The Prince was maddened by the summons.  “I will come,” he replied, “but with helmet on head, and with sixty thousand men at my back.”  War however had hardly been declared when the ability with which Charles had laid his plans was seen in his seizure of Ponthieu and in a rising of the whole country south of the Garonne.  Du Gueselin returned in 1370 from Spain to throw life into the French attack.  Two armies entered Guienne from the east; and a hundred castles with La Reole and Limoges threw open their gates to Du Guesclin.  But the march of an English army from Calais upon Paris recalled him from the south to guard the capital at a moment when the English leader advanced to recover Limoges, and the Black Prince borne in a litter to its walls stormed the town and sullied by a merciless massacre of its inhabitants the fame of his earlier exploits.  Sickness however recalled him home in the spring of 1371; and the war, protracted by the caution of Charles who forbade his armies to engage, did little but exhaust the energy and treasure of England.  As yet indeed the French attack had made small impression on the south, where the English troops stoutly held their ground against Du Guesclin’s inroads.  But the protracted war drained Edward’s resources, while the diplomacy of Charles was busy in rousing fresh dangers from Scotland and Castille.  It was in vain that Edward looked for allies to the Flemish towns.  The male line of the Counts of Flanders ended in Count Louis le Male; and the marriage of his daughter Margaret with Philip, Duke of Burgundy, a younger brother of the French king, secured Charles from attack along his northern border.  In Scotland the death of David Bruce put an end to Edward’s schemes for a reunion of the two kingdoms; and his successor, Robert the Steward, renewed in 1371 the alliance with France.

[Sidenote:  Loss of Aquitaine]

Castille was a yet more serious danger; and an effort which Edward made to neutralize its attack only forced Henry of Trastamara to fling his whole weight into the struggle.  The two daughters of Pedro had remained since their father’s flight at Bordeaux.  The elder of these was now wedded to John of Gaunt, Edward’s fourth son, whom he had created Duke of Lancaster on his previous marriage with Blanche, a daughter of Henry of Lancaster and the heiress of that house, while the younger was wedded to Edward’s fifth son, the Earl of Cambridge.  Edward’s aim was that of raising again the party of King Pedro and giving Henry of Trastamara work to do at home which would hinder his interposition in the war of Guienne.  It was with this view that John of Gaunt on his marriage took the title of king of Castille.  But no adherent of Pedro’s cause stirred in Spain, and Henry replied to the challenge by sending a Spanish fleet to the Channel.  A decisive victory which this fleet won over an English convoy off Rochelle proved a fatal blow to the English cause.  It wrested from Edward the mastery of the seas, and cut off all