t was
a moment in which a new life might have begun for France; in vain did the
noble order clamour for war and taxes,--they to do the war, with what
skill and success all men now knew, and the others to pay the taxes.
Clergy, however, and burghers resisted. The Estates parted, leaving what
power there was still in France in the hands of Etienne Marcel. He
strove in vain to reconcile Charles the Dauphin with Charles of Navarre,
who stood forward as a champion of the towns. Very reluctantly did
Marcel entrust his fortunes to such hands. With help of Lecocq, Bishop
of Laon, he called the Estates again together, and endeavoured to lay
down sound principles of government, which Charles the Dauphin was
compelled to accept. Paris, however, stood alone, and even there all
were not agreed. Marcel and Bishop Lecocq, seeing the critical state of
things, obtained the release of Charles of Navarre, then a prisoner. The
result was that ere long the Dauphin-regent was at open war with Navarre
and with Paris. The outbreak of the miserable peasantry, the Jacquerie,
who fought partly for revenge against the nobles, partly to help Paris,
darkened the time; they were repressed with savage bloodshed, and in 1358
the Dauphin's party in Paris assassinated the only great man France had
seen for long. With Etienne Marcel's death all hope of a constitutional
life died out from France; the Dauphin entered Paris and set his foot on
the conquered liberties of his country. Paris had stood almost alone;
civic strength is wanting in France; the towns but feebly supported
Marcel; they compelled the movement to lose its popular and general
character, and to become a first attempt to govern France from Paris
alone. After some insincere negotiations, and a fear of desultory
warfare, in which Edward III. traversed France without meeting with a
single foe to fight, peace was at last agreed to, at Bretigny, in May,
1360. By this act Edward III. renounced the French throne and gave up
all he claimed or held north of the Loire, while he was secured in the
lordship of the south and west, as well as that part of Northern Picardy
which included Calais, Guines, and Ponthieu. The treaty also fixed the
ransom to be paid by King John.

France was left smaller than she had been under Philip Augustus, yet she
received this treaty with infinite thankfulness; worn out with war and
weakness, any diminution of territory seemed better to her than a
continuance