In the midst of his successes Edward made a truce, yielding to the earnest request of the cardinals, “through his reverence to the apostolic see”.  The truce of Calais was signed on September 28, and included Scotland and Brittany as well as France within its scope.  On October 12 Edward returned to his kingdom.  Financial exhaustion, the need of repose, the unwillingness of his subjects to continue the combat, and the failure of the Flemish and Netherlandish alliances sufficiently explain this halt in the midst of victory.  Yet from the military standpoint Edward’s action, harmful everywhere to his partisans, was particularly fatal in Brittany, where most of Penthievre and nearly all upper Brittany were still obedient to Charles of Blois.[1] But Edward had embarked upon a course infinitely beyond his material resources.  When a special effort could only give him the one town of Calais, how could he ever conquer all France?

    [1] See on this A. de la Borderie, Hist. de Bretagne, iii.,
    507, et seq.

CHAPTER XVII.

FROM THE BLACK DEATH TO THE TREATY OF CALAIS.

At the conclusion of the truce of Calais in 1347, Edward III and England were at the height of their military reputation.  Perhaps the nation was in even a stronger position than the monarch.  Edward had dissipated his resources in winning his successes, but the danger which faced the ruler had but slightly impaired the fortunes of his subjects.  The country was in a sufficiently prosperous condition to bear its burdens without much real suffering.  The widespread dislike of extraordinary taxation, which so often assumed the form of the familiar cry that the king must live of his own, had taken the shape of unwillingness to accept responsibility for the king’s policy and a growing indisposition to meet his demands.  But since the rule of Edward began, England enjoyed a prosperity so unbroken that far heavier burdens would hardly have brought about a diminution of the well-being which stood in glaring contrast to the desolation long inflicted by Edward’s wars on France.  A war waged exclusively on foreign soil did little harm to England, and offered careers whereby many an English adventurer was gaining a place among the landed classes.  The simple archers and men-at-arms, who received high wages and good hopes of plunder in the king’s foreign service, found in it a congenial and lucrative, if demoralising profession.  In England, though wages were low, provisions were cheap and employment constant.  The growth of the wool trade, then further stimulated by refugees from the “three towns of Flanders,” against which Louis de Male was waging relentless war, was bringing comfort to many, and riches to a few.  The maritime greatness of England that found its first results in the battle of Sluys was the fruit of a commercial activity on the sea which enabled English shipmen to deprive the Italians, Netherlanders, and