ss descend from the castle, and kiss my lord Walter de Manny and
his comrades, one after another, two or three times, might well have said
that it was a gallant dame."

All the while that the Count of Montfort was a prisoner in the tower of
the Louvre, the countess his wife strove for his cause with the same
indefatigable energy. He escaped in 1345, crossed over to England, swore
fealty and homage to Edward III. for the duchy of Brittany, and
immediately returned to take in hand, himself, his own cause. But in the
very year of his escape, on the 26th of September, 1345, he died at the
castle of Hennebon, leaving once more his wife, with a young child, alone
at the head of his party and having in charge the future of his house.
The Countess Joan maintained the rights and interests of her son as she
had maintained those of her husband. For nineteen years, she, with the
help of England, struggled against Charles of Blois, the head of a party
growing more and more powerful, and protected by France. Fortune shifted
her favors and her asperities from one camp to the other. Charles of
Blois had at first pretty considerable success; but on the 18th of June,
1347, in a battle in which he personally displayed a brilliant courage,
he was in his turn made prisoner, carried to England, and immured in the
Tower of London. There he remained nine years. But he too had a valiant
and indomitable wife, Joan of Penthievre, the Cripple. She did for her
husband all that Joan of Montfort was doing for hers. All the time that
he was a prisoner in the Tower of London, she was the soul and the head
of his party, in the open country as well as in the towns, turning to
profitable account the inclinations of the Breton population, whom the
presence and the ravages of the English had turned against John of
Montfort and his cause. She even convoked at Dinan, in 1352, a general
assembly of her partisans, which is counted by the Breton historians as
the second holding of the states of their country. During nine years,
from 1347 to 1356, the two Joans were the two heads of their parties in
politics and in war. Charles of Blois at last obtained his liberty from
Edward III. on hard conditions, and returned to Brittany to take up the
conduct of his own affairs. The struggle between the two claimants still
lasted eight years, with vicissitudes ending in nothing definite. In
1363 Charles of Blois and young John of Montfort, weary of their
fruitl