Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/582

546 FRANCE [HISTORY. 1339-50. Vermandois country, no fighting took place, and the cam paign of 1339 ended obscurely. Norman and Genoese ships threatened the southern shores of England, landing at Southampton and in the Isle of Wight unopposed. In 1340 Edward returned to Flanders ; on his way he attacked the French fleet which lay at Sluys, and utterly destroyed it. The great victory of Sluys gave England for centuries the mastery of the British Channel. But, important as it was, it gave no success to the land-campaign. Edward wasted his strength on an unsuccessful siege of Tournai, and, ill-supported by his Flemish allies, could achieve nothing. The French king in this year seized on Guienne ; and from Scotland tlidings came that Edinburgh castle, the strongest place hed by the English, had fallen into the hands of Douglas. Neither from Flanders nor from Guienne could Edward hope to reach the heart of the French power ; a third inlet now presented itself in Brittany. On the death of John III. of Brittany in 1341, John of Montfort, his youngest brother, claimed the great fief against his niece Jeanne, daughter of his elder brother Guy, count of Penthievre. He urged that the Salic law which had been recognized in the case of the crown, should also apply to this great duchy, so nearly an independent sovereignty. Jeanne had been married to Charles of Blois, whom John III. of Brittany had chosen as his heir ; Charles was also nephew of king Philip, Avho gladly espoused his cause. Thereon John of Montfort appealed to Edward, and the two kings again met in border strife in Brittany, The Bretons sided with John against the influence of France. Both the claimants were made prisoners ; the ladies carried on a chivalric warfare, Jeanne of Montfort against Jeanne of Blois, and all went favourably for the French party till Philip, with a barbarity as foolish as it was scandalous, tempted the chief Breton lords to Paris and beheaded them withouttrial. The war,suspendedbya truce, broke out again, and the English raised large forces and supplies, meaning to attack on three sides at once, from Flanders, Brittany, and Guienne. The Flemish expedition came to nothing ; for the people of Ghent in 1345 murdered Jacques van Arteveldt as he was endeavouring to persuade them to re ceive the Prince of Wales as their count ; and Edward, on learning this adverse news, returned to England. Thence in July 1346 he sailed for Normandy, and landing at La Hogue overran with ease the country up to Paris. He was not, however, strong enough to attack the capital, for Philip lay with a large army watching him at St Denis, After a short hesitation Edward crossed the Seine at Poissy, and struck northwards, closely followed by Philip. He got across the Somme safely, and at Crecy in Ponthieu stood at bay to await the French. Though his numbers were far less than theirs, he had a good position, and his men were of good stuff; and when it came to the battle, the defeat of the French was crushing, Philip had to fall back with his shattered army ; Edward withdrew unmolested to Calais, which he took after a long siege in 1347. Philip had been obliged to call up his son John from the south, where he was observing the English under the earl of Derby ; thereupon the English overran all the south, taking Poitiers, and finding no opposition. Queen Philippa of Hainault had also defeated and taken David of Scotland at Neville s Cross. The campaign of 1346-1347 was on all hands disastrous to King Philip. He sued for and obtained a truce for ten months. These were the days of the " black death," which raged in France from 1347 to 1349, and completed the gloom of the country, vexed by an arbitrary and grasping monarch, by unsuccessful war, and now by the black cloud of pestilence. In 1350 King Philip died, leaving his crown to John of Normandy. He had added two districts and a title to France : he bought Montpellier from James of Aragon, and in 1349 also bought the territories of 1349. Humbert, dauphin of Yienne, who resigned the world, under influence of the revived religion of the time, a con sequence of the plague, and became a Carmelite friar. The fief and the title of dauphin were granted to Charles, the king s grandson, who was the first person who attached that title to the heir to the French throne. Apart from these small advantages the kingdom of France had suffered terribly from the reign of the false and heartless Philip VI. Nor was France destined to enjoy better things under John " the Good," one of the worst sovereigns with John whom she has been cursed. He took as his model and "th< example the chivalric John of Bohemia, who had been one Gocx of the most extravagant and worthless of the princes of his time, and had perished in his old age at Crecy. The first act of the new king was to take from his kinsman, Charles " the Bad " of Navarre, Champagne and other lands ; and Charles went over to the English king. King John was keen to fight; the States-General gave him the means fur carry ing on war, by establishing the odious " gabelle " on salt and other imposts. John hoped with his new army to drive the English completely out of the country. Petty war began again on all the frontiers, an abortive attack on Calais, a guerilla warfare in Brittany, slight fighting also in Guienne. Edward in 1355 lauded at Calais, but was recalled to pacify Scotland ; Charles of Navarre and the duke of Lancaster were on the Breton border ; the Black Prince sailed for Bordeaux. In 1356 he rode northward with a small army to the Loire, and King John, hastily summoning all his nobles and fiefholders, set out to meet him. Hereon the Black Prince, whose forces were weak, began to retreat ; but the French king outmarched and intercepted him near Poitiers. He had the English completely in his power, and with a little patience could have starved them into submission ; instead, he deemed it his chivalric duty to avenge Crecy in arms, and the great battle of Poitiers was the result (19th September 1356). The carnage and utter ruin of the French feudal army was quite incredible ; the dead seemed more than the whole army of the Black Prince ; the prisoners were too many to be held. The French army, bereft of leaders, melted away, and the Black Prince rode i triumphantly back to Bordeaux with the captive King John and his brave little son in his train. A two years truce ensued ; King John was carried over to London, where he found a fellow in misfortune in David of Scotland, who had been for 11 years a captive in English hands. The utter degradation of the nobles, and the misery of the country, gave to the cities of France an opportunity which one great man, Etienue Marcel, provost Et of the traders at Paris, was not slow to grasp. He 5I fortified the capital and armed the citizens ; the civic clergy made common cause with him ; and when the dauphin Charles convoked the three Estates at Paris, it was soon seen that the nobles had become completely discredited and powerless. It was a moment in which a new life might have begun for France ; in vain did the noble order clamour for war and taxes, they to do the war, with what skill and success all men now knew, and the others to pay the taxes. Clergy, however, and burghers resisted. The Estates parted, leaving what power there was still in France in the hands of Etienne Marcel. He strove in vain to reconcile Charles the dauphin with Charles of Navarre, who stood forward as a champion of the towns. Very reluctantly did Marcel entrust his fortunes to such hands. With help of Lecocq, bishop of Laon, he called the Estates again together, and endeavoured to lay down sound principles of government, which Charles the dauphin was compelled to accept. Paris, however, stood alone, aud even there all were not agreed. Marcel and Bishop