A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [127]
Yielding to Heaven’s warning and Lancaster’s counsel, Edward appointed commissioners to treat with the French on revised peace terms. They met at the little village of Brétigny about a league’s distance from Chartres, where the twenty years’ war was at last brought to an end-as it then seemed.
Signed May 8, 1360, the Treaty of Brétigny covered a maze of legal and territorial details in 39 articles, five letters of confirmation, and multiple rhetoric as eternal as lawyers. Basically it was a return to the original settlement of 1358. King Jean’s ransom was put back to 3 million gold écus and Edward’s excess territorial demands were abandoned, to that extent marking his last campaign as a failure and a waste. But the basic cession of Guienne and Calais to the King of England free of homage was confirmed, plus the transfer of other territories, towns, ports, and castles between the Loire and the Pyrenees and in the region of Calais, representing in all about a third of France, the largest gain ever recorded in western Europe up to that time. Edward renounced the crown of France and all territorial claims not granted in the treaty.
To ensure fulfillment, the earlier provision for forty hostages representing the greatest in the realm was renewed, again including Enguerrand de Coucy. As lord of the greatest stronghold in northern France and a center of resistance to the English, he was deliberately selected in the belief that the peace would be better kept if such men were hostages.
The group was headed by the four “Fleurs-de-Lys” or royal princes—namely, the King’s two sons, Louis and Jean (future Ducs d’Anjou and de Berry); his brother, the Duc d’Orléans; and the Dauphin’s brother-in-law, Louis II, Duc de Bourbon. The Counts d’Artois, d’Eu, de Longueville, d’Alençon, de Blois, de St. Pol, d’Harcourt, de Grandpré, de Braisne, and other grands seigneurs and notable fighters including Matthieu de Roye, Coucy’s former guardian, made up the list. King Jean was to be returned as far as Calais, where he would remain until a first payment of 600,000 écus was made on his ransom and a preliminary transfer of territories had taken place. He would then be liberated with ten of his fellow prisoners from Poitiers and replaced by forty hostages of the Third Estate—the real source of money—four from Paris and two from each of eighteen other towns. Thereafter, sovereignty of towns and castles was to be transferred, and the remainder of the ransom paid, 400,000 at a time, in six installments at six-month intervals, with one fifth of the hostages released upon each delivery.
The Treaty of Brétigny was “too lightly given to the great grief and prejudice of the kingdom of France” in the judgment of the anonymous chronicler of the Quatre Valois, of whom nothing is known except that he was a citizen of Rouen. Fortresses and good towns were given up, he wrote, that “could not have easily been conquered,” which was true enough, but the treaty was excused on the ground that it was necessary to deliver the King.
Delivering France from the companies was even more urgent. In an appendix to the treaty, Edward forbade on pain of banishment any further acts against the peace by English men of war, but there was no firm intent behind the provision and it brought France no surcease. In fact the Treaty of Brétigny opened the period of the companies’ greatest flourishing, as a swarm of newly discharged soldiers in groups labeled the Tard-Venus (Late-Comers)