26. John
CHAPTER XXVI. John (1350-1364)
The next king was John, the son of Philip. He found the country and the people over which he was to reign in a very unhappy state. Many of the people had died of the plague, many others had lost all they had in the war with England; the king himself had very little money, and no regular army; and the war with Edward might begin again at any time.
John has been called the Good; but good in those days did not mean quite what it does now; "good," when used about John, meant brave, gay, courteous, fond of giving. John's great wish was to be like a knight of the old times, to have adventures, tournaments, and feasts; and he cared much more about this than about ruling his people well. He was also at times very passionate and cruel.
One of the first things he did, after he became king, was to put to death one of his officers; a count who had been a prisoner in England, and who had been sent to France, by King Edward, to try and collect money for his ransom. John seems to have had some idea that this man had made friends with the English king, and would perhaps give up to him some of his land, instead of the money he had come to find. The king had him suddenly carried off to prison from his own house, and cut off his head two days later, without giving any reason to any one. This cruel deed made all his great lords very angry, and a strong castle, which had belonged to the dead count, was given up to Edward by the soldiers who held it, for they thought the English king would be the better master of the two.
(I said that) the count who was put to death in this way (was an officer of the king's. He) was what was called a constable — a word which, in English, usually means only a policeman — but in France, in those days, it meant a person who gave the king advice on all matters that had to do with war, and who was usually sent on any specially difficult attack that had to be made against the enemy.
The king could not do without a constable, so he chose a new one, who, as we shall see, was not more fortunate than the first.
There was a man living in France at this time, who was a great enemy of the king's. He was a cousin of John's, and some people thought he ought to have been King of France instead of John's father. His name was Charles, King of Navarre. He had once put to death, very cruelly, some of his subjects, who had made a plot against him, and from that time he was called Charles the Bad. He was not, on the whole, a worse man than John the Good; but he made great trouble in France, for he could speak well, and had a pleasant manner, which made every one like him, and he used to go about through the country, and make speeches to the people, trying to stir them up against the king. Had John been wise, he would have tried to make this young man his friend, and find some useful work for him to do for the country; but instead of this he treated Charles like a child, and as if he were of no importance, thus making him more and more of an enemy.
Charles had a special dislike to the new constable, and one day, when they had had a quarrel together, told him that he would be revenged upon him, and that the constable should not escape though he were under the mantle of King John himself. A short time after this, when the constable was staying in a small village, a body of men stole in by night to the house where he was sleeping, while the King of Navarre waited outside the village with a company of knights. In the morning the party that had been in the village came out again, their leader crying; "It is done! it is done!" " What is done?" said Charles. "He is dead," was the answer. The constable had been killed in his bed.
King John was extremely angry at this murder; but he had so little power in the country that he was not able to punish the King of Navarre, and so made peace with him, promising to forgive him and be his friend for the future; but he did not keep this promise, and probably never meant to do so. Two years later, when the King of Navarre was one evening dining with the king's eldest son, with whom he had made great friends, John suddenly appeared in the room with a body of soldiers, and carried off Charles of Navarre and several of his friends who were with him to prison, where he cut off the heads of all but three of the party. Charles was one of those whose life was spared, but he was kept in prison for some months, and at first fully expected to be put to death as his friends had been. The king gave orders to his guards to torture him by telling him constantly that he was to die in a few hours' time. They sometimes woke him at night to say this, and though he probably came at last to disbelieve them, yet it was extremely disagreeable for him never to feel sure that the unpleasant threat might not at last be carried out.
Meantime the truce between Edward and John had come to an end, and the war began again. Edward did not this time come to France himself, but he sent his son Edward, known as the Black Prince, at the head of his armies, to command instead of (him)<himself>. John had, as usual with the French kings, scarcely any money, so he called together the States-General(, which I described in another chapter,) to ask whether his people would give him some. The deputies said they would, but made him promise that he would not spend it except by the advice of some of their own number whom they chose out for the purpose. The people trusted their king so little that they feared he might spend the money on his own amusements, and that they might be none the better off for having given it to him. The Black Prince, as soon as he landed in France, began to march about the midland provinces, and do great harm there, burning and destroying what came in his way. The French king led an army to stop him, and after following him for some days, they came to a place near Poitiers, where the English army stopped, and made ready to defend themselves. As had happened at Cressy, the French king had many more men than the English leader, but the difference in the second battle was greater than in the first. At Cressy there were twice as many French as English; at Poitiers six times as many.
The English army was on a hill, and the side of the hill was covered with vineyards and hedges. Through the vineyards was a path which led up the hill, and the Black Prince had hidden archers near to the path, so that they might shoot at any one who tried to reach the top. He also made what is called an ambush, that is, he hid some soldiers at the bottom of a hill, in a place where the French king would not expect to find any one, who were to sparing out suddenly, and take the enemy by surprise. Had John waited without attacking the English, and simply prevented them from coming down to find food, they would soon have had to yield to him; but instead of this, he determined to attack them on the hill.
Two messengers were sent by the Pope to try and stop the battle; but they tried in vain. The morning after their visit King John sent a body of his men to climb the steep path leading to the top of the hill. They were on horseback, and as soon as they were seen on the path, the English archers shot off their long arrows, which killed and wounded great numbers, both of men and horses. The horses, when they felt the arrows, turned and rushed down the hill in great confusion. The French soldiers below were so much frightened at seeing their friends fleeing before the English, that many of them turned and fled also. Among others the three eldest sons of the French king, of whom the eldest was about twenty, were persuaded by their officers to run away with the soldiers. They galloped off with eight hundred unwounded men, who had never been near the enemy, and did not stop till they were in perfect safety.
The army had been in three divisions; the only one which remained fighting was that where the king himself was commanding. The Black Prince rushed down the hill, followed by his small army, to attack John in front; the men in ambush came out of their hiding-place to attack him on the side, and a struggle began which lasted for some hours. King John fought bravely, like one of the old knights whom he so much admired. He held a huge battle-axe with which he attacked every enemy who came near him. His fourth son, Philip, quite a boy, stayed by his side and watched over him, calling out, "Father, look to the right: Father, look to the left," whenever he saw any one making a stroke or shot at the king. But John's courage could not prevent him from being beaten at last; his men fell round him in great numbers, and the English had gathered about him, crying out, "Yield, yield, or you are a dead man." John gave himself up to a knight who could speak French, and by him was taken, with his son Philip, to the tent of the Black Prince, where he was received with great kindness and politeness, and treated like a brave visitor rather than a prisoner. The Prince of Wales gave him the chief place at table, and stood behind his chair to fetch him anything that he might want.
The English soldiers went out on the field of battle, and gathered together all the money and valuable metal they could find, of which there was a great quantity. The next day King John was taken prisoner to Bordeaux.
The French were much distressed at the loss of their king, and very angry with all the knights and barons who had fled from the field instead of fighting for him to the last. The English had taken so many prisoners that they had not been able to guard them all, and so had sent them back to their own homes, making them promise to return at a certain day to pay their ransoms. This was a promise which no one, at that time, ever thought of breaking. The French lords went to their estates, and called upon all their serfs and vassals to collect money for their ransoms. These poor people were obliged to give up all their money, besides having their goods taken from them, their corn, their cattle, or their fruits, which were sold by their lords to make up the sum that was wanted. Many of these poor men were even tortured to make them say where they had hidden their treasures. This made them more angry than ever at the way the nobles had behaved. That they should run away instead of defending the country, as was their duty, seemed bad enough, but that they should expect other people to pay for their cowardice was enough to make even their weak and helpless vassals begin to think of resistance.
It was now settled that, as King John seemed likely to be kept a prisoner for some time, his eldest son, Charles, Duke of Normandy, should be Regent, that is, rule in his place while he was away. This young man was about twenty years old. and not very wise so it is not surprising that he had some difficulty in managing the country through the three years during which John was a prisoner. John was soon taken to England, where he was very well treated, allowed to live with the King of England as one of his friends, and altogether made as happy as a prisoner can ever be.
The young regent had two special enemies in France; one was the King of Navarre, whom John had thrown into prison, and whom Charles kept there for the first few months of his reign; and the other was a man about whom a great deal is to be read in all the histories of this time, called Etienne or Stephen Marcel. Marcel was a deputy of the States-General(, who had been what we should call a sheriff,) and was well known to all the towns-people of Paris. He had shown himself to be brave and wise, and to care for the people of Paris. "When Paris seemed to be in danger from the enemy coming close to the gates of the city, he had made every arrangement for defending the town. He had had a wall built round it, and outside the wall a trench or large ditch; on the wall were little towers in which soldiers could be placed to attack any one who tried to make his way through. Marcel had also persuaded the people of Paris to buy arms, and learn to use them, and he had prepared chains to stretch across the streets in case any horse-soldiers should come in. After all, Paris was never attacked, but the Parisians were grateful to Marcel for having made them feel safe by making all these arrangements for their defence.
The States-General met at once after the Duke of Normandy had taken the chief power in the State, and several times afterwards. They gave the regent much good advice, which he was not particularly pleased to receive from them. Marcel soon saw that the young prince would not listen to what he wished, and that if he made promises to set straight all that was going wrong in the kingdom, as far as it was in his power to do so, he made them without meaning to keep them.
The common people of France were at this time in a bad state; they had lost a great deal of what belonged to them, they had been much ill-treated, and were poor. miserable, and discontented. This was only natural after so much money had been spent by John and his father Philip upon their amusements and their wars with the English, besides all the losses of the French after the battles of Cressy and Poiters, and during the many years through which their enemies stayed in the land, burning and laying waste the country. Etienne Marcel knew of this state of things, and though he had more power than any other man in the kingdom, he could no more set it right than the young prince; but besides all these troubles, the Duke of Normandy was always doing things that the people disliked, and which were bad for the country; but yet he could not be persuaded to (leave them off)<do better>. There were many disputes between him and Marcel. Once Marcel marched at the head of a body of men to the palace where the regent lived, to call upon him to do something to defend the country against the English. The regent answered in a very unfriendly way, and Marcel made a sign to some of his friends who had followed him into the room, and who at once fell upon two of the regent's chief officers standing on each side of him, and murdered them before their master's eyes. At this the regent was so much frightened, that he promised to do anything Marcel wished, and put on a cap of red, white, and blue, the colours always worn by Marcel's friends, and which are now the colours of the French Republic. But Marcel gained no good end by this wicked and cruel act.
The prince kept his promises only for a short time, and then he went out of Paris, and seemed to be calling together his friends, and making ready to attack the town.
Marcel had tried to make friends with the King of Navarre, but he was not much more to be trusted than the regent. He also left Paris, and seemed to be making friends with the prince. Marcel invited the King of Navarre to come back to the town and make himself king there, and was going secretly one night to open the gate of the city by which Charles was to come in, when some of the regent's friends saw him, found out who he was, fell upon him, and killed him. Thus Marcel died, and the young prince came into the city the next day, and found no one left to resist him in any way.
Just before this the poor peasants, who had had to suffer so much in finding money to pay their lords' ransoms, had resolved to resist the ill-treatment, which was too much for them to bear. They rose up in a body, and marched through the country, burning houses, carrying off cattle, emptying barns and storehouses, and torturing their masters the nobles as they had been tortured themselves. These poor people were wicked because they were ignorant, and had been taught nothing good; and unkind and cruel, because no one had ever been kind to them. The peasants from different parts of France joined each other, and they were too strong to be stopped at once. But when the nobles made up an army and marched against them, the peasants could not long resist; many of them were killed in battles, and the nobles and gentlemen went in small parties through the country, behaving in much the same way as the peasants had done — burning houses, killing the people, and destroying all that came in their way.
At this time also bands of robbers went through the country, taking whatever they could find, and finding plenty of goods, either belonging to no one or belonging to people so weak as not to be able to defend them.
After King John had been for three years a prisoner in England there came news that he and King Edward had made peace together, and that John was soon to be set free and come back to his own country. The French were much pleased at this, as they thought things could not be worse, and might grow better if their own king were over them once more; but when they heard how much of France John had agreed to give up to Edward, they said it was a shameful peace, that they would not agree to it, and that John must stay a prisoner. Edward then came to France and went on with the war, making the people more wretched than ever, till at last every one agreed to a peace, by which it was settled that Edward should give up calling himself King of France, and should set John free; and that in return a large ransom should be paid, and the greater part of the west side of France should be given up to him. John was allowed to return to France, and sent two of his younger sons with some of the other great lords to be prisoners instead of him till his ransom should have been paid.
In this year the plague which had before visited France appeared again, and great numbers of the people died, especially those who had been made weak by having little and unwholesome food to eat. The only important thing that happened after John came back to France again was that the Count of Burgundy died, and John was able to add this large province to his kingdom, though it ought by rights to have belonged to the King of Navarre. Soon after this one of John's sons escaped from the court of Edward, where John had promised he should stay till the ransom had been paid. When John heard of this he resolved to go back himself to Edward's court and be his prisoner again. The French writers say that John went back because he found his own country much less pleasant than England, and thought it harder work (to be expected) to rule his people than to be the visitor of King Edward, and have hunts and tournaments and all sorts of gaiety go on in his honour; and this is very likely true. Soon after he went back to England he was taken ill and died there, and his son, who had been regent, became king in his place.
