A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times Volume II Part 13

This detached and indecisive war lasted eight years, with a medley of more or less serious incidents, which, however, did not change its character. In 1370, the Prince of Wales laid siege to Limoges, which had opened its gates to the Duke of Berry. He was already so ill that he could not mount his horse, and had himself carried in a litter from post to post, to follow up and direct the operations of the siege. In spite of a month's resistance the prince took the place, and gave it up as a prey to a mob of reckless plunderers, whose excesses were such that Froissart himself, a spectator generally so indifferent, and leaning rather to the English, was deeply shocked. "There," said he, "was a great pity, for men, women, and children threw themselves on their knees before the prince, and cried, 'Mercy, gentle sir!' but he was so inflamed with pa.s.sion that he gave no heed, and none, male or female, was listened to, but all were put to the sword. There is no heart so hard but, if present then at Limoges and not forgetful of G.o.d, would have wept bitterly, for more than three thousand persons, men, women, and children, were there beheaded on that day. May G.o.d receive their souls, for verily they were martyrs!" The ma.s.sacre of Limoges caused, throughout France, a feeling of horror and indignant anger towards the English name. In 1373 an English army landed at Calais, under the command of the Duke of Lancaster, and overran nearly the whole of France, being incessantly hara.s.sed, however, without ever being attacked in force, and without mastering a single fortress. "Let them be," was the saying in the king's circle; "when a storm bursts out in a country, it leaves off afterwards and disperses of itself; and so it will be with these English." The sufferings and reverses of the English armies on this expedition were such, that, of thirty thousand horses which the English had landed at Calais, "they could not muster more than six thousand at Bordeaux, and had lost full a third of their men and more. There were seen n.o.ble knights, who had great possessions in their own country, toiling along a-foot, without armor, and begging their bread from door to door without getting any." In vain did Edward III. treat with the Duke of Brittany and the King of Navarre in order to have their support in this war. The Duke of Brittany, John IV., after having openly defied the King of France, his suzerain, was obliged to fly to England, and the King of Navarre entered upon negotiations alternately with Edward III. and Charles V., being always ready to betray either, according to what suited his interests at the moment. Tired of so many ineffectual efforts, Edward III. was twice obliged, between 1375 and 1377, to conclude with Charles V. a truce, just to give the two peoples, as well as the two kings, breathing-time; but the truces were as vain as the petty combats for the purpose of putting an end to this great struggle.

The great actors in this historical drama did not know how near were the days when they would be called away from this arena, still so crowded with their exploits or their reverses. A few weeks after the ma.s.sacre of Limoges the Prince of Wales lost, at Bordeaux, his eldest son, six years old, whom he loved with all the tenderness of a veteran warrior, so much the more affected by gentle impressions as they were a rarity to him; and he was himself so ill that "his doctors advised him to return to England, his own land, saying that he would probably get better health there."

Accordingly he left France, which he would never see again, and, on returning to England, he, after a few months' rest in the country, took an active part in Parliament in the home-policy of his country, and supported the opposition against the government of his father, who since the death of the queen, Philippa of Hainault, had been treating England to the spectacle of a scandalous old age closing a life of glory.

Parliamentary contests soon exhausted the remaining strength of the Black Prince, and he died on the 8th of June, 1376, in possession of a popularity that never s.h.i.+fted, and was deserved by such qualities as showed a nature great indeed and generous, though often sullied by the fits of pa.s.sion of a character harsh even to ferocity. "The good fortune of England," says his contemporary Walsingham, "seemed bound up with his person, for it flourished when he was well, fell off when he was ill, and vanished at his death. As long as he was on the spot the English feared neither the foe's invasion nor the meeting on the battle-field; but with him died all their hopes." A year after him, on the 21st of June, 1377, died his father, Edward III., a king who had been able, glorious, and fortunate for nearly half a century, but had fallen, towards the end of his life, into contempt with his people and into forgetfulness on the continent of Europe, where nothing was heard about him beyond whispers of an indolent old man's indulgent weaknesses to please a covetous mistress.

Whilst England thus lost her two great chiefs, France still kept hers.

For three years longer Charles V. and Du Guesclin remained at the head of her government and her armies. The truce between the two kingdoms was still in force when the Prince of Wales died, and Charles, ever careful to practise knightly courtesy, had a solemn funeral service performed for him in the Sainte-Chapelle; but the following year, at the death of Edward III., the truce had expired. The Prince of Wales's young son, Richard II., succeeded his grandfather, and Charles, on the accession of a king who was a minor, was anxious to reap all the advantage be could hope from that fact. The war was pushed forward vigorously, and a French fleet cruised on the coast of England, ravaged the Isle of Wight, and burned Yarmouth, Dartmouth, Plymouth, Winchelsea, and Lewes. What Charles pa.s.sionately desired was the recovery of Calais; he would have made considerable sacrifices to obtain it, and in the seclusion of his closet he displayed an intelligent activity in his efforts, by war or diplomacy, to attain this end. "He had," says Froissart, "couriers going a-horseback night and day, who, from one day to the next, brought him news from eighty or a hundred leagues' distance, by help of relays posted from town to town." This labor of the king had no success; on the whole the war prosecuted by Charles V. between Edward III.'s death and his own had no result of importance; the attempt, by law and arms, which he made in 1378, to make Brittany his own and reunite it to the crown, completely failed, thanks to the pa.s.sion with which the Bretons, n.o.bles, burgesses, and peasants, were attached to their country's independence. Charles V.

actually ran a risk of embroiling himself with the hero of his reign; he had ordered Du Guesclin to reduce to submission the counts.h.i.+p of Rennes, his native land, and he showed some temper because the constable not only did not succeed, but advised him to make peace with the Duke of Brittany and his party. Du Guesclin, grievously hurt, sent to the king his sword of constable, adding that he was about to withdraw to the court of Castile, to Henry of Transtamare, who would show more appreciation of his services. All Charles V.'s wisdom did not preserve him from one of those deeds of haughty levity which the handling of sovereign power sometimes causes even the wisest kings to commit, but reflection made him promptly acknowledge and retrieve his fault. He charged the Dukes of Anjou and Bourbon to go and, for his sake, conjure Du Guesclin to remain his constable; and, though some chroniclers declare that Du Guesclin refused, his will, dated the 9th of July, 1380, leads to a contrary belief, for in it he a.s.sumes the t.i.tle of constable of France, and this will preceded the hero's death only by four days. Having fallen sick before Chateauneuf-Randon, a place he was besieging in the Gevaudan, Du Guesclin expired on the 13th of July, 1380, at sixty-six years of age, and his last words were an exhortation to the veteran captains around him "never to forget that, in whatsoever country they might be making war, churchmen, women, children, and the poor people were not their enemies."

According to certain contemporary chronicles, or, one might almost say, legends, Chateauneuf-Randon was to be given up the day after Du Guesclin died. The marshal De Sancerre, who commanded the king's army, summoned the governor to surrender the place to him; but the governor replied that he had given his word to Du Guesclin, and would surrender to no other.

He was told of the constable's death: "Very well," he rejoined, "I will carry the keys of the town to his tomb." To this the marshal agreed; the governor marched out of the place at the head of his garrison, pa.s.sed through the besieging army, went and knelt down before Du Guesclin's corpse, and actually laid the keys of Chateauneuf-Randon on his bier.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Putting the Keys on Du Guesclin's Bier----407]

This dramatic story is not sufficiently supported by authentic doc.u.ments to be admitted as an historical fact; but there is to be found in an old chronicle concerning Du Guesclin [published for the first time at the end of the fifteenth century, and in a new edition by M. Francisque Michel in 1830] a story which, in spite of many discrepancies, confirms the princ.i.p.al fact of the keys of Chateauneuf-Randon being brought by the garrison to the bier. "At the decease of Sir Bertrand," says the chronicler, "a great cry arose throughout the host of the French. The English refused to give up the castle. The marshal, Louis de Sancerre, had the hostages brought to the ditches, for to have their heads struck off. But forthwith the people in the castle lowered their bridge, and the captain came and offered the keys to the marshal, who refused them, and said to him, 'Friends, you have your agreements with Sir Bertrand, and ye shall fulfil them to him.' 'G.o.d the Lord!' said the captain, 'you know well that Sir Bertrand, who was so much worth, is dead: how, then, should we surrender to him this castle? Verily, lord marshal, you do demand our dishonor when you would have us and our castle surrendered to a dead knight.' 'Needs no parley hereupon,' said the marshal, 'but do it at once, for, if you put forth more words, short will be the life of your hostages.' Well did the English see that it could not be otherwise; so they went forth all of them from the castle, their captain in front of them, and came to the marshal, who led them to the hostel where lay Sir Bertrand, and made them give up the keys and place them on his bier, sobbing the while: 'Let all know that there was there nor knight, nor squire, French or English, who showed not great mourning.'"

The body of Du Guesclin was carried to Paris to be interred at St. Denis, hard by the tomb which Charles V. had ordered to be made for himself; and nine years afterwards, in 1389, Charles V.'s successor, his son Charles VI., caused to be celebrated in the Breton warrior's honor a fresh funeral, at which the princes and grandees of the kingdom, and the young king himself, were present in state. The Bishop of Auxerre delivered the funeral oration over the constable; and a poet of the time, giving an account of the ceremony, says,

"The tears of princes fell, What time the bishop said, 'Sir Bertrand loved ye well; Weep, warriors, for the dead!

The knell of sorrow tolls For deeds that were so bright: G.o.d save all Christian souls, And his--the gallant knight: '

The life, character, and name of Bertrand du Guesclin were and remained one of the most popular, patriotic, and legitimate boasts of the middle ages, then at their decline.

Two months after the constable's death, on the 16th of September, 1380, Charles V. died at the castle of Beaute-sur-Marne, near Vincennes, at forty-three years of age, quite young still after so stormy and hard-working a life. His contemporaries were convinced, and he was himself convinced, that he had been poisoned by his perfidious enemy, King Charles of Navarre. His uncle, Charles IV., Emperor of Germany, had sent him an able doctor, who "set him in good case and in manly strength," says Froissart, by effecting a permanent issue in his arm.

"When this little sore," said he to him, "shall cease to discharge and shall dry up, you will die without help for it, and you will have at the most fifteen days' leisure to take counsel and thought for the soul."

When the issue began to dry up, Charles knew that death was at hand; and "like a wise and valiant man as he was," says Froissart, "he set in order all his affairs, and sent for his three brothers, in whom he had most confidence, the Duke of Berry, the Duke of Burgundy, and the Duke of Bourbon, and he left in the lurch his second brother, the Duke of Anjou, because he considered him too covetous. 'My dear brothers,' said the king to them, 'I feel and know full well that I have not long to live.

I do commend and give in charge to you my son Charles. Behave to him as good uncles should behave to their nephew. Crown him as soon as possible after my death, and counsel him loyally in all his affairs. The lad is young, and of a volatile spirit; he will need to be guided and governed by good doctrine; teach him or have him taught all the kingly points and states he will have to maintain, and marry him in such lofty station that the kingdom may be the better for it. Thank G.o.d, the affairs of our kingdom are in good case. The Duke of Brittany [John IV., called the Valiant] is a crafty and a slippery man, and he hath ever been more English than French; for which reason keep the n.o.bles of Brittany and the good towns affectionate, and you will thus thwart his intentions. I am fond of the Bretons, for they have ever served me loyally, and helped to keep and defend my kingdom against my enemies. Make the lord Clisson constable, for, all considered, I see none more competent for it than he.

As to those aids and taxes of the kingdom of France, wherewith the poorer folks are so burdened and aggrieved, deal with them according to your conscience, and take them off as soon as ever you can, for they are things which, although I have upheld them, do grieve me and weigh upon my heart; but the great wars and great matters which we have had on all sides caused me to countenance them."

Of all the dying speeches and confessions of kings to their family and their councillors, that which has just been put forward is the most practical, precise, and simple. Charles V., taking upon his shoulders at nineteen years of age, first as king's lieutenant and as dauphin, and afterwards as regent, the government of France, employed all his soul and his life in repairing the disasters arising from the wars of his predecessors and preventing any repet.i.tion. No sovereign was ever more resolutely pacific; he carried prudence even into the very practice of war, as was proved by his forbidding his generals to venture any general engagement with the English, so great a lesson and so deep an impression had he derived from the defeats of Crecy and Poitiers, and the causes which led to them. But without being a warrior, and without running any hazardous risks, he made himself respected and feared by his enemies.

"Never was there king," said Edward III., "who handled arms less, and never was there king who gave me so much to do." When the condition of the kingdom was at the best, and more favorable circ.u.mstances led Charles to believe that the day had come for setting France free from the cruel conditions which had been imposed upon her by the treaty of Bretigny, he entered without hesitation upon that war of patriotic reparation; and, after the death of his two powerful enemies, Edward III. and the Black Prince, he was still prosecuting it, not without chance of success, when he himself died of the malady with which he had for a long while been afflicted. At his death he left in the royal treasury a surplus of seventeen million francs, a large sum for those days. Nor the labors of government, nor the expenses of war, nor far-sighted economy had prevented him from showing a serious interest in learned works and studies, and from giving effectual protection to the men who devoted themselves thereto. The University of Paris, notwithstanding the embarra.s.sments it sometimes caused him, was always the object of his good-will. "He was a great lover of wisdom," says Christine de Pisan, "and when certain folks murmured for that he honored clerks so highly, he answered, 'So long as wisdom is honored in this realm, it will continue in prosperity; but when wisdom is thrust aside, it will go down.'" He collected nine hundred and fifty volumes (the first foundation of the loyal Library), which were deposited in a tower of the Louvre, called the library tower, and of which he, in 1373, had an inventory drawn up by his personal attendant, Gilles de Presle. His taste for literature and science was not confined to collecting ma.n.u.scripts. He had a French translation made, for the sake of spreading a knowledge thereof, of the Bible in the first place, and then of several works of Aristotle, of Livy, of Valerius Maximus, of Vegetius, and of St. Augustine. He was fond of industry and the arts as well as of literature. Henry de Vic, a German clock-maker, constructed for him the first public clock ever seen in France, and it was placed in what was called the Clock Tower in the Palace of Justice; and the king even had a clock-maker by appointment, named Peter de St. Beathe. Several of the Paris monuments, churches, or buildings for public use were undertaken or completed under his care. He began the building of the Bastille, that fortress which was then so necessary for the safety of Paris, where it was to be, four centuries later, the object of the wrath and earliest excesses on the part of the populace. Charles the Wise, from whatever point of view he may be regarded, is, after Louis the Fat, Philip Augustus, St. Louis, and Philip the Handsome, the fifth of those kings who powerfully contributed to the settlement of France in Europe, and of the kings.h.i.+p in France. He was not the greatest nor the best, but, perhaps, the most honestly able. And at the same time he was a signal example of the shallowness and insufficiency of human abilities. Charles V., on his death-bed, considered that "the affairs of his kingdom were in good case;" he had not even a suspicion of that chaos of war, anarchy, reverses and ruin into which they were about to fall, in the reign of his son, Charles VI.

END OF VOLUME II.