crimes alone rendered eminent, and
their number dangerous.

On the conclusion of the treaty of Bretigni, the many military
adventurers who had followed the standard of Edward being dispersed into
the several provinces, and possessed of strongholds, refused to lay
down their arms, or relinquish a course of life to which they were now
accustomed, and by which alone they could gain a subsistence.[**] They
associated themselves with the banditti, who were already inured to the
habits of rapine and violence; and under the name of the "companies"
and "companions," became a terror to all the peaceable inhabitants.
Some English and Gascon gentlemen of character, particularly Sir Matthew
Gournay, Sir Hugh Calverly, the chevalier Verte, and others, were not
ashamed to take the command of these ruffians, whose numbers amounted on
the whole to near forty thousand, and who bore the appearance of regular
armies, rather than bands of robbers. These leaders fought pitched
battles with the troops of France, and gained victories; in one of
which Jaques de Bourbon, a prince of the blood, was slain:[***] and
they proceeded to such a height, that they wanted little but regular
establishments to become princes, and thereby sanctify, by the maxims of
the world, their infamous profession. The greater spoil they committed
on the country, the more easy they found it to recruit their number: all
those who were reduced to misery and despair, flocked to their standard:
the evil was every day increasing; and though the pope declared them
excommunicated, these military plunderers, however deeply affected
with the sentence, to which they paid a much greater regard than to any
principles of morality, could not be induced by it to betake themselves
to peaceable or lawful professions.

* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 227, 228, etc. Walsing, p. 180.

** Froissard, liv. i. chap. 214.

*** Froissard, liv. i. chap, 214, 215.

{1366.} As Charles was not able by power to redress so enormous a
grievance, he was led by necessity, and by the turn of his character,
to correct it by policy, and to contrive some method of discharging into
foreign countries this dangerous and intestine evil.

Peter, king of Castile, stigmatized by his contemporaries and by
posterity with the epithet of Cruel, had filled with blood and murder
his kingdom and his own family; and having incurred the universal hatred
of his subjects, he kept from present terror alone, an