by faith and oath, and on a bond of two millions of florins entered into
with the pope, not to go to war with the King of France without incurring
a debt to the amount of that sum, and a sentence of ex-communication; but
if you do that which we are about to say to you, if you will be pleased
to adopt the arms of France, and quarter them with those of England, and
openly call yourself King of France, we will uphold you for true King of
France; you, as King of France, shall give us quittance of our faith; and
then we will obey you as King of France, and will go whithersoever you
shall ordain.'"

This prospect pleased Edward mightily: but "it irked him to take the name
and arms of that of which he had as yet won no tittle."  He consulted his
allies.  Some of them hesitated; but "his most privy and especial
friend," Robert d'Artois, strongly urged him to consent to the proposal.
So a French prince and a Flemish burgher prevailed upon the King of
England to pursue, as in assertion of his avowed rights, the conquest of
the kingdom of France.  King, prince, and burgher fixed Ghent as their
place of meeting for the official conclusion of the alliance; and there,
in January, 1340, the mutual engagement was signed and sealed.  The King
of England "assumed the arms of France quartered with those of England,"
and thenceforth took the title of King of France.

Then burst forth in reality that war which was to last a hundred years;
which was to bring upon the two nations the most violent struggles, as
well as the most cruel sufferings, and which, at the end of a hundred
years, was to end in the salvation of France from her tremendous peril,
and the defeat of England in her unrighteous attempt.  In January, 1340,
Edward thought he had won the most useful of allies; Artevelde thought
the independence of the Flemish communes and his own supremacy in his own
country secured; and Robert d'Artois thought with complacency how he had
gratified his hatred for Philip of Valois.  And all three were deceiving
themselves in their joy and their confidence.

Edward, leaving Queen Philippa at Ghent with Artevelde for her adviser,
had returned to England, and had just obtained from the Parliament, for
the purpose of vigorously pushing on the war, a subsidy almost without
precedent, when he heard that a large French fleet was assembling on the
coasts of Zealand, near the port of Ecluse (or Sluys), with a design of
surprising and attacking him when he should cross over again to the
Continent.  For some time past this fleet had been cruising in the
Channel, making descents here and there upon English soil, at Plymouth,
Southampton, Sandwich, and Dover, and everywhere causing alarm and
pillage.  Its strength, they said, was a hundred and forty large vessels,
"without counting the smaller," having on board thirty-five thousand men,
Normans, Picards, Italians, sailors and soldiers of all countries, under
the command of two French leaders, Hugh Quiret, titular admiral, and
Nicholas Bchuchet, King Philip's treasurer, and of a famous Genoese
buccaneer, named Barbavera.  Edward, so soon as he received this
information, resolved to go and meet their attack; and he gave orders to
have his vessels and troops summoned from all parts of England to
Orewell, his point of departure.  His advisers, with the Archbishop of
Canterbury at their head, strove, but in vain, to restrain him.  "Ye are
all in conspiracy against me," said he; "I shall go; and those who are
afraid can abide at home."  And go he did on the 22d of June, 1340, and
aboard of his fleet "went with him many an English dame," says Froissart,
"wives of earls, and barons, and knights, and burghers, of London, who
were off to Ghent to see the Queen of England, whom for a long time past
they had not seen; and King Edward guarded them carefully."  "For many a
long day," said he, "have I desired to fight those fellows, and now we
will fight them, please God and St. George; for, verily, they have caused
me so many displeasures, that I would fain take vengeance for them, if I
can but get it."  On arriving off the coast of Flanders, opposite Ecluse
(or Sluys), he saw "so great a number of vessels that of masts there
seemed to he verily a forest."  He made his arrangements forthwith,
"placing his strongest ships in front, and manoeuvring so as to have the
wind on the starboard quarter, and the sun astern.  The Normans marvelled
to see the English thus twisting about, and said, 'They are turning tail;
they are not men enough to fight us.'"  But the Genoese buccaneer was not
misled.  "When he saw the English fleet approaching in such fashion, he
said to the French admiral and his colleague, Behuchet, 'Sirs, here is
the King of England, with all his ships, bearing down upon us: if ye will
follow my advice, instead of remaining shut up in port, ye will draw out
into the open sea; for, if ye abide here, they, whilst they have in their
favor sun, and wind, and tide, will keep you so short of room, that ye
will be helpless and unable to manoeuvre.'  Whereupon answered the
treasurer, B6huchet, who knew more about arithmetic than sea fights,
'Let him go hang, whoever shall go out: here will we wait, and take our
chance.'  'Sir,' replied Barbavera, 'if ye will not be pleased to believe
me, I have no mind to work my own ruin, and I will get me gone with my
galleys out of this hole.'  "And out he went, with all his squadron,
engaged the English on the high seas, and took the first ship which
attempted to board him.  But Edward, though he was wounded in the thigh,
quickly restored the battle.  After a gallant resistance, Barbavera
sailed off with his galleys, and the French fleet found itself alone at
grips with the English.  The struggle was obstinate on both sides; it
began at six in the morning of June 24, 1340, and lasted to midday.  It
was put an end to by the arrival of the re-enforcements promised by the
Flemings to the King of England.  "The deputies of Bruges," says their
historian, "had employed the whole night in getting under way an armament
of two hundred vessels, and, before long, the French heard echoing about
them the horns of the Flemish mariners sounding to quarters."  These
latter decided the victory, Behuchet, Philip of Valois' treasurer, fell
into their hands; and they, heeding only their desire of avenging
themselves for the devastation of Cadsand (in 1337), hanged him from the
mast of his vessel "out of spite to the King of France."  The admiral,
Hugh Quieret, though he surrendered, was put to death; "and with him
perished so great a number of men-at-arms that the sea was dyed with
blood on this coast, and the dead were put down at quite thirty thousand
men."

The very day after the battle, the Queen of England came from Ghent to
join the king her husband, whom his wound confined to his ship; and at
Valenciennes, whither the news of the victory speedily arrived,
Artevelde, mounting a platform set up in the market-place, maintained, in
the presence of a large crowd, the right which the King of England had to
claim the kingdom of France.  He vaunted "the puissance of the three
countries, Flanders, Hainault, and Brabant, when at one accord amongst
themselves, and what with his words and his great sense," says Froissart,
"he did so well that all who heard him said that he had spoken mighty
well, and with mighty experience, and that he was right worthy to govern
the countship of Flanders."  From Valenciennes he repaired to King Edward
at Bruges, where all the allied princes were assembled; and there, in
concert with the other deputies from the Flemish communes, Artevelde
offered Edward a hundred thousand men for the vigorous prosecution of the
war.  "All these burghers," says the modern historian of the Flemings,
"had declared that, in order to promote their country's cause, they would
serve without pay, so heartily had they entered into the war."  The siege
of Tournay was the first operation Edward resolved to undertake.  He had
promised to give this place to the Flemings; the burghers were getting a
taste for conquest, in company with kings.

They found Philip of Valois better informed, and also more hot for war,
than perhaps they had expected.  It is said that he learned the defeat of
his navy at Ecluse from his court fool, who was the first to announce it,
and in the following fashion.  "The English are cowards," said he.  "Why
so?" asked the king.  "Because they lacked courage to leap into the sea
at Ecluse, as the French and Normans did."  Philip lost no time about
putting the places on his northern frontier in a state of defence, he
took up his quarters first at Arras, and then three leagues from Tournay,
into which his constable, Raoul d'Eu, immediately threw himself, with a
considerable force, and whither his allies, the Duke of Lorraine, the
Count of Savoy, the Bishops of Liege, Metz, and Verdun, and nearly all
the barons of Burgundy came and joined him.  On the 27th of July, 1340,
he received there from his rival a challenge of portentous length, the
principal terms of which are set forth as follows:

"Philip of Valois, for a long time past we have taken proceedings, by
means of messages and other reasonable ways, to the end that you might
restore to us our rightful heritage of France, which you have this long
while withheld from us and do most wrongfully occupy.  And as we do
clearly see that you do intend to persevere in your wrongful withholding,
we do give you notice that we are marching against you to bring our
rightful claims to an issue.  And, whereas so great a number of folks
assembled on our side and on yours, cannot keep themselves together for
long without causing great destruction to the people and the country, we
desire, as the quarrel is between you and us, that the decision of our
claim should be between our two bodies.  And if you have no mind to this
way, we propose that our quarrel should end by a battle, body to body,
between a hundred persons, the most capable on your side and on ours.
And, if you have no mind either to one way or to the other, that you do
appoint us a fixed day for fighting before the city of Tournay, power to
power.  Given under our privy seal, on the field near Tournay, the 26th
day of July, in the first year of our reign in France and in England the
fourteenth."

Philip replied, "Philip, by the grace of God King of France to Edward,
King of England.  We have seen your letters brought to our court, as from
you to Philip of Valois, and containing certain demands which you make
upon the said Philip of Valois.  And, as the said letters did not come to
ourself, we make you no answer.  Our intention is, when it shall seem
good to us, to hurl you out of our kingdom for the benefit of our people.
And of that we have firm hope in Jesus Christ, from whom all power cometh
to us."

Events were not satisfactory either to the haughty pretensions of Edward
or to the patriotic hopes of Philip.  The war continued in the north and
south-west of France without any result.  In the neighborhood of Tournay
some encounters in the open country were unfavorable to the English and
their allies; the siege of the place was prolonged for seventy-four days
without the attainment of any success by assault or investment; and the
inhabitants defended themselves with so obstinate a courage, that, when
at length the King of England found himself obliged to raise the siege,
Philip, to testify his gratitude towards them, restored them their law,
that is, their communal charter, for some time past withdrawn, and "they
were greatly rejoiced," says Froissart, "at having no more royal
governors, and at appointing provosts and jurymen according to their
fancy."  The Flemish burghers, in spite of their display of warlike zeal,
soon grew tired of being so far from their business and of living under
canvas.  In Aquitaine the lieutenants of the King of France had the
advantage over those of the King of England; they retook or delivered
several places in dispute between the two crowns, and they closely
pressed Bordeaux itself both by land and sea.  Edward, the aggressor, was
exhausting his pecuniary resources, and his Parliament was displaying but
little inclination to replenish them.  For Philip, who had merely to
defend himself in his own dominions, any cessation of hostilities was
almost a victory.  A pious princess, Joan of Valois, sister of Philip and
mother-in-law of Edward, issued from her convent at Fontenelle, for the
purpose of urging the two kings to make peace, or at least to suspend
hostilities.  "The good dame," says Froissart, "saw there, on the two
sides, all the flower and honor of the chivalry of the world; and many a
time she had fallen at the feet of her brother, the King of France,
praying him for some respite or treaty of agreement between himself and
the English king.  And when she had labored with them of France, she went
her way to them of the Empire, to the Duke of Brabant, to the Marquis of
Juliers, and to my Lord John of Hainault, and prayed them, for God's and
pity's sake, that they would be pleased to hearken to some terms of
accord, and would win over the King of England to be pleased to
condescend thereto."  In concert with the envoys of Pope Benedict XII.,
Joan of Valois at last succeeded in bringing the two sovereigns and their
allies to a truce, which was concluded on the 25th of September, 1340, at
first for nine months, and was afterwards renewed on several occasions up
to the month of June, 1342.  Neither sovereign, and none of their allies,
gave up anything, or bound themselves to anything more than not to fight
during that interval; but they were, on both sides, without the power of
carrying on without pause a struggle which they would not entirely
abandon.

An unexpected incident led to its recommencement in spite of the truce:
not, however, throughout France or directly between the two kings, but
with fiery fierceness, though it was limited to a single province, and
arose not in the name of the kingship of France, but out of a purely
provincial question.  John III., Duke of Brittany and a faithful vassal
of Philip of Valois, whom he had gone to support at Tournay "more stoutly
and substantially than any of the other princes," says Froissart, died
suddenly at Caen, on the 30th of April, 1341, on returning to his domain.
Though he had been thrice married, he left no child.  The duchy of
Brittany then reverted to his brothers or their posterity , but his very
next brother, Guy, Count of Penthievre, had been dead six years, and had
left only a daughter, Joan, called the Cripple, married to Charles of
Blois, nephew of the King of France.  The third brother was still alive;
he too was named John, had from his mother the title of Count of
Montfort, and claimed to be heir to the duchy of Brittany in preference
to his niece Joan.  The niece, on the contrary, believed in her own right
to the exclusion of her uncle.  The question was exactly the same as that
which had arisen touching the crown of France when Philip the Long had
successfully disputed it with the only daughter of his brother Louis the
Quarreller; but the Salic law, which had for more than three centuries
prevailed in France, and just lately to the benefit of Philip of Valois,
had no existence in the written code, or the traditions of Brittany.
There, as in several other great fiefs, women had often been recognized
as capable of holding and transmitting sovereignty.  At the death of John
III., his brother, the Count of Montfort, immediately put himself in
possession of the inheritance, seized the principal Breton towns, Nantes,
Brest, Rennes, and Vannes, and crossed over to England to secure the
support of Edward III.  His rival, Charles of Blois, appealed to the
decision of the King of France, his uncle and natural protector.  Philip
of Valois thus found himself the champion of succession in the female
line in Brittany, whilst he was himself reigning in France by virtue of
the Salic law, and Edward III. took up in Brittany the defence of
succession in the male line which he was disputing and fighting against
in France.  Philip and his court of peers declared on the 7th of
September, 1341, that Brittany belonged to Charles of Blois, who at once
did homage for it to the King of France, whilst John of Montfort demanded
and obtained the support of the King of England.  War broke out between
the two claimants, effectually supported by the two kings, who
nevertheless were not supposed to make war upon one another and in their
own dominions.  The feudal system sometimes entailed these strange and
dangerous complications.

If the two parties had been reduced for leaders to the two claimants
only, the war would not, perhaps, have lasted long.

In the first campaign the Count of Montfort was made prisoner at the
siege of Nantes, carried off to Paris, and shut up in the tower of the
Louvre, whence he did not escape until three years were over.  Charles of
Blois, with all his personal valor, was so scrupulously devout that he
often added to the embarrassments and at the same time the delays of war.
He never marched without being followed by his almoner, who took with him
everywhere bread, and wine, and water, and fire in a pot, for the purpose
of saying mass by the way.  One day when Charles was accordingly hearing
it and was very near the enemy, one of his officers, Auffroy de
Montboucher, said to him, "Sir, you see right well that your enemies are
yonder, and you halt a longer time than they need to take you."
"Auffroy," answered the prince, "we shall always have towns and castles,
and, if they are taken, we shall, with God's help, recover them; but if
we miss hearing of mass we shall never recover it."  Neither side,
however, had much detriment from either the captivity or pious delays of
its chief.  Joan of Flanders, Countess of Montfort, was at Rennes when
she heard that her husband had been taken prisoner at Nantes.  "Although
she made great mourning in her heart," says Froissart, "she made it not
like a disconsolate woman, but like a proud and gallant man.  She showed
to her friends and soldiers a little boy she had, and whose name was
John, even as his father's, and she said to them, 'Ah! sirs, be not
discomforted and cast down because of my lord whom we have lost; he was
but one man; see, here is my little boy, who, please God, shall be his
avenger.  I have wealth in abundance, and of it I will give you enow, and
I will provide you with such a leader as shall give you all fresh heart.'
She went through all her good towns and fortresses, taking her young son
with her, re-enforcing the garrisons with men and all they wanted, and
giving away abundantly wherever she thought it would be well laid out.
Then she went her way to Hennebon-sur-Mer, which was a strong town and
strong castle, and there she abode, and her son with her, all the
winter."  In May, 1242, Charles of Blois came to besiege her; but the
attempts at assault were not successful.  "The Countess of Montfort, who
was cased in armor and rode on a fine steed, galloped from street to
street through the town, summoned the people to defend themselves
stoutly, and called on the women, dames, damoisels, and others, to pull
up the roads, and carry the stones to the ramparts to throw down on the
assailants."  She attempted a bolder enterprise.  "She sometimes mounted
a tower, right up to the top, that she might see the better how her
people bore themselves.  She one day saw that all they of the hostile
army, lords and others, had left their quarters and gone to watch the
assault.  She mounted her steed, all armed as she was, and summoned to
horse with her about three hundred men-at-arms who were on guard at a
gate which was not being assailed.  She went out thereat with all her
company and threw herself valiantly upon the tents and quarters of the
lords of France, which were all burned, being guarded only by boys and
varlets, who fled as soon as they saw the countess and her folks entering
and setting fire.  When the lords saw their quarters burning and heard
the noise which came therefrom, they ran up all dazed and crying,
'Betrayed! betrayed!' so that none remained for the assault.  When the
countess saw the enemy's host running up from all parts, she re-assembled
all her folks, and seeing right well that she could not enter the town
again without too great loss, she went off by another road to the castle
of Brest [or, more probably, d'Auray, as Brest is much more than three
leagues from Hennebon], which lies as near as three leagues from thence."
Though hotly pursued by the assailants, "she rode so fast and so well
that she and the greater part of her folks arrived at the castle of
Brest, where she was received and feasted right joyously.  Those of her
folks who were in Hennebon were all night in great disquietude because
neither she nor any of her company returned; and the assailant lords, who
had taken up quarters nearer to the town, cried, 'Come out, come out, and
seek your countess; she is lost; you will not find a bit of her.' In such
fear the folks in Hennebon remained five days.  But the countess wrought
so well that she had now full five hundred comrades armed and well
mounted; then she set out from Brest about midnight and came away,
arriving at sunrise and riding straight upon one of the flanks of the
enemy's host; there she had the gate of Hennebon castle opened, and
entered in with great joy and a great noise of trumpets and drums;
whereby the besiegers were roughly disturbed and awakened."

The joy of the besieged was short.  Charles of Blois pressed on the siege
more rigorously every day, threatening that, when he should have taken
the place, he would put all the inhabitants to the sword.  Consternation
spread even to the brave; and a negotiation was opened with a view of
arriving at terms of capitulation.  By dint of prayers Countess Joan
obtained a delay of three days.  The first two had expired, and the
besiegers were preparing for a fresh assault, when Joan, from the top of
her tower, saw the sea covered with sails: "'See, see,' she cried, the
aid so much desired!'  Every one in the town, as best they could, rushed
up at once to the windows and battlements of the walls to see what it
might be," says Froissart.  In point of fact it was a fleet with six
thousand men brought from England to the relief of Hennebon by Amaury de
Clisson and Walter de Manny; and they had been a long while detained at
sea by contrary winds."

[Illustration: 'See! See!' she cried----283]

When they had landed the countess herself went to them and feasted them
and thanked them greatly, which was no wonder, for she had sore need of
their coming."  It was far better still when, next day, the new arrivals
had attacked the besiegers and gained a brilliant victory over them.
When they re-entered the place, "whoever," says Froissart, "saw the
countess descend from the castle, and kiss my lord Walter de Manny and
his comrades, one after another, two or three times, might well have said
that it was a gallant dame."

All the while that the Count of Montfort was a prisoner in the tower of
the Louvre, the countess his wife strove for his cause with the same
indefatigable energy.  He escaped in 1345, crossed over to England, swore
fealty and homage to Edward III. for the duchy of Brittany, and
immediately returned to take in hand, himself, his own cause.  But in the
very year of his escape, on the 26th of September, 1345, he died at the
castle of Hennebon, leaving once more his wife, with a young child, alone
at the head of his party and having in charge the future of his house.
The Countess Joan maintained the rights and interests of her son as she
had maintained those of her husband.  For nineteen years, she, with the
help of England, struggled against Charles of Blois, the head of a party
growing more and more powerful, and protected by France.  Fortune shifted
her favors and her asperities from one camp to the other.  Charles of
Blois had at first pretty considerable success; but on the 18th of June,
1347, in a battle in which he personally displayed a brilliant courage,
he was in his turn made prisoner, carried to England, and immured in the
Tower of London.  There he remained nine years.  But he too had a valiant
and indomitable wife, Joan of Penthievre, the Cripple.  She did for her
husband all that Joan of Montfort was doing for hers.  All the time that
he was a prisoner in the Tower of London, she was the soul and the head
of his party, in the open country as well as in the towns, turning to
profitable account the inclinations of the Breton population, whom the
presence and the ravages of the English had turned against John of
Montfort and his cause.  She even convoked at Dinan, in 1352, a general
assembly of her partisans, which is counted by the Breton historians as
the second holding of the states of their country.  During nine years,
from 1347 to 1356, the two Joans were the two heads of their parties in
politics and in war.  Charles of Blois at last obtained his liberty from
Edward III. on hard conditions, and returned to Brittany to take up the
conduct of his own affairs.  The struggle between the two claimants still
lasted eight years, with vicissitudes ending in nothing definite.  In
1363 Charles of Blois and young John of Montfort, weary of their
fruitless efforts and the sufferings of their countries, determined both
of them to make peace and share Brittany between them.  Rennes was to be
Charles's capital, and Nantes that of his rival.  The treaty had been
signed, an altar raised between the two armies, and an oath taken on both
sides; but when Joan of Penthivre was informed of it she refused
downright to ratify it.  "I married you," she said to her husband, "to
defend my inheritance, and not to yield the half of it; I am only a
woman, but I would lose my life, and two lives if I had them, rather than
consent to any cession of the kind."  Charles of Blois, as weak before
his wife as brave before the enemy, broke the treaty he had but just
sworn to, and set out for Nantes to resume the war.  "My lord," said
Countess Joan to him in presence of all his knights, "you are going to
defend my inheritance and yours, which my lord of Montfort--wrongfully,
God knows--doth withhold from us, and the barons of Brittany who are here
present know that I am rightful heiress of it.  I pray you affectionately
not to make any ordinance, composition, or treaty whereby the duchy
corporate remain not ours."  Charles set out; and in the following year,
on the 29th of September, 1364, the battle of Auray cost him his life and
the countship of Brittany.  When he was wounded to death he said, "I have
long been at war against my conscience."  At sight of his dead body on
the field of battle young John of Montfort, his conqueror, was touched,
and cried out, "Alas my cousin, by your obstinacy you have been the cause
of great evils in Brittany: may God forgive you!  It grieves me much that
you are come to so sad an end."  After this outburst of generous
compassion came the joy of victory, which Montfort owed above all to his
English allies and to John Chandos their leader, to whom, "My Lord John,"
said he, "this great fortune path come to me through your great sense and
prowess: wherefore, I pray you, drink out of my cup."  "Sir," answered
Chandos, "let us go hence, and render you your thanks to God for this
happy fortune you have gotten, for, without the death of yonder warrior,
you could not have come into the inheritance of Brittany."  From that day
forth John of Monfort remained in point of fact Duke of Brittany, and
Joan of Penthievre, the Cripple, the proud princess who had so
obstinately defended her rights against him, survived for full twenty
years the death of her husband and the loss of her duchy.

Whilst the two Joans were exhibiting in Brittany, for the preservation or
the recovery of their little dominion, so much energy and persistency,
another Joan, no princess, but not the less a heroine, was, in no other
interest than the satisfaction of her love and her vengeance, making war,
all by herself, on the same territory.  Several Norman and Breton lords,
and amongst others Oliver de Clisson and Godfrey d'Harcourt, were
suspected, nominally attached as they were to the King of France, of
having made secret overtures to the King of England.  Philip of Valois
had them arrested at a tournament, and had them beheaded without any form
of trial, in the middle of the market-place at Paris, to the number of
fourteen.  The head of Clisson was sent to Nantes and exposed on one of
the gates of the city.  At the news thereof, his widow, Joan of
Belleville, attended by several men of family, her neighbors and friends,
set out for a castle occupied by the troops of Philip's candidate,
Charles of Blois.  The fate of Clisson was not yet known there; it was
supposed that his wife was on a hunting excursion; and she was admitted
without distrust.  As soon as she was inside, the blast of a horn gave
notice to her followers, whom she had left concealed in the neighboring
woods.  They rushed up, and took possession of the castle, and Joan de
Clisson had all the inhabitants--but one--put to the sword.  But this was
too little for her grief and her zeal.  At the head of her troops,
augmented, she scoured the country and seized several places, everywhere
driving out or putting to death the servants of the King of France.
Philip confiscated the property of the house of Clisson.  Joan moved from
land to sea.  She manned several vessels, attacked the French ships she
fell in with, ravaged the coasts, and ended by going and placing at the
service of the Countess of Montfort her hatred and her son, a boy of
seven years of age, whom she had taken with her in all her expeditions,
and who was afterwards the great constable, Oliver de Clisson.  We shall
find him under Charles V. and Charles VI. as devoted to France and her
kings as if he had not made his first essays in arms against the
candidate of their ancestor, Philip.  His mother had sent him to England,
to be brought up at the court of Edward III., but, shortly after taking a
glorious part with the English in the battle of Auray, in which he lost
an eye, and which secured the duchy of Brittany to the Count of Montfort,
De Clisson got embroiled none the less with his suzerain, who had given
John Chandos the castle of Gavre, near Nantes.  "Devil take me, my lord,"
said Oliver to him, "if ever Englishman shall be my neighbor;" and he
went forthwith and attacked the castle, which he completely demolished.
The hatreds of women whose passions have made them heroines of war are
more personal and more obstinate than those of the roughest warriors.
Accordingly the war for the duchy of Brittany, in the fourteenth century,
has been called, in history, the war of the three Joans.

This war was, on both sides, remarkable for cruelty.  If Joan de Clisson
gave to the sword all the people in a castle, belonging to Charles of
Blois, to which she had been admitted on a supposition of pacific
intentions, Charles of Blois, on his side, finding in another castle
thirty knights, partisans of the Count of Montfort, had their heads shot
from catapults over the walls of Nantes, which he was besieging, and, at
the same time that he saved from pillage the churches of Quimper, which
he had just taken, he allowed his troops to massacre fourteen hundred
inhabitants, and had his principal prisoners beheaded.  One of them,
being a deacon, he caused to be degraded, and then handed over to the
populace, who stoned him.  It is characteristic of the middle ages that
in them the ferocity of barbaric times existed side by side with the
sentiments of chivalry and the fervor of Christianity: so slow is the
race of man to eschew evil, even when it has begun to discern and relish
good.  War was then the passion and habitual condition of men.  They made
it without motive as well as without prevision, in a transport of feeling
or for the sake of pastime, to display their strength or to escape from
listlessness; and, whilst making it, they abandoned themselves without
scruple to all those deeds of violence, vengeance, brutal anger, or
fierce delight, which war provokes.  At the same time, however, the
generous impulses of feudal chivalry, the sympathies of Christian piety,
tender affections, faithful devotion, noble tastes, were fermenting in
their souls; and human nature appeared with all its complications, its
inconsistencies, and its irregularities, but also with all its wealth of
prospective development.  The three Joans of the fourteenth century were
but eighty years in advance of the Joan of Arc of the fifteenth; and the
knights of Charles V., Du Guesclin and De Clisson, were the forerunners
of the Bayard of Francis I.

An incident which has retained its popularity in French history, to wit,
the fight between thirty Bretons and thirty English during the just now
commemorated war in Brittany, will give a better idea than any general
observations could of the real, living characteristics of facts and
manners, barbaric and at the same time chivalric, at that period.  No
apology is needed for here reproducing the chief details as they have
been related by Froissart, the dramatic chronicler of the middle ages.

In 1351, "it happened on a day that Sir Robert de Beaumanoir, a valiant
knight and commandant of the castle which is called Castle Josselin, came
before the town and castle of Ploermel, whereof the captain, called
Brandebourg [or Brembro, probably Bremborough], had with him a plenty of
soldiers of the Countess of Montfort.  'Brandebourg,' said Robert, 'have
ye within there never a man-at-arms, or two or three, who would fain
cross swords with other three for love of their ladies?'  Brandebourg
answered that their ladies would not have them lose their lives in so
miserable an affair as single combat, whereby one gained the name of fool
rather than honorable renown.  'I will tell you what we will do, if it
please you.  You shall take twenty or thirty of your comrades, as I will
take as many of ours.  We will go out into a goodly field where none can
hinder or vex us, and there will we do so much that men shall speak
thereof in time to come in hall, and palace, and highway, and other
places of the world.'  'By my faith,' said Beaumanoir, 'tis bravely said,
and I agree: be ye thirty, and we will be thirty, too.'  And thus the
matter was settled.  When the day had come, the thirty comrades of
Brandebourg, whom we shall call English, heard mass, then got on their
arms, went off to the place where the battle was to be, dismounted, and
waited a long while for the others, whom we shall call French.  When the
thirty French had come, and they were in front one of another, they
parleyed a little together, all the sixty; then they fell back, and made
all their fellows go far away from the place.  Then one of them made a
sign, and forthwith they set on and fought stoutly all in a heap, and
they aided one another handsomely when they saw their comrades in evil
case.  Pretty soon after they had come together, one of the French was
slain, but the rest did not slacken the fight one whit, and they bore
themselves as valiantly all as if they had all been Rolands and Olivers.
At last they were forced to stop, and they rested by common accord,
giving themselves truce until they should be rested, and the first to get
up again should recall the others.  They rested long, and there were some
who drank wine which was brought to them in bottles.  They rebuckled
their armor, which had got undone, and dressed their wounds.  Four French
and two English were dead already."

It was no doubt during this interval that the captain of the Bretons,
Robert de Beaumanoir, grievously wounded and dying of fatigue and thirst,
cried out for a drink.  "Drink thy blood, Beaumanoir," said one of his
comrades, Geoffrey de Bois, according to some accounts, and Sire de
Tinteniac, according to others.  From that day those words became the
war-cry of the Beaumanoirs.  Froissart says nothing of this incident.
Let us return to his narrative.

"When they were refreshed, the first to get up again made a sign, and
recalled the others.  Then the battle recommenced as stoutly as before,
and lasted a long while.  They had short swords of Bordeaux, tough and
sharp, and boar-spears and daggers, and some had axes, and therewith they
dealt one another marvellously great dings, and some seized one another
by the arms a-struggling, and they struck one another, and spared not.
At last the English had the worst of it; Brandebourg, their captain, was
slain, with eight of his comrades, and the rest yielded themselves
prisoners when they saw that they could no longer defend themselves, for
they could not and must not fly.  Sir Robert de Beaumanoir and his
comrades, who remained alive, took them and carried them off to Castle
Josselin as their prisoners; and then admitted them to ransom courteously
when they were all cured, for there was none that was not grievously
wounded, French as well as English.  I saw afterwards, sitting at the
table of King Charles of France, a Breton knight who had been in it, Sir
Yvon Charnel , and he had a face so carved and cut that he showed full
well how good a fight had been fought.  The matter was talked of in many
places, and some set it down as a very poor, and others as a very
swaggering business."

The most modern and most judicious historian of Brittany, Count Daru,
who has left a name as honorable in literature as in the higher
administration of the First Empire, says, very truly, in recounting this
incident, "It is not quite certain whether this was an act of patriotism
or of chivalry."  He might have gone farther, and discovered in this
exploit not only the characteristics he points out, but many others
besides.  Local patriotism, the honor of Brittany, party spirit, the
success of John of Montfort or Charles of Blois, the sentiment of
gallantry, the glorification of the most beautiful one amongst their
lady-loves, and, chiefly, the passion for war amongst all and sundry--
there was something of all this mixed up with the battle of the Thirty,
a faithful reflex of the complication and confusion of minds, of morals,
and of wants at that forceful period.  It is this very variety of the
ideas, feelings, interests, motives, and motive tendencies involved in
that incident which accounts for the fact that the battle of the Thirty
has remained so vividly remembered, and that in 1811 a monument,
unpretentious but national, replaced the simple stone at first erected on
the field of battle, on the edge of the road from P1o6rmel to Josselin,
with this inscription: "To the immortal memory of the battle of the
Thirty, gained by Marshal Beaumanoir, on the 26th of March, 1350 (1351)."

With some fondness, and at some length, this portion of Brittany's
history in the fourteenth century has been dwelt upon, not only because
of the dramatic interest attaching to the events and the actors, but also
for the sake of showing, by that example, how many separate associations,
diverse and often hostile, were at that time developing themselves, each
on its own account, in that extensive and beautiful country which became
France.  We will now return to Philip of Valois and Edward III., and to
the struggle between them for a settlement of the question whether France
should or should not preserve its own independent kingship, and that
national unity of which she already had the name, but of which she was
still to undergo so much painful travail in acquiring the reality.

Although Edward III. by supporting with troops and officers, and
sometimes even in person, the cause of the Countess of Montfort, and
Philip of Valois by assisting in the same way Charles of Blois and Joan
of Penthievre, took a very active, if indirect, share in the war in
Brittany, the two kings persisted in not calling themselves at war; and
when either of them proceeded to acts of unquestionable hostility, they
eluded the consequences of them by hastily concluding truces incessantly
violated and as incessantly renewed.  They had made use of this expedient
in 1340; and they had recourse to it again in 1342, 1343, and 1344.  The
last of these truces was to have lasted up to 1346; but, in the spring of
1345, Edward resolved to put an end to this equivocal position, and to
openly recommence war.  He announced his intention to Pope Clement IV.,
to his own lieutenants in Brittany, and to all the cities and
corporations of his kingdom.  He accused Philip of having "violated,
without even sending us a challenge, the truce which, out of regard to
the sovereign pontiff, we had agreed upon with him, and which he had
taken an oath, upon his soul, to keep.  On account whereof we have
resolved to proceed against him, him and all his adherents, by land and
sea, by all means possible, in order to recover our just rights."  It is
not quite clear what pressing reasons urged Edward to this decisive
resolution.  The English Parliament and people, it is true, showed more
disposition to support their king in his pretensions to the throne of
France, and the cause of the Count of Montfort was maintaining itself
stubbornly in Brittany, but nothing seemed to call for so startling a
rupture, or to promise Edward any speedy and successful issue.  He had
lost his most energetic and warlike adviser; for Robert d'Artois, the
deadly enemy of Philip of Valois, had been so desperately wounded in the
defence of Vannes against Robert de Beaumanoir, that he had returned to
England only to die.  Edward felt this loss severely, gave Robert a
splendid funeral in St. Paul's church, and declared that "he would listen
to nought until he had avenged him, and that he would reduce the country
of Brittany to such plight that, for forty years, it should not recover."
Philip of Valois, on his side, gave signs of getting ready for war.  In
1343 he had convoked at Paris one of those assemblies which were
beginning to be called the states-general of the kingdom, and he obtained
from it certain subventions.  It was likewise in 1343 and at the
beginning of 1344, that he ordered the arrest, at a tournament to which
he had invited them, and the decapitation, without any form of trial, of
fourteen Breton and three Norman lords whom he suspected of intriguing
against him with the King of England.  And so Edward might have
considered himself threatened with imminent peril; and, besides, he had
friends to avenge.  But it is not unreasonable to suppose that his fiery
ambition, and his impatience to decide, once for all, that question of
the French kingship which had been for five years in suspense between
himself and his rival, were the true causes of his warlike resolve.
However that may be, he determined to push the war vigorously forward at
the three points at which he could easily wage it.  In Brittany he had a
party already engaged in the struggle; in Aquitaine, possessions of
importance to defend or recover; in Flanders, allies with power to back
him, and as angry as he himself.  To Brittany he forwarded fresh supplies
for the Count of Montfort; to Aquitaine he sent Henry of Lancaster, Earl
of Derby, his own cousin, and the ablest of his lieutenants; and he
himself prepared to cross over with a large army to Flanders.

The Earl of Derby met with solid and brilliant success in Aquitaine.
He attacked and took in rapid succession Bergerac, La Reole, Aiguillon,
Montpezat, Villefranche, and Angouleme.  None of those places was
relieved in time; the strict discipline of Derby's troops and the skill
of the English archers were too much for the bravery of the men-at-arms,
and the raw levies, ill organized and ill paid, of the King of France;
and, in a word, the English were soon masters of almost the whole country
between the Garonne and the Charente.  Under such happy auspices Edward
III. arrived on the 7th of July, 1345, at the port of Ecluse (Sluys),
anxious to put himself in concert with the Flemings touching the campaign
he proposed to commence before long in the north of France.  Artevelde,
with the consuls of Bruges and Ypres, was awaiting him there.  According
to some historians, Edward invited them aboard of his galley, and
represented to them that the time had come for renouncing imperfect
resolves and half-measures; told them that their count, Louis of
Flanders, and his ancestors, had always ignored and attacked their
liberties, and that the best thing they could do would be to sever their
connection with a house they could not trust; and offered them for their
chieftain his own son, the young Prince of Wales, to whom he would give
the title of Duke of Flanders.  According to other historians, it was not
King Edward, but Artevelde himself, who took the initiative in this
proposition.  The latter had for some time past felt his own dominion in
Flanders attacked and shaken; and he had been confronted, in his own
native city, by declared enemies, who had all but come to blows with his
own partisans.  The different industrial corporations of Ghent were no
longer at one amongst themselves; the weavers had quarrelled with the
fullers.  Division was likewise reaching a great height amongst the
Flemish towns.  The burghers of Poperinghe had refused to continue
recognizing the privileges of those of Ypres; and the Ypres men, enraged,
had taken up arms, and, after a sanguinary melley, had forced the folks
of Poperinghe to give in.  Then the Ypres men, proud of their triumph,
had gone and broken the weavers' machinery at Bailleul, and in some other
towns.  Artevelde, constrained to take part in these petty civil wars,
had been led on to greater and greater abuse, in his own city itself,
of his municipal despotism, already grown hateful to many of his fellow-
citizens.  Whether he himself proposed to shake off the yoke of Count
Louis of Flanders, and take for duke the Prince of Wales, or merely
accepted King Edward's proposal, he set resolutely to work to get it
carried.  The most able men, swayed by their own passions and the growing
necessities of the struggle in which they may be engaged, soon forget
their first intentions, and ignore their new perils.  The consuls of
Bruges and Ypres, present with Artevelde at his interview with King
Edward in the port of Ecluse (Sluys), answered that "they could not
decide so great a matter unless the whole community of Flanders should
agree thereto," and so returned to their cities.  Artevelde followed them
thither, and succeeded in getting the proposed resolution adopted by the
people of Ypres and Bruges.  But when he returned to Ghent, on the 24th
of July, 1345, "those in the city who knew of his coming," says
Froissart, "had assembled in the street whereby he must ride to his
hostel.  So soon as they saw him they began to mutter, saying, 'There
goes he who is too much master, and would fain do with the countship of
Flanders according to his own will; which cannot be borne.'  It had,
besides this, been spread about the city that James Van Artevelde had
secretly sent to England the great treasure of Flanders, which he had
been collecting for the space of the nine years and more during which he
had held the government.  This was a matter which did greatly vex and
incense them of Ghent.  As James Van Artevelde rode along the street, he
soon perceived that there was something fresh against him, for those who
were wont to bow down and take off their caps to him turned him a cold
shoulder, and went back into their houses.  Then he began to be afraid;
and so soon as he had dismounted at his house, he had all the doors and
windows shut and barred.  Scarcely had his varlets done so, when the
street in which he lived was covered, front and back, with folk, and
chiefly small crafts-folk.  His hostel was surrounded and beset, front
and back, and broken into by force.  Those within defended themselves a
long while, and overthrew and wounded many; but at last they could not
hold out, for they were so closely assailed that nearly three quarters of
the city were at this assault.  When Artevelde saw the efforts a-making,
and how hotly he was pressed, he came to a window over the street, and
began to abase himself, and say with much fine language, 'Good folks,
what want ye?  What is it that doth move ye?  Wherefore are ye so vexed
at me?  In what way can I have angered ye?  Tell me, and I will mend it
according to your wishes.'  Then all those who had heard him answered
with one voice, 'We would have an account of the great treasure of
Flanders, which you have sent to England without right or reason.'
Artevelde answered full softly, 'Of a surety, sirs, I have never taken a
denier from the treasury of Flanders; go ye back quietly home, I pray
you, and come again to-morrow morning; I shall be so well prepared to
render you a good account, that, according to reason, it cannot but
content ye.'  'Nay, nay,' they answered, with one voice, 'but we would
have it at once; you shall not escape us so; we do know of a verity that
you have taken it out and sent it away to England, without our wit; for
which cause you must needs die.'  When Artevelde heard this word, he
began to weep right piteously, and said, 'Sirs, ye have made me what I
am, and ye did swear to me aforetime that ye would guard and defend me
against all men; and now ye would kill me, and without a cause.  Ye can
do so an if it please you, for I am but one single man against ye all,
without any defence.  Think hereon, for God's sake, and look back to
bygone times.  Consider the great courtesies and services that I have
done ye.  Know ye not how all trade had perished in this country?  It was
I who raised it up again.  Afterwards I governed ye in peace so great,
that, during the time of my government, ye have had everything to your
wish, grains, wools, and all sorts of merchandise, wherewith ye are well
provided and in good case.'  Then they began to shout, 'Come down, and
preach not to us from such a height; we would have account and reckoning
of the great treasure of Flanders which you have too long had under
control without rendering an account, which it appertaineth not to any
officer to do.'  When Artevelde saw that they would not cool down, and
would not restrain themselves, he closed the window, and bethought him
that he would escape by the back, and get him gone to a church adjoining
his hostel; but his hostel was already burst open and broken into behind,
and there were more than four hundred persons who were all anxious to
seize him.  At last he was caught amongst them, and killed on the spot
without mercy.  A weaver, called Thomas Denis, gave him his death-blow.
This was the end of Artevelde, who in his time was so great a master in
Flanders.  Poor folk exalted him at first, and wicked folk slew him at
the last."

[Illustration: Statue of James Van Artevelde----296]

It was a great loss for King Edward.  Under Van Artevelde's bold
dominance, and in consequence of his alliance with England, the warlike
renown of Flanders had made some noise in Europe, to such an extent that
Petrarch exclaimed, "List to the sounds, still indistinct, that reach us
from the world of the West; Flanders is plunged in ceaseless war; all the
country stretching from the restless Ocean to the Latin Alps is rushing
forth to arms.  Would to Heaven that there might come to us some gleams
of salvation from thence!  O Italy, poor father-land, thou prey to
sufferings without relief, thou who wast wont with thy deeds of arms to
trouble the peace of the world, now art thou motionless when the fate of
the world hangs on the chances of battle!  "The Flemings spared no effort
to re-assure the King of England.  Their envoys went to Westminster to
deplore the murder of Van Artevelde, and tried to persuade Edward that
his policy would be perpetuated throughout their cities, and "to such
purpose," says Froissart, "that in the end the king was fairly content
with the Flemings, and they with him, and, between them, the death of
James Van Artevelde was little by little forgotten."  Edward, however,