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By Root 815 0

could get, and violated and defiled women, old and young, without pity, and slew men, women and children without mercy’. Captives were tortured as a matter of routine, in the hope that they might reveal hoards of treasure, or even just grain. The routiers’ lives were as uncertain as they were violent ; the Archpriest amassed a fortune but was lynched by his own troops, while a Gascon captain, Seguin de Badefol, accustomed to returning to Guyenne ‘with great pillage and treasure’, was poisoned by the King of Navarre for foolishly asking for arrears of pay. English captains seem to have been luckier though they were quite as rapacious, with a taste for monasteries with good cellars ; Sir John Harleston is said to have given a party to his routiers at which they drank out of a hundred chalices looted from the churches of Champagne. Significantly the French called all men of the Free Companies English, whatever their origin—Philippe de Mézières said that such Englishmen were the scourge of God.

Routiers were much in evidence after Brétigny, ‘Englishmen, Gascons and Almains, who said they must needs live’ and refused to evacuate the fortresses from which they levied their protection rackets, moving on and seizing new castles when an area had been milked dry. They were simply practising those English inventions, the chevauchée and the pâtis. The companies became still more dangerous when they formed themselves into bigger units—the Grand Companies, in which they were grouped by nationality in routes. In 1361 I a Grand Company rode down the Rhône valley to Avignon and more or less held the Pope to ransom, while another peculiarly vicious band, the Tard-Venus or ‘Late-comers’ terrorized Lyons. In 1363, at Brignais, the Archpriest defeated a large army under the Duke of Bourbon, who died of his wounds.

Charles had neither the troops nor the money to exterminate these pests. Time and again local authorities had to buy them off. The King did at least try and persuade them to seek their fortunes elsewhere. He employed an obscure little Breton hedge-squire, the Sieur Bertrand du Guesclin, who had himself ridden with the routiers, to talk them into going on Crusade to help the Hungarians who were threatened by the Turks, but the plan failed. A golden opportunity came in 1365 when the Castilian pretender, Henry of Trastámara, asked Charles for help against his half-brother King Pedro the Cruel. A delighted Charles sent du Guesclin over the Pyrenees with every routier he could find. They met with gratifying success, establishing Henry on the throne of Castile, but two years later he was defeated at Nájera by the Black Prince and the routiers poured back into France.

Pedro the Cruel had sought the help of the Prince of Aquitaine as a fellow Biscayan ruler, offering lavish payment and the province of Guipuzcoa. The Prince responded enthusiastically, leading an army of English, Guyennois, Navarrese, exiled Castilians and ‘rutters’—the contemporary English term for routiers-down to the Ebro where on 2April 1367 he won his crushing victory at Najera—‘a marvellous dangerous battle and many a man slain and sore hurt’—and restored Pedro to his throne. It was more than just a chivalrous adventure: a friendly Castile would not allow France to use Castilian galleys against England. Unfortunately, true to his knight-errant’s code, the Prince refused to hand over to Pedro the key men of the Trastámara faction whom he had captured, and in 1369 Pedro was again overthrown and killed by his half-brother, who understandably was no friend to the English. Worst of all, Pedro had been unable to pay the Black Prince the 600,000 florins he had promised him and on which the latter was counting to pay for the campaign ; his principality would now have to foot the bill. (Prince Edward’s sole tangible gain was a great ‘ruby’—actually a garnet-once the property of the Sultan of Granada and still a famous English Crown Jewel.)

From the beginning the Black Prince’s reign in Aquitaine had not been altogether happy. He and his Princess held great state at Bordeaux