A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [177]
“We will do it if he will,” said the King, but the gaunt and weakened Captal said “he would never take such an oath if he had to die in prison.” Left to that choice, never again to know his sword, his horse, or his freedom, he succumbed to depression, wanted neither to eat nor drink, gradually sank into coma, and died after four years in prison in 1376.
Following Edward’s aborted expedition, the English made one more effort. A new army was assembled which probably numbered about 4,000 to 5,000 men despite the chroniclers’ “10,000” and “15,000.” Led by John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, without his father or elder brother, both now unfit for war, the army crossed to Calais in July 1373 with the stated purpose of marching to the relief of Aquitaine. It was the longest and strangest march of the war.
Although supposedly seeking decisive battle, in which the English usually prevailed, Lancaster did not take the direct route southward, where he would have encountered Du Guesclin’s forces on the way. Instead he took the long way around, behind Paris, in a protracted raid of pillage that led down through Champagne and Burgundy, across the central highlands of Auvergne, and eventually, after five months and almost 1,000 miles, to Aquitaine. Probably the intention of the famous, if indirect, offensive was to spread damage like Knollys, with the added purpose of distracting the French from organizing a possible invasion of England. Perhaps Lancaster simply wanted a wider opportunity to find knightly adventure and the plunder necessary to make up the pay which the state could not furnish.
Covering eight or nine miles a day in the usual three lines of march, the better to live off the country and gather loot, the army inflicted wanton damage in order to provoke, through the complaints of the inhabitants, the combat of French knights. This failed, owing to Charles’s strict prohibition and because the population was encouraged to take refuge inside fortified towns. Lancaster’s march stretched out into the cold and rains of autumn; provisions dwindled, horses starved and died, discomfort grew into hardship and hardship into privation. The Duke of Burgundy’s men, following on the army’s heels, picked off stragglers, local resistance accounted for more losses, in the south Du Guesclin laid ambushes. November was met on the wind-swept shelterless plateau of Auvergne, knights without horses plodded on foot, some discarded rusted armor, some as they entered Aquitaine were seen to beg their bread. Of the wasted army that stumbled into Bordeaux at Christmastime, half the men and almost all the horses had perished.
Enough were left to hold the old Aquitaine, now reduced to its original boundaries, but not to regain what had been lost. By 1374 the Treaty of Brétigny had been nullified in fact as well as name. Except for Calais, England was left with no more than she had held before Crécy. The English had no way of holding territory without the financial means to maintain an army abroad nor, once war had broken out, could they hold ceded regions whose population had become hostile. Nor could military superiority conquer an opponent who refused decisive battle. In August 1374 King Edward declared his readiness to conclude a truce.
For both sides the time had come. Charles V, by using his head, and Du Guesclin, by his unorthodox tactics, had combined to forge a strategy based on recognition of the possible—the direct antithesis of combat for honor, chivalry’s central principle. While contemporary chroniclers and propagandists tried to make of Du Guesclin the “Tenth Worthy” and Perfect