But the new Duke held his Duchy as a fief from the English king, and the grievance of the Southerners was left untouched.
Charles V.who succeeded his father John in 1364 silently prepared to reap this harvest of discontent.

Patient, wary, unscrupulous, he was hardly crowned before he put an end to the war which had gone on without a pause in Britanny by accepting homage from the claimant whom France had hitherto opposed.

Through Bertrand du Guesclin, a fine soldier whom his sagacity had discovered, he forced the king of Navarre to a peace which closed the fighting in Normandy.

A more formidable difficulty in the way of pacification and order lay in the Free Companies, a union of marauders whom the disbanding of both armies after the peace had set free to harry the wasted land and whom the king's military resources were insufficient to cope with.

It was the stroke by which Charles cleared his realm of these scourges which forced on a new struggle with the English in the south.
[Sidenote: Pedro the Cruel] In the judgement of the English court the friendship of Castille was of the first importance for the security of Aquitaine.