XI.

CHAP. Court, too, if it afforded the monarch facilities for observing his noblesse, offered, at the same time, frequent causes of jealousy and discontent. Charles of Spain, lately promoted to the dignity of Constable, and married to a daughter of Charles of Blois, was the especial favourite of King John, who enriched and endowed him, amongst other possessions, with several castles and domains belonging of right to the King of Navarre. The latter had so many possessions that it was thought he might spare some; and as King John gave him his daughter in marriage, with nominally a rich dowry in towns and money, his fidelity was considered to be secured. Eventually, however, the dowry was not paid, and the towns assigned to him were not given up. His mother had possessed Angoulême, which Philip of Valois had induced her, a little before her death, to abandon or exchange. The towns, so unwarrantably filched from the King of Navarre, were given to Charles of Spain. These various causes of rivalry between the two princely courtiers broke out into open enmity, which John had not the ascendancy or the address to appease. They quarrelled when they met, and had personal altercations. One called the other traitor, who replied that he lied in his throat.

The fate of the unfortunate Count d'Eu, and the manner of his sacrifice to Charles of Spain, who had got his spoils, was in every one's mind. The constable was about to visit the town of Aigle in Normandy, which had become his by right of his wife. The King of Navarre, who was at Evreux, sent some of his followers to seize his rival; or, according to other accounts, went himself for that purpose. Charles of Spain was sleeping in a village near, the town and castle of Aigle not being yet perhaps formally surrendered to him. Here he was surprised and murdered, whether by the King of Navarre or by his agents is of little importance, since that monarch afterwards assumed

all the responsibility of the deed. John was wroth at the death of his favourite, and despatched all the force he could muster to seize Evreux and the other possessions of the King of Navarre in Normandy. He at the same time urged the Counts of Foix and Comminge to invade Navarre. Charles of Navarre had instant recourse to the Duke of Lancaster, then in Flanders, whom he had treated with great friendship in his last visit to Paris, and who was, moreover, his relative. Lancaster sent him officers and troops, who had no difficulty in reaching Mantes, such was the disordered state of the kingdom; and John found it expedient to dissemble and smother his resentment. A public reconciliation took place, as brief as it was insincere. Charles learned from his friends at court that the king was still deeply incensed against him, dissatisfied with the treaty of reconciliation, and even raising troops in Normandy. Charles of Navarre, therefore, privately withdrew to Avignon, where he met the Duke of Lancaster, and renewed his alliance with England.

When Edward learned the utter hopelessness of concluding an accommodation with France on the basis of his retaining Guienne and Calais without homage-for what he had, he was resolved to hold absolutely, and not in fief the English king determined to put forth all his efforts to crush his enemy. He fitted out three expeditions; one under the Prince of Wales to Gascony, the other under the Duke of Lancaster, to act in Brittany in concert with Charles of Navarre; a third army Edward collected at Southampton, with which he himself intended to land in Normandy. But these vast preparations, at least for the northern campaign, were rendered fruitless by the inconstancy and weakness of Charles. That prince had sailed to Cherbourg with 2000 men, and Edward was at the Channel Islands about to join him, when the two French queens intervened, and made promises to the King of Navarre,

CHAP.

XL

XI.

from John, that all should be forgotten. The latter, and still more the members of his council, feared that if Charles admitted English troops into his fortresses of Cherbourg and Evreux, as well as of Mantes and Pontoise near Paris, the monarchy would be exposed to imminent peril. Promises of the most ample kind were therefore made to the King of Navarre, with entreaties and permission that he would come to Paris accompanied by no more than a hundred knights, and on his nominal submission and surrender of his fortresses, all should be restored and secured to him. Charles's demands in reply are characteristic of the time, and of the pretensions of the princes to reassume the prerogatives of the great ducal families. That prince demanded to "hold his possessions in Normandy as the duke used to do when there was a duchy," and that he was to have an independent échiquier or court of exchequer. Moreover, he required that his brothers should be treated as of the blood royal, a privilege which seems to have been denied them. The court demurred to none of these demands, and the King of Navarre, against the advice and despite of the remonstrance of his brother, Philip, proceeded to Paris, became reconciled to John, and abandoned Edward. The English king, disgusted, withdrew his fleet from the coasts of Normandy and Brittany, and transferred his efforts to Calais, from whence he advanced with his army as far as Hesdin, wasting and burning. John mustered what forces he was able, and marched to challenge first Edward, and then the Duke of Lancaster, who paid small attention to his bravados.

The Prince of Wales made a most remarkable foray in Gascony. He had 1000 men-at-arms, 10,000 archers, and a large body of Gascon nobles. With these he proceeded from Bordeaux to Toulouse, where the French

* Comme les autres seigneurs des Fleurs de Lys. Every information and document relating to this quarrel

between John and Charles have been collected by Secousse, Mémoires sur Charles II., roy de Navarre.

XI.

commander, the Count of Armagnac, had taken refuge. CHAP. The citizens of Toulouse, mustering 46,000 men, wanted to be led out to fight; but the count told them their numbers would not avail against the English. Toulouse was too strong for these to assault; they therefore passed on to Avignonet and Castelnaudari, both of which they took and pillaged. Carcassonne tried to defend itself by chains drawn across the streets; but the English archers soon cleared such defences. Narbonne was not more successful. "It was a fat country," says Froissart, "that had for a long time not known war, the people simple, the chambers hung with tapestry, and their strongboxes full of jewels." Whilst the Prince of Wales was enriching his followers with the spoil of such a land, the Count of Armagnac and the constable, James of Bourbon, commanded far superior forces; but they preferred allowing the Black Prince to retire unmolested to Bordeaux with his booty.

These ravages of the English, both in the north and south, the west having been saved from a similar visitation solely by the impunity and the concessions offered to the King of Navarre, compelled John to fling himself upon his people. He summoned the estates of the Langue d'Oil, that is, of France north of the Dordogne, to meet at Paris in December, 1355. To these the monarch announced that he was prepared to make them every amends in the matter of adulterating the coin, begging them in return to vote him an aide for carrying on the war. This was an important step, in direct imitation of the mode in which the English king obtained subsidies of his parliaments. There was not, however, in France, as in England, the same facility of taxing imports and exports; and the three estates, after communing together, merely reestablished the gabelle or tax on salt, and doubled the duty on sales of all commodities. Hitherto the nobles and clergy were exempt from pay

XI.

CHAP. ing such taxes upon what they sent to market: their immunity in this respect was now abrogated. The king already possessed the right of levying these taxes; but, as every town was now more or less menaced by the enemy*, the citizens or the local lords and magistrates applied what revenue they raised to purposes of local defence. It was to remedy this, and probably at the king's own desire, that the estates ordained, that the tax should be levied, not by the royal officers, but by commissioners and agents appointed by the estates.

It was agreed also that these should reassemble in a few months, in March, 1356, to see what sum their vote had realised, and how any deficiency was to be made good. This first vote of a representative assembly in France for fiscal purposes proved a complete failure. It raised considerable discontent that the estates should merely sanction the very worst exactions of the crown. The great towns of the north, such as Rouen and Abbeville, set the order at nought, and even refused to send deputies again to an assembly that had evidently betrayed civic interests. The towns of Artois and Flanders were even more incensed. The common people of Arras rose, and slew fourteen of the most wealthy citizens,—those, no doubt, who were enforcing the gabelle.

These events gave more power to what might be called the liberal and middle-class party in the estates, and these, in lieu of the salt tax and sales duty, now voted a tax on property or income. Its remarkable feature was, that it included all classes, from the labourer to the noble, ecclesiastics not excepted, the amount of the tax being paid into the hands of six general receivers in Paris, appointed, not by the monarch, but the estates.