Du Guesclin hastened back
from Brittany to command the army engaged in watching Lancaster. He
still continued his defensive tactics, but gave the enemy little rest.
Lancaster was no match for so able a general as the Breton constable.
At the end of September he moved from Troyes to Sens, and thence pushed
into Burgundy. Then he turned westwards through the Nivernais and the
Bourbonnais, and led his army through the uplands of Auvergne. By the
end of the year he had traversed the Limousin, and made his way to
Bordeaux. Half his army had perished of hunger, cold, and in petty
warfare. The horses had suffered worse than the men, and the baggage
train was almost destroyed. Without fighting a battle Du Guesclin had
put the enemy out of action. Experience now showed how useless were the
prolonged plundering raids which ten years before had filled all France
with terror.

Even in Gascony Lancaster could not hold his own. After declining
battle with the Duke of Anjou, he returned to England, leaving Sir
Thomas Felton as seneschal. The enemy had penetrated to the very heart
of the old English district. La Reole opened its gates to them;
Saint-Sever, the seat of the Gascon high court, followed its example,
By 1374 the English duchy was reduced to the coast lands around Bayonne
and Bordeaux. That year the French laid siege to Chandos's castle of
Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte. The siege was as long and as elaborately
organised as the great siege of Calais. A ring of _bastilles_ was
erected round the doomed town, and cannon discharged huge balls of
stone against its ramparts. After nearly a year's siege the garrison
agreed to surrender on condition of a heavy payment. With the fall of
the old home of the Harcourts the English power in Normandy perished.
There was still, it is true, the influence of Charles of Navarre; but
that desperate intriguer had compromised himself so much with both
parties that no confidence could be placed in him.

The misfortunes of the English inclined them to listen to proposals of
peace. Though the papacy was more frankly on the French side than ever,
it had not lost its ancient solicitude to put an end to the war. With
that object Gregory XI, though eager to return to Rome, tarried in the
Rhone valley. Two of his legates appeared in Champagne at the time of
John of Gaunt's abortive expedition. From that moment offers of peace
were constantly pressed on both sides. Lancaster was at Calais, and
Anjou was not