nsel and silly advice, have designed to impose upon
them, whereat we are quite astounded, . . . we, of our kingly majesty
and lordship, do command you to come to our city of Paris, in your own
person, and to present yourself before us in our chamber of peers, for to
hear justice touching the said complaints and grievances proposed by you
to be done to your people which claims to have resort to our court. . .
And be it as quickly as you may."

"When the Prince of Wales had read this letter," says Froissart, "he
shook his head, and looked askant at the aforesaid Frenchmen; and when he
had thought a while, he answered, 'We will go willingly, at our own time,
since the King of France doth bid us, but it shall be with our Basque on
our head, and with sixty thousand men at our back.'"

This was a declaration of war; and deeds followed at once upon words.
Edward III., after a short and fruitless attempt at an accommodation,
assumed, on the 3d of June, 1369, the title of King of France, and
ordered a levy of all his subjects between sixteen and sixty, laic or
ecclesiastical, for the defence of England, threatened by a French fleet
which was cruising in the Channel. He sent re-enforcements to the Prince
of Wales, whose brother, the Duke of Lancaster, landed with an army at
Calais; and he offered to all the adventurers with whom Europe was
teeming possession of all the fiefs they could conquer in France.
Charles V. on his side vigorously pushed forward his preparations; he had
begun them before he showed his teeth, for as early as the 19th of July,
1368, he had sent into Spain ambassadors with orders to conclude an
alliance with Henry of Transtamare against the King of England and his
son, whom he called "the Duke of Aquitaine." On the 12th of April, 1369,
he signed the treaty which, by a contract of marriage between his
brother, Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, and the Princess Marguerite
of Flanders, transferred the latter rich province to the House of France.
Lastly he summoned to Paris Du Guesclin, who since the recovery of his
freedom had been fighting at one time in Spain, and at another in the
south of France, and announced to him his intention of making him
constable. "Dear sir and noble king," said the honest and modest Breton,
"I do pray you to have me excused; I am a poor knight and petty bachelor.
The office of constable is so grand and noble that he who would well
discharge it should have had long previous