He wrote of battles between England and France during the Hundred Years' War where he was so close, "the arrows darkened the sky around him”. Some of these battles he described were the siege of Calais in 1347 and the Battle of Poitiers (1356) where the French King and his son were captured. He gives an account of what happened after Poitiers where he states that there seem to be no rule in the kingdom. He wrote that "thieves and robbers rose up everywhere in the land and the Nobles also robbed and pillaged the peasants and took no thought for the people but rather for their own profit".