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and John Chandos set aside five hundred knights as a CHAP. reserve under Hugh Calverly, to succour any division that might be broken. The English archers began the battle, but not with the fatal effect which these missiles had at Crecy and at Poitiers. The French, says Froissart, were too well armed and protected for the arrows to affect them. Seeing this, the archers flung down their bows, mingled with the armed infantry, and seizing the axes of their foes, plied them ably as fearlessly, and with much more agility, than the mailed knight. This use made of the axe in preference to the sword, as well as the powerlessness of the arrow, evinces that armour had been rendered much more solid and impenetrable. It was a hand-to-hand and stubborn fight, a struggle of ferocity and strength, in which the French and the Bretons of their side, says Froissart, did not so well keep their array as the English, and the Bretons in their alliance. The French accordingly gave way, some mounted their horses and fled; the more valiant were struck down, slain, or made prisoners. It is evident from the narrative of Froissart that each knight on the English side was aided by his followers, whilst the French knights called in vain upon theirs, who were engaged in a separate part of the fray. Du Guesclin was taken; Charles of Blois slain. And, as the pursuit took place during eight long leagues to Rennes, few escaped. All the nobles of the party of Charles of Blois were swept from the field; the victory of Chandos was complete. The result was the recognition of De Montfort as Duke of Brittany by the French king, to whom he did homage; the widow of Charles of Blois being endowed with the Duchy of Penthièvre, and her heirs being appointed to succeed in Brittany in case of the failure of those of De Montfort. As Edward of England gave his full consent to his sonin-law, De Montfort, thus being reconciled to Charles and doing him homage, the King of Navarre felt that

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CHAP. he had no longer a support. Edward, indeed, neither liked nor trusted Charles the Bad, of Navarre. The latter also came to an agreement with the court, giving up the towns on the Seine, and receiving Montpellier in exchange; the county of Evreux and the Cotentin he retained. His claim to the Burgundian succession was referred to the arbitrage of the Pope, the received mode, at that time, of shelving and definitely adjourning any difficult question.

Whilst the rival princes, who contended upon French soil, were thus universally reconciled and pacified, the soldiers and captains they had employed were by no means so. Warfare had become a profession, which unfitted men for any other. The sturdy peasant who had procured a breastplate and an axe, and become accustomed to live by pay and plunder, could no longer return to the plough. Not only had these mercenary soldiers and the professional captains fallen into the habit and licence of freebooters, but even the gentry themselves were incapable of repose. Private war, for mere feud's sake, or tournaments for pride and vaunt, had declined. Gain had become a consideration far more potent than renown; and greed and rapacity raised and moved those armies which in previous centuries had mustered and marched under the impulse of chivalry or devotion.

There were some good folks then, however, as there will be at all times, who imagined that the same motives and the same traditions must ever continue to actuate mankind, and that one century ought, by right, to be but a reproduction of that which has just expired. These men went about preaching a crusade. The King of Cyprus was the most interested party, and a worthy colleague of the late King John. He had at heart the recovery of his paternal dominions in the East; he succeeded in raising a respectable army, which he transported to Alexandria, capturing a portion, and

destroying the entire of that flourishing city. The only result of his conquest, according to Walsingham, was that the wonted market for the interchange between East and West being destroyed, every species of transmarine produce became so dear that commerce and purchase were suspended. The Emperor of Germany, as well as the Pope, nevertheless, laboured to accomplish a crusade which would have at least for its result, the liberation of France from the military companies. It succeeded so far as to induce the Arch-priest, as one of the captains of these brigands was called, to march eastward as far as the Rhine. But the other companies derided the scheme of an expedition to the Holy Land; and those who had set forth returned to their "chamber," as they called France, and resumed their habits. of existing by pillage.

The Pope, who from his defenceless state in Avignon was peculiarly at the mercy of these lawless bands, exhumed the idea of old, familiar and profitable to the Church of a home crusade. "There was then a king in Castille," says Froissart, " called Don Pedro, full of marvellous opinions, and rudely rebellious to the commands and ordinances of the Church, especially in being tolerant both of Jews and Moors." Pope Urban, on this account, considered Pedro a fitting and convenient victim. He had offended France and its royal family by his treatment of Blanche, daughter of the Duke of Bourbon, whom he had married, and whom he was accused of having put to death. He had, moreover, an illegitimate brother, who had been driven from Castille by Pedro, who served in the military companies, and was animated by feelings of vindictiveness towards the Castilian king. It was considered no difficult task to place this illegitimate brother, called Henry of Trastamare, on the throne of Pedro. The latter, known as the Cruel, was detested by his subjects as well as neighbours. A kingdom so little remote, to be conquered

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and ransomed, was sufficiently tempting, not only to the companies, but also to adventurers of a superior class. An expedition was therefore organised without difficulty. The nominal command was given to a youth, Jaques de Bourbon, with the mission of avenging his sister, the murdered wife of Don Pedro; but the real authority lay with Bertrand Du Guesclin, who, the prisoner of John Chandos since the battle of Auray, was now liberated at the price of a hundred thousand francs, paid conjointly by the King of France, the Pope, and Henry of Trastamare. John Chandos was also asked to be of the expedition, but he had higher than mercenary views, and declined. Sir Hugh Calverly, however, and several of the Gascon chiefs of the Prince of Wales' following, accepted similar offers, and joined Du Guesclin, notwithstanding the prohibition of King Edward.

Bertrand Du Guesclin led the assembled bands down the course of the Soane and Rhone. The expedition being announced as a crusade, generals and soldiers required the papal blessing, and marched, not altogether as suppliants, to Avignon to receive it. The Pope, as he afterwards pleaded, always received payment for such religious boons; but Du Guesclin and his bands, on the contrary, insisted on having 200,000 gold pieces as a part or an accompaniment of the papal blessing. The Pope made many protests, and showed great reluctance; but he was told that the army contained a multitude of reprobates who made little account of the papal blessing, but who would be rendered honest and zealous crusaders by the money. According to the poet Cuvellier, who celebrated the feats of Du Guesclin, that commander, even when paid, was discontented at the moneys having been levied upon the people of Avignon, and insisted on having it from the Pope's own coffers. The story may tell honourably for Du Guesclin, but the Pope must have known what, and how to levy, and no

doubt indemnified himself for what the crusaders unce- CHAP. remoniously took.

At the head of 30,000 of these mercenaries, Du Guesclin advanced by Montpellier and Narbonne, and over the Pyrenees, into Aragon, the king of which received them with open arms, as his allies against Castille. From Aragon the companies sent a derisive message to Don Pedro, saying they were pilgrims, bent on a crusade against the Moors of Grenada, and asking him to furnish provisions for their passage. Don Pedro, for reply, called upon his subjects to aid him in repelling the invaders; but so unpopular was he, that his Castilians refused to obey the summons, and the companies under Du Guesclin met with no resistance whatever. The result of this bloodless campaign was the installation of Henry, called Trastamare, as king of Castille, and of Du Guesclin as his constable.

As for Don Pedro, he fled to Andalusia, and embarking thence, stopped for a space at Corunna, and despatched a messenger to the Prince of Wales at Bordeaux, to represent his forlorn condition and the injustice with which he had been ejected from his kingdom by the French, who had enthroned his illegitimate brother in his place, and who, in his name, of course, was disposing of the resources and the navy, then considerable, of the first kingdom of Spain. Don Pedro followed close upon his messenger, and landed at Bayonne, where he was well received. The Prince of Wales, by the advice of his counsellors, Chandos and Fenton, summoned a parliament of the barons of Aquitaine, with whom the first anxiety was to learn the opinion of King Edward. That monarch highly approved of his son's undertaking to replace Don Pedro on the throne, and deprive the French and Du Guesclin of Castille. The Gascon nobles did not object; they only cared for pay and profit, and of this Don Pedro promised a large amount when he should recover

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