The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol. I., Part B.: From Henry III. to Richard III.
David Hume · en
the king of Navarre, and other noblemen of the party, to a feast at
Rouen, where they were betrayed into the hands of John. Some of the most
obnoxious were immediately led to execution: the king of Navarre was
thrown into prison;[*] but this stroke of severity in the king, and of
treachery in the dauphin, was far from proving decisive in maintaining
the royal authority. Philip of Navarre, brother to Charles, and Geoffrey
d’Harcourt, put all the towns and castles belonging to that prince in
a posture of defence; and had immediate recourse to the protection of
England in this desperate extremity.
* Froissard. liv. i. chap. 146.
The truce between the two kingdoms, which had always been ill observed
on both sides, was now expired; and Edward was entirely free to support
the French malecontents. Well pleased that the factions in France had at
length gained him some partisans in that kingdom, which his pretensions
to the crown had never been able to accomplish, he purposed to attack
his enemy both on the side of Guienne, under the command of the prince
of Wales, and on that of Calais, in his own person.
Young Edward arrived in the Garronne with his army, on board a fleet of
three hundred sail, attended by the earls of Avesbury, p. 243. Warwick,
Salisbury, Oxford, Suffolk, and other English noblemen. Being joined by
the vassals of Gascony, he took the field; and as the present disorders
in France prevented every proper plan of defence, he carried on with
impunity his ravages and devastations, according to the mode of war in
that age. He reduced all the villages and several towns in Languedoc to
ashes: he presented himself before Toulouse; passed the Garronne, and
burned the suburbs of Carcassonne; advanced even to Narbonne, laying
every place waste around him; and after an incursion of six weeks,
returned with a vast booty and many prisoners to the Guienne, where he
took up his winter quarters.[*] The constable of Bourbon, who commanded
in those provinces, received orders, though at the head of a superior
army, on no account to run the hazard of a battle.
The king of England’s incursion from Calais was of the samme nature,
and attended with the same issue. He broke into France at the head of
a numerous army; to which he gave a full license of plundering and
ravaging the open country. He advanced to St. Omer, where the king of
France was posted; and on the retreat of that prince, followed him to
Hesdin.[**] John still kept at a distance, and declined an engagement:
but in order to save his reputation, he sent Edward a challenge to fight
a pitched battle with him; a usual bravado in that age, derived from the
practice of single combat, and ridiculous in the art of war. The king,
finding no sincerity in this defiance, retired to Calais, and thence
went over to England, in order to defend that kingdom against a
threatened invasion of the Scots.