communication between England and Guienne.  Charles was at once roused to new exertions.  Poitou, Saintonge, and the Angoumois yielded to his general Du Guesclin; and Rochelle was surrendered by its citizens in 1372.  The next year saw a desperate attempt to restore the fortune of the English arms.  A great army under John of Gaunt penetrated into the heart of France.  But it found no foe to engage.  Charles had forbidden any fighting.  “If a storm rages over the land,” said the king coolly, “it disperses of itself; and so will it be with the English.”  Winter in fact overtook the Duke of Lancaster in the mountains of Auvergne, and a mere fragment of his host reached Bordeaux.  The failure of this attack was the signal for a general defection, and ere the summer of 1374 had closed the two towns of Bordeaux and Bayonne were all that remained of the English possessions in Southern France.  Even these were only saved by the exhaustion of the conquerors.  The treasury of Charles was as utterly drained as the treasury of Edward; and the kings were forced to a truce.

[Sidenote:  The Social Strife]

Only fourteen years had gone by since the Treaty of Bretigny raised England to a height of glory such as it had never known before.  But the years had been years of a shame and suffering which stung the people to madness.  Never had England fallen so low.  Her conquests were lost, her shores insulted, her commerce swept from the seas.  Within she was drained by the taxation and bloodshed of the war.  Its popularity had wholly died away.  When the Commons were asked in 1354 whether they would assent to a treaty of perpetual peace if they might have it, “the said Commons responded all, and all together, ‘Yes, yes!’” The population was thinned by the ravages of pestilence, for till 1369, which saw its last visitation, the Black Death returned again and again.  The social strife too gathered bitterness with every effort at repression.  It was in vain that Parliament after Parliament increased the severity of its laws.  The demands of the Parliament of 1376 show how inoperative the previous Statutes of Labourers had proved.  They prayed that constables be directed to arrest all who infringed the Statute, that no labourer should be allowed to take refuge in a town and become an artizan if there were need of his service in the county from which he came, and that the king would protect lords and employers against the threats of death uttered by serfs who refused to serve.  The reply of the Royal Council shows that statesmen at any rate were beginning to feel that repression might be pushed too far.  The king refused to interfere by any further and harsher provisions between employers and employed, and left cases of breach of law to be dealt with in his ordinary courts of justice.  On the one side he forbade the threatening gatherings which were already common in the country, but on the other he forbade the illegal exactions of the employers.  With such a reply however the proprietary class were hardly likely to be content.  Two years later the Parliament of Gloucester called for a Fugitive-slave Law, which would have enabled lords to seize their serfs in whatever county or town they found refuge, and in 1379 they prayed that judges might be sent five times a year into every shire to enforce the Statute of Labourers.