ot halt till he arrived
before Rheims, which he was in hopes of surprising, and where, it is
said, he purposed to have himself, without delay, crowned King of France.
But he found the place so well provided, and the population so determined
to make a good defence, that he raised the siege and moved on Chalons,
where the same disappointment awaited him. Passing from Champagne to
Burgundy, he then commenced the same course of scouring and ravaging; but
the Burgundians entered into negotiations with him, and by a treaty
concluded on the 10th of March, 1360, and signed by Joan of Auvergne,
Queen of France, second wife of King John, and guardian of the young Duke
of Burgundy, Philip de Rouvre, they obtained, at the cost of two hundred
thousand golden sheep (moutons), an agreement that for three years Edward
and his army "would not go scouring and burning" in Burgundy, as they
were doing in the other parts of France. Such was the powerlessness, or
rather absence, of all national government, that a province made a treaty
all alone, and on its own account, without causing the regent to show any
surprise, or to dream of making any complaint.

As a make-weight, at this same time, another province, Picardy, aided by
many Normans and Flemings, its neighbors, "nobles, burgesses, and
common-folk," was sending to sea an expedition which was going to try,
with God's help, to deliver King John from his prison in England, and
bring him back in triumph to his kingdom." "Thus," says the chronicler,
"they who, God-forsaken or through their own faults, could not defend
themselves on the soil of their fathers, were going abroad to seek their
fortune and their renown, to return home covered with honor and boasting
of divine succor! The Picard expedition landed in England on the 14th of
March, 1360; it did not deliver King John, but it took and gave over to
flames and pillage for two days the town of Winchelsea, after which it
put to sea again, and returned to its hearths." (_The Continuer of
William of Nangis,_ t. ii. p. 298.)

Edward III., weary of thus roaming with his army over France without
obtaining any decisive result, and without even managing to get into his
hands any one "of the good towns which he had promised himself," says
Froissart, "that he would tan and hide in such sort that they would be
glad to come to some accord with him," resolved to direct his efforts
against the capital of the kingdom, where the dauphin kept himse