guard.  Having thus made certain that his prisoner would not escape from him, he put to sea, and, on the 28th of October, 1359, landed at Calais with a numerous and well-supplied army.  Then, rapidly traversing Northern France, he did not halt till he arrived before Rheims, which he was in hopes of surprising, and where, it is said, he purposed to have himself, without delay, crowned King of France.  But he found the place so well provided, and the population so determined to make a good defence, that he raised the siege and moved on Chalons, where the same disappointment awaited him.  Passing from Champagne to Burgundy, he then commenced the same course of scouring and ravaging; but the Burgundians entered into negotiations with him, and by a treaty concluded on the 10th of March, 1360, and signed by Joan of Auvergne, Queen of France, second wife of King John, and guardian of the young Duke of Burgundy, Philip de Rouvre, they obtained, at the cost of two hundred thousand golden sheep (moutons), an agreement that for three years Edward and his army “would not go scouring and burning” in Burgundy, as they were doing in the other parts of France.  Such was the powerlessness, or rather absence, of all national government, that a province made a treaty all alone, and on its own account, without causing the regent to show any surprise, or to dream of making any complaint.

As a make-weight, at this same time, another province, Picardy, aided by many Normans and Flemings, its neighbors, “nobles, burgesses, and common-folk,” was sending to sea an expedition which was going to try, with God’s help, to deliver King John from his prison in England, and bring him back in triumph to his kingdom.”  “Thus,” says the chronicler, “they who, God-forsaken or through their own faults, could not defend themselves on the soil of their fathers, were going abroad to seek their fortune and their renown, to return home covered with honor and boasting of divine succor!  The Picard expedition landed in England on the 14th of March, 1360; it did not deliver King John, but it took and gave over to flames and pillage for two days the town of Winchelsea, after which it put to sea again, and returned to its hearths.” (The Continuer of William of Nangis, t. ii. p. 298.)

Edward III., weary of thus roaming with his army over France without obtaining any decisive result, and without even managing to get into his hands any one “of the good towns which he had promised himself,” says Froissart, “that he would tan and hide in such sort that they would be glad to come to some accord with him,” resolved to direct his efforts against the capital of the kingdom, where the dauphin kept himself close.  On the 7th of April, 1360, he arrived hard by Montrouge, and his troops spread themselves over the outskirts of Paris in the form of an investing or besieging force.  But he had to do with a city protected by good ramparts, and well supplied with provisions, and with a prince cool,