er it--the
lieutenant of his father, Edward, in all Aquitaine. He was to recover the
districts immediately north of the Garonne, and even (in theory, at
least) right up to the neighbourhood of the Loire; and (in theory, again)
he was to regard those who might resist his administration of all these
"lost" countries of the Central and Southern West of France as "rebels."

It was thought certain at first, of course, that the whole claim could
never be pushed home; but the Black Prince might well hope so to harry the
districts which were claimed--and the neighbouring county of Toulouse to
the east, which was admittedly feudatory to the King of Paris--as to
compel that sovereign to recognise at last his father's absolute
sovereignty over Gascony certainly, and perhaps over Guienne, or even
somewhat more than Guienne.

The remainder of that year, 1355, therefore--the autumn and the
winter--were spent in striking at the sole portion of Gascony that was
disaffected (that of Armagnac), and pushing eastward to ravage Toulouse
and Carcassonne; for though these towns were admittedly outside Edward's
land, the wasting of their territory was a depletion of the King of
France's revenue.

The Black Prince did more. In the early part of the next year, 1356, he
set up his flag upon Perigueux, some days' march to the north of his
father's real boundary; and, as the year proceeded, he planned an advance
far to the northward of that, which advance was to be taken in
co-operation with a descent of the Plantagenet forces upon the other
extremity of the French kingdom.

As to the character of the Black Prince, which so largely determined what
is to follow, and especially his character in command, nothing is more
conspicuous in the history of the Middle Ages. He was, partly from the
influence of models, partly from personal force, the mirror of what the
fighting, French-speaking nobility of that century took for its ideal
conception of a captain. Far the first thing for him was the trade and the
profession of arms, and the appetite for combat which this career
satisfied certainly in its baser, but still more certainly in its nobler,
effects in the mind of a virile youth. He had gone through the great
experience of Crecy as a boy of sixteen. He was now, upon the eve of the
Campaign of Poitiers, a man in his twenty-sixth year, thoroughly avid not
only of honour but of capture, thoroughly contemptuous of gain, generous
with a mad magnificence,