It was worse with the towns, where national sentiment was stronger.  La Rochelle held out for months, and, when its notables at last submitted, they declared:  “We will accept the English with our lips but never with our hearts”.  Much patriotic feeling was manifested in Quercy.  The consuls of Cahors made their submission, weeping and groaning.  “Alas!” they declared, “how odious it is to lose our natural lord, and to pass over to a master we know not.  But it is not we who abandon the King of France.  It is he who, against our wishes, hands us over, like orphans, to the hands of the stranger.”  It was not until two years after the signing of the treaty that Edward entered into possession of the bulk of the lands granted to him.  Even then there were districts in Poitou, notably Belleville, which never became English at all.  One of the last districts to yield was Rouergue, whose count, John of Armagnac, only made his submission under the compulsion of irresistible necessity.

It was even more difficult to get the English out of the lands which the treaty had assigned to the French.  These districts were largely held by companies of mercenaries, little under Edward’s control and indisposed to yield up the conquests won by their own hands because their nominal lord had thought fit to make a treaty with the French king.  Despite the orders of Edward, the English garrisons in the north and centre of France flatly refused to surrender their strongholds.  In Maine, Hugh Calveley took Bertrand du Guesclin prisoner when he sought to receive the submission of his castles, and only released him on payment of a heavy ransom.  In Normandy, Du Guesclin had to buy off James Pipe, who dominated all the central district from the fortified abbey of Cormeilles, and to crush John Jowel in a pitched battle near Lisieux.  Even when the castles were surrendered, the garrisons joined with each other to establish societies of warriors that now inflicted terrible woes on France.  The exploits of these free companies hardly belong to English history, though many of their leaders and a large proportion of the rank and file were Englishmen.  Cruel, fierce, and uncouth, they still preserved in all military dealings the strict discipline which had taught the English armies the way to victory.  The combination of the order of a settled host with the rapacity of a gang of freebooters made them as irresistible as they were destructive.  Though Edward formally repudiated them, it was more than suspected that they were secretly playing his game.

Before long, this guerilla warfare became consolidated into military operations on a large scale.  Charles of Navarre once more profited by the disorder of France to bring himself to the front.  In 1361 John had availed himself of the death of Philip of Rouvres to treat the duchy of Burgundy as a lapsed fief, and conferred it on his youngest son, Philip the Bold.  Charles then claimed to be the heir of Burgundy, and