CHAP. XII. Castille, the Black Prince offering himself and his exchequer as guarantees. The alliance of the King of Navarre was then secured at a certain price. Such of the companies and their chiefs as were attached to England were recalled. At first the Prince of Wales demanded of the Gascon lords all the troops they could furnish. But though he melted his plate and received a large sum from England, he found himself unable to meet all the expenses of the expedition. He therefore begged the Sieur d'Albret, who had engaged to furnish a thousand lances, to bring no more than two hundred. At this the Gascon lord was wroth, and threatened not to come at all. Froissart relates this as the cause of the House of Albret subsequently turning against the English, but D'Albret had already served against the English, and had fought against Chandos in the battle of Auray. There were fierce jealousies, it was evident, between English and Gascon; and the natural preference and confidence shown by the Prince of Wales to the former, aggravated the jealousy of the latter, and caused them already to look towards the King of France. In February, 1367, the Black Prince mustered 22,000 men at St. Jean Pied de Port, 17,000 of whom were heavily armed, and about 5000 Welsh and English archers. The Gascons accompanied him under Armagnac and D'Albret, and some Bretons under De Clisson. Crossing the pass of Roncesvaux, which the King of Navarre opened to them, Edward reached Pampeluna, with great difficulty obliging his men to respect the neutral or friendly territory through which they passed. The King of Navarre, however, managed to escape from his compromising position as an ally, being captured, with his own connivance, by the French. From Pampeluna the Prince advanced to the Ebro, at Logrogno, whilst Don Henry assembled his forces at San Domingo. These were considerable, 70,000, XII. according to the poetic chronicle of Du Guesclin. This CHAP. chieftain had been to the court of the Duke of Anjou in Languedoc, and of the King of France, as soon as he learned the Prince of Wales' designs, and had brought a reinforcement of 4000 French knights. Besides these and his Spanish men-at-arms, Henry of Castille had 20,000 light-armed infantry and 40,000 soldiers of his towns, chiefly those of Seville, Toledo, and Burgos. It was, indeed, one symptom of the hopelessness of Don Pedro's final success that the townsfolk were, to a man, against him, whilst he is represented as especially vowing vengeance against them. Notwithstanding his 70,000 soldiers, Du Guesclin and Maréchal d'Andreghen advised the Castilian prince not to fight a battle with the Prince of Wales, whose troops were irresistible in such encounters, but to confine his efforts to holding the mountain passes and cutting off the supplies of the enemy. Henry was too chivalrous to adopt such tactics at the head of forces triple those of his antagonist. He even sent a regular challenge to the Black Prince, to appoint a day and place for the battle, which Edward expressed himself most willing to assign. The encounter took place on the 3rd of April, between the towns of Navarrete and Najfra, and much nearer to the latter, although it is generally called the battle of Navarrete, from Froissart, who depicts it as fought in its immediate vicinity. The first division of the army of Don Henry consisted of his foreign auxiliaries, the French, who formed his real strength. These, commanded by Du Guesclin; were attacked by the English, under John Chandos and the Duke of Lancaster, the contest being long, fierce, and undecided. Chandos was thrown down in the thick of the fight, a heavy Spaniard, Martin Ferrand, falling on him; but whilst down he contrived to poignard his adversary, and rose again into the action. The Black Prince XII. CHAP. himself led the attack against the enemy's centre, commanded by Don Tello, Henry's brother, and consisting chiefly of Spaniards. These, not able to bear the shock, took to flight; and the English prince, dividing his force, sent a part to take the division of Du Guesclin in flank, whilst with the rest he confronted Don Henry and his town militia. These made use of slings, whilst the English archers poured in arrows much more thick and deadly. The tactics of the English appear, from Cuvelier, to have been first to attack on foot, and then, when the enemy were somewhat in disorder, to mount their heavy-armed horse and drive in amongst them.* Henry of Trastamare led his men three times to the charge, but was unable to withstand the weight and valour of his antagonists. The Spaniards being put to the rout, the English closed around the French division, of which all were either slain or made prisoners. One of the orders of the Black Prince before the battle was, that no one should kill Du Guesclin; and accordingly that gallant chief once more surrendered himself to John Chandos, the Maréchal d'Andreghen being taken with him. Notwithstanding the great number of armed knights engaged, not more than 570 were found dead on the field, whilst of the infantry there were 7500. Don Henry escaped, to the great disappointment of his brother Pedro, who proposed taking vengeance by the slaughter of his prisoners, till he was stopped by the Prince of Wales. Thus, with ten years' interval between each, this great and fortunate captain won three of the greatest battles in European "Le banière au Castal fièrement s'aprocha, Pour percer la bataille, quand temps il en sera." Cuvelier, Chronique de Du Guesclin. annals: Crecy, in 1346; Poitiers, in 1356; and Navarrete, or Najfra, in 1367. Notwithstanding the desire of the English king, that the Peace of Bretigny should prove durable, and the reluctance of the French monarch to come to an open breach with Edward, the state of war, we have seen, remained uninterrupted. The struggle in Brittany first, in Castille subsequently, was but a continuance of the antagonism, if not between France and England, at least between the partisans of the two countries. And even in the intervals of these wars, the mercenary bands exercised ravages in the name and under the banner of England, of which country the greater number of the chiefs were natives, and persuaded the French people and gentry that such acts of hostility were prepared and abetted by the English court. Charles complained to Edward, who first endeavoured to put a stop to the ravages of the bands by written orders. When these were despised, he offered to march against them, and put them down; but the mere offer so alarmed Charles the Fifth, that he hastened to deprecate it; and this manifest token of mistrust annoyed Edward so much, that he declared he would not again interfere, though France were plundered from one end to the other. But the true causes of the want of solidity in the treaty of Bretigny was, that it ran counter to the interests, the pride, and the wishes of the inhabitants of the ceded provinces. It is always a vain attempt to hold the littoral of a great country, including the mouths of its principal rivers, whilst the course of those rivers and the rich provinces of the interior remain in the hands of a different and, of course, a hostile government. For the English to hold Bordeaux and La Rochelle, and the coast of France from the Pyrenees to the Loire, and from the Somme to Flanders, thus to cut off the French provinces and people of the interior from their natural communication with the country's seaboard and with CHAP. XII. XII. CHAP. the ocean, the ocean,was unnatural and impossible. Not only the inland provinces suffered from it, but the maritime districts as well as the seaports rebelled. There was not only community of interests between the maritime and central provinces of France, but there was now community of tongue and of pride. The men of Poitiers, Angoulême and Abbeville, were as much inspired by the feeling of French nationality as those of Paris or Orleans. To subject these to an English prince, and to his English commanders, officers, or courts of law, was an utter impossibility. The great victories of Edward and of the Black Prince violently separated the west from the centre of France, and compelled the conclusion of the treaty of Bretigny; but the people, far more than the sovereign, were certain to break such a treaty at the first opportunity. Neither was the wisdom nor equity of the English princes such as to compensate to the French for being thus rudely severed from their compatriots. The Black Prince is certainly one of the noblest characters in history. England has not done justice to the commander who won three of the greatest victories in European annals, with skill and sagacity as well as courage. Whilst the French have hymned and, within their own circle, immortalised Du Guesclin, England has not bestowed an epitaph upon the Black Prince, or upon Chandos, more than once the victor of Du Guesclin, and at least his equal. The English prince, though one of the bravest and noblest personifications of chivalry, was but a bad politician. He was expensive, reckless, ready to engage in war more for love of adventure than reasons of policy. As lord of the south of France, he might perhaps with success have introduced English institutions, might have summoned to Bordeaux, not only the Gascon nobles, in order to consult them, and require their aid in war, but he might have called the delegates of the good towns, hearkened to them, and en |