nder of the little English army, and, on the 19th of September,
lost, contrary to all expectation, the lamentable battle of Poitiers.
We have seen how he was deserted before the close of the action by his
eldest son, Prince Charles, with his body of troops, and how he himself
remained with his youngest son, Prince Philip, a boy of fourteen years, a
prisoner in the hands of his victorious enemies. "At this news," says
Froissart, "the kingdom of France was greatly troubled and excited, and
with good cause, for it was a right grievous blow and vexatious for all
sorts of folk. The wise men of the kingdom might well predict that great
evils would come of it, for the king, their head, and all the chivalry of
the kingdom were slain or taken; the knights and squires who came back
home were on that account so hated and blamed by the commoners that they
had great difficulty in gaining admittance to the good towns; and the
king's three sons who had returned, Charles, Louis, and John, were very
young in years and experience, and there was in them such small resource
that none of the said lads liked to undertake the government of the said
kingdom."

The eldest of the three, Prince Charles, aged nineteen, who was called
the Dauphin after the cession of Dauphiny to France, nevertheless assumed
the office, in spite of his youth and his anything but glorious retreat
from Poitiers. He took the title of lieutenant of the king, and had
hardly re-entered Paris, on the 29th of September, when he summoned, for
the 15th of October, the states-general of _Langue d'oil,_ who met, in
point of fact, on the 17th, in the great chamber of parliament. "Never
was seen," says the report of their meeting, "an assembly so numerous, or
composed of wiser folk." The superior clergy were there almost to a man;
the nobility had lost too many in front of Poitiers to be abundant at
Paris, but there were counted at the assembly four hundred deputies from
the good towns, amongst whom special mention is made, in the documents,
of those from Amiens, Tournay, Lille, Arras, Troyes, Auxerre, and Sens.
The total number of members at the assembly amounted to more than eight
hundred.

The session was opened by a speech from the chancellor, Peter de la
Forest, who called upon the estates to aid the dauphin with their
counsels under the serious and melancholy circumstances of the kingdom.
The three orders at first attempted to hold their deliberations each in a
separa