ut utterly without scruples and with no other ambition than
to raise a good revenue and maintain themselves in authority. The most
famous of them were members of gentle but obscure houses, whose poverty
debarred them from the ordinary avenues to fame and fortune, and whose
vigour and ability made good use of their exceptional positions. Two
Cheshire kinsmen, Hugh Calveley and Robert Knowles, thus won, each for
himself, a place in history. Some of the adventurers were of obscurer
origin, some were foreigners, German, French, or Netherlandish, and
some few Breton gentlemen of Montfort's faction. Of these Crockart, the
German, and Raoul de Caours, the Breton, were the most famous.

The results of the system bore heavily on the Breton peasantry. Each
lord of a castle levied systematic blackmail on the neighbouring
parishes. These payments, called ransoms, were exacted as a condition
of protection. The governor, though severely maltreating those who
neglected to pay their ransom, did little to save his dependants from
the ravages of the partisans of Charles of Blois. Despite such
misdeeds, the war of partisans was brightened by many feats of heroism.
The friends of Charles of Blois disregarded the truce and waged war as
well as they could. Among them was already conspicuous the son of a
nobleman of the neighbourhood of Dinan, the ugly, able, restless
Bertrand du Guesclin, whose enterprise and valour won for him a great
local reputation. In 1350 Dagworth was slain. The history of the
following years is not to be found in the acts of his successor, Sir
Walter Bentley, but in the private deeds of daring of the heroes of
both sides. Conspicuous among these is the famous Battle of the Thirty,
well known from the detailed narrative of Froissart, and the stirring
verses of a contemporary French poem. This fight was fought on March
27, 1351, between thirty Breton gentlemen of the Blois faction, drawn
from the garrison of Josselin, and a less noble but even more strenuous
band of thirty English and other adventurers of the Montfort party,
from the garrison of Ploermel, seven miles to the east. Beaumanoir, the
commandant at Josselin, had been moved to indignation at the cruel
treatment of peasants who had refused to pay ransom by Robert Bembro,
the commander of Ploermel. He challenged the tyrant to combat, and
thirty heroes of each party fought out their quarrel at a spot marked
by the half-way oak, equidistant from the two garrisons.