What Was the Treaty of Brétigny?
The Treaty of Brétigny, signed on 8 May 1360 near the village of Brétigny, between Chartres and Paris, was the agreement that ended the Edwardian phase of the Hundred Years’ War. By its terms, Edward III of England renounced his claim to the French throne and to the title “King of France”; in return, the French crown, acting through the regent Charles (the future Charles V) on behalf of his captive father John II, recognised English sovereignty over the duchy of Aquitaine, the county of Ponthieu, and the city of Calais. King John, who had been held in honourable captivity in England since the Battle of Poitiers in 1356, was released against a ransom of 4 million écus, of which only a fraction was ever paid.
The treaty was a triumph for English diplomacy and a humiliation for the French. Edward had not the institutions, the money, or the population to occupy the territory he had been granted; within a decade, the French had recovered most of the ceded lands and the war was on again. The treaty was, in the long view, the high-water mark of English territorial ambition in France.
Background to the treaty
The negotiations that led to the Treaty of Brétigny began in the autumn of 1359, in the wake of the English chevauchée of that year, in which Edward III had marched from Calais to the walls of Paris and back again without being able to bring the French to a decisive engagement. The English position in 1359 was, on the surface, very strong: the three great English land victories of the war — Sluys (1340), Crécy (1346), Poitiers (1356) — had been won, and the French king was a prisoner in London. The English position was, in practice, much weaker: the Italian banking houses of the Bardi and the Peruzzi, which had financed much of the war, had been bankrupted in 1343–1346; the English wool trade was in crisis; the French population was hostile; and the Black Death of 1348–1350 had reduced the English population by perhaps a third.
The French position, by 1359, was also weaker than it appeared. The captivity of King John had left a political vacuum in France; the Estates-General, summoned by the Dauphin Charles, had been unable to raise a coherent resistance; the regency government at Paris was dominated by a faction of Norman and Parisian nobles whose authority was uncertain. The negotiations at Brétigny were, in effect, an attempt by both sides to convert a military stalemate into a political settlement that they could live with.
The terms of the treaty
The terms of the Treaty of Brétigny were settled in two stages. The preliminary agreement, signed on 8 May 1360, was the public treaty. The detailed implementation, in particular the timing of the renunciations and the transfer of sovereignty, was settled in a second set of agreements signed at Calais in October 1360 and ratified by the French Estates-General in December 1360.
The principal terms were:
- Renunciation of the French crown. Edward III renounced his claim to the French throne and to the title “King of France.” The renunciation was to be made by Edward in person, before a date to be fixed; in return, the French crown released Edward from his homage for the duchy of Aquitaine.
- Sovereignty over Aquitaine. The duchy of Aquitaine, in its full extent, was to be held by the King of England in full sovereignty, without the feudal obligations that had previously attached to the English possession of the duchy. The duchy was to be held by the king of England, not by the Black Prince (who had been granted the principality in 1362, in a separate transaction).
- Ponthieu and Calais. The county of Ponthieu, the ancestral home of Edward III, and the city of Calais, the principal English foothold on the French coast, were ceded to the English crown in full sovereignty.
- Ransom of King John. The ransom of King John was set at 4 million écus, to be paid in instalments over a period of several years. The first instalment was to be paid immediately, and the rest over a period of about five years. Hostages, including two of the king’s sons, were to be given as security.
- Other concessions. A number of smaller territorial adjustments were made, including the cession of various castles in Normandy and the Loire valley.
The treaty, on paper, was extraordinarily favourable to the English. The duchy of Aquitaine, in its full extent, was one of the richest and most extensive territories in France, and the cession of Ponthieu and Calais gave the English a permanent foothold on the French coast. The renunciation of the French throne, which Edward had not been able to make effective, was a small price to pay for the territorial settlement.
The implementation of the treaty
The implementation of the treaty was immediate, in some respects, and very slow, in others. The English were given possession of Calais and of the principal Aquitanian towns, and the Black Prince established his principality at Bordeaux. The renunciations, however, were not made. Edward III did not formally renounce the title “King of France” until 1369, and Charles V did not formally renounce sovereignty over Aquitaine until the same year. The territorial settlement was therefore, in legal terms, provisional.
The ransom of King John was the most difficult part of the implementation. The French, having already pledged most of the royal demesne and most of the movable wealth of the kingdom, were unable to raise the full amount, and the English became increasingly frustrated with the slow pace of payment. The death of King John in London in April 1364, while he was still technically a hostage for the payment of the ransom, was a serious blow. The king had returned to England voluntarily, to negotiate the release of the hostages, and he died of an infection in the Savoy Palace.
The unenforceability of the treaty
The Treaty of Brétigny was unenforceable in practice, even if it had been implemented in law. The duchy of Aquitaine, in its full extent, was too large and too far from England to be defended effectively. The duchy was populated by French-speaking subjects who were politically English and who resented both the English tax-collectors and the longbowmen garrisoned in their towns. The local nobility of the duchy, who had long been accustomed to a degree of autonomy, were unhappy with the imposition of English rule, and the Black Prince’s harsh fiscal policies as Prince of Aquitaine only made matters worse.
The French, under the leadership of the new king, Charles V, and his constable, Bertrand du Guesclin, were able to recover most of the territories ceded at Brétigny within a decade. The French strategy was one of attrition: avoid open battle, harass the English garrisons, cut off English Aquitaine from seaborne reinforcement (the Franco-Castilian fleet destroyed an English convoy at La Rochelle in 1372), and exhaust the enemy’s finances. By the truce of Leulinghem in 1389, only Calais and a coastal strip around Bordeaux remained in English hands.
The reopening of the war in 1369
The French reopened the war on 30 November 1369, citing a number of grievances, including the failure of the English to implement the territorial settlements of the treaty. Charles V summoned the Gascon lords to Paris, invited them to repudiate their allegiance to the English, and gradually detached them from the duchy. The Black Prince, who was then ruling Aquitaine from Bordeaux, was forced to defend his duchy against a French attack. The long Caroline reconquest of Aquitaine, which would culminate in the truce of Leulinghem in 1389, was the consequence of the over-extension of 1360.
The English position in 1369 was much weaker than it had been in 1360. The Black Prince was ill; the English treasury was empty; the French had developed a tactical system that did not depend on pitched battle. The reconquest of Aquitaine was, in effect, the working-out of the strategic consequences of Brétigny.
The legacy of the treaty
The Treaty of Brétigny was one of the most ambitious diplomatic agreements of the Middle Ages, and it represented a high point of English power in France. The treaty’s provisions, however, were never fully implemented, and the long Caroline reconquest that followed undid most of its provisions. The treaty, in the end, was a failure: the territories it granted were lost within a decade, and the war that it was supposed to end resumed with renewed intensity.
The standard modern treatment is Jonathan Sumption’s second and third volumes, Trial by Fire (1999) and Divided Houses (2009), both of which treat the treaty in detail. Philippe Contamine’s La Guerre de Cent Ans (1968) is the standard French treatment. The site treats the treaty within the Edwardian phase and the Caroline phase, and within the ransom system long-tail article.