A year after Philip’s accession, Edward, as lord of Aquitaine, had gone to France and paid his feudal duty to him. The two monarchs were supposed to be friends. Friendship is hard to preserve, however, when ambitions clash and when interested people are alert to foment trouble. In 1337 war was declared, and its dragging course for the next decade was prophetic of the whole miserable century. After nine years of desultory fighting the French suffered at Crécy the worst defeat the country ever had known. For the first time in history gunpowder was used in war and the innovation made apparent at once the futility of the nobles’ fortresses against the new ammunition. A part of the English army drew dangerously close to Paris--so near that the watchmen on the towers caught the gleam of their camp-fires, and refugees brought news of burning and slaughter no farther away than Saint Denis. The city was saved from attack only because Edward was besieging Calais. It cost England a year’s fighting to capture this Channel key to France, but she held it for two hundred years, a threat to French power and a grief to French hearts. Destructive as was the new ammunition its work could not approach the loss occasioned by the “Black Death,” the plague which swept across Europe with such might that it even put an end to war. In 1350 Philip VI died. His body was carried to Notre Dame where it lay in state before being taken to Saint Denis. There it was buried “on the left side of the great altar, his bowels were interred at the Jacobins at Paris, and his heart at the convent of the Carthusians at Bourgfontaines in Valois.” A month later Philip’s son, John (1350-1364) was crowned at Rheims. By way of signalizing his accession he conferred knighthood on many young men, and for a week Paris was gay with continual feasting. Perhaps it was because so many people thronged the palace at this time, perhaps it was because of the encroachments of the courts, that John did not always occupy the royal apartments on the Cité but lived for some time at the Hôtel de Nesle which Philip the Fair had bought for the crown. During the next five years John showed himself entirely lacking in the discretion and calmness which the uncertainties of the time demanded. He was influenced by favorites and he was constantly quarreling with his son-in-law, Charles the Bad, king of Navarre, who had caused the murder of a man whom John esteemed and who was incessantly playing fast and loose now with England, now with France. It was to consider certain charges against this undesirable connection that John held the first known _lit de justice_. The “bed of justice” received its name from the king’s seat, a couch raised on a dais, both covered with handsome stuffs sown with the fleur-de-lis. The king’s appearance was in harmony with his desire to accent his regal state for he wore his robes of ceremony and his crown.