ine, rose in wild insurrection,
butchering their lords and firing their castles over the whole face of
France. Paris and the Jacquerie, as this peasant rising was called, were at
last crushed by treachery and the sword: and, exhausted as it was, France
still backed the Regent in rejecting a treaty of peace by which John in
1359 proposed to buy his release. By this treaty Maine, Touraine, and
Poitou in the south, Normandy, Guisnes, Ponthieu, and Calais in the west
were ceded to the English king. On its rejection Edward in 1360 poured
ravaging over the wasted land. Famine however proved its best defence. "I
could not believe," said Petrarch of this time, "that this was the same
France which I had seen so rich and flourishing. Nothing presented itself
to my eyes but a fearful solitude, an utter poverty, land uncultivated,
houses in ruins. Even the neighbourhood of Paris showed everywhere marks of
desolation and conflagration. The streets are deserted, the roads overgrown
with weeds, the whole is a vast solitude." The utter desolation forced
Edward to carry with him an immense train of provisions, and thousands of
baggage waggons with mills, ovens, forges, and fishing-boats, formed a long
train which streamed for six miles behind his army. After a fruitless
attempt upon Reims he forced the Duke of Burgundy to conclude a treaty with
him by pushing forward to Tonnerre, and then descending the Seine appeared
with his army before Paris. But the wasted country forbade a siege, and
Edward after summoning the town in vain was forced to fall back for
subsistence on the Loire. It was during this march that the Duke of
Normandy's envoys overtook him with proposals of peace. The misery of the
land had at last bent Charles to submission, and in May a treaty was
concluded at Bretigny, a small place to the eastward of Chartres. By this
treaty the English king waived his claims on the crown of France and on the
Duchy of Normandy. On the other hand, his Duchy of Aquitaine, which
included Gascony, Guienne, Poitou, and Saintonge, the Limousin and the
Angoumois, Perigord and the counties of Bigorre and Rouergue, was not only
restored but freed from its obligations as a French fief and granted in
full sovereignty with Ponthieu, Edward's heritage from the second wife of
Edward the First, as well as with Guisnes and his new conquest of Calais.

[Sidenote: Misery of England]

The Peace of Bretigny set its seal upon Edward's glory. But within Eng