ded
his army to Longjumeau, Montrouge, and Vaugirard. He tried to provoke
the dauphin to hazard a battle, by sending him a defiance; but could not
make that prudent prince change his plan of operations. Paris was safe
from the danger of an assault by its numerous garrison; from that of a
blockade by its well-supplied magazines: and as Edward himself could not
subsist his army in a country wasted by foreign and domestic enemies,
and left also empty by the precaution of the dauphin, he was obliged
to remove his quarters; and he spread his troops into the provinces of
Maine, Beausse, and the Chartraine, which were abandoned to the fury
of their devastations.[**] The only repose which France experienced was
during the festival of Easter, when the king stopped the course of his
ravages. For superstition can sometimes restrain the rage of men, which
neither justice nor humanity is able to control.

* Rymer, vol. vi. p. 161. Walsing. p. 174.

** Walsing. p. 175.

While the war was carried on in this ruinous manner, the negotiations
for peace were never interrupted: but as the king still insisted on
the full execution of the treaty which he had made with his prisoner
at London, and which was strenuously rejected by the dauphin, there
appeared no likelihood of an accommodation. The earl, now duke of
Lancaster, (for this, title was introduced into England during the
present reign,) endeavored to soften the rigor of these terms, and to
finish the war on more equal and reasonable conditions. He insisted with
Edward, that, notwithstanding his great and surprising successes, the
object of the war, if such were to be esteemed the acquisition of the
crown of France, was not become any nearer than at the commencement of
it; or rather, was set at a greater distance by those very victories and
advantages which seemed to lead to it. That his claim of succession had
not from the first procured him one partisan in the kingdom; and the
continuance of these destructive hostilities had united every Frenchman
in the most implacable animosity against him. That though intestine
faction had crept into the government of France, it was abating every
moment; and no party, even during the greatest heat of the contest,
when subjection under a foreign enemy usually appears preferable to the
dominion of fellow-citizens, had ever adopted the pretensions of the
king of England. That the king of Navarre himself, who alone was allied
with the Eng