pay six hundred thousand gold florins to gain for his son the hand of a French princess, and this bargain with the Milanese despot enabled John to return to his kingdom. He seems, however, to have found the cares of government a disagreeable burden after the comparative gaiety of his imprisonment in London. In 1363 his second son, Louis of Anjou, escaped from Calais, whither he had gone as one of his father’s hostages. John seized the opportunity to parade a chivalrous regard for his plighted word, and at the same time to abandon duties which had become difficult and distasteful. Leaving the regency once more to his eldest son, he sailed to England in January 1364, and died in London three months later. Before his departure he had done one act which is of cardinal importance in the history of France. In 1361 a return of the plague had carried off Philip de Rouvre, the childless ruler of Burgundy, Franche-Comté, and Artois. The two latter provinces, which had come to Philip through the female line, passed to Margaret of Flanders, but the duchy [Sidenote: Duchy of Burgundy.] of Burgundy escheated to the crown. A prudent king would have retained the direct rule of so valuable a possession; but John, with reckless generosity, gave it away to his fourth son Philip, who had fought boldly by his side at Poitiers, and had shared his captivity. This Philip the Bold is the founder of the great line of the Valois Dukes of Burgundy. The new king, Charles V., had been the practical ruler of France since the battle of Poitiers. During those eight years [Sidenote: Government of Charles V.] he had learned from harsh experience many lessons which stood him in good stead when circumstances enabled him to gain some success. The very weakness of his bodily health, which contemporaries attributed to poison administered by Charles of Navarre during their early friendship, debarred him from the active exercises of chivalry, and impelled him to cultivate his mental faculties. Fragile, timid, a stranger to the joys of the tournament and the battle-field, he seems strangely out of place in the days of the Black Prince and Bertrand du Guesclin, of John Chandos and the Captal de Buch. Yet Charles V. is the greatest of the Valois kings before Louis XI., and must be reckoned among the founders of modern France. His chief task was to restore the despotic power of the crown, which had been so rudely shaken between 1355 and 1358. Arbitrary taxation was to supersede the grant of supplies by the estates; military and civil officials were to be royal nominees; even the local assessors and collectors of taxes were to be under the supervision and control of the crown. Only once did the States-General meet during the reign, and then they were summoned merely to strengthen the king’s hands. But the despotism of Charles V. was a capable and orderly government, wholly different from that of his predecessors. It is curious to note how this absolute king adopts and turns to his own