This time he found in England something else besides galas; he before long fell seriously ill, "which mightily disconcerted the King and Queen of England, for the wisest in the country judged him to be in great peril." He died, in fact, on the 8th of April, 1364, at the Savoy Hotel, in London; "whereat the King of England, the Queen, their children, and many English barons were much moved," says Froissart, "for the honor of the great love which the King of France, since peace was made, had shown them." France was at last about to have in Charles V.a practical and an effective king.
[Illustration: Charles V .-- --371] In spite of the discretion he had displayed during his four years of regency (from 1356 to 1360), his reign opened under the saddest auspices.
In 1363, one of those contagious diseases, all at that time called the plague, committed cruel ravages in France.

"None," says the contemporary chronicler, "could count the number of the dead in Paris, young or old, rich or poor; when death entered a house, the little children died first, then the menials, then the parents.

In the smallest villages, as well as in Paris, the mortality was such that at Argenteuil, for example, where there were wont to be numbered seven hundred hearths, there remained no more than forty or fifty." The ravages of the armed thieves, or bandits, who scoured the country added to those of the plague.

Let it suffice to quote one instance.

"In Beauce, on the Orleans and Chartres side, some brigands and prowlers, with hostile intent, dressed as pig-dealers or cow-drivers, came to the little castle of Murs, close to Corbeil, and finding outside the gate the master of the place, who was a knight, asked him to get them back their pigs, which his menials, they said, had the night before taken from them, which was false.