The younger Edward ended by losing his health and his wealth in an
unnecessary war beyond the Pyrenees. He was persuaded by the exiled
Peter the Cruel, king of Castile, to restore him to the throne which he
had forfeited by his misgovernment. In 1367 he gathered a great army,
entered Castile, defeated the usurper Henry of Trastamara at the battle
of Najera, and restored his ally. But Peter, when once re-established as
king, forgot his obligations and left the prince burdened with the whole
expense of the campaign. Edward left Spain with a discontented and
unpaid army, and had himself contracted the seeds of a disease which was
to leave him an invalid for the rest of his life. To pay his debts he
was obliged to resort to heavy taxation in Aquitaine, which gave his
discontented subjects in Poitou and the other outlying districts an
excuse for the rebellion that they had been for some time meditating. In
1368 his greatest vassals, the counts of Armagnac, Périgord and
Comminges, displayed their disloyalty by appealing to the king of France
as their suzerain against the legality of Edward's imposts. The French
overlordship had been formally abolished by the treaty of 1360, so this
appeal amounted to open rebellion. And when Charles V. accepted it, and
cited Edward to appear before his parlement to answer the complaints of
the counts, he was challenging England to renewed war. He found a
preposterous excuse for repudiating the treaty by which he was bound, by
declaring that some details had been omitted in its formal ratification.
Renewal of the war with France.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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