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Negotiations of terms for the ransom of the King and the conditions of a permanent peace treaty were obstructed by Edward’s exorbitant demands. He wanted outright cession of Guienne, Calais, and all the former Plantagenet holdings in France, plus an enormous ransom of three million écus for Jean, in return for which he would give up his claim to the French crown. Under pressure of the papal delegates, the parleys dragged on while the French commissioners twisted and turned in agony. The one solution they never considered was to leave the King unransomed and go home. For one thing, this would have meant no peace treaty, and battered France had to have peace. More fundamentally, the King was a principle of order. Since the reign of St. Louis, who had used the royal authority to eliminate private wars, impose justice, and systematize taxes, the crown had come to be equated in the public mind with greater protection and law. All the back-sliding of his successors could not soil the kingship, and Jean, its careless representative, was yearned for as if he had been St. Louis.

The French provinces, believing royal power to be their last resource for defense against the companies, did not want to see the monarchy enfeebled. In August 1357 the Dauphin was emboldened to reinstate the dismissed councillors and defiantly to inform Marcel and the Council of Thirty-six that he intended to govern alone without their interference. Made an extremist by his frustrations, Marcel accepted an ally utterly incompatible with his purpose.

Into the turmoil of November 1357 stepped Charles of Navarre out of his prison near Cambrai in Picardy. Although a plot of his partisans was credited with effecting his escape or release, behind it the hand of Marcel and the mind of Robert le Coq were at work. Charles of Navarre was to be used as an alternative King against the Valois. He entered the capital “grandly accompanied” by nobles of Picardy and Normandy, among them “Monseigneur de Coussi.” At seventeen, Enguerrand had been receiving the homage of vassals as their acknowledged lord. Probably sharing the anti-Valois sentiments of many nobles of the north, he would have been swept into the following of Charles of Navarre, although, with the remarkable political sense he was to display throughout his life, he did not stay there long.

With wonderful eloquence “seasoned by much venom,” Charles of Navarre harangued a great assembly of Parisians, mentioning without actually pressing his claim to the crown, which he said was at least better than King Edward’s. His challenge forced the Dauphin to reenter Paris and recall the Estates, and within a month, when he had assembled “2,000” men-at-arms in the fortress of the Louvre, he too took to the people. Sending couriers through the city to assemble them, he spoke on horseback before a crowd gathered at the Halles on January 11, 1358, turning sentiment at once in his favor. Marcel’s deputy, who tried to make himself heard in opposition, was drowned out in the shouting and turbulence. Intensely susceptible to the spoken word, people of the time responded to any Mark Antony and would listen for hours to the outdoor sermons of great preachers, which they regarded as a form of public entertainment.

Alarmed by the Dauphin’s success, Marcel resorted to an act of violence in the unmistakable style of Charles of Navarre, and generally believed, after the event, to have been instigated by him. The pretext was the death of a citizen named Perrin Marc, who had murdered the Dauphin’s treasurer and in turn had been forcefully taken from sanctuary in a church by the Dauphin’s Marshal and hung. Assembling 3,000 artisans and tradesmen, armed and wearing the red-and-blue hoods of the popular party, Marcel marched at their head to the royal palace. Regnaut d’Acy, one of the Dauphin’s councillors, encountered in the street, was recognized and greeted by shouts of “Death!” Before he could flee, he was struck down by so many blows that he died without uttering a sound.

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