, and a
truce for two years seemed to give healing-time to France.

[Sidenote: Edward and the Scots]

With the Scots Edward the Third had less good fortune. Recalled from Calais
by their seizure of Berwick, the king induced Balliol to resign into his
hands his shadowy sovereignty, and in the spring of 1356 marched upon
Edinburgh with an overpowering army, harrying and burning as he marched.
But the Scots refused an engagement, a fleet sent with provisions was
beaten off by a storm, and the famine-stricken army was forced to fall
rapidly back on the border in a disastrous retreat. The trial convinced
Edward that the conquest of Scotland was impossible, and by a rapid change
of policy which marks the man he resolved to seek the friendship of the
country he had wasted so long. David Bruce was released on promise of
ransom, a truce concluded for ten years, and the prohibition of trade
between the two kingdoms put an end to. But the fulness of this
reconciliation screened a dexterous intrigue. David was childless, and
Edward availed himself of the difficulty which the young king experienced
in finding means of providing the sum demanded for his ransom to bring him
over to a proposal which would have united the two countries for ever. The
scheme however was carefully concealed; and it was not till 1363 that David
proposed to his Parliament to set aside on his death the claims of the
Steward of Scotland to his crown, and to choose Edward's third son, Lionel,
Duke of Clarence, as his successor. Though the proposal was scornfully
rejected, negotiations were still carried on between the two kings for the
realization of this project, and were probably only put an end to by the
calamities of Edward's later years.

[Illustration: France at the Treaty of Bretigny (v2-map-2t.jpg)]

[Sidenote: Peace of Bretigny]

In France misery and misgovernment seemed to be doing Edward's work more
effectively than arms. The miserable country found no rest in itself. Its
routed soldiery turned into free companies of bandits, while the lords
captured at Crecy or Poitiers procured the sums needed for their ransom by
extortion from the peasantry. The reforms demanded by the States-General
which met in this agony of France were frustrated by the treachery of the
Regent, John's eldest son Charles, Duke of Normandy, till Paris, impatient
of his weakness and misrule, rose in arms against the Crown. The peasants
too, driven mad by oppression and fam