СНАР. out his arms to Our Lady of Chartres, the steeple of which is still the prominent object of the plain, and vowed that he would yield terms of peace. It is probably this storm that Knighton alludes to when he states it to have occurred upon the march, and to have destroyed all the horses of the army. The first treaty concluded between the Kings of France and England as feudal equals, was thus signed at Bretigny on the 8th of May, 1360. Edward waived his claim upon Normandy, Maine, Anjou, and Touraine. But Poitou, Angoulême, Xaintonge, Cahors, Agen, Périgord, the Rouergue, and the Limousin, with all south of those provinces to the Pyrenees, including Tarbes, were ceded in full sovereignty to the English king. The county of Ponthieu, Montreuil, Guise, and Calais, were ceded in the north. The ransom of the king was fixed at 3,000,000 of golden crowns, or 6,000,000 of English nobles. On the payment of 600,000 crowns, the French king, who was previously to be brought to Calais, should be set at liberty; and the remaining payments should be made of 40,000 crowns at a time. Hostages were to be furnished until the term of total payment. Of all the ceded provinces the barons and lords were to do direct homage to the King of England, who was to be sole sovereign as in his own domain, recognising no superiority, homage, resort, or subjection whatever. The King of England, at the same time, waiving all right to the throne of France, was to claim no homage of the Counts of Flanders or of Brittany. John of Montfort was to be restored to his county of Montfort; and the rival claims of the count and of Charles of Blois were to be decided by the two kings,— each holding what he held until the time of such decision. Philip of Navarre and the heir of Godfrey of Harcourt were to be restored to their possessions, and all exiles were to return without being molested. The King of France was to lend no aid to the Scotch, and the King of England made a similar stipulation with regard to the Flemings. The difficulty with the French for the consummation of this treaty was the payment of the first instalment of 600,000 crowns. It was got over by Galeas Visconti, Duke of Milan, who paid the money as the price of a marriage between his son and Isabella, daughter of King John. It was the necessities of the peace of Bretigny that first drove the French royal family into connection with the Dukes of Milan, a connection which drew after it many consequences. The first and principal conditions of the treaty being thus accomplished in October, King John departed from Calais, and journeyed on foot to return thanks to Our Lady of Boulogne for his deliverance. The treaty of Bretigny is considered by French historians as the degradation of their crown. Yet as an award between Plantagenet and Capet, it was no more than fair. John was merely compelled to disgorge a certain portion of what Philip Augustus and Philip the Fair had more stolen than conquered; and at the same time to abandon a feudal superiority, which had also been filched and magnified by trickery and chicane. Such, no doubt, were the views of Edward. But the French, even of that time, began to entertain far higher and juster ideas of national right than those which were attached to the mere patrimony of monarchs. From the Garonne, and even from the Mediterranean, to the Meuse, a race had sprung up, with a common language, identical interests, and a kindred feeling of patriotism, then best expressed by allegiance to the reigning crown. It was painful and humiliating to the Poitevin and the Picard to be torn from the great family to which he appertained, and made over to a distant monarch of another race: the province, instead of remaining the peaceful portion of a large and well defined kingdom, being transformed into a frontier, eternally exposed to the XI. CHAP. ravages and the exigences of war. XI. All the population naturally and justly desired to be French-not the subjects of England; and, however the valiant efforts of English monarchs and men, together with the dissension between classes and princes of the French, obstructed and adjourned the accomplishment of these desires, they were too strong ever to be definitively overcome. The tendency of these provinces to rebecome French, resembled a tide that had ebbed, but which flowed back with irresistible force. The attempts to oppose it were like the orders of Canute to the ocean, bidding it recede ; and even the glorious Edward experienced, before the laurels of Poitiers had faded, or the ink of the treaty of Bretigny was dry, that France, within its natural boundaries, had become a body national and a body politic, of which it was impossible to sever limb from limb without first crushing the life from out France and the French altogether, a catastrophe not even to be conceived or contemplated, much less accomplished. 493 CHAP. XII. CHARLES THE FIFTH, OR THE SAGE. THE humble attitude and distracted condition of France CHAP. XII. before, and still more after, the treaty of Bretigny, are generally attributed to the victories of the English, and these again to the incapacity of the French monarch and noblesse. Yet John, unlike his English namesake, was a brave soldier and a resolute prince, nor could the noblesse be accused of wanting manly virtue. The truth is, it was the system that broke down. Absolutism and centralisation, or rather the premature attempts at both, were alone to blame for the anarchy, the helplessness and the disgrace, into which the country fell, and for the misery and the peril it endured and incurred. The effort, at first partially successful, to attract all power to the capital, and vest it in the hands of the King and of his parlement, or court of functionaries, had destroyed all local authority, and abrogated military organisation and strength. It delivered the townsmen and even the rustic classes from the jurisdiction in many cases, perhaps, from the tyranny and oppression of the feudal noblesse. But the royal seneschals and officers, like the prefects of the declining Roman empire, from whom they were derived, however enlightened in the judgment-seat, and vigilant as financiers, were powerless to organise, to discipline, or to command the military manhood of the country. CHAP. XII. Efforts were made to institute a financial system, on a basis different from the feudal, and to raise money upon town-population, and landed-proprietors indiscriminately, wherewith the military as well as the civil exigences of the state might be met. The Statesgeneral were in consequence summoned to sanction and to facilitate the levy. But the abuse made of the royal authority in altering the coin, wasting the revenue, and not providing for the defence of the state, prompted the burgess politicians to imitate their brethren of England, and endeavour to control the royal power. The attempt to achieve such a revolution, not in ac cordance with the noblesse, but in defiance of the other classes of society, and moreover by the instrumentality of crime, disgusted the nation, and restored the uncontrolled supremacy of the crown, at least in Paris. The noblesse also recovered or retained a large share of power. The hostility of the townsfolk, and the still more inveterate hatred of the peasant displayed in the Jacquerie, alarmed them. The gentry began universally to arm and to fortify, to retain followers, and to exercise once more a feudal or semi-feudal authority over the rustic population, and even over smaller towns. The collection of the royal ordinances for these years contains a multitude of charters or grants made by local lords, seen and approved of by the king. In previous years, such documents would have run exclusively in the sovereign's name. The first act or clause of these charters is to emancipate the people from serfage, and from corvée. Their labour and their persons are declared free, on the condition of their paying a certain cens, or rent. The male inhabitants are bound to follow the lord to war, and to perform this duty within the district or for the existence of one day's march without remuneration, being entitled to pay for service more distant or more lengthened. Here takes place once more that opening for the |