Paris, returned to the immediate
neighbourhood of the city, and Marcel found himself driven to avowed
co-operation with the dauphin's enemies, the English and the Navarrese.
Charles had been compelled in March to take the title of regent to
prevent the possibility of further intervention from King John. In
defiance of a recent ordinance prohibiting provincial assemblies, he
presided over the estates of Picardy and Artois, and then over those of
Champagne. The states-general of 1358 were summoned to Compiegne instead
of Paris, and granted a large aid. The condition of northern France was
rendered more desperate by the outbreak (May-June 1358) of the peasant
revolt known as the Jacquerie, which was repressed with a barbarity far
exceeding the excesses of the rebels. Within the walls of Paris Jean
Maillart had formed a royalist party; Marcel was assassinated (31st July
1358), and the dauphin entered Paris in the following month. A reaction
in Charles's favour had set in, and from the estates of 1359 he regained
the authority he had lost. It was with their full concurrence that he
restored their honours to the officials who had been dismissed by the
estates of 1356 and 1357. They supported him in repudiating the treaty
of London (1359), which King John had signed in anxiety for his personal
freedom, and voted money unconditionally for the continuation of the
war. From this time the estates were only once convoked by Charles, who
contented himself thenceforward by appeals to the assembly of notables
or to the provincial bodies. Charles of Navarre was now at open war with
the regent; Edward III. landed at Calais in October; and a great part of
the country was exposed to double depredations from the English and the
Navarrese troops. In the scarcity of money Charles had recourse to the
debasement of the coinage, which suffered no less than twenty-two
variations in the two years before the treaty of Bretigny. This
disastrous financial expedient was made good later, the coinage being
established on a firm basis during the last sixteen years of Charles's
reign in accordance with the principles of Nicolas Oresme. On the
conclusion of peace King John was restored to France, but, being unable
to raise his ransom, he returned in 1364 to England, where he died in
April, leaving the crown to Charles, who was crowned at Reims on the
19th of May.

The new king found an able servant in Bertrand du Guesclin, who won a
victory over the Navar