me, having prayed King Charles and his barons to dine with me, if you do treat me thus?  It will be said that I betrayed them.”  “Hold your peace, Charles,” answered his father:  “you know not all I know.”  He gave orders for the instant removal of the King of Navarre, and afterwards of the Count d’Harcourt and three others of those present under arrest.  “Rid us of these men,” said he to the captain of the Ribalds, forming the soldiers of his guard; and the four prisoners were actually beheaded in the king’s presence outside Rouen, in a field called the Field of Pardon.  John was with great difficulty prevailed upon not to mete out the same measure to the King of Navarre, who was conducted first of all to Gaillard Castle, then to the tower of the Louvre, and then to the prison of the Chatelet:  “and there,” says Froissart, “they put him to all sorts of discomforts and fears, for every day and every night they gave him to understand that his head would be cut off at such and such an hour, or at such and such another he would be thrown into the Seine . . . whereupon he spoke so finely and so softly to his keepers that they who were so entreating him by the command of the King of France had great pity on him.”

With such violence, such absence of all legal procedure, such a mixture of deceptive indulgence and thoughtless brutality, did King John treat his son-in-law, his own daughter, some of his principal barons, their relations, their friends, and the people with whom they were in good credit.  He compromised more and more seriously every day his own safety and that of his successor, by vexing more and more, without destroying, his most dangerous enemy.  He showed no greater prudence or ability in the government of his kingdom.  Always in want of money, because he spent it foolishly on galas or presents to his favorites, he had recourse, for the purpose of procuring it, at one time to the very worst of all financial expedients, debasement of the coinage; at another, to disreputable imposts, such as the tax upon salt, and upon the sale of all kinds of merchandise.  In the single year of 1352 the value of a silver mark varied sixteen times, from four livres ten sous to eighteen livres.  To meet the requirements of his government and the greediness of his courtiers, John twice, in 1355 and 1356, convoked the states-general, to the consideration of which we shall soon recur in detail, and which did not refuse him their support; but John had not the wit either to make good use of the powers with which he was furnished, or to inspire the states-general with that confidence which alone could decide them upon continuing their gifts.  And, nevertheless, King John’s necessities were more evident and more urgent than ever:  war with England had begun again.