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Updated: June 29, 2025
I saw one night at Paris, in the suburb of St. Germain des Pres, while the people were sleeping, some brigands who were abiding with their chieftains in the city, attempting to sack certain hospices: they were arrested and imprisoned in the Chatelet; but, before long, they were got off, declared innocent, and set at liberty without undergoing the least punishment a great encouragement for them and their like to go still farther. . . . When the king gave Bertrand du Guesclin the countship of Longueville, in the diocese of Rouen, which had belonged to Philip, brother of the King of Navarre, Du Guesclin promised the king that he would drive out by force of arms all the plunderers and robbers, those enemies of the kingdom; but he did nothing of the sort; nay, the Bretons even of Du Guesclin, on returning from Rouen, pillaged and stole in the villages whatever they found there garments, horses, sheep, oxen, and beasts of burden and of tillage."
Their knights and squires, lad, are every whit as good as ours, and I could pick out a score of those who ride behind Du Guesclin who would hold the lists with sharpened lances against the best men in the army of England. On the other hand, their common folk are so crushed down with gabelle, and poll-tax, and every manner of cursed tallage, that the spirit has passed right out of them.
When Rennes was besieged by the Duke of Lancaster, in 1356, Du Guesclin forced his way with a handful of men into the town, and successfully defended it till June, 1357, when the siege was raised in pursuance of the truce of Bordeaux. For this service he was rewarded with the lordship of Roche d'Airien.
The victorious Du Guesclin turned his attention to his native Brittany, where the war of Blois and Montfort still went on, for Joan of Penthièvre insisted so strongly upon her rights that the efforts of Edward and John to end the contest had been without result.
Bertrand du Guesclin, who stood among the throng of nobles around the Prince, was the first to come forward and shake Eustace by the hand, saying with a laugh, "Nay, my Lord, this is the first time the ugliest Knight in France has been called by such a name. However, young Sir, may you win and wear many another."
Du Guesclin was taken, Henry fled across the Pyrenees, and Pedro was again seated on his throne. The pay however which he had promised was delayed; and the Prince, whose army had been thinned by disease to a fifth of its numbers and whose strength never recovered from the hardships of this campaign, fell back sick and beggared to Aquitaine. He had hardly returned when his work was undone.
On April 3 Henry advanced over the little river Najarilla against the enemy. The Spanish host fought after a different fashion from that practised by both sides in the French wars. Only Du Guesclin and the small remnant of the companies which still abode in Spain dismounted. The mass of the Castilians remained on their horses.
Courage and resource were penned in by desperation and numbers, while the great yellow sheets of flame threw their lurid glare over the scene of death. "There is but space for two upon a step to give free play to our sword-arms," said Du Guesclin. "Do you stand with me, Nigel, upon the lowest. France and England will fight together this night.
Some time after, Du Guesclin having sent a request to the Prince of Wales to admit him to ransom, the prince, one day when he was in a gay humor, had him brought up, and told him that his advisers had urged him not to give him his liberty so long as the war between France and England lasted.
They were fairly matched in numbers, and as day broke both marched resolutely to the encounter, amid opposing shouts of "King Henry for Castile" and "St. George and Guyenne." It was a hard, fierce, bitter struggle that followed, in which the onset of Du Guesclin was so impetuous as for a moment to break the English line.
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