We can form some idea of the deplorable state of the finances from the fact that during the course of the year 1351 John issued no less than eighteen ordinances altering monetary values, although neither the help of such expedients nor the subsidies voted by the provinces availed to bring about an equilibrium between receipts and expenditures. The treasury continued, as in the preceding reign, to pay annually only a part of the officers’ wages and of the interest on the debt. There were also ordinances regulating the order in which the public expenses were to be met, just as to-day, in cases of bankruptcy, the succession in which creditors are to be paid is determined by law. In the case of certain outlays the government was extremely tardy in making payment, taking for its model the nobility, to the members of which great latitude was allowed. “Let no one,” said King John, “wonder or be ill-pleased, for we take account of the respites and delays accorded to the nobles in the payment of their debts, and it would not be seemly that we should be in a worse condition than they.” The truces, although renewed from year to year, were imperfectly kept; hostilities continued to break out from time to time at different points, and there was not a campaign during which special engagements did not take place between parties of English or French knights. There were frequent skirmishes during 1351 in the neighbourhood of St. Jean d’Angély, and in 1352 between Guines and St. Omer. The war in Brittany had been kept up in desultory fashion since the capture of Charles of Blois in 1347, when his wife, Joan de Penthièvre, took up the cause. The most celebrated of these minor combats was the _combat des trente_, fought in Brittany, August 1352, on the moor of Mi-Voie, between Josselin and Ploërmel.[c] [Sidenote: [1352-1354 A.D.]] Robert de Beaumanoir, governor of the castle of Josselin, challenged the English captain Richard Bamborough who commanded at Ploërmel. They met on the lands of Josselin each with twenty-nine companions. The sixty champions fought on foot with short swords. “Such a combat,” says Froissart, “had not been recorded for over a hundred years.” It did not cease until all the combatants were either killed or badly wounded--four French and nine English, Bamborough among them, lay dead on the field. The rest of the English gave themselves up to the French. But such contests did not help matters, and so the war dragged on.[a] TROUBLE WITH CHARLES OF NAVARRE [Illustration: JOHN THE GOOD (From an old French print)]