r they still
clung to the equally traditional suzerainty of the kings of France. But the
treaty of Bretigny not only severed them from the realm of France, it
subjected them to the realm of England. Edward ceased to be their
hereditary Duke, he became simply an English king ruling Aquitaine as an
English dominion. If the Southerners loved the North-French little, they
loved the English less, and the treaty which thus changed their whole
position was followed by a quick revulsion of feeling from the Garonne to
the Pyrenees. The Gascon nobles declared that John had no right to transfer
their fealty to another and to sever them from the realm of France. The
city of Rochelle prayed the French king not to release it from its fealty
to him. "We will obey the English with our lips," said its citizens, "but
our hearts shall never be moved towards them." Edward strove to meet this
passion for local independence, this hatred of being ruled from London, by
sending the Black Prince to Bordeaux and investing him in 1362 with the
Duchy of Aquitaine. But the new Duke held his Duchy as a fief from the
English king, and the grievance of the Southerners was left untouched.
Charles V. who succeeded his father John in 1364 silently prepared to reap
this harvest of discontent. Patient, wary, unscrupulous, he was hardly
crowned before he put an end to the war which had gone on without a pause
in Britanny by accepting homage from the claimant whom France had hitherto
opposed. Through Bertrand du Guesclin, a fine soldier whom his sagacity had
discovered, he forced the king of Navarre to a peace which closed the
fighting in Normandy. A more formidable difficulty in the way of
pacification and order lay in the Free Companies, a union of marauders whom
the disbanding of both armies after the peace had set free to harry the
wasted land and whom the king's military resources were insufficient to
cope with. It was the stroke by which Charles cleared his realm of these
scourges which forced on a new struggle with the English in the south.

[Sidenote: Pedro the Cruel]

In the judgement of the English court the friendship of Castille was of the
first importance for the security of Aquitaine. Spain was the strongest
naval power of the western world, and not only would the ports of Guienne
be closed but its communication with England would be at once cut off by
the appearance of a joint French and Spanish fleet in the Channel. It was
with satisfaction