We must proudly preserve the memory of this poor Picardy peasant called the Large one Shoed, who with him only put in escape a whole band of English plunderers, and which, sick, rose of its bed to strike those which approached (1359).

It Large Had certainly shoed there many whose history does not know the names, and whose exploits are remained without glory.

France, in contact with the English, started to become aware of itself.

Bertrand Du Guesclin had been born about 1320 in a rustic manor from Brittany, around Dinan.

During its childhood it made the despair of his parents: it struck his brothers and sisters, refused to learn how to read, and saved paternal house to go to fight with the small farmers.

One day his father locked up it in his room, but Bertrand succeeds with flees, jumped on a horse which it met and ran to Rennes; a few days afterwards, it took part in a combat of athletes and embanked all its adversaries, although it was yet only sixteen years old.

Avid to measure itself with nobler adversaries, it was made lend a horse and an armour, went to a great tournament where all the nobility of Brittany had met, and there gained victory over victory; it was made known only at the end of the tournaments, and his father, transported admiration, gave him the means of holding his row of knight and of fighting the English.

It arrived during a truce that a brother of Du Guesclin, which was useful in the same army, was stopped treacherously in the surroundings of Dinan and jeté in prison by English gentleman named Thomas de Canterbury.

To this news, Bertrand, transported anger, rides a horse, runs to the English camp and causes Canterbury with a combat with excess.

The duel took place on the public place of Dinan in the presence of a crowd moved and the duke by Lancaster which one had let enter the city with twenty English knights; undecided victory considering a long time; the two champions, forks and spoons of impenetrable armours, fought with the lance, the sword, the scraping-knife; finally Du Guesclin foot put at ground, and tackling the horse of its enemy, it inserted his sword in the belly to him; the English rolled in dust and Du Guesclin was proclaimed victorious; his brother was put at once in freedom, and driven out Canterbury of the English camp (1357).

Ringois was a martyr of patriotism.

When it saw the English entering Abbeville, under the terms of the treaty of Brétigny, it could not contain its heart and it raised the people against the invader; overpowered under the number and seized before to have found death, it was led to the castle of Dover and was summoned to lend oath to king d' Angleterre, but no threat could bend it, and the honest French was precipitated in the sea top of the fortress (1360).

The castle of Fougeray, located in the surroundings of Redon, was firmly occupied by a hundred English, and it had been madness that to attack it of sharp force.

Du Guesclin, who had only sixty men with him, nevertheless swore to take him: informed that the governor had ordered firewood, it disguised thirty of his companions as loggers or as old women, made them take with each one a load of wood, and curved itself under a faggot, it arised in front of the fortress, while the remainder of its band was held ready to run: the English without distrust lowered the drawbridge, but Du Guesclin, entered at once, rectifies itself while shouting: "Ahead", and precipitates on the English with large blows of knocked: surrounded of enemies, sifted wounds, it is about to succumb, when his companions arrive at his help: the English are massacred, and the French take their place in the castle (1350).

The town of Rennes, besieged by the duke of Lancaster since October 1356, started to suffer from the famine, when Du Guesclin ran to its help, forced the English lines with its small troop, and penetrated in the place, with the great joy of the inhabitants (March 1357).

At once the situation changes: the English are badgered day and night: they is only surprised, blows of hand and skirmishes from where Du Guesclin always some prisoner or some spoils brings back.

Once it forces the enemy camp and y removes hundred carts charged with corn, meat and wine; another time it puts fire at a large wood tower which threatened the ramparts; all the English knights who defy it in singular combat bite dust the ones after the others, and the duke of Lancaster, discouraged, decides to raise the seat.

It should not be forgotten that this success was gained by Du Guesclin almost at the following day of the battle of Poitiers.