It is probable that England did not recover the loss of population which it now sustained for a couple of centuries. But if the nation was dreadfully thinned, the results of the plague were not all in the direction of evil. It certainly raised the position of the lower classes by making labour more scarce, and therefore more valuable. The surviving agricultural labourers were able to demand much higher wages than before, and it was in vain that Parliament, by the foolish _Statute of Labourers_ (1349), tried to prescribe a maximum rate of wages for them, and to prevent employers giving more. Legislation is unable to prevent the necessary working of the laws of political economy, and in spite of the statute the peasant got his advantage. [Sidenote: =Renewal of the French war.--The Black Prince.=] About the time of the outbreak of the Black Death, the kings of England and France had signed a truce, being moved to turn their thoughts far from war by the terrible havoc that was going on around them. It was six years before they and their peoples could find heart to forget the plague, and once more resumed their reckless struggle. In 1355 Edward made proposals for a definitive peace to King John--Philip VI. had died in 1350--on the terms that he should give up his claims to the French crown, but receive Aquitaine free from all burden of homage to the King of France as suzerain. John refused this reasonable offer, and Edward recommenced his attacks on France. He himself landed at Calais and invaded Picardy, but was ere long recalled home by the news that the Scots also had renewed the war, and were over the Tweed. Edward spent the summer in beating them back and cruelly ravaging the whole of Lothian. Meanwhile, his son, the Black Prince, now a young man of twenty-five, started from Bordeaux and plundered the French province of Languedoc. In the following year, the Black Prince made a similar incursion into Central France, and swept through the whole country from Limoges to Tours with a small army of 4000 mounted men and 3000 archers. When he turned his face homeward, however, he found that King John with a host of 40,000 men had blocked his road, by getting between him and Bordeaux. Thus intercepted, Prince Edward posted himself on the hill of Maupertuis, near Poictiers, and took up a defensive position. It is probable that the French, with their vastly superior numbers, could have completely surrounded him and starved him into surrender without any need of fighting. But King John, a fierce and reckless prince with none of a general's ability, preferred to take the English by force of arms, and, when they refused to surrender to him, prepared to storm their position. [Illustration: BATTLE OF POICTIERS, SEP. 1356.] [Sidenote: =The Battle of Poictiers.=]