which included Calais, Guines, and Ponthieu. The treaty also fixed the
ransom to be paid by King John.

France was left smaller than she had been under Philip Augustus, yet she
received this treaty with infinite thankfulness; worn out with war and
weakness, any diminution of territory seemed better to her than a
continuance of her unbearable misfortunes. Under Charles, first as
Regent, then as King, she enjoyed an uneasy rest and peace for twenty
years.

King John, after returning for a brief space to France, went back into
his pleasant captivity in England, leaving his country to be ruled by the
Regent the Dauphin. In 1364 he died, and Charles V., "the Wise," became
King in name, as he had now been for some years in fact. This cold,
prudent, sickly prince, a scholar who laid the foundations of the great
library in Paris by placing 900 MSS. in three chambers in the Louvre, had
nothing to dazzle the ordinary eye; to the timid spirits of that age he
seemed to be a malevolent wizard, and his name of "Wise" had in it more
of fear than of love. He also is notable for two things: he reformed the
current coin, and recognised the real worth of Du Guesclin, the first
great leader of mercenaries in France, a grim fighting-man, hostile to
the show of feudal warfare, and herald of a new age of contests, in which
the feudal levies would fall into the background. The invention of
gunpowder in this century, the incapacity of the great lords, the rise of
free lances and mercenary troops, all told that a new era had arrived. It
was by the hand of Du Guesclin that Charles overcame his cousin and
namesake, Charles of Navarre, and compelled him to peace. On the other
hand, in the Breton war which followed just after, he was defeated by Sir
John Chandos and the partisans of Jean de Montfort, who made him
prisoner; the Treaty of Guerande, which followed, gave them the dukedom