Treaty of Bretigny, 1360
by This treaty ended the first phase of the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453) in France, though fighting continued in Brittany to 1364 and broke out in Castile in 1365.
It was forced on the French by the capture of Jean II (”The Good,” 1319-1364) by the Black Prince at Poitiers (1356). Also contributing was a sorrowful chevauche´e in 1359-1360, in which an English army cut a swath of destruction many miles wide from Calais to Reims, through the heart of Burgundy, and on to the suburbs of Paris. Finally, the French monarchy was faced with internal fears and challenges born of the Jacquerie of 1358 and, more important, virtual secession of several provinces under powerful barons.
France had had enough of war for the moment, and agreed to a huge ransom for Jean II (three million ”livres tournais”), gave most of the Aquitaine as an independent fief to the Black Prince, and surrendered nearly a third of France to English sovereignty in a new ”Gascony” that was vastly enlarged by territory taken from neighboring provinces. The treaty brought formal peace with England but not real peace within France: disbandment by both armies of common troops and thousands of mercenaries led to formation of over 100 Free Companies, some of mixed French and English troops, who moved through the land taking or burning whatever they wished. More fighting took place in Brittany and Normandy and along the border of English Languedoc. The larger war between England and France broke out again in 1369.
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