Treaty of Brétigny
The
Treaty of Brétigny was a
treaty signed on
May 8,
1360, between
King Edward III of
England and
King John II (the Good) of
France. The treaty was signed at
Brétigny, a village near
Chartres, and marked the end of the first phase of the
Hundred Years' War (
1337–
1453), as well as the height of English
hegemony on the
Continent. The treaty was signed several years after John was taken as a
prisoner of war at the
Battle of Poitiers (
September 19,
1356). The ensuing conflicts in
Paris between
Stephen Marcel and the
Dauphin (later
King Charles V) and the outbreak of the
Jacquerie peasant revolt weakened French bargaining power. The treaty did not lead to lasting peace, but procured nine years' respite from the Hundred Years' War. In the following years, French forces were involved in battles against the Anglo-Navarrais (
Bertrand du Guesclin's victory at Cocherel, May 16, 1364) and the
Bretons.
The exactions of the English, who wished to yield as few as possible of the advantages claimed by them in the abortive
Treaty of London the year before, made negotiations difficult, and the discussion of terms begun early in April lasted more than a month. By virtue of this treaty Edward III obtained, besides
Guyenne and
Gascony,
Poitou,
Saintonge and
Aunis,
Agenais,
Périgord,
Limousin,
Quercy,
Bigorre, the countship of
Gaure,
Angoumois,
Rouergue,
Montreuil-sur-Mer,
Ponthieu,
Calais,
Sangatte,
Ham and the
countship of
Guines. The king of England was to hold these free and clear, without doing homage for them.
On his side, the king of England gave up the duchies of
Normandy and
Touraine, the countships of
Anjou and
Maine, and the suzerainty of
Brittany and of
Flanders. He also renounced all claims to the French throne. The terms of Brétigny were meant to disentangle the feudal responsibilities that had caused so much conflict, and as far as the English were concerned would concentrate English territories in an expanded version of
Aquitaine.
John II had to pay three million gold crowns for his ransom, and would be released after he paid one million. The occasion was the first minting of the
franc, equivalent to one
livre tournois (20
sous). As a guarantee for the payment of his ransom, John gave as hostages two of his sons, several princes and nobles, four inhabitants of Paris, and two citizens from each of the nineteen principal towns of France. This treaty was ratified and sworn to by the two kings and by their eldest sons on
October 24,
1360, at
Calais. At the same time the special conditions relating to each important article of the treaty and the renunciatory clauses in which the kings abandoned their rights over the territory they had yielded to one another were signed. Edward III retired finally to England, for the last time.
When his own son
Louis I, Duc d'Anjou (one of the hostages) escaped from England in
1362, John II chivalrously gave himself up. He died in honorable captivity in
1364 and
Charles V succeeded him as king of France. In
1369, on the pretext that Edward III had failed to observe the terms of the treaty of Brétigny, the king of France declared war once again.
By the time of the death of Edward III in
1377, English forces had been pushed back into their territories in the southwest around
Bordeaux.
*"Brétigny, Treaty of."
Encyclopædia Britannica. 2005.
[1]*Burne, Alfred H.
The Crecy War: Military History of the Hundred Years War from 1337 to the Peace of Bretigny, 1360. Eyre & Spottiswoode: 1955. ISBN 0837183014.
