grave news received from his father, and of an interview at Metz with his uncle, the emperor Charles IV., he begged the states to adjourn till the 3rd of November 1356. This was a political coup d’état, and when the time had expired he attempted a financial coup d’état by debasing the currency. An uprising obliged him to call the states-general together again in February 1357, when they transformed themselves into a deliberative, independent and permanent assembly by means of the Grande Ordonnance.
In order to make this great French charter really effective resistance to the royal authority should have been collective, national and even popular, as in the case of the charters of 1215 and 1258 in England. But the lay and ecclesiastical feudal lords continued to show themselves The Grande Ordonnance of 1357. in France, as everywhere else except across the Straits of Dover, a cause of division and oppression. Moreover, the states were never really general; those of the Langue d’oc and the Langue d’oil sometimes acted together; but there was never a common understanding between them and always two Frances within the kingdom. Besides, they only represented the three classes who alone had any social standing at that period: the nobles, the clergy, and the burgesses of important towns. Étienne Marcel himself protested against councillors “de petit état.” Again, the states, intermittently convoked according to the king’s good pleasure, exercised neither periodical rights nor effective control, but fulfilled a duty which was soon felt as onerous. Indifference and satiety spread speedily; the bourgeoisie forsook the reformers directly they had recourse to violence (February 1358), and the Parisians became hostile when Étienne Marcel complicated his revolutionary work by intrigues with Navarre, releasing from prison the grandson of Louis X., the Headstrong, an ambitious, fine-spoken courter of popularity, covetous of the royal crown. The dauphin’s flight from Paris excited a wild outburst of monarchist loyalty and anger against the capital among the nobility and in the states-general of Compiègne. Marcel, like the dauphin, was not a man to turn back. But neither the support of the peasant insurgents—the “Jacques”—who were annihilated in the market of Meaux, nor a last but unheeded appeal to the large towns, nor yet the uncertain support of Charles the Bad, to whom Marcel in despair proposed to deliver up Paris, saved him from being put to death by the royalist party of Paris on the 31st of July 1358.
Isolated as he was, Étienne Marcel had been unable either to seize the government or to create a fresh one. In the reaction which followed his downfall royalty inherited the financial administration which the states had set up to check extravagance. The “élus” and the superintendents, instead of being delegates of the states, became royal functionaries like the baillis and the provosts; imposts, hearth-money (fouage), salt-tax (gabelle), sale-dues (droits de vente), voted for the war, were levied during the whole of Charles V.’s reign and added to his personal revenue. The opportunity of founding political liberty upon the vote and the control of taxation, and of organizing the administration of the kingdom so as to ensure that the entire military and financial resources should be always available, was gone beyond recall.
Re-establishing the royal authority in Paris was not enough; an end had to be put to the war with England and Navarre, and this was effected by the treaty of Brétigny (1360). King John ceded Poitou, Saintonge, Agenais, Périgord and Limousin to Edward III., and was offered his The treaty of Brétigny. liberty for a ransom of three million gold crowns; but, unable to pay that enormous sum, he returned to his agreeable captivity in London, where he died in 1364.
Yet through the obstinacy and selfishness of John the Good,
France, in stress of suffering, was gradually realizing herself.
More strongly than her king she felt the shame of
defeat. Local or municipal patriotism waxed among
peasants and townsfolk, and combined with hatred
Charles V.
(1364–1380).
of the English to develop national sentiment. Many
of the conquered repeated that proud, sad answer of the men
of Rochelle to the English: “We will acknowledge you with
our lips; but with our hearts, never!”
The peace of Brétigny brought no repose to the kingdom. War having become a congenial and very lucrative industry, its cessation caused want of work, with all the evils that entails. For ten years the remnants of the armies of England, Navarre and Brittany—the “Grandes The “Grandes Compagnies.” Compagnies,” as they were called—ravaged the country; although Charles V., “durement subtil et sage,” succeeded in getting rid of them, thanks to du Guesclin, one of their chiefs, who led them to any place where fighting was going on—to Brittany, Alsace, Spain. Charles also had all towns and large villages fortified; and being a man of affairs he set about undoing the effect of the treaty of Brétigny by alliances with Flanders, whose heiress he married to his brother Philip, duke of Burgundy; with Henry, king of Castile, and Ferdinand of Portugal, who possessed fine navies; and, finally, with the emperor Charles IV. Financial and military preparations were made no less seriously when the harsh administration of the Black Prince, to whom Edward III. had given Guienne in fief, provoked the nobles of Gascony to complain to Charles V. Cited before the court of Paris, the Black Prince refused to attend, and war broke out in Gascony, Poitou and Normandy, but with fresh tactics (1369). Whilst the English adhered to the system of wide circuits, under Chandos or Robert Knolles, Charles V. limited himself to defending the towns and exhausting the enemy without taking dangerous risks. Thanks to the prudent constable du Guesclin, sitting quietly at home he reconquered bit by bit what his predecessors had lost upon the battlefield, helm on head and sword in hand; and when he died in 1380, after the decease of both Edward III. and the Black Prince, the only possessions of England in a liberated but ruined France were Bayonne, Bordeaux, Brest, Cherbourg and Calais.
The death of Charles V. and dynastic revolutions in England
stopped the war for thirty-five years. Then began an era of
internal disorder and misery. The men of that
period, coarse, violent and simple-minded, with few
political ideas, loved brutal and noisy pleasures—witness
Charles VI.
(1380–1422).
the incredible festivities at the marriage of
Charles VI., and the assassinations of the constable de Clisson,
the duke of Orleans and John the Fearless. It would have
needed an energetic hand to hold these passions in check; and
Charles VI. was a gentle-natured child, twelve years of age,
who attained his majority only to fall into a second childhood.
Thence arose a question which remained without reply during
the whole of his reign. Who should have possession of the
royal person, and, consequently, of the royal power?
The king’s uncles and the Marmousets.
Should it be the uncles of the king, or his followers
Clisson and Bureau de la Rivière, whom the nobles
called in mockery the Marmousets? His uncles first
seized the government, each with a view to his own particular
interests, which were by no means those of the kingdom at
large. The duke of Anjou emptied the treasury in conquering
the kingdom of Naples, at the call of Queen Joanna of Sicily.
The duke of Berry seized upon Languedoc and the wine-tax.
The duke of Burgundy, heir through his wife to the countship
of Flanders, wanted to crush the democratic risings among the
Flemings. Each of them needed money, but Charles V., pricked
by conscience on his death-bed, forbade the levying of the
hearth-tax (1380). His brother’s attempt to re-establish it set
The revolt of the Maillotins.
Paris in revolt. The Maillotins of Paris found imitators
in other great towns; and in Auvergne and Vivarais
the Tuchins renewed the Jacquerie. Revolutionary
attempts between 1380 and 1385 to abolish all taxes
were echoed in England, Florence and Flanders. These isolated
rebellions, however, were crushed by the ever-ready coalition
of royal and feudal forces at Roosebeke (1382). Taxes and
subsidies were maintained and the hearth-money re-established.
The death of the duke of Anjou at Bari (1384) gave preponderant influence to Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, who increased the large and fruitless expenses of his Burgundian
