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Updated: June 2, 2025
This poem has been thought by earlier commentators to allegorise an event known to have happened in 1358, by later critics another which occurred in 1364. Thus, backwards and forwards, the disputed points in Chaucer's biography and the question of his works are affected by one another.
There is a work, as yet unpublished, of M. Leopold Delisle, which is to contain a complete explanatory catalogue of all the Mandements et Actes divers de Charles V. This catalogue, which forms a pendant to a similar work performed by M. Delisle for the reign of Philip Augustus, is not yet concluded; and, nevertheless, for the first seven years only of Charles V.'s reign, from 1364 to 1371, there are to be found enumerated and described in it eight hundred and fifty-four mandements, ordonnances et actes divers de Charles V., relating to the different branches of administration, and to daily incidents of government; acts all bearing the impress of an intellect active, farsighted, and bent upon becoming acquainted with everything, and regulating everything, not according to a general system, but from actual and exact knowledge.
It contains several French and Latin anthems, ballads, &c.; and concludes with a mass, which is supposed to have been sung at the coronation of Charles V., in 1364; and which proves, at that time they were acquainted with the art of composition in four parts.
In 1364 an invasion of locusts from Africa led to a famine, and ultimately a plague which destroyed two-thirds of the population. The people, attributing their misfortunes to the intercession of the Jews with the powers below, rose up and massacred them: only five Israelites out of over two thousand are said to have escaped their blind fury.
But the new Duke held his Duchy as a fief from the English king, and the grievance of the Southerners was left untouched. Charles V. who succeeded his father John in 1364 silently prepared to reap this harvest of discontent.
On the 1st of February 1364, Hawkwood, with a thousand horse and two thousand foot, drove the Florentines through the Val di Nievole; he harried them above Vinci and chased them through Serravalle, crushed them at Castel di Montale, and scattered them in the valley of Arno. They found their city at last, as foxes find their holes, and went to earth. There Pisa halted.
Calveley, Knowles, and the Breton Oliver de Clisson were among the captains of Duke John's forces. The decisive engagement took place on September 29, 1364, on the plateau, north of Auray, which is still marked by the church of St. Michael, erected as a thank-offering by the victor. It was another Poitiers on a small scale.
The lion at the left end of the façade is also a copy, the original by Donatello being in the Bargello, close by; but the pedestal is Donatello's original. This lion is the Marzocco, the legendary guardian of the Florentine republic, and it stood here for four centuries and more, superseding one which was kissed as a sign of submission by thousands of Pisan prisoners in 1364.
King John, after returning for a brief space to France, went back into his pleasant captivity in England, leaving his country to be ruled by the Regent the Dauphin. In 1364 he died, and Charles V., "the Wise," became King in name, as he had now been for some years in fact.
However that may be, the confirming statute of 1364 was duly enacted by Parliament, and this was not in terms repealed until the year 1869, although labor leaders claim it to have been repealed by general words in the 5th Elizabeth.
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