diminutive in stature, deformed, he had raised himself to
military positions usually reserved as a reward for sons of nobles. In
the reopening of a war with England, which Charles was planning, du
Guesclin was to be the sword and he the brain.

The Black Prince had gone to Spain to fight the battles of Peter the
Cruel, in a civil war in which the Prince was involved by inheritance,
and was levying taxes for this Castilian war upon his new subjects in
Aquitaine. The people in this province turned to Charles to deliver
them from this oppression. He immediately summoned Prince Edward
before the Court of Peers; to which the Black Prince replied that he
would accept the invitation, but would come with his helmet on his head
and sixty thousand men in his party.

So successfully did Charles and du Guesclin meet this renewal of the
war that Prince Edward and his sixty thousand men were gradually driven
north until the English possessions were reduced to a few towns upon
the coast. The Black Prince, under the weight of responsibility and
defeat, succumbed to disease, and died, 1377. The death of Edward III.
occurred soon after that of his son, and Richard II. was King of
England.

The expulsion of the English was not the only benefit bestowed by
Charles V. The revolting States-General were restrained and were
firmly held in the king's hand. Still more important was the
reorganization of the military system, by placing it under the command
of officers appointed by the Crown, who might or might not belong to
the order of nobility. No more effective blow could have been aimed at
feudalism, which was nothing if not militant. Indeed, every act of
this brief reign was a protest against the purposes and ideals of his
father, King John, who was the embodiment of the ancient spirit. It
was a needed breathing-spell between a half-century of disaster behind
and another half-century of still greater disaster before.

The death of Charles V. (1380) left the throne to a delicate boy of
twelve years, who was to reign under the successive regencies of three
uncles. These brothers of Charles, and sons of the romantic King John,
seem to represent all the traits and passions which can degrade
humanity. The oldest, the Duke of Anjou, was driven from the regency
after stealing everything which was movable in the king's palace and
vaults. The Duke of Burgundy, who succeeded him, had nobler objects,
and needed a larger field for his a