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By Root 1583 0

in matter-of-fact description to the Bishop of Winchester, “we burned Plaisance and other fine towns and all the lands around.” After loading loot into the baggage wagons, rounding up cattle, slaughtering pigs and chickens, the company proceeded to the business of laying waste: burning granaries and mills, barns and haystacks, smashing wine vats, cutting down vines and fruit trees, wrecking bridges, and moving on. Bypassing Toulouse, they stormed and burned Mont Giscar, where many men, women, and children hitherto ignorant of war were maltreated and slain. The raiding party plundered Carcassonne for three days without attacking the citadel, “and the whole of the third day we remained for burning of the said city.” The process was repeated at Narbonne. Strangely, the French offered no organized resistance, despite the presence of Marshal Jean de Clermont alongside the Count of Armagnac, the King’s lieutenant in Languedoc. Beyond bringing people inside the city walls where possible, Armagnac failed to come out against the English except for an inconclusive skirmish on their way back.

His failure was probably owed to fear of a pounce at his back by his opulent neighbor and mortal enemy, Gaston, Count of Foix. The autonomies and rivalries of the great southern lords led to as unquiet relations with the King as with each other. Called “Gaston Phoebus” for his beauty and red-gold hair, Foix had ignored the summons of Philip VI for defense of the realm in the year of Crécy. He subsequently served as Lieutenant of Languedoc, but on becoming involved in a feud with King Jean had been imprisoned in Paris for eighteen months. Back in his domain in 1355, he entered into a deal of some kind with the Black Prince which spared his lands during the raid while he remained neutral. The virtual autonomy of such great lords drained away much of the strength of France.

The Prince’s company returned to winter quarters at Bordeaux loaded down with carpets, draperies, jewels, and other spoils if not with glory. Where was prowess, where was valor, where the skills and feats of combat that were the warrior’s pride? Robbing and slaying unarmed civilians called for no courage or strength of arms and hardly for the knightly virtues of the Round Table and the Garter. The Prince himself; his principal Gascon ally, the Captal* de Buch; his closest companion and adviser, Sir John Chandos; the Earls of Warwick and Salisbury, and at least three others of the company were charter members of the Order of the Garter, supposedly exemplars of magnanimity. Whether, when they lay down to sleep after a day’s carnage, they felt any discrepancy between the ideal and the practice, no one knows. They left no such indication. To signify his right to punish, the Prince twice rejected a good price offered by towns to buy immunity from sack. His letters express only a sense of satisfied accomplishment. His raid had enriched his company, reduced French revenues, and proved to any wavering Gascons that service under his banner was rewarding. Yet even Froissart, the uncritical celebrator of knighthood, was moved to write, “It was an occasion for pity.…” As the war dragged on, the habituating of armed men to cruelty and destruction as accepted practice poisoned the 14th century.

Held up by contrary winds and by Charles of Navarre’s sudden defection, the English force destined for Normandy did not sail until the end of October, already late for a campaign in the north. Its commander, Henry, Duke of Lancaster, called the “Father of Soldiers,” was England’s most distinguished warrior, who had not missed a battle in his 45 years. He was a veteran of the Scottish wars, of Sluys, of Calais and all the campaigns in France, and when his country was quiescent he rode forth in knightly tradition to carry his sword elsewhere. He had joined the King of Castile in a crusade against the Moors of Algeciras and journeyed to Prussia to join the Teutonic Knights in one of their annual “crusades” to extend Christianity over the lands of Lithuanian heathen.

Inheritor of enormous lands and