Page:Historyoffranc00yong.djvu/79

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v.] THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. 55 plain the Dukes of Lorraine and Bourbon, the Counts of Flanders, Nevers and Savoy, two archbishops, 80 barons, 1,200 knights, and 30,000 soldiers. Edward next besieged Calais, and during the blockade, which lasted all the winter, Philip's allies, David II. of Scotland and Charles of Blois, were made prisoners, the one at Nevil's Cross and the other at Roche Derrien. When brought to the extremity of fam.ine, the burghers of Calais accepted Edward's terms, namely, that six should come in sackcloth with ropes round their necks to die for their obstinacy : but, when they knelt before him, he yielded to the queen's prayers and spared their lives. He drove out however all the French inhabitants, though many came back, and made it an English colony, so as to keep an ever open door into France. A brief truce ensued, during which a horrid pestilence called the Black Death raged throughout Europe and swept off a third of the whole population of France. 5. Acquisition of the Dauphiny, 1349. — Joan /., Queen of Naples, the last direct descendant of Charles of Anjou, was driven to take refuge in her county of Pro- vence by Lewis the Great, King of Hungary, whose brother, her husband, Andrew, she had probably murdered. In her distress she sold Avignon to Pope Clement VI., and adopted as her heir the King's grandson, Charles, Duke of Anjon, second son of John, Duke of Normandy. This was the beginning of the second Angevin dynasty in Naples. Thus France was further mixed up with the affairs of Italy, and at the same time it made a great advance beyond the Rhone, to which the way had been opened by the annexation of Lyons. The Dauphiny or county of Viennois had been ruled by a series of counts called Dauphins, apparently from the dolphin in their coats of arms. Ihmibert, the last of these, on becoming a priest, sold the county to John on condition that it should be held by the king's eldest son, and should remain a fief of the empire. This last condition was gradually eluded ; but, as long as the kingdom lasted, the heir apparent borethe title of Daitphin of Viennois. Just as this was arranged, Philip ended his reign of war and disaster by his death in 1350. 6. John's Quarrel with Charles of Navarre, 1350. — The new King John, called Le Bon, had small abilities, a nar- row mind, hot temper, and was full of fanciful notions of honour, so that gallantry and baseness take strange turns