In August 1350, Jean II, known as Jean le Bon (Jean the Good), succeeded his father Philip VI on the French throne. An impetuous and ineffective ruler, he quickly alienated the nobility by executing the Constable of France without a trial and promoting his unpopular favorite, Charles d’Espagne. Jean’s attempts at military reform, including the creation of the chivalric Order of the Star, proved disastrous: The Order’s oath never to retreat led to the near-annihilation of its members at the ambush of Mauron in 1352, causing the ruin of that company. The political turmoil was exploited by Charles the Bad, the King of Navarre, who emerged as a dangerous rival to the French crown. After assassinating Charles d’Espagne, Charles of Navarre forged an alliance with England.

In 1355, the war with England resumed with new intensity. Edward (also known as the Black Prince), son of King Edward III of England, led a destructive raid through southern France, leaving a trail of destruction. The following year, King Jean assembled a massive army to confront the Black Prince’s smaller force near Poitiers. Despite their superior numbers, the French suffered a catastrophic defeat on September 19, 1356. Plagued by poor leadership, internal disputes, and a flawed strategy that had knights fighting on foot, the French army collapsed; Orléans’ battalion fled without striking a blow. King Jean himself was captured on the battlefield, along with much of the French nobility. The defeat was a deep humiliation for France, sparking popular outrage at the nobility, who were widely viewed as cowards and traitors.

With King Jean a captive in England, France fell into chaos. In Paris, the Third Estate, led by the Provost of Merchants, Etienne Marcel, seized the opportunity to push for governmental reform. The Estates General, a representative assembly, drafted the Grand Ordinance, a document intended to limit the monarchy’s power and curb corruption. The young Charles, acting as regent, was initially forced to accept their demands. At this time, Charles was the Dauphin of France, the title traditionally given to the designated heir to the French throne. At the same time, the country was being terrorized by the Free Companies, bands of discharged mercenaries who plundered the countryside.

The political struggle in Paris grew violent in February 1358 when Marcel led an armed crowd to the royal palace, where his men murdered two of the Dauphin’s marshals in front of the prince. This act horrified the nobility and drove them to support the Dauphin. Three months later, years of oppression and the nobles’ failure to protect the common people led to a brutal peasant uprising known as the Jacquerie. Led by Guillaume Cale, peasants attacked castles and manors, killing their lords. Marcel made a fatal error by allying his bourgeois movement with the Jacques, which alienated his support among the propertied classes. The nobility suppressed the rebellion separately: Charles of Navarre defeated the Jacques at Clermont, while Enguerrand de Coucy, at the head of the gentry of his barony, defeated the Jacques in his own domain. Marcel’s own power in Paris collapsed and, in July 1358, he was killed by his fellow citizens. The Dauphin soon regained control of the city and the attempt to reform the French monarchy ended in failure.

In 1359, King Jean, still a prisoner, agreed to the humiliating Treaty of London, which would have ceded vast territories to England. The Dauphin and the Estates General rejected the terms, however, prompting a new English invasion led by King Edward III. The French, under the Dauphin’s leadership, adopted a new strategy of avoiding open battle, frustrating the English campaign. After a severe hailstorm demoralized his army in 1360, Edward agreed to negotiate. The resulting Treaty of Brétigny was less harsh, but still ceded about a third of France and confirmed a ransom of three million gold écus for King Jean.

To guarantee the treaty, forty high-ranking French nobles, including Enguerrand de Coucy, were sent to England as hostages. The convoy also included Jean Froissart, a young chronicler from Hainault, and possibly Geoffrey Chaucer, a poet traveling as part of the duke of Clarence’s retinue, though no documentary evidence confirms Chaucer’s presence on the voyage. France, ravaged by war and a second wave of plague in 1361, struggled to make the ransom payments. The territorial transfers also met with resistance from French towns unwilling to accept English rule. The hostages’ exile was prolonged indefinitely. In 1363, one of the royal hostages, the Duc d’Anjou, broke his parole and refused to return to England. Insisting that good faith and honor must be found in the hearts of princes, King Jean announced he would return to captivity despite his council calling it a great folly. He sailed back to England in early 1364 and died in London a few months later, leaving his country leaderless and his ransom still unpaid.

Isabella of England, the eldest and favorite daughter of King Edward III, was 33 in 1365, eight years older than Enguerrand, and still unmarried. After several diplomatic matches had failed, she had been allowed to live an unusually independent and extravagant life. During Enguerrand de Coucy’s five-year stay in England as a hostage, a match was arranged between them; the chronicler Ranulph Higden stated forthrightly that she wished to be betrothed only for love. King Edward strongly favored the union, seeing it as a political advantage. Marrying his daughter to a powerful French lord whose lands were strategically located near English-held Calais would secure a valuable ally and, he felt, neutralize a potential enemy.

Enguerrand and Isabella were married in July 1365. The king’s wedding gift to his new son-in-law was his freedom; Enguerrand was released from his hostage status without ransom. Edward further solidified the alliance by restoring Enguerrand’s ancestral lands in England, creating for him the earldom of Bedford, and inducting him into the prestigious Order of the Garter. The couple had two daughters, Marie and Philippa. However, Isabella preferred the English court to her husband’s lands in Coucy, returning to England whenever possible. Enguerrand’s status was further enhanced when he acquired the French county of Soissons, making him a major lord with significant territory and allegiances in both kingdoms.

After the Treaty of Brétigny was signed in 1360, France was beset by the Free Companies, organized bands of unemployed mercenaries who lived by pillage and extortion. Led by skilled military captains like the Englishman Sir John Hawkwood, these companies terrorized the countryside, becoming a powerful and destabilizing force that the former Regent, now Charles V, was unable to control. Rulers often had no choice but to hire the companies or pay them enormous sums to leave their territories. In 1365, an effort by the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor to divert the companies into a crusade against the Turks in Hungary failed.

A new theater of war soon opened in Spain, where a civil war broke out between King Pedro the Cruel, backed by the English, and his half-brother Enrique of Trastamare, supported by the French. Charles V saw an opportunity to rid France of the Free Companies by sending them to Spain under the command of a talented Breton soldier named Bertrand Du Guesclin. Du Guesclin’s forces succeeded in placing Enrique on the throne, but the Black Prince intervened with an English army to restore Pedro. At the Battle of Najera in 1367, the prince defeated the French and captured Du Guesclin. Though inclined to hold him, the prince was stung by Du Guesclin’s taunts and agreed to a ransom of 100,000 francs, allowing Bertrand to return to French service. The victory proved hollow, as Pedro defaulted on his promise to pay for the campaign. The Black Prince was left with a discontented, unpaid army and failing health, while his imposition of new taxes to cover the debt drove his subjects in Aquitaine back toward an alliance with France.