Du Guesclin, darting forward, struck so rough a blow with his sword at Don Pedro, that he brought him fainting to the ground, and then turning to the Prince of Wales said, “Nathless I give up my sword to the most valiant prince on earth.”  The Prince of Wales took the sword, and charged the Captal of Buch with the prisoner’s keeping.  “Aha! sir Bertrand,” said the Captal to Du Guesclin, “you took me at the battle of Cocherel, and to-day I’ve got you.”  “Yes,” replied Du Guesclin; “but at Cocherel I took you myself, and here you are only my keeper.”

The battle of Najara being over, and Don Pedro the Cruel restored to a throne which he was not to occupy for long, the Prince of Wales returned to Bordeaux with his army and his prisoner Du Guesclin, whom he treated courteously, at the same time that he kept him pretty strictly.  One of the English chieftains who had been connected with Du Guesclin at the time of his expedition into Spain, Sir Hugh Calverley, tried one day to induce the Prince of Wales to set the French warrior at liberty.  “Sir,” said he, “Bertrand is a right loyal knight, but he is not a rich man, or in estate to pay much money; he would have good need to end his captivity on easy terms.”  “Let be,” said the prince; “I have no care to take aught of his; I will cause his life to be prolonged in spite of himself:  if he were released, he would be in battle again, and always a-making war.”  After supper, Hugh, without any beating about the bush, told Bertrand the prince’s answer.  “Sir,” he said, “I cannot bring about your release.”  “Sir,” said Bertrand, “think no more of it; I will leave the matter to the decision of God, who is a good and just master.”  Some time after, Du Guesclin having sent a request to the Prince of Wales to admit him to ransom, the prince, one day when he was in a gay humor, had him brought up, and told him that his advisers had urged him not to give him his liberty so long as the war between France and England lasted.  “Sir,” said Du Guesclin to him, “then am I the most honored knight in the world, for they say, in the kingdom of France and elsewhere, that you are more afraid of me than of any other.”  “Think you, then, it is for your knighthood that we do keep you?” said the prince:  “nay, by St. George; fix you your own ransom, and you shall be released.”  Du Guesclin proudly fixed his ransom at a hundred thousand francs, which seemed a large sum even to the Prince of Wales.  “Sir,” said Du Guesclin to him, “the king in whose keeping is France will lend me what I lack, and there is not a spinning wench in France who would not spin to gain for me what is necessary to put me out of your clutches.”  The advisers of the Prince of Wales would have had him think better of it, and break his promise; but “that which we have agreed to with him we will hold to,” said the prince; “it would be shame and confusion of face to us if we could be reproached with not setting him to ransom when he is ready to set himself down at so much as to pay a hundred thousand francs.”  Prince and knight were both as good as their word.  Du Guesclin found amongst his Breton friends a portion of the sum he wanted; King Charles V. lent him thirty thousand Spanish doubloons, which, by a deed of December 27, 1367, Du Guesclin undertook to repay; and at the beginning of 1368 the Prince of Wales set the French warrior at liberty.