the presumptuous and hare-brained incapacity of her new king, were, for
so ambitious and able a prince as Edward III., very strong temptations.
Nor did opportunities for attack, and chances of success, fail him any
more than temptations.  He found in France, amongst the grandees of the
kingdom, and even at the king's court, men disposed to desert the cause
of the king and of France to serve a prince who had more capacity, and
who pretended to claim the crown of France as his lawful right.  The
feudal system lent itself to ambiguous questions and doubts of
conscience: a lord who had two suzerains, and who, rightly or wrongly,
believed that he had cause of complaint against one of them, was
justified in serving that one who could and would protect him.  Personal
interest and subtle disputes soon make traitors; and Edward had the
ability to discover them and win them over.  The alternate outbursts and
weaknesses of John in the case of those whom he suspected; the snares he
laid for them; the precipitancy and cruel violence with which he struck
them down, without form of trial, and almost with his own hand, forbid
history to receive his suspicious and his forcible proceedings as any
kind of proof; but amongst those whom he accused there were undoubtedly
traitors to the king and to France.  There is one about whom there can be
no doubt at all.  As early as 1351, amidst all his embroilments and all
his reconciliations with his father-in-law, Charles the Bad, King of
Navarre, had concluded with Edward III. a secret treaty, whereby, in
exchange for promises he received, he recognized his title as King of
France.  In 1355 his treason burst forth.  The King of Navarre, who had
gone for refuge to Avignon, under the protection of Pope Clement VI.,
crossed France by English Aquitaine, and went and landed at Cherbourg,
which he had an idea of throwing open to the King of England.  He once
more entered into communications with King John, once more obtained
forgiveness from him, and for a while appeared detached from his English
alliance.  But Edward III. had openly resumed his hostile attitude; and
he demanded that Aquitaine and the courtship of Ponthieu, detached from
the kingdom of France, should be ceded to him in full sovereignty, and
that Brittany should become all but independent.  John haughtily rejected
these pretensions, which were merely a pretext for recommencing war.  And
it recommenced accordingly, and the King of Navarre resumed his course of
perfidy.  He had lands and castles in Normandy, which John put under
sequestration, and ordered the officers commanding in them to deliver up
to him.  Six of them, the commandants of the castles of Cherbourg and
Evreux, amongst others, refused, believing, no doubt, that in betraying
France and her king, they were remaining faithful to their own lord.

At several points in the kingdom, especially in the northernprovinces,
the first fruits of the war were not favorable for the English.  King
Edward, who had landed at Calais with a body of troops, made an
unsuccessful campaign in Artois and Picardy, and was obliged to re-embark
for England, falling back before King John, whom he had at one time
offered and at another refused to meet and fight at a spot agreed upon.
But in the south-west and south of France, in 1355 and 1356, the Prince
of Wales, at the head of a small picked army, and with John Chandos for
comrade, victoriously overran Limousin, Perigord, Languedoc, Auvergne,
Berry, and Poitou, ravaging the country and plundering the towns into
which he could force an entrance, and the environs of those that defended
themselves behind their walls.  He met with scarcely any resistance, and
he was returning by way of Berry and Poitou back again to Bordeaux, when
he heard that King John, starting from Normandy with a large army, was
advancing to give him battle.  John, in fact, with easy self-complacency,
and somewhat proud of his petty successes against King Edward in Picardy,
had been in a hurry to move against the Prince of Wales, in hopes of
forcing him also to re-embark for England.  He was at the head of forty
or fifty thousand men, with his four sons, twenty-six dukes or counts,
and nearly all the baronage of France; and such was his confidence in
this noble army, that on crossing the Loire he dismissed the burgher
forces, "which was madness in him and in those who advised him," said
even his contemporaries.  John, even more than his father Philip, was a
king of courts, ever surrounded by his nobility, and caring little for
his people.  Jealous of the order of the Garter, lately instituted by
Edward III. in honor of the beautiful Countess of Salisbury, John had
created, in 1351, by way of following suit, a brotherhood called Our Lady
of the Noble House, or of the Star, the knights of which, to the number
of five hundred, had to swear, that if they were forced to recoil in a
battle they would never yield to the enemy more than four acres of
ground, and would be slain rather than retreat.  John was destined to
find out before long that neither numbers nor bravery can supply the
place of prudence, ability, and discipline.  When the two armies were
close to one another, on the platform of Maupertuis, two leagues to the
north of Poitiers, two legates from the pope came hurrying up from that
town, with instructions to negotiate peace between the Kings of France,
England, and Navarre.  John consented to an armistice of twenty-four
hours.  The Prince of Wales, seeing himself cut off from Bordeaux by
forces very much superior to his own,--for he had but eight or ten
thousand men,--offered to restore to the King of France "all that he had
conquered this bout, both towns and castles, and all the prisoners that
he and his had taken, and to swear that, for seven whole years, he would
bear arms no more against the King of France; "but King John and his
council would not accept anything of the sort, saying that "the prince
and a hundred of his knights must come and put themselves as prisoners in
the hands of the King of France."  Neither the Prince of Wales nor
Chandos had any hesitation in rejecting such a demand: "God forbid," said
Chandos, "that we should go without a fight!  If we be taken or
discomfited by so many fine men-at-arms, and in so great a host, we shall
incur no blame; and if the day be for us, and fortune be pleased to
consent thereto, we shall be the most honored folk in the world."  The
battle took place on the 19th of September, 1356, in the morning.  There
is no occasion to give the details of it here, as was done but lately in
the case of Crecy; we should merely have to tell an almost perfectly
similar story.  The three battles which, from the fourteenth to the
fifteenth century, were decisive as to the fate of France, to wit, Crecy,
on the 26th of August, 1346; Poictiers, on the 19th of September, 1356;
and Azincourt, on the 25th of October, 1415, considered as historical
events, were all alike, offering a spectacle of the same faults and the
same reverses, brought about by the same causes.  In all three, no matter
what was the difference in date, place, and persons engaged, it was a
case of undisciplined forces, without co-operation or order, and
ill-directed by their commanders, advancing, bravely and one after
another, to get broken against a compact force, under strict command, and
as docile as heroic.  From the battle of Poictiers we will cull but that
glorious feat which was peculiar to it, and which might be called as
unfortunate as glorious if the captivity of King John had been a
misfortune for France.  Nearly all his army had been beaten and
dispersed; and three of his sons, with the eldest, Charles, Duke of
Normandy, at their head, had left the field of battle with the wreck of
the divisions they commanded.  John still remained there with the knights
of the Star, a band of faithful knights from Picardy, Burgundy, Normandy,
and Poitou, his constable, the Duke of Artois, his standard-bearer,
Geoffrey de Charny, and his youngest son Philip, a boy of fourteen, who
clung obstinately to his side, saying, every instant, "Father, ware
right! Father, ware left!"

[Illustration: "Father, ware right!  Father, ware left!"----326]

The king was surrounded by assailants, of whom some did and some did not
know him, and all of whom kept shouting, "Yield you! yield you! else you
die."  The banner of France fell at his side; for Geoffrey de Charny was
slain.  Denis de Morbecque, a knight of St. Omer, made his way up to the
king, and said to him, in good French, "Sir, sir, I pray you, yield!"
"To whom shall I yield me?" said John:
where is my cousin, the Prince of Wales?"  "Sir, yield you to me; I will
bring you to him."  "Who are you?"  "Denis de Morbecque, a knight of
Artois; I serve the King of England, not being able to live in the
kingdom of France, for I have lost all I possessed there."  "I yield me
to you," said John: and he gave his glove to the knight, who led him away
"in the midst of a great press, for every one was dragging the king,
saying, 'I took him!' and he could not get forward, nor could my lord
Philip, his young son.  .  .  .  The king said to them all, Sirs, conduct
me courteously, and quarrel no more together about the taking of me, for
I am rich and great enough to make every one of you rich.'"  Hereupon,
the two English marshals, the Earl of Warwick and the Earl of Suffolk,
"seeing from afar this throng, gave spur to their steeds, and came up,
asking, 'What is this yonder?'  And answer was made to them, 'It is the
King of France who is taken, and more than ten knights and squires would
fain have him.'  Then the two barons broke through the throng by dint of
their horses, dismounted and bowed full low before the king, who was very
joyful at their coming, for they saved him from great danger."  A very
little while afterwards, the two marshals "entered the pavilion of the
Prince of Wales, and made him a present of the King of France; the which
present the prince could not but take kindly as a great and noble one,
and so truly he did, for he bowed full low before the king, and received
him as king, properly and discreetly, as he well knew how to do.  .  .  .
When evening came, the Prince of Wales gave a supper to the King of
France, and to my lord Philip, his son, and to the greater part of the
barons of France, who were prisoners.  .  .  .  And the prince would not
sit at the king's table for all the king's entreaty, but waited as a
serving-man at the king's table, bending the knee before him, and saying,
'Dear sir, be pleased not to put on so sad a countenance because it hath
not pleased God to consent this day to your wishes, for assuredly my lord
and father will show you all the honor and friendship he shall be able,
and he will come to terms with you so reasonably that ye shall remain
good friends forever."

[Illustration: King John taken Prisoner----326]

Henceforth it was, fortunately, not on King John, or on peace or war
between him and the King of England, that the fate of France depended.




CHAPTER XXI.----THE STATES--GENERAL OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

Let us turn back a little, in order to understand the government and
position of King John before he engaged in the war which, so far as he
was concerned, ended with the battle of Poitiers and imprisonment in
England.

A valiant and loyal knight, but a frivolous, hare-brained, thoughtless,
prodigal, and obstinate as well as impetuous prince, and even more
incapable than Philip of Valois in the practice of government, John,
after having summoned at his accession, in 1351, a states-assembly
concerning which we have no explicit information left to us, tried
for a space of four years to suffice in himself for all the perils,
difficulties, and requirements of the situation he had found bequeathed
to him by his father.  For a space of four years, in order to get money,
he debased the coinage, confiscated the goods and securities of foreign
merchants, and stopped payment of his debts; and he went through several
provinces, treating with local councils or magistrates in order to obtain
from them certain subsidies which he purchased by granting them new
privileges.  He hoped by his institution of the order of the Star to
resuscitate the chivalrous zeal of his nobility.  All these means were
vain or insufficient.  The defeat of Crecy and the loss of Calais had
caused discouragement in the kingdom and aroused many doubts as to the
issue of the war with England.  Defection and even treason brought
trouble into the court, the councils, and even the family of John.  To
get the better of them he at one time heaped favors upon the men he
feared, at another he had them arrested, imprisoned, and even beheaded in
his presence.  He gave his daughter Joan in marriage to Charles the Bad,
King of Navarre, and, some few months afterwards, Charles himself, the
real or presumed head of all the traitors, was seized, thrown into
prison, and treated with extreme rigor, in spite of the supplications of
his wife, who vigorously took the part of her husband against her father.
After four years thus consumed in fruitless endeavors, by turns violently
and feebly enforced, to reorganize an army and a treasury, and to
purchase fidelity at any price or arbitrarily strike down treason, John
was obliged to recognize his powerlessness and to call to his aid the
French nation, still so imperfectly formed, by convoking at Paris, for
the 30th of November, 1355, the states-general of _Langue d'oil_.  that
is, Northern France, separated by the Dordogne and the Garonne from
_Langue d'oc,_ which had its own assembly distinct.  Auvergne belonged to
_Langue d'oil_.

It is certain that neither this assembly nor the king who convoked it had
any clear and fixed idea of what they were meeting together to do.  The
kingship was no longer competent for its own government and its own
perils; but it insisted none the less, in principle, on its own all but
unregulated and unlimited power.  The assembly did not claim for the
country the right of self-government, but it had a strong leaven of
patriotic sentiment, and at the same time was very much discontented with
the king's government: it had equally at heart the defence of France
against England and against the abuses of the kingly power.  There was no
notion of a social struggle and no systematic idea of political
revolution; a dangerous crisis and intolerable sufferings constrained
king and nation to come together in order to make an attempt at an
understanding and at a mutual exchange of the supports and the reliefs of
which they were in need.

On the 2d of December, 1355, the three orders, the clergy, the nobility,
and the deputies from the towns assembled at Paris in the great hall of
the Parliament.  Peter de la Forest, Archbishop of Rouen and Chancellor
of France, asked them in the king's name "to consult together about
making him a subvention which should suffice for the expenses of the
war," and the king offered to "make a sound and durable coinage."  The
tampering with the coinage was the most pressing of the grievances for
which the three orders solicited a remedy.  They declared that "they were
ready to live and die with the king, and to put their bodies and what
they had at his service;" and they demanded authority to deliberate
together--which was granted them.  John de Craon, Archbishop of Rheims;
Walter de Brienne, Duke of Athens; and Stephen Marcel, provost of the
tradesmen of Paris, were to report the result, as presidents, each of his
own order.  The session of the states lasted not more than a week.  They
replied to the king "that they would give him a subvention of thirty
thousand men-at-arms every year," and, for their pay, they voted an
impost of fifty hundred thousand livres (five millions of livres), which
was to be levied "on all folks, of whatever condition they might be,
Church folks, nobles, or others," and the gabel or tax on salt "over the
whole kingdom of France."  On separating, the states appointed beforehand
two fresh sessions at which they would assemble, one, in the month of
March, to estimate the sufficiency of the impost, and to hear, on that
subject, the report of the nine superintendents charged with the
execution of their decision; the other, in the month of November
following, to examine into the condition of the kingdom."

They assembled, in fact, on the 1st of March, and on the 8th of May, 1356
[N. B.  As the year at that time began with Easter, the 24th of April was
the first day of the year 1356: the new style, however, is here in every
case adopted]; but they had not the satisfaction of finding their
authority generally recognized and their patriotic purpose effectually
accomplished.  The impost they had voted, notably the salt-tax, had met
with violent opposition.  "When the news thereof reached Normandy," says
Froissart, "the country was very much astounded at it, for they had not
learned to pay any such thing.  The Count d'Harcourt told the folks of
Rouen, where he was puissant, that they would be very serfs and very
wicked if they agreed to this tax, and that, by God's help, it should
never be current in his country."  The King of Navarre used much the same
language in his countship of Evreux.  At other spots the mischief was
still more serious.  Close to Paris itself, at Malun, payment was
peremptorily refused; and at Arras, on the 5th of March, 1356, "the
commonalty of the town," says Froissart, "rose upon the rich burghers and
slew fourteen of the most substantial, which was a pity and loss; and so
it is when wicked folk have the upper hand of valiant men.  However, the
people of Arras paid for it afterwards, for the king sent thither his
cousin, my lord James of Bourbon, who gave orders to take all them by
whom the sedition had been caused, and, on the spot, had their heads cut
off."

The states-general at their re-assembly on the 1st of March, 1356,
admitted the feebleness of their authority and the insufficiency of their
preceding votes for the purpose of aiding the king in the war.  They
abolished the salt-tax and the sales-duty, which had met with such
opposition; but, stanch in their patriotism and loyalty, they substituted
therefor an income-tax, imposed on every sort of folk, nobles or
burghers, ecclesiastical or lay, which was to be levied "not by the high
justiciers of the king, but by the folks of the three estates
themselves."  The king's ordinance, dated the 12th of March, 1356, which
regulates the execution of these different measures, is (article 10) to
this import: "there shall be, in each city, three deputies, one for each
estate.  These deputies shall appoint, in each parish, collectors, who
shall go into the houses to receive the declaration which the persons who
dwell there shall make touching their property, their estate, and their
servants.  When a declaration shall appear in conformity with truth, they
shall be content therewith; else they shall have him who has made it sent
before the deputies of the city in the district whereof he dwells, and
the deputies shall cause him to take, on this subject, such oaths as they
shall think proper.  .  .  .  The collectors in the villages shall cause
to be taken therein, in the presence of the pastor, suitable oaths on the
subject of the declarations.  If, in the towns or villages, any one
refuse to take the oaths demanded, the collectors shall assess his
property according to general opinion, and on the deposition of his
neighbors."  (_Ordonnances des Bois de France,_ t. iv.  pp. 171 175.)

In return for so loyal and persevering a co-operation on the part of the
states-general, notwithstanding the obstacles en-countered by their votes
and their agents, King John confirmed expressly, by an ordinance of May
26, 1356 [art. 9: _Ordonnances des Bois de France,_ t. iii.  p. 55], all
the promises he had made them and all the engagements he had entered into
with them by his ordinance of December 28, 1355, given immediately after
their first session (Ibidem, t. iii.  pp. 19 37): a veritable reformatory
ordinance, which enumerated the various royal abuses, administrative,
judicial, financial, and military, against which there had been a public
clamor, and regulated the manner of redressing them.

After these mutual concessions and promises the states-general broke up,
adjourning until the 30th of November following (1356); but two months
and a half before this time King John, proud of some success obtained by
him in Normandy and of the brilliant army of knights remaining to him
after he had dismissed the burgher-forces, rushed, as has been said, with
conceited impetuosity to encounter the Prince of Wales, rejected with
insolent demands the modest proposals of withdrawal made to him by the
commander of the little English army, and, on the 19th of September,
lost, contrary to all expectation, the lamentable battle of Poitiers.
We have seen how he was deserted before the close of the action by his
eldest son, Prince Charles, with his body of troops, and how he himself
remained with his youngest son, Prince Philip, a boy of fourteen years, a
prisoner in the hands of his victorious enemies.  "At this news," says
Froissart, "the kingdom of France was greatly troubled and excited, and
with good cause, for it was a right grievous blow and vexatious for all
sorts of folk.  The wise men of the kingdom might well predict that great
evils would come of it, for the king, their head, and all the chivalry of
the kingdom were slain or taken; the knights and squires who came back
home were on that account so hated and blamed by the commoners that they
had great difficulty in gaining admittance to the good towns; and the
king's three sons who had returned, Charles, Louis, and John, were very
young in years and experience, and there was in them such small resource
that none of the said lads liked to undertake the government of the said
kingdom."

The eldest of the three, Prince Charles, aged nineteen, who was called
the Dauphin after the cession of Dauphiny to France, nevertheless assumed
the office, in spite of his youth and his anything but glorious retreat
from Poitiers.  He took the title of lieutenant of the king, and had
hardly re-entered Paris, on the 29th of September, when he summoned, for
the 15th of October, the states-general of _Langue d'oil,_ who met, in
point of fact, on the 17th, in the great chamber of parliament.  "Never
was seen," says the report of their meeting, "an assembly so numerous, or
composed of wiser folk."  The superior clergy were there almost to a man;
the nobility had lost too many in front of Poitiers to be abundant at
Paris, but there were counted at the assembly four hundred deputies from
the good towns, amongst whom special mention is made, in the documents,
of those from Amiens, Tournay, Lille, Arras, Troyes, Auxerre, and Sens.
The total number of members at the assembly amounted to more than eight
hundred.

The session was opened by a speech from the chancellor, Peter de la
Forest, who called upon the estates to aid the dauphin with their
counsels under the serious and melancholy circumstances of the kingdom.
The three orders at first attempted to hold their deliberations each in a
separate hall; but it was not long before they felt the inconveniences
arising from their number and their separation, and they resolved to
choose from amongst each order commissioners who should examine the
questions together, and afterwards make their report and their proposals
to the general meeting of the estates.  Eighty commissioners were
accordingly elected, and set themselves to work.  The dauphin appointed
some of his officers to be present at their meetings, and to furnish them
with such information as they might require.  As early as the second day
"these officers were given to understand that the deputies would not work
whilst anybody belonging to the king's council was with them."  So the
officers withdrew; and a few days afterwards, towards the end of October,
1356, the commissioners reported the result of their conferences to each
of the three orders.  The general assembly adopted their proposals, and
had the dauphin informed that they were desirous of a private audience.
Charles repaired, with some of his councillors, to the monastery of the
Cordeliers, where the estates were holding their sittings, and there he
received their representations.  They demanded of him "that he should
deprive of their offices such of the king's councillors as they should
point out, have them arrested, and confiscate all their property.
Twenty-two men of note, the chancellor, the premier president of the
Parliament, the king's stewards, and several officers in the household of
the dauphin himself, were thus pointed out.  They were accused of having
taken part to their own profit in all the abuses for which the government
was reproached, and of having concealed from the king the true state of
things and the misery of the people.  The commissioners elected by the
estates were to take proceedings against them: if they were found guilty,
they were to be punished; and if they were innocent, they were at the
very least to forfeit their offices and their property, on account of
their bad counsels and their bad administration."

The chronicles of the time are not agreed as to these last demands.  We
have, as regards the events of this period, two contemporary witnesses,
both full of detail, intelligence, and animation in their narratives,
namely, Froissart and the continuer of William of Nangis' _Latin
Chronicle_.  Froissart is in general favorable to kings and princes; the
anonymous chronicler, on the contrary, has a somewhat passionate bias
towards the popular party.  Probably both of them are often given to
exaggeration in their assertions and impressions; but, taking into
account none but undisputed facts, it is evident that the claims of the
states-general, though they were, for the most part, legitimate enough at
bottom, by reason of the number, gravity, and frequent recurrence of
abuses, were excessive and violent, and produced the effect of complete
suspension in the regular course of government and justice.  The dauphin,
Charles, was a young man, of a naturally sound and collected mind, but
without experience, who had hitherto lived only in his father's court,
and who could not help being deeply shocked and disquieted by such
demands.  He was still more troubled when the estates demanded that the
deputies, under the title of reformers, should traverse the provinces as
a check upon the malversations of the royal officials, and that twenty-
eight delegates, chosen from amongst the three orders, four prelates,
twelve knights, and twelve burgesses, should be constantly placed near
the king's person, "with power to do and order everything in the kingdom,
just like the king himself, as well for the purpose of appointing and
removing public officers as for other matters."  It was taking away the
entire government from the crown, and putting it into the hands of the
estates.

The dauphin's surprise and suspicion were still more vivid when the
deputies spoke to him about setting at liberty the King of Navarre, who
had been imprisoned by King John, and told him that "since this deed of
violence no good had come to the king or the kingdom, because of the sin
of having imprisoned the said King of Navarre."  And yet Charles the Bad
was already as infamous as he has remained in history; he had labored to
embroil the dauphin with his royal father; and there was no plot or
intrigue, whether with the malcontents in France or with the King of
England, in which he was not, with good reason, suspected of having been
mixed up, and of being ever ready to be mixed up.  He was clearly a
dangerous enemy for the public peace, as well as for the crown, and,
for the states-general who were demanding his release, a bad associate.

[Illustration: Charles the Bad, King of Navarre, in Prison----335]

In the face of such demands and such forebodings, the dauphin did all he
could to gain time.  Before he gave an answer he must know, he said, what
subvention the states-general would be willing to grant him.  The reply
was a repetition of the promise of thirty thousand men-at-arms, together
with an enumeration of the several taxes whereby there was a hope of
providing for the expense.  But the produce of these taxes was so
uncertain, that both parties doubted the worth of the promise.  Careful
calculation went to prove that the subvention would suffice, at the very
most, for the keep of no more than eight or nine thousand men.  The
estates were urgent for a speedy compliance with their demands.  The
dauphin persisted in his policy of delay.  He was threatened with a
public and solemn session, at which all the questions should be brought
before the people, and which was fixed for the 3d of November.  Great was
the excitement in Paris; and the people showed a disposition to support
the estates at any price.  On the 2d of November, the dauphin summoned at
the Louvre a meeting of his councillors and of the principal deputies;
and there he announced that he was obliged to set out for Metz, where he
was going to follow up the negotiations entered into with the Emperor
Charles IV. and Pope Innocent VI. for the sake of restoring peace between
France and England.  He added that the deputies, on returning for a while
to their provinces, should get themselves enlightened as to the real
state of affairs, and that he would not fail to recall them so soon as he
had any important news to tell them, and any assistance to request of
them.

[Illustration: The Louvre in the Fourtheenth Century----336]

It was not without serious grounds that the dauphin attached so much
importance to gaining time.  When, in the preceding month of October, he
had summoned to Paris the states-general of _Langue d'oil_, he had
likewise convoked at Toulouse those of _Langue d'oe_, and he was informed
that the latter had not only just voted a levy of fifty thousand men-at-
arms, with an adequate subsidy, but that, in order to show their royalist
sentiments, they had decreed a sort of public mourning, to last for a
year, if King John were not released from his captivity.  The dauphin's
idea was to summon other provincial assemblies, from which he hoped for
similar manifestations.  It was said, moreover, that several deputies,
already gone from Paris, had been ill received in their towns, at
Soissons amongst others, on account of their excessive claims, and their
insulting language towards all the king's councillors.  Under such
flattering auspices the dauphin set out, according to the announcement he
had made, from Paris, on the 5th of December, 1356, to go and meet the
Emperor Charles IV. at Metz; but, at his departure, he committed exactly
the fault which was likely to do him the most harm at Paris: being in
want of money for his costly trip, he subjected the coinage to a fresh
adulteration, which took effect five days after his departure.

The leaders in Paris seized eagerly upon so legitimate a grievance for
the support of their claims.  As early as the 3d of the preceding
November, when they were apprised of the dauphin's approaching departure
for Metz, and the adjournment of their sittings, the states-general had
come to a decision that their remonstrances and demands, summed up in
twenty-one articles, should be read in general assembly, and that a
recital of the negotiations which had taken place on that subject between
the estates and the dauphin should be likewise drawn up, "in order that
all the deputies might be able to tell in their districts wherefore the
answers had not been received."  When, after the dauphin's departure, the
new debased coins were put in circulation, the people were driven to an
outbreak thereby, and the provost of tradesmen, "Stephen Marcel, hurried
to the Louvre to demand of the Count of Anjou, the dauphin's brother and
lieutenant, a withdrawal of the decree.  Having obtained no answer, he
returned the next day, escorted by a throng of the inhabitants of Paris.
At length, on the third day, the numbers assembled were so considerable
that the young prince took alarm, and suspended the execution of the
decree until his brother's return.  For the fist time Stephen Marcel had
got himself supported by an outbreak of the people; for the first time
the mob had imposed its will upon the ruling power; and from this day
forth pacific and lawful resistance was transformed into a violent
struggle."

At his re-entry into Paris, on the 19th of January, 1357, the dauphin
attempted to once more gain possession of some sort of authority.  He
issued orders to Marcel and the sheriffs to remove the stoppage they had
placed on the currency of the new coinage.  This was to found his
opposition on the worst side of his case.  "We will do nothing of the
sort," replied Marcel; and in a few moments, at the provost's orders, the
work-people left their work, and shouts of "To arms!" resounded through
the streets.  The prince's councillors were threatened with death.  The
dauphin saw the hopelessness of a struggle; for there were hardly a
handful of men left to guard the Louvre.  On the morrow, the 20th of
January, he sent for Marcel and the sheriffs into the great hall of
parliament, and giving way on almost every point, bound himself to no
longer issue new coin, to remove from his council the officers who had
been named to him, and even to imprison them until the return of his
father, who would do full justice to them.  The estates were at the same
time authorized to meet when they pleased: on all which points the
provost of tradesmen requested letters, which were granted him; "and he
demanded that the dauphin should immediately place sergeants in the
houses of those of his councillors who still happened to be in Paris, and
that proceedings should be taken without delay for making an inventory of
their goods, with a view to confiscation of them.

The estates met on the 5th of February. It was not without surprise that
they found themselves less numerous than they had hitherto been.  The
deputies from the duchy of Burgundy, from the countships of Flanders and
Alencon, and several nobles and burghers from other provinces, did not
repair to the session.  The kingdom was falling into anarchy; bands of
plunderers roved hither and thither, threatening persons and ravaging
lands; the magistrates either could not or would not exercise their
authority; disquietude and disgust were gaining possession of many honest
folks.  Marcel and his partisans, having fallen into somewhat of
disrepute and neglect, keenly felt how necessary, and also saw how easy,
it was for them to become completely masters.  They began by drawing up a
series of propositions, which they had distributed and spread abroad far
and wide in the provinces.  On the 3d of March, they held a public
meeting, at which the dauphin and his two brothers were present.  A
numerous throng filled the hall.  The Bishop of Laon, Robert Lecoeq, the
spokesman of the party, made a long and vehement statement of all the
public grievances, and declared that twenty-two of the king's officers
should be deprived forever of all offices, that all the officers of the
kingdom should be provisionally suspended, and that reformers, chosen by
the estates, and commissioned by the dauphin himself, should go all over
France, to hold inquiries as to these officers, and, according to their
deserts, either reinstate them in their offices or condemn them.  At the
same time, the estates bound themselves to raise thirty thousand men-at-
arms, whom they themselves would pay and keep; and as the produce of the
impost voted for this purpose was very uncertain, they demanded their
adjournment to the fortnight of Easter, and two sessions certain, for
which they should be free to fix the time, before the 15th of February in
the following year.  This was simply to decree the permanence of their
power.  To all these demands the dauphin offered no resistance.  In the
month of March following, a grand ordinance, drawn up in sixty-one
articles, enumerated all the grievances which had been complained of, and
prescribed the redress for them.  A second ordinance, regulating all that
appertained to the suspension of the royal officers, was likewise, as it
appears, drawn up at the same time, but has not come down to us.  At last
a grand commission was appointed, composed of thirty-six members, twelve
elected by each of the three orders.  "These thirty-six persons," says
Froissart, "were bound to often meet together at Paris, for to order the
affairs of the kingdom, and all kinds of matters were to be disposed of
by these three estates, and all prelates, all lords, and all commonalties
of the cities and good towns were bound to be obedient to what these
three estates should order."  Having their power thus secured in their
absence, the estates adjourned to the 25th of April.

The rumor of these events reached Bordeaux, where, since the defeat at
Poitiers, King John had been living as the guest of the Prince of Wales,
rather than as a prisoner of the English.  Amidst the galas and pleasures
to which he abandoned himself, he was indignant to learn that at Paris
the royal authority was ignored, and he sent three of his comrades in
captivity to notify to the Parisians that he rejected all the claims of
the estates, that he would not have payment made of the subsidy voted by
them, and that he forbade their meeting on the 25th of April following.
This strange manifesto on the part of imprisoned royalty excited in Paris
such irritation amongst the people, that the dauphin hastily sent out of
the city the king's three envoys, whose lives might have been threatened,
and declared to the thirty-six commissioners of the estates that the
subsidy should be raised, and that the general assembly should be
perfectly free to meet at the time it had appointed.

And it did meet towards the end of April, but in far fewer numbers than
had been the case hitherto, and with more and more division from day to
day.  Nearly all the nobles and ecclesiastics were withdrawing from it;
and amongst the burgesses themselves many of the more moderate spirits
were becoming alarmed at the violent proceedings of the commission of the
thirty-six delegates, who, under the direction of Stephen Marcel, were
becoming a small oligarchy, little by little usurping the place of the
great national assembly.  A cry was raised in the provinces "against the
injustice of those chief governors who were no more than ten or a dozen;"
and there was a refusal to pay the subsidy voted.  These symptoms and the
disorganization which was coming to a head throughout the whole kingdom
made the dauphin think that the moment had arrived for him to seize the
reins again.  About the middle of August, 1357, he sent for Marcel and
three sheriffs, accustomed to direct matters at Paris, and let them know
"that he intended thence-forward to govern by himself, without curators."
He at the same time restored to office some of the lately dismissed royal
officers.  The thirty-six commissioners made a show of submission; and
their most faithful ecclesiastical ally, Robert Lecocq, Bishop of Laon,
returned to his diocese.  The dauphin left Paris and went a trip into
some of the provinces, halting at the principal towns, such as Rouen and
Chartres, and everywhere, with intelligent but timid discretion, making
his presence and his will felt, not very successfully, however, as
regarded the re-establishment of some kind of order on his route in the
name of the kingship.

[Illustration: Stephen Marcel----342]

Marcel and his partisans took advantage of his absence to shore up their
tottering supremacy.  They felt how important it was for them to have a
fresh meeting of the estates, whose presence alone could restore strength
to their commissioners; but the dauphin only could legally summon them.
They, therefore, eagerly pressed him to return in person to Paris, giving
him a promise that, if he agreed to convoke there the deputies from
twenty or thirty towns, they would supply him with the money of which he
was in need, and would say no more about the dismissal of royal officers,
or about setting at liberty the king of Navarre.  The dauphin, being
still young and trustful, though he was already discreet and reserved,
fell into the snare.  He returned to Paris, and summoned thither, for the
7th of November following, the deputies from seventy towns, a sufficient
number to give their meeting a specious resemblance to the
states-general.  One circumstance ought to have caused him some
glimmering of suspicion.  At the same time that the dauphin was sending
to the deputies his letters of convocation, Marcel himself also sent to
them, as if he possessed the right, either in his own name or in that of
the thirty-six delegate-commissioners, of calling them together.  But a
still more serious matter came to open the dauphin's eyes to the danger
he had fallen into.  During the night between the 8th and 9th of
November, 1357, immediately after the re-opening of the states, Charles
the Bad, King of Navarre, was carried off by a surprise from the castle
of Arleux in Cambresis, where he had been confined; and his liberators
removed him first of all to Amiens and then to Paris itself, where the
popular party gave him a triumphant reception.  Marcel and his sheriffs
had decided upon and prepared, at a private council, this dramatic
incident, so contrary to the promises they had but lately made to the
dauphin.  Charles the Bad used his deliverance like a skilful workman;
the very day after his arrival in Paris he mounted a platform set against
the walls of St. Germain's abbey, and there, in the presence of more than
ten thousand persons, burgesses and populace, he delivered a long speech,
"seasoned with much venom," says a chronicler of the time.  After having
denounced the wrongs which he had been made to endure, he said, for
eighteen months past, he declared that the would live and die in defence
of the kingdom of France, giving it to be understood that "if he were
minded to claim the crown, he would soon show by the laws of right and
wrong that he was nearer to it than the King of England was."  He was
insinuating, eloquent, and an adept in the art of making truth subserve
the cause of falsehood.  The people were moved by his speech.  The
dauphin was obliged not only to put up with the release and the triumph
of his most dangerous enemy, but to make an outward show of
reconciliation with him, and to undertake not only to give him back the
castles confiscated after his arrest, but "to act towards him as a good
brother towards his brother."  These were the exact words made use of in
the dauphin's name, "and without having asked his pleasure about it," by
Robert Lecocq, Bishop of Laon, who himself also had returned from his
diocese to Paris at the time of the recall of the estates.

The consequences of this position were not slow to exhibit themselves.
Whilst the King of Navarre was re-entering Paris and the dauphin
submitting to the necessity of a reconciliation with him, several of the
deputies who had but lately returned to the states-general, and amongst
others nearly all those from Champagne and Burgundy, were going away
again, being unwilling either to witness the triumphal re-entry of
Charles the Bad or to share the responsibility for such acts as they
foresaw.  Before long the struggle, or rather the war, between the King
of Navarre and the dauphin broke out again; several of the nobles in
possession of the castles which were to have been restored to Charles the
Bad, and especially those of Breteuil, Pacy-sur-Eure, and Pont-Audemer,
flatly refused to give them back to him; and the dauphin was suspected,
probably not without reason, of having encouraged them in their
resistance.  Without the walls of Paris it was really war that was going
on between the two princes.  Philip of Navarre, brother of Charles the
Bad, went marching with bands of pillagers over Normandy and Anjou, and
within a few leagues of Paris, declaring that he had not taken, and did
not intend to take, any part in his brother's pacific arrangements, and
carrying fire and sword all through the country.  The peasantry from the
ravaged districts were overflowing Paris.  Stephen Marcel had no mind to
reject the support which many of them brought him; but they had to be
fed, and the treasury was empty.  The wreck of the states-general,
meeting on the 2d of January, 1358, themselves had recourse to the
expedient which they had so often and so violently reproached the king
and the dauphin with employing: they notably depreciated the coinage,
allotting a fifth of the profit to the dauphin, and retaining the other
four fifths for the defence of the kingdom.  What Marcel and his party
called the defence of the kingdom was the works of fortification round
Paris, begun in October, 1356, against the English, after the defeat of
Poitiers, and resumed in 1358 against the dauphin's party in the
neighboring provinces, as well as against the robbers that were laying
them waste.  Amidst all this military and popular excitement the dauphin
kept to the Louvre, having about him two thousand men-at-arms, whom he
had taken into his pay, he said, solely "on account of the prospect of a
war with the Navarrese."  Before he went and plunged into a civil war
outside the gates of Paris, he resolved to make an effort to win back the
Parisians themselves to his cause.  He sent a crier through the city to
bid the people assemble in the market-place, and thither he repaired on
horseback, on the 11th of January, with five or six of his most trusty
servants.  The astonished mob thronged about him, and he addressed them
in vigorous language.  He meant, he said, to live and die amongst the
people of Paris; if he was collecting his men-at-arms, it was not for the
purpose of plundering and oppressing Paris, but that he might march
against their common enemies; and if he had not done so sooner, it was
because "the folks who had taken the government gave him neither money
nor arms; but they would some day be called to strict account for it."
The dauphin was small, thin, delicate, and of insignificant appearance;
but at this juncture he displayed unexpected boldness and eloquence; the
people were deeply moved; and Marcel and his friends felt that a heavy
blow had just been dealt them.

They hastened to respond with a blow of another sort.  It was everywhere
whispered abroad that if Paris was suffering so much from civil war and
the irregularities and calamities which were the concomitants of it, the
fault lay with the dauphin's surroundings, and that his noble advisers
deterred him from measures which would save the people from their
miseries.

"Provost Marcel and the burgesses of Paris took counsel together and
decided that it would be a good thing if some of those attendants on the
regent were to be taken away from the midst of this world.  They all put
on caps, red on one side and blue on the other, which they wore as a sign
of their confederation in defence of the common weal.  This done, they
reassembled in large numbers on the 22d of February, 1358, with the
provost at their head, and marched to the palace where the duke was
lodged."  This crowd encountered on its, way, in the street called
Juiverie (Jewry), the advocate-general Regnault d'Aci, one of the
twenty-two royal officers denounced by the estates in the preceding year;
and he was massacred in a pastry-cook's shop.  Marcel, continuing his
road, arrived at the palace, and ascended, followed by a band of armed
men, to the apartments of the dauphin, "whom he requested very sharply,"
says Froissart, "to restrain so many companies from roving about on all
sides, damaging and plundering the country.  The duke replied that he
would do so willingly if he had the wherewithal to do it, but that it was
for him who received the dues belonging to the kingdom to discharge that
duty.  I know not why or how," adds Froissart, "but words were multiplied
on the part of all, and became very high."  "My lord duke," suddenly said
the provost, "do not alarm yourself; but we have somewhat to do here;"
and turning towards his fellows in the caps, he said, "Dearly beloved, do
that for the which ye are come."  Immediately the Lord de Conflans,
Marshal of Champagne, and Robert de Clermont, Marshal of Normandy, noble
and valiant gentlemen, and both at the time unarmed, were massacred so
close to the dauphin and his couch, that his robe was covered with their
blood.  The dauphin shuddered; and the rest of his officers fled.  "Take
no heed, lord duke," said Marcel; "you have nought to fear."  He handed
to the dauphin his own red and blue cap, and himself put on the
dauphin's, which was of black stuff with golden fringe.  The corpses of
the two marshals were dragged into the court-yard of the palace, where
they remained until evening without any one's daring to remove them; and
Marcel with his fellows repaired to the mansion-house, and harangued from
an open window the mob collected on the Place de Greve.  "What has been
done is for the good and the profit of the kingdom," said he; "the dead
were false and wicked traitors."  "We do own it, and will maintain it!"
cried the people who were about him.

[Illustration: The Murder of the Marshals----345]

The house from which Marcel thus addressed the people was his own
property, and was called the Pillar-house.  There he accommodated the
town-council, which had formerly held its sittings in divers parlors.

For a month after this triple murder, committed with such official
parade, Marcel reigned dictator in Paris.  He removed from the council
of thirty-six deputies such members as he could not rely upon, and
introduced his own confidants.  He cited the council, thus modified, to
express approval of the blow just struck; and the deputies, "some from
conviction and others from doubt (that is, fear), answered that they
believed that for what had been done there had been good and just cause."
The King of Navarre was recalled from Nantes to Paris, and the dauphin
was obliged to assign to him, in the king's name, "as a make-up for his
losses," ten thousand livres a year on landed property in Languedoc.