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By Root 787 0

and at Angouleme—‘so great, that in all Christendom was none like’. (He had made a love match in 1361 with his beautiful Plantagenet cousin, Joan of Kent, who was over thirty, twice married-one husband was still alive-and penniless. An annulment had been obtained from the Pope.) While an ecstatic Chandos herald might write that at Prince Edward’s court ‘there abode all nobleness, all joy and jollity, largesse, gentleness and honour, and all his subjects and all men loved him right dearly’, there was considerable local grumbling. Too many Englishmen had followed the Prince to Aquitaine and too many were given the best jobs. The Guyennois disliked having an energetic ruler of ‘si hauteyn et de si graunt port’ on the spot instead of far away over the sea, and were irritated by administrative reforms and a vastly increased bureaucracy. For the Guyennois the new administration took away the whole charm of English rule, which had been that they were left in peace. Worst of all were the new taxes. The Prince’s stately court, his feasting and his jousting, had to be paid for and three years running (in 1364, 1365 and 1366) he imposed a ferocious fouage or hearth tax throughout his domain. When King Pedro could not pay him he demanded yet another fouage, for five years. The English Chancellor of Aquitaine, John Harewell, persuaded most of the Aquitainian lords to agree to it at an assembly at Niort, though they did so with the utmost reluctance. Chandos warned the Prince to drop it but he would not, so Sir John retired to his Norman estates. Not only in the new territories but in the heart of English Guyenne men thought of transferring their allegiance.

In 1368 some of the highest lords of Guyenne, led by the Count of Armagnac (who in any case was on bad terms with the Prince) and Armand-Amanieu of Albret, refused to allow the hearth tax to be levied on their lands. Armagnac and Albret, who were in Paris for the latter’s wedding to the French King’s sister, suddenly decided to appeal to Charles V against the Prince’s excessive taxation. To allow their appeal would be to claim sovereignty over Aquitaine, a clear violation of the Treaty of Brétigny. But the French had never formally renounced suzerainty. Charles, who possessed such a taste for the law that Edward III sneered he was no better than a lawyer, at once realized that by a shrewd use of legal processes he could undermine the entire English position in France.

King Charles had been preparing for war for a long time. He had retained and extended the harsh consumer taxes—the aide, taille and gabelle-imposed for his father’s ransom, and while he still owed nearly half of the ransom, his war treasurers were seeing that his troops were paid more regularly than hitherto. No more ransom money was sent to the English, and the income from special taxes was ten times that from the irregular war taxation which the English Parliament allowed Edward III. Over a number of years the French King issued imaginative edicts dealing with military matters, and eventually he had a permanent force—it can hardly be called a standing army—of 3,000—6,000 men-at-arms and 800 crossbowmen, paid for by the new revenues. There were also attempts to impose a primitive command structure; men-at-arms were grouped in companies of a hundred under captains, who in turn were under lieutenants and marshals. The machinery of muster and review which controlled soldiers’ pay was tightened up to stop commanders claiming money for non-existent troops. Townsmen were ordered to practise archery so that they could help in defending their own walls, while château owners were commanded to keep their fortifications in good repair, the castles being regularly inspected and their lords being given money to maintain proper garrisons. Some frontier châteaux were taken over by the King and those which were indefensible were demolished. The arsenal at the Louvre was restocked. New warships were laid down in the Clos des Galées at Rouen.

Although he never once went on campaign, Charles masterminded all military operations throughout