south-west, from which in the August of 1346 he was sent posthaste northwards to try to prevent an invading Flemish army from capturing the strategically vital town of Béthune. This assignment he achieved with conspicuous success, in marked contrast to his king, Philip VI, who after being heavily defeated by England’s King Edward III at the battle of Crécy, went on to lose the port of Calais likewise. In 1347 King Philip appointed Charny a royal councilor and bearer of the Oriflamme, later also making him responsible for protecting France’s northern border and for trying to recapture Calais from the English. In 1349 Aimery of Pavia, a Lombard mercenary who held the keys to one of the gates of Calais, secretly offered to help Charny recapture the town in return for payment of a huge bribe. Having procured the requisite sum, Charny led a daring night-time assault only to discover that Aimery had double-crossed him by pre-warning England’s King Edward III. Charny duly found himself once again a prisoner, chafing in an English jail for over a year before the newly succeeded King Jean II paid off the huge ransom that was demanded for his release. Shortly after his return to France Charny found the castle where Aimery was staying, captured him, and carried him off to his military base at Saint-Omer, where he ordered him to be publicly executed as a traitor to the sworn word. As noted by historian Richard Kaeuper: "To show that all this was a private matter and not a part of the business of war (there was currently a truce), Charny took possession only of Aimery himself, not his castle." Because his first wife had died, most likely during the Black Death of 1348/9, without producing a male heir, Charny remarried circa 1354, his second wife being Jeanne de Vergy, a very young woman (for she would live on to 1428), who bore him a son named Geoffroi after his father. Death During the spring of 1356, King Jean II and Charny collected the Oriflamme from the abbey of St. Denis and set off with the French army to try to dislodge a well-entrenched enemy garrison that was holding the northern town of Breteuil. Meanwhile an army led by England’s Edward the Black Prince, which had been raiding towns in France’s south, began heading dangerously towards Paris, forcing King Jean and his army to