that bound them together, were sunk at anchor, with, according to
the chroniclers, twenty-five thousand of their crews and fighting-
material.
 The English were now masters of the Channel, and Edward III
was enabled to transplant an army to Flanders, but no triumph in
any way corresponding to the victory of Sluys rewarded his efforts
in this field of warfare. The campaign became a tedious affair of
sieges; and the Flemings, cooling from their first sympathies, came
to dislike the English and to accuse Jacob van Artevelde of
supplying Edward III with money, merely in order to forward his
personal ambitions. This charge the Flemish leader stoutly denied,
but when, hearing the people of Ghent hooting him in the street
outside his house, he stepped out on to the balcony and tried to
clear himself, the mob surged forward, and, refusing to listen to a
word, broke in through the barred doors and murdered him. This
was ill news for Edward III, but angry though he was at the fate of
his ally, he had neither sufficient men nor money to exact
vengeance. Instead he himself determined to try a new theatre of
war, for, as well as his army in Flanders, he had other forces
fighting the French in Normandy and Guienne.
Battle of CreciEdward landed in Normandy; and at Creci, to the
north of the Somme, as he marched towards Calais,
he was overtaken by Philip of Valois in command of a very large but
undisciplined force.

‘You must know’, says Froissart, the famous chronicler of

this first period of the Hundred Years’ War, ‘that the French
troops did not advance in any particular order, and that as
soon as their King came in sight of the English his blood
began to boil, and he cried out to his Marshals, “Order the
Genoese forward and begin the battle in the name of God
and St. Denys!”’

These Genoese were archers, who had already marched on foot

so far and at such a pace that they were exhausted; and when,
against their will, they sullenly advanced, their bows that were wet
from a thunderstorm proved slack and untrue. The sun also, that
had just emerged from behind a cloud, shone in their eyes and
dazzled them. Silently the English bowmen waited as they drew
near, shouting hoarsely, and then of a sudden poured into the
weary ranks such a multitude of arrows that ‘it seemed as though it
snowed’.
The Genoese, utterly disheartened, broke and fled; at which the
French king, choking with rage, cried, ‘Kill me this rabble that
cumbers our road without any reason’; but the English fire never
ceased; and the French knights and men-at-arms that came to take
the place of the Genoese and rode them underfoot fell in their turn
with the shafts piercing through the joints of their heavy armour.
Again, at Creci it was made evident to Europe that the old
feudal order of battle was passing away. Victory fell not to the
knight armoured with his horse like a slowly-moving turret, but to
the clear-eyed, leather-clad bowman, or the foot-soldier quick with
his knife or spear. The French fought gallantly at Creci, and none
more fiercely than Philip of Valois, whose horse was killed beneath
him; but courage cannot wipe out bad generalship, and when at
last he consented to retreat he left eleven princes of the blood-
royal and over a thousand of his knights stretched on the battle-
field.
The defeat of Creci took from Calais any hope of French
succour, and in the following year after a prolonged siege it
surrendered to the English and became the most cherished of all
their possessions across the seas. ‘The Commons of England’,
wrote Froissart, ‘love Calais more than any town in the world, for
they say that as long as they are masters of Calais they hold the
keys of France at their girdle.’
The Black Death at the battle of Creci, decked in all the
Death panoply of mediaeval warfare, had taken its toll of
the chivalry of France and England. Now, in an open
and ghastly form, indifferent alike to race or creed, it stalked across
Europe, visiting palace and castle but sweeping with a still more
ruthless scythe the slum and the hovel. Somewhere in the far East
the ‘Black Death’, as it was later called, had its origin, and wherever
it passed, moving westward, villages, nay, even towns,
disappeared.
More than thirteen million people are said to have perished in
China, India was almost depopulated, and at last in 1347 Europe
also was smitten. Very swift was the blow, for many victims of the
plague died in a few hours, the majority within five days; and
contemporary writers tell us of ships, that left an eastern harbour
with their full complement of crew, found drifting in the
Mediterranean a few weeks later without a living soul on board to
take the helm; of towns where the dead were so many that there
was none to bury them; of villages where the peasants fell like
cattle in the fields and by the wayside unnoticed.
In Italy, in France, in England, there is the same record of
misery and terror. Boccaccio, the Italian writer, describes in his
book, the Decameron, how the wealthy nobles and maidens of
Florence fled from the plague-stricken town to a villa without the
walls, there to pass their days in telling one another tales. These
tales have made Boccaccio famous as the first great European
novelist; but in reality not many even of the wealthy could keep
beyond the range of infection, and Boccaccio himself says
elsewhere ‘these who first set the example of forsaking others
languished where there was no one to take pity on them’.
Neither courage, nor devotion, nor selfishness could avail
against the dread scourge; though like all diseases its ravages were
most virulent where small dwellings were crowded together or
where dirt and insanitary conditions prevailed. ‘They fell sick by
thousands,’ says Boccaccio of the poorer classes, ‘and having no
one whatever to attend them, most of them died.’ According to a
doctor in the south of France, ‘the number of those swept away
was greater than those left alive.’ In the once thriving port of
Marseilles ‘so many died that it remained like an uninhabited place’.
Another French writer, speaking of Paris, says, ‘there was so great a
mortality of people of both sexes ... that they could hardly be
buried.’ ‘There was no city, nor town, nor hamlet,’ writes an
Englishman of his own country, ‘nor even, save in rare instances,
any house, in which this plague did not carry off the whole or the
greater portion of the inhabitants.’
One immediate result of the Black Death was to put a
temporary stop to the war between England and France; for armies
were reduced to a fraction of their former strength and rival kings
forgot words like ‘glory’ or ‘conquest’ in terrified contemplation of
an enemy against whom all their weapons were powerless.
Other and more lasting effects were experienced everywhere,
for town and village life was completely disorganized: magistrates,
city officials, priests, and doctors had perished in such numbers
that it was difficult to replace them: criminals plundered deserted
houses unchecked: the usually law-abiding, deprived of the
guidance to which they had been accustomed, gave themselves up
to a dissolute life, trying to drown all thoughts of the past and
future in any enjoyment they could find in the present. Work
almost ceased: the looms stood idle, the ships remained without
cargoes, the fields were neither reaped of the one harvest nor
sown for the next. The peasants, when reproached, declared that
the plague had been a sign of the end of the world and that
therefore to labour was a waste of time. ‘All things were dearer,’
says a Frenchman: ‘furniture, food, and merchandise of all sorts
doubled in price: servants would only work for higher wages.’
In the years following the Black Death the labouring classes of
Europe discovered for the first time their value. They were the
necessary foundation to the scheme of mediaeval life, the base of
the feudal pyramid; and, since they were now few in number,
masters began to compete for their services. Thus they were able
to demand a better wage for their work and improved conditions;
but here the governments of the day, that ruled in the interests of
the nobles and middle classes, stepped in, forbade wages to be
raised, or villeins and serfs to leave their homes and seek better
terms in another neighbourhood. The discontent of those held
down with an iron hand, yet half awake to the possibilities of
greater freedom, seethed towards revolution; but few mediaeval
kings chose to look below the surface of national life, and in the
case of England Edward III was certainly not enough of a
statesman to do so.
In 1355 he renewed the war with France, hoping that by
victories he would be able to fill his own purse from French
ransoms and pillage as well as to drug the disordered popular mind
at home with showy triumphs. His eldest son, Edward, the Black
Prince, who had gained his spurs at Creci, landed at Bordeaux and
marched through Guienne, the English armies like the French being
mainly composed of ‘companies’, that is, of hired troops under
military captains, the terror of friends and foes alike; for with
impartial ruthlessness they trampled down corn and vineyards as
they passed, pillaged towns, and burned farms and villages.
Battle of Philip of Valois was dead, but his son, John ‘the
Poitiers Good’, had succeeded him, and earned his title, it
must be supposed, by his punctilious regard for the
laws of mediaeval chivalry. His reckless daring, extravagance, and
rash generalship made him at any rate a very bad ruler according
to modern standards. Froissart says that on the field of Poitiers,
where the two armies met, ‘King John on his part proved himself a
good knight; indeed, if the fourth of his people had behaved as
well, the day would have been his own.’
This is extremely doubtful, for the French, though far the larger
force, were outmanœuvred from the first. The Black Prince had the
gift of generalship and disposed his army so that it was hidden
amid the slopes of a thick vineyard, laying an ambush of skilled
archers behind the shelter of a hedge. As King John’s cavalry
charged towards the only gap, in order to clear a road for their
main army, they were mown down by a merciless fire at short
range from the ambush; while in the ensuing confusion English
knights swept round on the French flank and put the foot-soldiers
to flight. The Black Prince’s victory was complete, for King John and
his principal nobles were surrounded and taken prisoners after a
fierce conflict in which for a long time they refused to surrender.
‘They behaved themselves so loyally’, says Froissart, ‘that their
heirs to this day are honoured for their sake’: and Prince Edward,
waiting on his royal captive that night at dinner, awarded him the
‘prize and garland’ of gallantry above all other combatants.
Evil days followed in France, where her king’s chivalry could not
pay his enormous ransom nor those of his distinguished fellow
prisoners. For this money merchants must sweat and save, and the
peasants toil longer hours on starvation rations; while the
‘companies’, absolved by a truce from regular warfare, exacted
their daily bread at the sword-point when and where they chose.
Famous captains, who were really infamous brigands, took their
toll of sheep and corn and grapes; and those farmers and labourers
who refused, or could not give what they required, they flung alive
on to bonfires, while they tortured and mutilated their wives and
families. Against such wickedness there was no protection either
from the government or overlords; indeed, the latter were as cruel
as the brigand chiefs, extorting the very means of livelihood from
their tenants and serfs to pay for the distractions of a court never
more extravagant and pleasure-seeking than in this hour of
national disaster.
‘Jacques Bonhomme,’ the French noble would say mockingly of
the peasant, ‘has a broad back ... he will pull out his purse fast
enough if he is beaten.’ The day came, however, when Jacques
Bonhomme, grown reckless in his misery, pulled out his knife
instead, and, in the words of Froissart, became like a ‘mad dog’. He
had neither leaders nor any hope of reform, nothing but a seething
desire for revenge; and in the ‘Jacquerie’, as the peasant rebellion
of this date was called, he inflicted on the nobles and their families
all the horrors that he himself, standing by helpless, had seen
perpetrated on his own belongings. Castles were burned, their
furniture and treasures looted and destroyed, their owners were
roasted at slow fires, their wives and daughters violated, their
children tortured and massacred.
 This is one of the most hideous scenes in French history, the
darker because France in her blindness learned no lesson from it.
The nobles, who soon gained the upper hand against these wild
undisciplined hordes, exacted a vengeance in proportion to the
crimes committed, and fixed the yoke of serfdom more surely than
ever on the shoulders of Jacques Bonhomme. This was the only
way, in their conception, to deal with such a mad dog; but Jacques
Bonhomme was in reality an outraged human being of flesh and
blood like those who loathed and despised him; and during
centuries of tyranny his anger grew in force and bitterness until in
the Revolution of 1789 it burst forth with a violence against both
guilty and innocent that no power in France was strong enough to
stem.
Étienne Marcel The outrages of the Jacquerie unfortunately
discredited real efforts at reform that had been
initiated in Paris by the leader of the middle classes, the Provost of
Merchants, Étienne Marcel. This Marcel had demanded that the
States-General should be called regularly twice a year, that the
28
Dauphin Charles, eldest son of King John, who was acting as
regent during his father’s imprisonment, should send away his
favourites, and that instead of these fraudulent ministers a standing
council of elected representatives should be set up to advise the
crown.
To these and many other reforms the Dauphin pretended to
yield under the pressure of public opinion; but he soon broke all his
promises and began to rule again as he chose. Marcel, roused to
indignation, summoned his citizen levies, and, breaking into the
Prince’s palace, ordered his men-at-arms to seize two of the most
hated ministers and drag them to the royal presence. ‘Do that
quickly for which you were brought,’ he said to the soldiers;
whereupon they slew the favourites as they crouched at Charles’s
feet, their fingers clinging to his robe.
This act of violence won for Étienne Marcel the undying hatred
of the Dauphin and his court, and from this time the decline of his
influence may be traced. In order to maintain his power the
popular leader was driven to condone the excesses of the peasants,
in their rebellion, that had shocked the whole of France, and to ally
himself with Charles the Bad, King of Navarre, to whom he
promised to deliver the keys of Paris in return for his support
against the Dauphin.
This was a fatal move, for Charles the Bad did not care at all for
the interests of the middle classes: he only wished to gain some
secret or advantage worth selling, and at once betrayed Étienne to
his foes as soon as the Dauphin paid him a sufficient price. Then a
trap was arranged, and Marcel killed in the gateway of Paris as he
was about to open its strong bars to his treacherous ally. With his
death all attempts at securing a more liberal and responsible
government failed.
The country, indeed, had sunk into the apathy of exhaustion;
and two years later the Treaty of Bretigni, that represents the high-
water mark of English power in France, was thankfully signed. In
return for Edward III’s surrender of his claim to the French throne,
his right to the Duchy of Guienne as well as to Calais and the
country immediately round its walls was recognized, without any of
the feudal obligations that had been such a fruitful source of
trouble in old days.
 The Treaty of BRETIGNI

Peace now seemed possible for an indefinite period; but, in

truth, so long as two hostile nations divided France there was
always the likelihood of fresh discord; and the Dauphin, who had
succeeded his father, King John, gently fanned the flames
whenever he thought that the political wind blew to his advantage.
From a timid, peevish youth, one of the first to fly in terror from
the field of Poitiers, he had developed into an astute politician,
whose successful efforts to regain the lost territories of France
earned him the title of ‘Wise’.
King Edward III and his son professed to despise this prince,
who knew not how to wield a lance to any purpose; but Charles,
though feeble in body and a student rather than a soldier at heart,
knew how to choose good captains to serve him in the field; and
one of these—the famous Bertrand du Guesclin, said to have been
the ugliest knight and best fighter of his time—became the hero of
many a battle against the English, first of all in France, and later in
Spain.
It was owing to the war in Spain that the English hold over the
south of France was first shaken; for the Black Prince, who had
been created Duke of Guienne, unwisely listened to the exiled King
of Castile, Pedro the Cruel, who came to Bordeaux begging his
assistance against the usurper of his throne. This was his
illegitimate brother, Henry of Trastamara. The English Prince at
once declared that chivalry demanded that he should help the
rightful king. Perhaps he remembered the strong bond that there
had been between England and Castile ever since his great-
grandfather, Edward I, had married the Spanish Eleanor: perhaps it
was the promise of large sums of money that Pedro declared would
reward the victorious troops: it is more likely, however, that the
fiery soldier was moved by the news that Henry of Trastamara had
gained his throne through French assistance and by the deeds of
arms of the renowned Du Guesclin.
Battle of In 1367 the English Prince crossed the Pyrenees, and
Navarette at Navarette, near the river Ebro, his English archers
and good generalship proved a match once more for
his foes. Although the Spaniards were in vastly superior numbers
they were mown down as they rashly charged to the attack; and
Henry of Trastamara was driven from the field, leaving Du Guesclin
a prisoner and his brother Pedro once more able to assert his
kingship.
 The real victors of Navarette now had cause to repent their
alliance. Sickness, due to the heat of the climate and strange food,
had thinned their ranks even more than the actual warfare: the
money promised by Pedro the Cruel was not forthcoming; indeed,
that wily scoundrel, after atrocities committed against his helpless
prisoners that fully bore out his nickname, had slipped away to
secure his throne, while the Black Prince was in no position to
pursue him, and could gain little satisfaction by correspondence.
Sullen and weary, with the fever already lowering his vitality that
was finally to cut short his life, Edward of Wales arrived in
Bordeaux with his almost starving ‘companies’. Because he had no
money to pay them, he set them free to ravage southern France,
while in order to fill his exchequer he imposed a tax on every
hearth in Guienne.
These measures proved him no statesman, whatever his
generalship. In the early days of the Hundred Years’ War Guienne
had looked coldly on Paris, and appreciated a distant ruler who
secured her liberty of action; now, victim of a policy of mingled
pillage and exactions, she soon came to regard her English rulers
as foreign tyrants. Thus an appeal was made by the men of
Guienne to Charles V, and he, in defiance of the terms of the Treaty
of Bretigni, summoned Prince Edward to Paris—as though he were
his vassal—to answer the charges made against him. ‘Gladly we will
answer our summons,’ replied the Prince, when he heard. ‘We will
go as the King of France has ordered us, but with helm on head
and sixty thousand men.’
They were bold words; but the haughty spirit that dictated them
spoke from the mouth of a dying man, and the Black Prince never
lived to fulfil his boast. His place in France was taken by his
younger brother, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, who proved
himself an indifferent general. In 1373 Duke John marched from
Calais into the heart of France, his army burning villages as it went;
but though he pressed deeper and ever deeper into the enemy’s
country, he met no open foes nor towns that he could take without
a siege. ‘Let them be,’ said Charles ‘the Wise’, when his indignant
nobles pleaded for leave to fight a pitched battle; ‘by burnings they
shall not seize our heritage. Though a storm and tempest rage
together over a land they disperse themselves: so will it be with
these English.’
Ever since the Treaty of Bretigni Charles had been planning
profitable alliances with foreign rulers that would leave the English
friendless; while, like Henry the Fowler of Germany, he had fortified
his cities against invasion. With the advent of winter Lancaster and
his men could find no food nor succour from any local barons; and
when at last the remnant of his once proud army reached
Bordeaux, it was without a single horse, and leaving a track of sick
and dying to be cut off by guerrilla bands. He had not lost a single
battle, but he was none the less defeated, and had imperilled the
English cause in France.
The truce of 1375 that practically closed the first period of the
Hundred Years’ War left to Edward III and his successors no more
than the coast towns of Calais, Cherbourg, Brest, Bayonne, and
Bordeaux.

* * * * *
Henry V in When in 1415 Henry V of England formally claimed
France
the throne of France, and by so doing renewed the
war that had languished since 1375, he had no satisfactory
argument save his sword to uphold his demands. Grandson of John
of Gaunt, and son of the royal usurper Henry IV, who had deposed
and killed his cousin Richard II, Henry V hoped by a successful
campaign to establish the popularity of the Lancastrian dynasty. He
wished also, like most mediaeval rulers, to find a battle-ground for
his barons in any territory except his own. It is only fair to add that
of the modern belief that the one possible excuse for shedding
human blood is a righteous cause he had not the faintest
conception.
‘War for war’s sake’ might have been the motto of this most
mediaeval of all English sovereigns; but if his purpose is
indefensible to-day in its selfish callousness, he at any rate chose
an admirable time in which to put it into execution; for France, that
had begun to recover a semblance of nationality under the rule of
Charles ‘the Wise’, had degenerated into anarchy under his son
Charles ‘the Mad’.
First as a minor, for he was only eleven at the time of his
accession, and later when he developed frequent attacks of
insanity, Charles VI was destined to be some one else’s tool, while
round his person raged those factions for which Louis VIII had
shortsightedly prepared when he set the example of creating
29
appanages. First one ‘Prince of the Lilies’ and then another strove
to control the court and government in their own interests; but the
most formidable rivals at the beginning of the fifteenth century
were the Houses of Burgundy and Armagnac.
The latter centred in the person of the young Charles, Duke of
Orleans, the King’s nephew and a son-in-law of Count Bernard of
Armagnac, who gave his name to the party: the other was his
cousin, John ‘the Fearless’, Duke of Burgundy, who was also by
inheritance from his mother Count of Flanders, and therefore ruler
of that great middle province lying between France and the Empire.
The King himself in his moments of sanity inclined to the side of
Charles of Orleans and the Armagnacs; and it happened that just at
the time when Henry V of England landed in Normandy and laid
siege to Harfleur the Armagnacs controlled Paris. It was their
faction therefore that raised an army and sent it northwards to
oppose the invaders, while John of Burgundy stood aloof, for
besides being unwilling to help the Armagnacs he was reluctant to
embroil himself in a war with England, on whose wool trade the
commercial fortunes of his Flemish towns depended.
At Agincourt Henry V, who had taken Harfleur and was
marching towards Calais, came upon his foes drawn up across the
road that he must follow in such vastly superior numbers that they
seemed overwhelming. The battle that followed, however, showed
that the French had learned no military lesson from previous
disasters. The heavily-armed, undisciplined noble on horseback was
still their main hope, and on this dark October day he floundered
helplessly in the mud, unable to charge, scarcely able to extricate
himself, an easy victim for his enemy’s shafts. The slaughter was
tremendous; for Henry, receiving a false report that a new French
army was appearing on the horizon, commanded his prisoners to
be killed, and numbers had perished before the mistake was
discovered and the order could be reversed.
When the news of the defeat and massacre at Agincourt
reached Paris, that had always hated the Armagnacs, the indignant
populace broke into rebellion, crying, ‘Burgundy and Peace!’ but the
movement was suppressed, and it was not till 1418 that John ‘the
Fearless’ succeeded in entering the capital. By this time Henry V,
who had returned to England after his victory, was once more back
in France conquering Normandy; and French indignation was
roused to white heat when it was known that Rouen, the old capital
of the Duchy, had been forced to surrender to his victorious arms.
Even the Duke of Burgundy, who still disliked war with England,
felt that he must take some steps to prevent further
encroachments; and, after negotiations with the enemy had failed
owing to their arrogant demands, he suggested an agreement with
the Armagnacs, in order that France, if she must fight, should at
least present a united front to her foes.
Here was the moment for France’s regeneration; for the head of
the Armagnac faction at this date was the Dauphin Charles, son of
Charles ‘the Mad’, and in response to his rival’s olive branch he
consented to meet him on the bridge of Montereau in order that
the old rift might be cemented. In token of submission and goodwill
John of Burgundy knelt to kiss the Prince’s hand; but, as he did so,
an Armagnac still burning with party hate sprang forward and
plunged his dagger into his side. A shout of horror and rage arose
from the Burgundians, and as they carried away the body of John
‘the Fearless’ they swore that this murder had been arranged from
the beginning and that they would never pay allegiance again to
the false Dauphin.
The Treaty of In the Treaty of Troyes that was forthwith negotiated
Troyes with the English they ratified this vow, for Henry V of
England received the hand of the mad king’s
daughter Catherine in marriage and was recognized as his heir to
the throne of France.
Two years later died both Henry V and Charles VI, leaving
France divided into two camps, one lying mainly in the north and
east, that acknowledged as ruler the infant Henry VI, son of Henry
V and Catherine; the other in the south and south-west, that
obeyed the Valois Charles VII.
The Treaty of Troyes marks the high-water mark of English
power in France during the second period of the Hundred Years’
War; for, though the banners that Henry V had carried so
triumphantly at Agincourt were pushed steadily southward into
Armagnac territory after this date, yet the influence of the invaders
was already on the wane. The agreement that gave France to a
foreigner and a national enemy had been made only with a section
of the French nation; and some of those who in the heat of their
anger against the Armagnacs had consented to its terms were soon
secretly ashamed of their strange allegiance.
When Charles the Dauphin became Charles VII he ceased to
appear merely the leader of a party discredited by its murder of the
Duke of Burgundy. He became a national figure; and though his
enemies might call him in derision ‘King of Bourges’ because he
dared not come to Paris but ruled only from a town in central
France, yet he remained in spite of all their ridicule a king and a
Frenchman. Had he been less timid and selfish, more ready to run
risks and exert himself rather than to idle away his time with
unworthy favourites, there is no doubt that he could have hastened
the English collapse. Instead he allowed those who fostered his
indolence and hatred of public affairs in order to increase their own
power to hinder a reconciliation with the Burgundians that might
have been the salvation of France.
Philip ‘the Good’, son of John ‘the Fearless’, disliked the Dauphin
as his father’s murderer, but he had little love for his English allies.
By marriage and skilful diplomacy he had absorbed a great part of
modern Holland into his already vast inheritance and could assume
the state and importance of an independent sovereign. With
England he felt that he could treat as an equal, and now regarded
with dismay the idea that she might permanently control both sides
of the Channel. So long as John, Duke of Bedford, brother of Henry
V, acted as regent for his young nephew with statesmanlike
moderation, an outward semblance of friendship was maintained;
but Bedford could with difficulty keep in order his quarrelsome,
irresponsible younger brother, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, who
ruled in England, and with still greater difficulty quell the sullen
discontent of the people of Paris who, suffering from starvation as
the result of a prolonged war, professed to regard a foreign king as
the source of all their troubles.
Only the prestige of English arms retained the loyalty of
northern France. ‘Two hundred English would drive five hundred
French before them,’ says a chronicler of the day; but salvation was
to come to France from an unexpected quarter, and enable the
same writer to add proudly, ‘Now two hundred French would chase
and beat four hundred English.’
Jeanne d’Arc In the village of Domremy on the Upper Meuse there
lived at the beginning of the fifteenth century a
peasant maid, Jeanne d’Arc, who was, according to the description
of a fellow villager, ‘modest, simple, devout, went gladly to Church
and sacred places, worked, sewed, hoed in the fields, and did what
was needful about the house.’ Up till the age of thirteen Jeanne had
been like other light-hearted girls, but it was then that a change
came into her life: voices seemed to draw her away from her
companions and to speak to her from behind a brilliant cloud, and
later she had visions of St. Catherine and of St. Michael, whose
painted effigies she knew in church.
‘I saw them with my bodily eyes as clearly as I see you,’ she
said when questioned as to these appearances, and admitted that
at first she was afraid but that afterwards they brought her
comfort. Always they came with the same message, in her own
words, ‘that she must change her course of life and do marvellous
deeds, for the King of Heaven had chosen her to aid the King of
France.’
Jeanne d’Arc was no hysterical visionary: she had always a fund
of common sense, and knew how ridiculous the idea that she, an
uneducated peasant girl, was called to save France would seem to
the world. For some time she tried to forget the message her
Voices told her; but at last it was borne in upon her that God had
given her a mission, and from this time neither her indignant father
nor timid friends could turn her from her purpose.
 FRANCE in 1429

Of all the difficulties and checks that she encountered before at

last, at the age of seventeen, she was allowed to have audience
with Charles VII, there is no space to tell here. News of her
persistence had spread abroad, and the torch-lit hall of the castle
into which Jeanne was shown was packed with gaily-clad courtiers,
and standing amongst them the King, in no way distinguished from
the others by his dress or any outward pomp. Every one believed
that the peasant-maid would be dazzled; but she, who had seen no
portrait of the King and lived all her life in the quiet little village of
Domremy, showed no confusion at the hundreds of eyes fixed on
her. Recognizing at once the man with whom her mission was
concerned she went straight to him and said, ‘My noble lord, I
come from God to help you and your realm.’
There must have been something arresting in Jeanne’s
simplicity and frankness contrasted with that corrupt atmosphere.
Even the feeble king was moved; and, when she had been
questioned and approved by his bishops, he allowed her to ride
forth, as she wished, with the armies of France to save for him the
important town of Orleans that was closely besieged by the English.
She went in armour with a sword in hand and a banner, and those
who rode with her felt her absolute belief in victory, and into their
hearts stole the magic influence of her own gay courage and hope.
We have often spoken of ‘chivalry’, the ideal of good conduct in
the Middle Ages. The kings, princes, and knights, whose prowess
has made the chronicles of Froissart famous, were to their
journalist veritable heroes of chivalry, exponents of courage,
courtesy, and breeding. Yet to modern eyes these qualities seem
often tarnished, since the heroes who flaunted them were in no
way ashamed of vices like cruelty, selfishness, or snobbery. A King
John of France would die in a foreign prison rather than break his
parole, but he would disdainfully ride down a ‘rabble’ of archers
whom his negligence had left too tired to fight his battles. The
Black Prince would wait like a servant on his royal prisoner, but
accept as a brother-in-arms to be succoured a human devil like
Pedro the Cruel; or put a town to the sword, as he did at Limoges,
old men, women, and children, because it had dared to set him at
defiance.
There is nothing of this tarnish in the chivalry of the peasant-
maid who saved France. Pure gold were her knightly deeds, yet
achieved without a trace of the prig or the boaster. Jeanne d’Arc
was always human and therefore lovable, quick in her anger at
fraud, yet easily appeased; friendly to king and soldier alike, yet
never losing the simple dignity that was her safeguard in court and
camp. Of all mediaeval warriors of whom we read she was the
bravest; for she knew what fear was and would often pray not to
fall into the hands of her enemies alive, yet she never shirked a
battle or went into danger with a downcast face. A slim figure, with
her close-cropped dark hair and shining eyes, she rode wherever
the fight was thickest, always, in the words of a modern
biographer, ‘gay and gaily glad,’ quick to see her opportunities and
follow them up, joyful in victory, generous to her foes, pitiful to the
wounded and prisoners.
The sight of her awoke new courage in her countrymen, dismay
as at the supernatural in her enemies, who dubbed her a witch and
vowed to burn her.

‘Suddenly she turned at bay,’ says a contemporary

account of one of her battles, ‘and few as were the men with
her she faced the English and advanced on them swiftly with
standard displayed. Then fled the English shamefully and the
French came back and chased them into their works.’

Orleans was relieved and entered, the reluctant, still half-

doubting Charles led to Reims, and there in the ancient capital of
France crowned, that all Frenchmen might know who was their true
king. ‘The Maid’ urged that the ceremony should be followed by a
rapid march on Paris; but favourites who dreaded her influence
whispered other counsels into the royal ear, and Charles dallied and
hesitated. When at last he advanced it was to find that the bridges
over the Seine had been cut, not by the retreating English but by
French treachery.
Paris was ripe for rebellion, and at the sight of ‘the Maid’ would
have murdered her foreign garrison and opened her gates. Bedford
was in the north suppressing a revolt, yet Charles, clutching at the
excuse of the broken bridges, retreated southwards, disbanding his
army and leaving his defender to her fate.
 Her Voices now warned Jeanne of impending capture and
death, but her mission was to save France, and hearing that the
Duke of Burgundy planned to take the important town of
Compiègne she rode to its defence with a small force. Under the
walls, in the course of a sortie, she was captured, refusing to
surrender. ‘I have sworn and given my faith to another than you,
and I will keep my oath,’ she declared; and through the months
that followed, caged and fettered in a dark cell of the castle of
Rouen, exposed to the insults of the rough English archers, she
maintained her allegiance, saying to her foes of the prince who had
failed her so pitiably, ‘My King is the most noble of all Christians.’
Frenchmen (some of them bishops, canons, and lawyers of the
University of Paris), as well as Englishmen, were amongst those
who, after the mockery of a trial, sent Jeanne to be burned as a
heretic in the market-place of Rouen. Bravely as she had lived she
died, calling on her saints, begging the forgiveness of her enemies,
pardoning the evil they had done her. ‘That the world’, says a
modern writer, ‘might have no relic of her of whom the world was
not worthy, the English threw her ashes into the Seine.’
France, that had betrayed Jeanne d’Arc, needed no relic to keep
her memory alive. To-day men and women call her Saint, and one
miracle she certainly wrought, for she restored to her country, that
through years of anarchy had almost lost belief in itself, the
undying sense of its own nationality. ‘As to peace with the English,’
she had said, ‘the only peace possible is for them to return to their
own land.’ Within little more than twenty years from her death the
mission on which she had ridden forth from Domremy had been
accomplished, and Calais, of all their French possessions, alone
remained to the enemies of France.
In summary of the Hundred Years’ War it may be said that from
the beginning the English fought in a lost cause. Fortune, military
genius, and dogged courage gave to their conquests a fictitious
endurance; but nationality is a foe invincible because it has
discovered the elixir of life; and when the tide of fortune turned
with the coming of ‘the Maid’ the ebb of English discomfiture was
very swift.
In 1435 died the Duke of Bedford, and in the same year Charles
VII, moved from his sluggishness, concluded at Arras a treaty with
Philip of Burgundy that secured his entry into Paris. By good
fortune his young rival in the ensuing campaigns, the English King,
Henry VI, had inherited, not the energy and valour of his father, but
an anaemic version of his French grandfather’s insanity. Even
before his first lapse into melancholia, he was the weak puppet of
first one set of influences, then another; and the factions that
strove to govern for their own interests in his name lost him first
Normandy and then Guienne. Finally they carried their feuds back
across the Channel to work out what seemed an almost divine
vengeance for the anarchy they had caused in France, in the
troubled ‘Wars of the Roses’.
Under Charles VII, well named le bien servi, France, as she
gradually freed herself from a foreign yoke, developed from a
mediaeval into the semblance of a modern state. Wise ministers,
whom in his later years the King had the sense to substitute for his
earlier workless favourites, built up the power of the monarchy,
restored its financial credit, and established in the place of the
disorderly ‘companies’ a standing army recruited and controlled by
the crown.
These things were not done without opposition, and the
rebellion of ‘the Praguerie’, in which were implicated nearly all the
leading nobles of France, including the King’s own son, the Dauphin
Louis, was a desperate attempt on the part of the aristocracy to
shake off the growing pressure of royal control. It failed because
the nation, as a whole, saw in submission to an absolute monarch a
means, imperfect perhaps but yet the only means available at the
moment, of securing the regeneration of France.
It is significant that when Louis XI succeeded to Charles VII he
inevitably followed in his father’s footsteps, forsaking the interests
of the class with which he had first allied himself, in order to rule as
an autocrat and fulfil the ideal of kingship in his day.

Supplementary Dates. For Chronological

Summary, see pp. 368–73.
Philip VI of France 1328–50
John II of France 1350–64
Charles V of France 1364–80
Charles VI of France 1380–1422
Charles VII of France 1422–61
Henry V of England 1413–22
Henry VI of England 1422–61
Boccaccio 1313–75
Jeanne d’Arc 1412–30
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