The Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, vol 3 | Page 6

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 Humbert, Dauphin of Vienne, who resigned the world
under influence of the revived religion of the time, a consequence 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 whom she has been cursed. He took as his
model and example the chivalric John of Bohemia, who had been one
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 for carrying
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 1335 landed 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 fief-holders, 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
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 eleven 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, Etienne
Marcel, provost of the traders at Paris, was not slow to grasp. He
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