set at their liberty." Calais, thus won, remained an English town for more than two centuries--till it was lost in the reign of Mary, in the year 1558. The remaining course of the war with France may be very summarily sketched. After the fall of Calais a succession of armistices or truces suspended hostilities for about six years. Meanwhile King Philip had died in 1350, and been succeeded by his eldest son John. By this time Edward had come to perceive how little impression his brilliant but insulated successes had made upon the real strength of his adversary--how little a way--or, rather, no way at all--he had advanced towards the conquest of France by the mere winning of a great battle or two, and the capture and retention of a single town. In the end of the year 1353, therefore, he renewed more formally an offer which he had already made to Philip, of renouncing his claim to the French crown on condition of being acknowledged as sovereign of Guienne, Poitou, and the other territories in France which the English kings had hitherto held as vassals. The negotiations consumed some time, but ended in nothing: several months were then spent in preparations for the renewal of the war; at last, in October, 1355, the Black Prince, who had been for some years intrusted with the government of Guienne, took the field at the head of an army of sixty thousand men, with which, advancing from his capital of Bordeaux, he made a circuit through Armagnac and Languedoc, spreading devastation wherever he went, and laying, it is affirmed, more than five hundred towns and villages in ashes in the space of seven weeks. In the summer of the next year he proceeded to repeat the same experiment in a different direction: this time the force with which he set out amounted to only about twelve thousand men, and with these he boldly crossed the Garonne, and penetrated into the heart of France. For some weeks he pursued his destructive course without opposition; but, at last, when making for Poictiers, and within a short distance of that city, he suddenly found himself enveloped by a French army, commanded by King John, more than four times as numerous as his own. Then, on the 19th of September, was fought the battle of Poictiers, making that other name worthy to be associated for ever in story and in song with Creci, of which both the extremity of peril and the glorious deliverance were now more than renewed. The French host was beaten back at all points, and in the end utterly routed, scattered, and annihilated by Prince Edward and his handful of English. Most of the chief nobility of France were either slain or captured: King John himself fell into the hands of the victors. The illustrious captive was treated with noble courtesy both by the Black Prince and by the king his father; but, although the extraordinary fortune of Edward had now placed in his power the persons of the kings of both the countries which he had so long been