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This, however, was of short duration, for though the domination of the Sultan of Delhi in that tract was completely destroyed, yet three years later, viz, on Friday the 24th Rabi-al-akhir A.H. 748, according to Firishtah, a date which corresponds to Friday, August 3, A.D. 1347, Ala-ud-din Bahmani was crowned sovereign of the Dakhan at Kulbarga, establishing a new dynasty which lasted for about 140 years.
In all these directions contagion found its way, though doubtless Constantinople and the harbors of Asia Minor were the chief foci of infection, whence it radiated to the most distant seaports and islands. As early as 1347 the Mediterranean shores were visited by the plague, and in January, 1348, it appeared in the south of France, the north of Italy, and also in Spain.
She even convoked at Dinan, in 1352, a general assembly of her partisans, which is counted by the Breton historians as the second holding of the states of their country. During nine years, from 1347 to 1356, the two Joans were the two heads of their parties in politics and in war.
Meanwhile, the sonnets of Petrarch had spread her fame throughout France and Italy, and attracted many to the court of Avignon, who were surprised and disappointed at the sight of her whom they had believed to be the loveliest of mortals. In 1347, during the absence of the poet from Avignon, Laura fell a victim to the plague, just twenty-one years from the day that Petrarch first met her.
This only seems established, that during the year 1347 there was great atmospheric disturbance extending over a large area of Southern Europe, and resulting in extensive failure of the harvest, and consequent distress and famine; and that in January, 1348, one of the most violent earthquakes in history wrought immense havoc in Italy, the shocks being felt in the islands of the Mediterranean, and even north of the Alps.
In January, 1347, he was back in England, having restored the reputation of his king in Gascony, and set an example of heroism soon to be emulated by his cousin, the Black Prince. Edward resolved to take the field in person in the summer of 1346.
When a special effort could only give him the one town of Calais, how could he ever conquer all France? See on this A. de la Borderie, Hist. de Brétagne, iii., 507, et seq. At the conclusion of the truce of Calais in 1347, Edward III and England were at the height of their military reputation. Perhaps the nation was in even a stronger position than the monarch.
Though between 1347 and 1355 there was, so far as forms went, an almost continuous armistice for the space of eight years, its effect was not so much to stop fighting as to limit its scale. In reality the years of nominal truce were a period of harassing warfare in Brittany, the Calais march, Gascony, and the narrow seas, which even the ravages of the Black Death did not stop.
In the worst period of the year sufficient forces to man the trenches could only be secured by wholesale charters of pardon to felonious and offending soldiers, on condition that they did not withdraw from service without the king's licence, so long as Edward himself remained beyond the seas. A parliament of magnates met in March, 1347, and granted an aid.
In July of 1347, eleven months after the siege began, the garrison, weary with long waiting, saw afar from their lookout towers the floating banners of France, and beneath them the faintly-seen forms of a mighty host. The glad news spread through the town. The king was coming with a great army at his back!
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