A Great and Glorious Adventure

by Gordon Corrigan

  The capture of Jean was, of course, a tremendous coup, and there was much argument about who had captured him, for, while he would have to become the Black Prince’s prisoner, his actual captor would be well rewarded. It seems that Jean, realizing that the game was up, had looked around the field to see where the Black Prince was, as it was to him that a king should surrender. Edward was not in the vicinity and it may have been a renegade French knight in the English service to whom Jean yielded. In any event, it was not until the arrival of the earl of Warwick that the unseemly argument going on around Jean was stilled, and Warwick took charge of the royal prisoner and delivered him to the prince.

  The chronicles are generally silent about the fate of the wounded at Poitiers, as indeed they are for most medieval battles. We do not know how many eventually died days or weeks later from loss of blood, infection or botched surgery, but it must have been a significant number. Military surgeons of the time were not unskilled, but they suffered from a lack of an effective counter to what they termed ‘spasm’ (probably tetanus) as a postoperative complication, a lack of sterile conditions in which to operate, and a tendency to amputate a damaged limb (with the risk of shock leading to a sudden lowering of blood pressure and death) rather than attempting to repair or splint it. There were numerous medical manuals available, describing various ways of treating wounds, the most commonly used probably being Roger of Salerno’s Practica chirurgiae, which first appeared in 1180. Well regarded in England, it was still in use as an authority in the early fifteenth century.

  There were many theories about the best way to deal with a wound caused by an arrow or a crossbow bolt – increasingly common as the Hundred Years War went on. If the offending metal had lodged in flesh, there were those who advocated pushing it on through until it exited; others recommended applying poultices to the wound to make it easier to pull out the foreign body; while others still advised doing nothing until the wound became so full of pus that the flesh was soft enough to allow the arrowhead to be extracted. Far more difficult was the removal of an arrowhead that had lodged in bone, as it had in the jaw of the young prince Henry (the future Henry V) at the Battle of Shrewsbury. In all cases, once the bolt or arrowhead had been removed, the wound was to be sealed by molten lard or boiling oil, and cauterized with a red-hot branding iron. Surgeons of the time were aware of the danger of nerve damage and local paralysis as the result of a cutting wound, and frequent massage of the affected area was encouraged. In an age before anaesthetics, having a wound treated would have been a long and often agonizing process.

  As it was, the Anglo-Gascon army camped that night in the Forest of Nouailles to the east of the field of battle. The baggage train was called forward and tents erected for the prince and his immediate retinue, where he entertained Jean, his son and the senior French prisoners to supper – the food sequestered from the French stores, as the English had none. Gentlemen may fight each other, but they do not have to hate each other, and the Black Prince assured Jean that his father, Edward III, would treat him as befitted his high-born status (although continuing to refer to him as ‘the usurper’). It was not until the next day that the English could count the French dead, many of whom had already been robbed and stripped by the locals. The bodies of around 150 of the highest born were taken away by the clergy of Poitiers and buried in the Dominican church or the Franciscan cemetery, while the rest were left where they lay, to be eventually loaded on carts and dumped in grave pits near the church.

  It was now time for Edward and his army to head back to the safety of Aquitaine, and, while the prince had inflicted a massive defeat on the French, he could not assume that he was safe from them. Poitiers contained a large garrison and was far too well fortified to fall quickly; the dauphin was still on the loose and might act as a rallying point; and the division of the duke of Orléans, though it had fled the field, had done so without casualties and was probably still somewhere in the vicinity. Given stout leadership, the French might yet block the route to Bordeaux and pluck a victory of sorts from the ashes of defeat. Speed was of the essence, but movement would be slowed in any case by the baggage train, where the booty had been hugely increased by the rich arms and robes acquired from the battle. Add to this the huge flock of prisoners, most of them on foot, and the chances of getting to Bordeaux without interference were sharply reduced. The solution was to use captured horses to carry baggage and to release all but the most important of the prisoners, having first made them promise to report to Bordeaux and pay their agreed ransoms ‘by Christmas’.

  The Black Prince’s army marched straight to Bordeaux, a distance of 125 miles as the crow flies but not as the soldier marches. They averaged around fourteen miles a day and arrived at Bordeaux on 2 October 1356. Messengers were sent to England to give the good news to the king and the people; it was immediately ordered that it should be announced from all pulpits in the kingdom and read out at market crosses. Coupled to this was more good news from Brittany, where the duke of Lancaster was supporting John de Montfort in gobbling up towns loyal to Charles of Blois, who, released from prison on parole pending payment of an enormous ransom of around £60,000 and thus unable to take up arms, could only watch as more and more of Brittany fell to the English. Eventually, Charles fled to Paris to join the dauphin in the Louvre.

  In Bordeaux, Prince Edward and his men settled down to see the winter out until the spring weather would allow safe passage for the army to return to England. Some of the French noblemen who had promised to turn up with their ransom money defaulted, but even so the money raised, along with the plunder acquired in the chevauchée, paid for the cost of the campaign many times over. The ransom for the archbishop of Sens was paid – £8,000 – and King Edward bought a batch of nobles for £66,000, an outlay he would recoup with a handsome profit to boot. In London there was jubilation, in Paris dismay that turned swiftly to anger. The French armies had been defeated, their king captured, and his brother and sons had run away. Knights who had escaped the slaughter dared not show their faces in Paris, and many could not even return home for fear of being blamed for the disgrace and physically attacked.

  Negotiations now began from Bordeaux, before Jean and his court were taken to England, but, while Jean was prepared to concede almost anything for his freedom, the Estates General, consisting of nobility, clergy and bourgeoisie, nominally headed by the dauphin and trying to govern a kingdom that was rapidly falling apart, did not regard the return of their king as their first priority. Rather, they wanted to find a way to end the war, either by raising an army big enough to expel the English, or by coming to terms with them. King Edward, too, was in no hurry to release Jean, viewing him as a useful pawn in arriving at a permanent settlement, and his secret instructions to the Prince of Wales in Bordeaux were to enter into negotiations but to stall and to agree to nothing except perhaps a temporary and short truce, which was in any case to exclude Normandy and Brittany.

  In Paris, the dauphin suspended the Estates General and attempted to raise money by a further devaluation of the coinage. When this aroused massive civil disobedience and when no help could be obtained from the Francophile Holy Roman Emperor at a conference in Metz, the dauphin’s clique had no option but to recall the Estates and to concede to their demands for a root-and-branch reform of the administration. This was to include the dismissal and imprisonment of many of the dauphin’s and his father’s advisers, the withdrawal of the new, devalued coinage, an insistence that the dauphin could only rule with the advice of a council nominated by the Estates, and a levy of new taxes to support a continuance of the war. No mention was made of raising money to release Jean. The dauphin agreed to all the demands – being without a sou in his empty treasury, he had no alternative. When the news percolated down to Bordeaux, Jean decided to take matters into his own hands and issued letters to be taken to Paris and read out at street corners repudiating the new administration and cancelling the levy. This resulted in even more chaos and a counter-repudiation f
rom the dauphin, and, when Jean entered into negotiations with the Prince of Wales, nothing could be decided except for a two-year truce to run until Easter 1359.

  In the spring, ships arrived from England to bring the army home, and on 24 May 1357 the Black Prince and his army made a triumphant entry into London to the cheers of the populace. Jean rode on a smart grey charger, while the Black Prince rode a modest pony – no doubt to make the point that, for all the French bombast and show, it could avail nothing against English skill at arms. Jean was lodged in the Palace of Savoy, built by Henry of Lancaster with the proceeds of French ransoms and near what is now the Savoy Hotel in the Strand, and began a luxurious detention while negotiations continued for his ransom. Edward III took a liking to his captive and took him hunting at Windsor, and occasionally paraded him along with that other captive king, David II of Scotland, who was now in his eleventh year in the Tower.

  In June 1357, the French deputation arrived at Westminster to attend what would be a long-drawn-out conference to decide upon terms to bring the war to an end. It was headed by Cardinals Périgord, who was regarded with great suspicion by the English, and Cappoci, an Italian who was considered to be relatively unbiased. With them was a plethora of lawyers, civil servants, advisers, royal councillors and general hangers-on, all with their own servants, who had to be accommodated and fed. Parallel to these talks were discussions with the Scots, who had finally realized the hopelessness of continuing hostility to England when their backers, the French, were in such dire straits. At a meeting in Edinburgh, they agreed to pay a ransom of £67,000 – a huge sum for an impoverished country with a small population and no raw materials – to be paid over ten years, during which time the Scots agreed not to take up arms against England and to provide hostages against their good behaviour. King David was brought up to Berwick to attend the signing in October and was then released, although he now had little authority over the quarrelling factions in his country. Meanwhile, after much discussion and argument over the agenda, a draft treaty between England and France was at last agreed in December 1357. It allowed for almost a third of French territory, including Calais and the pale around it, to be ceded to Edward III in full sovereignty and a ransom of £650,000 with £100,000 down, after which Jean would be released on parole subject to hostages being delivered. In return, Edward would give up his claim to the throne of France.

  The English parliament was summoned to meet at Westminster in February 1358 to agree the terms of the treaty. The members were in no hurry to come to a conclusion. England was now safe from invasion but there were vested interests keen to continue the war: the professional soldiers, civil servants who would administer conquered areas, owners of troop-ships hired by the government, manufacturers of arms and armour, bowyers and fletchers, and, presumably, the breeders of flocks of geese. Parliament decided that a solution to other long-standing matters could be tacked onto the treaty, particularly matters of papal authority. The pope was known to want peace between England and France, so concessions could be squeezed from him in order to get it. Specific matters were the taxation of English clergy by the pope, which meant English money going to Avignon in France, and appointments by the pope to English ecclesiastic posts, which most Englishmen felt should be a matter for them and not for some foreigner across the seas.55 (Similar grievances would eventually lead to a final break with the Roman church less than two centuries later.) An embassy to Avignon would mean sending at least one senior bishop, lawyers, civil servants, clerks and escorts and would take a very long time, while armies would continue to be paid and arms manufacturers to thrive. King Edward drew the line at this, and, while he agreed that emissaries could be sent to Avignon, they could be reduced to a couple of knights and a clerk or two and thus conclude their business promptly. At the same time, Jean, knowing that the terms of the treaty might not find universal favour in France, despatched a group of his advisers to explain the finer points to government and people.

  The difficulty for Jean was that France was effectively in a state of civil war. The Estates, trying to govern without their king, attempted to collect the increased taxes, but with the death or capture of so many magnates, normally the enforcers of good order and discipline, lawlessness spread. Demobilized soldiers and deserters, mainly English and Gascon but some Frenchmen too, formed themselves into ‘free companies’, or routiers, and roamed the countryside working for whomsoever could pay them. If no paymaster could be found, they simply appropriated a suitable castle or fortified town and set themselves up as district robber barons, levying tolls on all who moved and taxes on those who did not. The king of Navarre, who had been imprisoned by Jean for plotting against him, escaped from prison and, arriving in Paris, ‘persuaded’ the dauphin to pardon him. In Paris, the third estate, that of the bourgeoisie, was increasing in influence just as the nobility – defeated and disgraced at Poitiers – lost their authority, and their leader, Étienne Marcel, a prosperous cloth merchant, considered at one point making Charles of Navarre (who was, after all, a Capet) king of France. Navarre, who was quite happy to claim the crown when the time was ripe but was far too clever to have it given to him by acclamation of the mob, left Paris at speed. He was followed in March 1358 by the dauphin, who felt (rightly) that government had broken down to such an extent that even his life was in danger – a fact that was finally corroborated when agents of Étienne Marcel broke into the dauphin’s chambers and murdered two high-ranking officials lodging with him. The Parisians were now in control of the capital and they were against any treaty with England.

  In the French countryside, those magnates who were still in control of their estates and had to raise money either for their own ransoms or for those of their relatives, and for the eventual ransom of Jean II, began to put even more pressure on their tenants and peasants, who were already taxed almost to extinction. Finally, the worm turned. It began in the Beauvaisis – now the département of Oise – in 1358 when the peasants, exploited beyond endurance, rose up and attacked their masters with whatever weapons they could find. It appears to have been a spontaneous rising, and in savagery it presaged the French Revolution over four centuries later, but unlike the latter it did not have a corps of the middle class and educated to lead it, at least not at first. Horrific bloodshed and disruption were caused by the Jacquerie,56 mainly directed against the nobility, the clergy and any owners of property. Lynchings and burnings spread, and, as the movement expanded into Champagne and Picardy, the reports of the doings of the disaffected became more and more lurid. One tale circulating told of a lady being gang-raped and then forced to eat the roasted flesh of her husband (at least they roasted him first). In the past, there had been regular outbreaks of defiance of authority in rural France, sometimes with violence, but they had usually fizzled out in a few days with little harm done. Here, however, the peasants themselves appear to have been so shocked by the excesses of what they had done that they had no option but to keep going, even attracting the support of some townsmen and minor nobles – who no doubt thought that they could thereby preserve their own lives and property. Étienne Marcel tried to make common cause with them, which did him no good in the end. And when a deputation of the Jacquerie tried to enlist the support of Charles of Navarre, he turned his soldiers on them and slaughtered the lot.

  While the Jacquerie were neither encouraged nor supported by Edward III – peasants massacring their betters were not to be approved of, even if the betters were French – their activities served his purpose in that the uprising concentrated the minds of the French government and encouraged them to find a means of ending the war so that they could concentrate on restoring order internally. France was now in a state of complete and utter confusion, with the routiers, the Jacquerie, the Navarrese, the dauphin and the citizens of Paris all in arms and all out for what they could get. What was increasingly clear was that the Jacquerie was a threat to any sort of established order, and, when Charles of Navarre and noblemen whose castles had not been stor
med began to organize themselves, the armies of peasants could not stand against them. Although the destruction was immense – eighty castles and manors destroyed between Soissons and Paris alone32 – by mid-June the rebellion was over and retribution began, with the vengeful nobility meting out punishment every bit as unpleasant as that inflicted by the rebellious peasants and finding novel ways to execute their leaders. The result of the rising, which was seen as threatening everyone’s way of life (except, of course, that of the downtrodden peasantry), was an upsurge of loyalty to the crown in the shape of the dauphin, a trickling away of Charles of Navarre’s supporters, and second thoughts among the citizens of Paris. The latter were beginning to turn against their erstwhile leader, Étienne Marcel, who had made common cause with Charles against the dauphin and had allowed the detachments of the army of Navarre, mainly composed of English mercenaries, into the city. On 31 July, the mob rose, in the name of the dauphin, and murdered Étienne and his principal lieutenants. On 2 August, the dauphin entered Paris and Charles of Navarre withdrew his army from its encampment at Saint-Denis, looted the abbey and then marched off to Mantes to plot his next moves.

  Despite the pleadings of Jean’s advisers, the terms of the treaty agreed at the Westminster conference were not agreed by the dauphin and his government, whose confidence had been restored by the departure of Navarre and the end of the Parisians’ attempt to gain their independence. King Edward received their refusals and decided that only another military campaign would bring the French to their senses. Accordingly, more claims were attached to those already in the treaty, including a restatement of the claim to the French crown, and an army, numbering (according to the Chandos Herald) 10,000 men but more likely 6,000, evenly split between men-at-arms and archers, landed at Calais on 28 October 1358. It then advanced through Artois and Champagne, burning, looting and levelling in the usual manner, as far as Rheims. One of the men-at-arms was the poet Geoffrey Chaucer, whose experiences led him to write later: ‘There is ful many a man that crieth “Werre! Werre!” that wot ful litel what werre amounteth.’57 The army stayed at Rheims from December 1358 until January 1359, in appalling winter conditions, and, having failed to force a surrender of that heavily fortified city, moved off to Paris. In accordance with the now standard English military practice, King Edward took up a defensive position and tried very hard to persuade the dauphin to come out of the city and attack him. He even sent Sir Walter Manny up to the walls to shout insults at the craven French, some of whom were beginning to learn of the inadvisability of attacking an English army in a position of their choosing and wisely resisted the offer. The only small crumb of comfort for the French at this time was a raid on Winchelsea in March 1360, when a few French ships hove to offshore and landed men who burned the town, stayed there for one night and left again. The English had grown complacent; no such raid had happened in twenty years and the infliction on them of the sort of terror they had been imposing on the French for many years caused short-lived panic and long-lived indignation.