[1] Grandes Chroniques de France, v., 323 (ed. P. Paris).
The diplomatists still had plenty of work before them. The French statesmen insisted on the necessity of the ceremony at Amiens being interpreted as liege homage, involving the obligation of defending the overlord "against all those who can live or die". The English politicians complained of the "injustice and unreason of the King of France, who seeks the disinheritance of their master in Aquitaine". It was only by limiting the demands of both parties to points of detail, that a compromise was arrived at in the convention of the Wood of Vincennes on May 8, 1330. Further negotiations were still necessary; and at the moment when everything was trembling in the balance, the sudden occupation of Saintes by the Count of Alencon, brother of Philip VI., brought matters within a measurable distance of war. But Edward, then at the beginning of his real reign, had no mind for fighting. A more satisfactory convention, drawn up on March 9, 1331, at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, was ratified by Edward at Eltham on March 30, when he recognised that he owed liege homage, and not merely simple homage, to the King of France. Next month, he crossed over to France so secretly that his subjects believed that he went disguised as a merchant or a pilgrim. At Pont-Sainte-Maxence, a little town on the Oise, a few miles below Compiègne, Edward held an interview with Philip VI., who came thither with equal privacy. The French king does not seem to have insisted upon a renewal of homage, being content with the assurance already given as to the character of the previous ceremony. The informal interview, which the modern historian can only ascertain by painful scrutiny of the royal itineraries, proved more fertile in friendship than all the pomp of Amiens. Before Edward went home, Philip gave him complete satisfaction for the outrage at Saintes, and arrived at a financial settlement. Thus Edward and Philip at last became friends "so far as outside appearances went," as a chronicler of the time phrased it. The fundamental difference of interests and standpoint could be glossed over by no facile compromise, and the calm of the next six years was only the prelude to a storm destined to end the policy that had regulated the relations of the two courts from the days of the peace of 1259 to those of the meeting at Pont-Sainte-Maxence.
At first there was talk of further cementing the newly established friendship. There were suggestions of a marriage of Edward's infant son with Philip's daughter, a fresh interview between the monarchs, a treaty of perpetual alliance and a common crusade against the Turks. The last, and the most fantastic, of these projects was the one which was most seriously discussed. The chivalrous spirit of Philip of Valois rose eagerly to the idea of a great European expedition against the infidel, of which he was to be the chief commander. Inspired by John XXII., he took the cross, made preparations for an early start, and invoked Edward's co-operation. Edward cleverly utilised his kinsman's zeal as another lever for enforcing the settlement of outstanding differences. "Tell your master," he said to the French ambassador, Peter Roger, now Archbishop of Rouen, "that when he has fulfilled his promises, I will be more eager to go on the holy voyage than he is himself." But the chronic troubles, arising from the unceasing extension of the suzerain's claims in Aquitaine, and from the shelter given by Philip to David Bruce, had continued all through the years of professed friendship, and in 1334 an embassy to Paris, presided over by Archbishop Stratford, failed to establish a modus vivendi. In the same year John XXII. died without having either procured the crusade or crushed Louis of Bavaria. His successor, James Founder of Foix, who took the name of Benedict XII., pursued his general policy, though in a more diplomatic and self-seeking spirit. Benedict's great wish was to, unite France and England against his enemy, the Emperor Louis of Bavaria, and he dexterously played upon Philip's eagerness for the crusade to persuade him to abandon to the papacy the position, which he had assumed, of arbiter of the differences between Edward and the Scots. It was a signal, though transitory, triumph of this policy that a truce between England and Scotland was brought about by the mediation of the pope and not of the French king. But Benedict found that a crusade was impossible so long as the chief powers of the west were hopelessly estranged from each other. In 1336, he vetoed the crusading scheme until happier times had dawned. Philip, bitterly disappointed, sought out Benedict at Avignon, but utterly failed to change his purpose. He was in his own despite released from the crusader's vow, though exhorted still to continue his preparations. The galleys, purchased from the crusading tenths of the Church, were transferred from the Mediterranean to the Channel. The French king might well find consolation for the abandonment of the holy war in a sudden descent on England.
From that moment the horizon darkened. Philip VI., once more took up the cause of the Scots, and once more the Aquitanian troubles became acute. His irritation at Benedict led him to open up negotiations with Louis of Bavaria, whereat Benedict was greatly offended. Edward III. then sought to find friends who would help him against Philip. He was as much disgusted with the pope as was his French rival. The crusading fleet, equipped with the money of the Roman Church, threatened the English coast, and the curia was even more French in its sympathies than the temporising pontiff. It is no wonder then that both kings looked coldly on Benedict's offer of mediation between them. Yet, notwithstanding the indifference manifested by both courts, two cardinals, Peter Gomez, a Spaniard, and Bertrand of Montfavence, a Frenchman, were sent in the summer of 1337 as papal legates to France and England to settle the points in dispute. For the next three years these prelates pursued their mission with energy and persistence, though with little result.
A fresh dispute further embittered the personal relations of Philip and Edward. In 1336, Edward offered a refuge in England to Robert of Artois, Philip's brother-in-law and mortal enemy. The grandson of the Count Robert of Artois who was slain in 1302 at Courtrai, Robert of Artois was indignant that the rich county of Artois should, according to local custom, have devolved upon his aunt Maud, the wife of Otto, Count of Burgundy, or Franche Comté, and the mother-in-law of the last two kings of the direct Capetian line. Though he had failed in several suits to obtain it, Robert renewed his claim after his brother-in-law became King of France. It was soon proved that the charters upon which he relied to prove his title had been forged. The sudden death of the Countess of Artois, followed quickly by that of her daughter and heiress, added the suspicion of poisoning to the certainly of forgery. Robert was deprived of all his possessions and was exiled from France. Driven from his first refuge in Brabant by Philip's indignant hostility, he found shelter in England, where he was received with a favour which Philip bitterly resented. Condemned in his absence as a traitor, and devoured by a ferocious hatred of Philip and his Burgundian wife, Robert did all that he could to inflame the mind of Edward against the French king. French romance of the next generation, in the poem of the Vow of the Heron,[1] tells how Robert, returning to Edward's court from the chase, brought as his only victim a heron, which he offered to the king as the most timid of birds to the most cowardly of kings; "for, sire," he declared, "you have not dared to claim the realm of France which belongs to you by hereditary right". Stirred up by this challenge, Edward swore to God and the heron that within a year he would place the crown of France on Queen Philippa's brow. This famous legend is, however, a fiction. It was not until later that Edward seriously renewed the claim which he had advanced in 1328. But when once war became certain, the challenge of the French throne was bound to be made, and the dissolution of the friendly personal relations of the two kings, which had so long prevented either from proceeding to extremities, was certainly in large part the work of Robert of Artois. For the moment, Edward probably thought that his welcome of Robert was only a fair return for Philip's reception of David Bruce.
[1] Les voeus du héron in Wright, Political Poems and Songs, i., 1-25 (Rolls Ser.)
War being imminent, Edward looked beyond sea for foreign allies. Commercial and traditional ties closely bound England to the county of Flanders, but our friendship had latterly been with its people rather than with its princes. Louis of Nevers, the Count of Flanders, had been expelled in 1328 by a rising of the maritime districts of the county, and had been restored by force of arms through the agency of Philip of Valois. Gratitude and interest accordingly combined to make Count Louis a strong partisan of Philip of Valois. Though far from absolute, he was still possessed of sufficient authority over his unruly townsmen to make it impossible for Edward to negotiate successfully with them. In 1336 the count answered Edward's advances by prohibiting all commercial relations between his subjects and England. Bitterly disgusted at the hostility of Flanders, Edward in 1337 passed a law through parliament which prohibited the export of wool to the Flemish weaving centres. This measure provoked an economic crisis at Ghent and Ypres; but for the moment such a catastrophe could only accentuate the differences between England and the count. It was otherwise, however, with the neighbouring princes of the imperial obedience. Count William I. of Hainault, Holland, and Zealand was Edward III.'s father-in-law, and, during the last months of his strenuous career, he welcomed Bishop Burghersh, Edward's chief diplomatist, to his favourite residence of Valenciennes, where from April, 1337, the English ambassadors kept great state, "sparing as little as if the king were present there in his own person," and striving with all their might to build up an alliance with the princes of the Low Countries. When the count died, his son and successor, William II., persisted, though with less energy, in his father's policy, and the Hainault connexion became the nucleus of a general Low German alliance. Burghersh was lavish in promises, and soon a large number of imperial vassals took Edward's pay and promised to fight his battles. Among these were Count Reginald of Gelderland, who since 1332 had been the husband of Edward III.'s sister Eleanor, and with him came the Counts of Berg, Jülich, Cleves, and Mark, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, and a swarm of minor potentates.
Hardest to win over of the Netherlandish princes was Duke John III. of Brabant, a crafty statesman and a successful warrior, who had recently conquered limburg, and won a signal victory over a formidable coalition of his neighbours. Among his former foes had been the house of Avesnes, but he had reconciled himself with Hainault, by reason of his greater hatred for Louis of Flanders. The Flemish cities were the rivals in trade of his own land, and their count's friendship for his French suzerain ensured the establishment of Philip of Valois as temporary lord of Mechlin, the possession of which had long been indirectly disputed between Brabant and Flanders. The hesitating duke was at last won over by a favourable commercial treaty, which made Antwerp the staple of English wools, and ensured for the looms of Louvain and Brussels the advantages denied by Edward's hostility to the clothworkers of Ghent and Ypres. Convinced that war with Philip was the surest way of adding Mechlin to his dominions, he then joined the circle of Edward's stipendiaries. The excommunicated and schismatic emperor, Louis of Bavaria, welcomed the advances of Burghersh. More than one tie already bound the Bavarian to England. The English Franciscan, William of Ockham, proved himself the most active and daring of the literary champions of the imperial claims against John XXII. Moreover, the emperor and Edward had married sisters, and their brother-in-law, the new Count of Hainault, Holland, and Zealand, was childless, so that they had common interests in keeping on good terms with him. Louis' bitter enemy, Benedict XII., forbade all hope of French support, and blocked the way to all prospect of reconciliation with the Church. It was natural that Louis should take his revenge by an alliance with the prince who ignored the advice of the pontiff, and hated the Valois king. As the result of all this, an offensive and defensive alliance between Edward on the one hand and Louis and his Low German vassals on the other was signed at Valenciennes in the summer of 1337.
The die seemed cast. Philip VI. pronounced the forfeiture of Gascony and Ponthieu. The French at once invaded Edward's duchy and county, while the French sailors in the Channel plundered the Anglo-Norman islands and the towns on the Sussex and Hampshire coasts. Edward redoubled his preparations for war, and issued a long manifesto to his subjects in which he set forth in violent language his grievances against Philip. It was at this unlucky moment that the two cardinal legates came upon the scene, reaching Paris in August, intent on arranging a pacification. The irritation, which Benedict showed against Edward for concluding an alliance with the schismatic emperor, did not make him more disposed to the work of conciliation. But the pope saw in the outbreak of a great war the destruction of his last hopes of humiliating the Bavarian, and once more played upon the weakness and impolicy of Philip. Though France was more ready than England, and Philip had everything to lose by delay, the French king allowed himself to be persuaded by the two legates to enter once more upon the paths of conciliation. As a preliminary measure, he revoked the order for the confiscation of Gascony, and accepted a temporary armistice. As before in the Scottish business, Philip again played the game of the papacy. Unlike his adversary, Edward continued steadily in the line which he had determined upon, while welcoming any delay that gave him opportunity to get ready. He employed the interval in making peace more impossible than ever. On October 7, he renewed his claim to the French crown, repudiated the homage into which he had been tricked during his infancy, and sent Bishop Burghersh straight from Valenciennes to Paris as bearer of his defiance. Thus the autumn of 1337 saw a virtual declaration of war. In November the first serious hostilities took place. Sir Walter Manny devastated the Flemish island of Cadzand, taking away with him as prisoner the bastard brother of the Count of Flanders.
Papal diplomacy had not yet exhausted its resources. Benedict XII. was deeply concerned at the conclusion of the Anglo-imperial alliance. He was convinced that the only possible way of avoiding its perils was to persuade Edward and Philip to bury their differences and unite with him against the emperor. He succeeded in obtaining short prolongations of the existing armistice and, in December, 1337, the two cardinal legates landed in England, and were gladly received by Edward, who was delighted to gain time by negotiations. For the next six months they tarried in England, hoping against hope that something definite would result from their efforts. Meanwhile the English hurried on their preparations for war, and Edward made ready to cross over to the continent. As months slipped away, the tension became more severe, and in May Edward denounced the truces, though he still kept up the pretence of negotiations, and so late as June appointed ambassadors to treat with Philip of Valois. The real interest centred in the hard fighting which at once broke out at sea between the rival seamen of England and Normandy. At first the advantage was with the Normans. Not only were many English ships captured, but repeated destructive forays were made on the coasts of the south-eastern counties. Portsmouth was burnt; the Channel Islands were ravaged; and so alarming were the French corsairs that, in July, 1338, the dwellers on the south coast were ordered to take refuge in fortresses, or withdraw their goods to a distance of four leagues from the sea.
At last the army and fleet were ready. On July 12, 1338, Edward appointed his son, the eight-year-old Duke of Cornwall, warden of England, and a few days later sailed from Orwell on a great ship named the Christopher. A favourable wind quickly bore the royal fleet to the mouth of the Scheldt. Thence the king and his army sailed up the river to Antwerp, the chief port of Brabant, where they landed on July 16. There, on July 22, Edward revoked all commissions addressed to the King of France, and withheld from his agents all power to prejudice his own pretensions to the throne of the Valois. He passed more than a month at Antwerp, holding frequent conferences with his imperial allies, and thence proceeded through Brabant and Jülich to Cologne. From that city he went up the Rhine to Coblenz, where on September 5 he held an interview with his queen's imperial brother-in-law. Their meeting was celebrated with all the pomp and stateliness of the heyday of chivalry. Edward was accompanied by the highest nobles of his land, the emperor by all the electors, save King John of Bohemia, who, as a Luxemburger, was a convinced partisan of the French. Louis received his ally clothed in a purple dalmatic, with crown on head and with sceptre and orb in hand, surrounded by the electors and the higher dignitaries of the empire, and seated on a lofty throne erected in the Castorplatz, hard by the Romanesque basilica that watches over the junction of the Moselle with the Rhine. Another throne, somewhat lower in height, was occupied by the King of England, clothed in a robe of scarlet embroidered with gold, and surrounded by three hundred knights. Then, before the assembled crowd, Louis declared that Philip of France had forfeited the fiefs which he held of the empire. He put into Edward's hands a rod of gold and a charter of investiture, by which symbols he appointed him as "Vicar-general of the Empire in all the Germanies and in all the Almaines". Next day the allies heard a mass celebrated by the Archbishop of Cologne in the church of St. Castor. After the service the emperor swore to aid Edward against the King of France for seven years, while the barons of the empire took oaths to obey the imperial vicar and to march against his enemies. Thereupon the English king took farewell of the emperor, and returned to Brabant.
All was ready for war. The interview at Coblenz was the deathblow to the papal diplomacy, and the sluggish Philip awaited in the Vermandois the expected attack of the Anglo-imperial armies. Yet the best part of a year was still to elapse before lances were crossed in earnest. The lords of the empire had no real care for the cause of Edward. They were delighted to take his presents, to pledge themselves to support him, and to insist upon the regular payment of the subsidies he had promised. But John of Brabant was more intent on winning Mechlin than on invading France, and even William of Avesnes was embarrassed by the ties which bound him to Philip, his uncle, even more than to Edward, his brother-in-law. They contented themselves with taking Edward's money and giving him little save promises in return. It became evident that an imperial vicar would be obeyed even less than an emperor. Every week of delay was dangerous to Edward, who had exhausted his resources in the pompous pageantry of his Rhenish journey, and in magnificent housekeeping in Brabant. It was then Edward's interest, as it had previously been Philip's, to bring matters to a crisis. That he failed to do this must be ascribed to the lukewarmness of his allies, the poverty of his exchequer, and, above all, to the still active diplomacy of Benedict XII.
The cardinal legates appeared in Brabant, but their tone was different from that which they had taken in the previous spring in England. Profoundly irritated by the alliance of Edward and Louis, Benedict lectured the English king on the iniquity of his courses. The empire was vacant; the Coblenz grant was therefore of no effect; if Edward persisted in acting as vicar of the schismatic, he would be excommunicated. Benedict stood revealed as the partisan of France. It was in vain that Edward offered peace if France gave up the Scots and made full restitution of Gascony. Benedict ordered his legates to refuse to discuss the latter proposal, and, as the Gascon question lay at the root of the whole matter, an amicable settlement became more impossible than ever. Edward hotly defended his right to make what alliances he chose with his wife's kinsmen, and bitterly denounced the employment of the wealth of the Church in equipping the armies of his enemies. Though the cardinals, Peter and Bertrand, remained in Edward's camp, they might, for all practical purposes, as well have been at Avignon. The papal diplomacy had failed.
Edward employed the leisure forced upon him by these events in elaborating his claim to the French throne. His lawyers ransacked both Roman jurisprudence and feudal custom that they might lay before the pope and Christendom plausible reasons for their master's pretensions. They advanced pleas of an even bolder character. Was not the right of Edward to the French throne the same as that of Jesus Christ to the succession of David? The Virgin Mary, incapable of the succession on her own behalf, was yet able to transmit her rights to her Son. These contentions, sacred and profane, did not touch the vital issue. It was not the dynastic question that brought about the war, though, war being inevitable, Edward might well, as he himself said, use his claim as a buckler to protect himself from his enemies. The fundamental difference between the two nations lay in the impossible position of Edward in Gascony. He could not abandon his ancient patrimony, and Philip could not give up that policy of gradually absorbing the great fiefs which the French kings had carried on since the days of St. Louis. The support given to the Scots, the Anglo-imperial alliance, the growing national animosity of the two peoples, the rivalry of English and French merchants and sailors, all these and many similar causes were but secondary.[1] At this stage the claim to the French throne, though immensely complicating the situation, and interposing formidable technical obstacles to the conduct of negotiations, loomed larger in talk than in acts. It was only in 1340, when Edward saw in his pretensions the best way of commanding the allegiance of Philip's sworn vassals, that the question of the French title became a serious matter.
[1] Déprez, Les Préliminaires de la Guerre de Cent Ans, pp. 400-406, admirably elucidates the situation.
On which side did the responsibility for the war rest? National prejudices have complicated the question. English historians have seen in the aggression of Philip in Gascony, his intervention in Scottish affairs, and the buccaneering exploits of the Norman mariners, reasons adequate to provoke the patience even of a peace-loving monarch. French writers, unable to deny these facts, have insisted upon the slowness of Philip to requite provocation, his servile deference to papal authority, his willingness to negotiate, and his dislike to take offence even at the denial of his right to the crown which he wore. Either king seems hesitating and reluctant when looked at from one point of view, and pertinaciously aggressive when regarded from the opposite standpoint. It is safer to conclude that the war was inevitable than to endeavour to apportion the blame which is so equally to be divided between the two monarchs. The modern eye singles out Edward's baseless claim and makes him the aggressor, but there was little, as the best French historians admit, in Edward's pretension that shocked the idea of justice in those days. Moreover this view, held too absolutely, is confuted by the secondary position taken by the claim during the negotiations which preceded hostilities. If in the conduct of the preliminaries we may assign to Edward the credit of superior insight, more resolute policy, and a more clearly perceived goal, the intellectual superiority, which he possessed over his rival, was hardly balanced by any special moral obliquity on his part; though to Philip, with all his weakness, must always be given the sympathy provoked by the defence of his land against the foreign invader. It is useless to refine the issue further. The situation had become impossible, and fighting was the only way out of the difficulty. When in the late summer of 1339 the curtain was rung down on the long-drawn-out diplomatic comedy, Edward had not yet finally assumed that title of King of France, which made an inevitable strife irreconcilable, and so prolonged hostilities that the struggle became the Hundred Years' War.
In the late summer of 1339 Edward III. was at last able to take the offensive against France. During the negotiations England strained every effort to provide her absent sovereign with men and money, but neither the troops nor the supplies were adequate. The army which assembled in September in the neighbourhood of Brussels consisted largely of imperial vassals, hired by the English King, and clamorous for the regular payment of their wages. Already Edward told his ministers that, had not "a good friend in Flanders" advanced him a large sum, he would have been obliged to return with shame to England. As it was, enough was raised to set the unwieldy host in motion, and on September 20 he marched from Valenciennes, and thence advanced into the bishopric of Cambrai, whose lord, though an imperial vassal, had declared for France and the papacy.
The rolling uplands of the Cambrésis were devastated with fire and sword. One night an English baron took the Cardinal Bertrand, who with his comrade Peter still accompanied Edward's host, to the summit of a high tower, whence they could witness the flaming homesteads and villages of the fertile and populous district. In that woeful spectacle the churchman saw the futility of his last two years of constant labour, and fell in a swoon to the ground. But the confederates could do little more than devastate the open country. Cambrai itself was besieged to no purpose, and Edward pressed on to the invasion of France. On October g he spent his first night on French soil at the abbey of Mont Saint-Martin. He learnt how slender was the tie which bound his foreign allies to him, for his brother-in-law, William of Hainault, refused to serve, except on imperial soil, against his uncle Philip VI. Consoled for this defection by the arrival of the sluggish Duke of Brabant and of the Elector of Brandenburg, the eldest son of the emperor, Edward marched through the Vermandois, the Soissonais, and the Laonnais, burning and devastating, without meeting any serious resistance. Philip of Valois timidly held aloof in the neighbourhood of Péronne.
By the middle of October, when Edward was near St. Quentin on the Oise, the Duke of Brabant suggested the expediency of seeking out winter quarters. The slow-moving host was almost in mutiny, when the master crossbowman of the King of France brought a challenge from his lord. "Let the King of England," ran the message, "seek out a field favourable for a pitched battle, where there is neither wood, nor marsh, nor river." Edward cheerfully accepted a day for the combat, and chose his ground higher up the Oise valley, among the green meadowlands and hedgerows of the Thiérache. The appointed day passed by, and the French came not. At last, when Edward almost despaired of a meeting, he was told that the French were arrayed at Buironfosse, on the plateau between the Oise and the upper Sambre, and that Philip was ready to fight the next day, Saturday, October 23. Edward once more chose a suitable field of action in a plain between La Flamangrie and Buironfosse, a league and a half from the French. "On the Saturday," wrote Edward to his son in England, "we were in the field, a full quarter of an hour before dawn, and took up our position in a fitting place to fight. In the early morning some of the enemy's scouts were taken, and they told us that his advanced guard was in battle array and coming out towards us. The news having come to our host, our allies, though they had hitherto borne themselves somewhat sluggishly, were in truth of such loyal intent that never were folk of such goodwill to fight. In the meantime one of our scouts, a knight of Germany, was taken, and he showed all our array to the enemy. Thereupon the foe withdrew his van, gave orders to encamp, made trenches around him, and cut down large trees in order to prevent us from approaching him. We tarried all day on foot in order of battle, until towards evening it seemed to our allies that we had waited long enough. And at vespers we mounted our horses and went near to Avesnes, and made him to know that we would await him there all the Sunday. On the Monday morning we had news that the lord Philip had withdrawn. And so would our allies no longer afterwards abide."
Thus ended the inglorious campaign of the Thiérache. Edward returned to Brussels "like a fox to his hole," and each side denounced the other for failing to keep the appointed tryst. The chivalry of the fourteenth century saw something ignoble in the sluggishness of Philip; but no modern soldier would blame him for his inactivity. Without striking a blow, he obtained the object of his campaign, for the enemy abandoned French territory. Had Edward been fully confident of victory, he could easily have forced a battle by advancing on Buironfosse; but he preferred to run the risk of a fiasco rather than abandon the defensive tactics on which he relied. Thus, even from the chivalrous point of view, he was by no means blameless. From the material standpoint, his first French campaign was a failure. It left its only mark on the devastated countryside, the beggared peasantry, the desolated churches and monasteries, the farmsteads and villages burnt to ashes.
Edward seemed ruined both in reputation and purse. He had exhausted his resources in meeting the extravagant demands of his allies, and their help had profited him nothing at all. Yet his inexhaustible energy opened up a surer means of foreign assistance than had been supplied by the unruly vassals of Louis of Bavaria. At the moment when the imperial alliance was tried and found wanting, the way was opened up for close friendship between Edward and the Flemish cities. In earlier years the chivalrous devotion of Louis of Nevers to his overlord had secured the political dependence of Flanders upon the King of France. If the action of their count made the Flemings the tools of French policy, their commercial necessities bound them to England by chains forged by nature itself. Alone of the lands of northern and western Europe, Flanders was not a self-sufficing economic community.[1] Its great ports and weaving towns depended for their customers on foreign markets, and the raw material of their staple manufacture was mainly derived from England. When in 1337 Edward prohibited the export of wool to Flanders, his action at once brought about the same result that the cessation of the supplies of American cotton would cause in the manufacturing districts of Lancashire. A wool famine, like the Lancashire cotton famine of 1862-65, plunged Ghent, Ypres, and Bruges into grievous distress. The starving weavers wandered through the farms begging their bread, and, when charity at home proved inadequate, they exposed their rags and their misery in the chief cities of northern France. Even wealthy merchants felt the pinch of the crisis which ruined the small craftsmen.
[1] See for this Pirenne, Histoire de Belgique, vols. i. and ii., and Lamprecht, Deutsche Geschichte, iii., 304-324, and iv., 134-142.
A common desire to avoid calamity bound together the warring classes and rival districts of Flanders, as they had never been united before. Bruges and Ypres had borne the brunt of earlier struggles, and had not even yet recovered from the exhaustion of the wars of the early years of the century. Their exhaustion left the way open to Ghent, where the old patricians and the rich merchants, the weavers and the fullers, forgot their ancient rivalries and worked together to remedy the crisis. A wealthy landholder and merchant-prince of Ghent, James van Artevelde, made himself the spokesman of all classes of that great manufacturing city. He was no demagogue nor artisan, though his eloquence and force had wonderful power over the impressionable craftsmen of the trading guilds. He was no Netherlandish patriot, as some moderns have imagined, though he was anxious to unite Flanders with her neighbour states, on the broad basis of their identity of economic and political interests. A man of Ghent, above all things, his policy was to save the imperilled industries of his native town, and to make it the centre of a new movement for the vindication of commercial liberty against feudal domination. By the winter of 1337 this rich capitalist allied himself with the turbulent democracy of the weavers' guilds, and put himself at the head of affairs. Early in 1338 he began to negotiate with Edward III., and his loans to the distressed monarch had the result of removing the embargo on English wool. The famished craftsmen hailed the enemy of their class as a god who had come down from heaven for their salvation.
Louis of Nevers and Philip of Valois took the alarm. Seeing in the ascendency of Artevelde the certainty that Flanders would join the English alliance, they left no stone unturned to avoid so dire a calamity. Artevelde, conscious of the narrow basis of his own authority, was prudent enough to be moderate. Instead of pressing the English alliance to a conclusion, he accepted the suggestion of Philip VI., that Flanders should remain neutral. Louis of Nevers hated the notion; but in June, 1338, Edward and Philip agreed to recognise Flemish neutrality, and he was forced to acquiesce in it. Both monarchs promised to avoid Flemish territory, and offered free commercial relations between Flanders and their respective dominions.
Artevelde and the men of Ghent were the real masters of Flanders. They kept their count in scarcely veiled captivity, forcing him to wear the Flemish colours and to profess acceptance of the policy that he disliked. In such circumstances the neutrality of Flanders could not last long. Both Edward and Artevelde regarded it simply as a step towards a declared alliance. Before long Philip became uneasy, and lavished concession on concession to keep the dominant party true to its promises. He gave up the degrading conditions which since the treaty of Athis had secured the subjection of Flanders. But Edward could offer more than his rival. He proposed to the count and the "good towns" of Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres that, in return for their alliance, he would aid them to win back the towns of Lille, Douai, Béthune, and Tournai, which the French king had usurped from the Flemings, as well as the county of Artois, which had been separated from Flanders since the days of Philip Augustus. He also offered ample commercial privileges, the establishment of the staple of wool at Bruges as well as at Antwerp, free trade for Flemish cloth with the English markets, and a good and fixed money which was to be legal tender in Flanders, Brabant, France, and England. The Flemings demanded in return that Edward, by formally assuming the title of King of France, should stand to them as their liege lord, and thus free themselves and their count from the ecclesiastical penalties and dishonour involved in their waging war against a king of France. Late in 1339, these terms were mutually accepted, and Count Louis avoided further humiliations by flight into France.
In January, 1340, Edward entered Flemish territory and was magnificently entertained in the abbey of Saint Bavon at Ghent. "The three towns of Flanders," declared Artevelde to his guest, "are ready to recognise you as their sovereign lord, provided that you engage yourself to defend them." The deputies of the three towns took oaths to Edward as their suzerain, and thereupon Edward was proclaimed King of France with much ceremony in the Friday market of Ghent. A new great seal was fashioned and new royal arms assumed, in which the lilies of France were quartered with the leopards of England. The new regnal year of Edward, which began on January 25, was styled the fourteenth of his reign in England, and the first of his reign in France. Urgent affairs called Edward back to his kingdom, but his debts to the Flemings were already so heavy that they only consented to his departure on his pledging himself to return before Michaelmas day, and on his leaving as hostages his queen, his two sons, and two earls. At last, on February 20, he crossed over from Sluys to Orwell. He had been absent from home for nearly a year and a half.
From February 21 to June 22, 1340, Edward remained in England. During that period, formal treaties with the Flemings confirmed the hasty negotiations of Ghent. Benedict XII, still pursued Edward with remonstrances. He warned the English king to have no trust in allies like the Flemings, who had shamefully driven away their natural lords and whose faithlessness and inconstancy were by-words. He told him that his strength was not enough to conquer France, and reproached him with calling himself king of a land of which he possessed nothing. Somewhat inconsistently, he offered his mediation between Edward and Philip. But Philip was only less weary than Edward of the self-seeking pontiff. Benedict was forced to drink the cup of humiliation, for after the rejection of his mediation, he was confronted with a proposal that the schismatic Bavarian should arbitrate between the two crowns. Meanwhile, after many delays, Edward embarked a gallant army on a fleet of 200 ships, and on June 22 a favourable west wind bore them from the Orwell towards Flanders. On arriving next day off Blankenberghe, he learned that a formidable French squadron was anchored in the mouth of the Zwyn, and that he could only land in Flanders as the reward of victory.
From the outbreak of hostilities in 1337, there had been a good deal of fighting by sea, and in the first stages of warfare the advantage lay with the French. Since the days of Edward I., and Philip the Fair, the maritime energies of the two countries had developed at an almost equal rate, and the parallel growth had been marked by bitter rivalry between the seamen of the two nations. The Normans had taken the leading share in this expansion of the French navy.[1] They welcomed the outbreak of war with enthusiasm, as giving them a chance of measuring their forces with their hated foes. Alone among the provinces of France, Normandy seems already to have experienced that intense national bitterness against the English which was soon to spread to all the rest of the country. Not content with the vigorous war of corsairs which had inflicted so much mischief on our southern coast and on English shipping, the Normans formed bold designs of a new Norman Conquest of England, and in return for the permanent establishment of the local estates of Normandy, agreed with Philip and his son John, who bore the title of Duke of Normandy, to equip a large fleet and army, with which England was to be invaded in the summer of 1339. Normandy, which monopolised the glory, was to monopolise the spoil. If England were conquered, Duke John, like Duke William before him, was to be King of England as well as Duke of Normandy. Thus the aggressions of Edward in France were to be answered by Norman aggressions in England.[2]
[1] C. de la Roncière, Hist, de la Marine Française; of. Nicolas, Hist, of the Royal Navy.
[2] See on this subject A. Coville, Les États de Normandie, pp. 41-52 (1894).
Nothing came of this grandiose project, though the burning ruins of Southampton, the capture of the great Christopher, which had borne Edward in 1338 to Antwerp, and the occupation of the Channel Islands—the last remnants of the old duchy still under English rule—showed that the Normans were in earnest. The chief result of their energy was the equipment of the strongest French fleet that had ever been seen in the Channel. Though a few Genoese galleys under Barbavera and a few great Spanish ships swelled the number of the armada, 160 of the 200 ships that formed the fleet were Norman.[1] Of the two Frenchmen in command, one, Hugh Quièret, was a Picard knight, but the other, the more popular, was Nicholas Béhuchet, a Norman of humble birth, then a knight and the chief confidant of Philip VI. Quièret and Béhuchet had long challenged the command of the narrow seas. But for their error of dividing their forces and preferring a piratical war of reprisals, they might have cut off communications between England and the Netherlands. They had learnt wisdom by experience, and their ships were massed in Zwyn harbour to prevent the passage of Edward to his new allies.
[1] S. Luce, La Marine normande à l'Écluse, in La France pendant la Guerre de Cent Ans, 3-31.
The coast-line between Blankenberghe and the mouth of the Scheldt was strangely different in the fourteenth century from what it is at present.[1] The sandy flats, through which the Zwyn now trickles to the sea, formed a large open harbour, accessible to the biggest ships then known. It was protected on the north by the island of Cadzand, the scene of Manny's exploit in 1337, while at its head stood the town of Sluys, so called from the locks, or sluices, that regulated the waters of the ship canal, which bore to the great mart of Bruges the merchantmen of every land. It was in this harbour that Edward, on arriving off Blankenberghe, first spied the fleet of Quièret and Béhuchet. He anchored at sea for the night, and on the afternoon of June 24, the anniversary of Bannockburn, he bore down on the French, having the sun, the tide, and the wind in his favour. On his approach Barbavera urged that the French should take to the open sea; but Quièret and Béhuchet preferred to fight in the harbour. As an unsatisfactory compromise, however, the French moved a mile or so towards the enemy. Then they lashed their ships together and awaited attack.
[1] For this see Professor Tait's inset map of the district in Oxford Historical Atlas, plate lvi.
The English, unable to break the serried mass of their enemies, feigned a retreat, whereupon the Normans unlashed their ships and hurried in pursuit into the open water. At once the English turned and met them. The battle began when the English admiral, Robert Morley, lay alongside the Christopher, which, after its capture, had been taken into the enemy's service. Soon the ships of both fleets were closely grappled together in a fierce hand-to-hand fight which lasted until after nightfall. The desperate eagerness of the combatants strangely contrasted with the slackness of the campaign in the Thiérache. "This battle," says Froissart, "was right fierce and horrible, for battles by sea are more dangerous and fiercer than battles by land, for at sea there is no retreat nor fleeing; there is no remedy but to fight and abide fortune, and every man to show his prowess." In the end the English won an overwhelming victory, which was completed next morning after more hard fighting. During the night Barbavera and his Genoese put to sea and escaped, but the magnificent Norman fleet was in the hands of the victor. The English loss was small, though it included Thomas of Monthermer, a son of Joan of Acre, and Edward himself was wounded in the thigh. The Norman force was almost annihilated. Quièret fell mortally wounded into Edward's hands; Béhuchet was captured unhurt. A later Norman legend tells how Béhuchet, when brought before the English king, answered some taunt by boxing the king's ears, whereupon the angry monarch hanged him forthwith from the mast of his ship.[1] But the tradition is unsupported by English authorities, and, with all his faults, Edward was not the man to deal thus with a captive knight who had fought his best. Master at last of the sea, Edward landed at Sluys amidst the rejoicings of the Flemings, and made his way to Ghent, where he greeted his wife, and first saw his infant son John, born during his absence, to whom Artevelde stood as godfather.
[1] Luce, Le Soufflet de l'Écluse, in La Frame pendant la Guerre de Cent Ans, 2nd série, pp. 3-15.
Edward's military fame was established over all Europe, and, says the Flemish writer, John van Klerk, "all who spoke the German tongue rejoiced at the defeat of the French". Yet the victory at Sluys was the prelude to a land campaign as ineffective as the raid into the Thiérache. Eager to restore their lost lands to the Flemings, Edward made the mistake of dividing his army. He sent Robert of Artois to effect the reconquest of Artois, while he himself besieged Tournai, which was then in French hands. Robert's attempt to win back the lands of his ancestors was a sorry failure. Defeated outside Saint Omer, he was unable even to invest that town. Almost equally unsuccessful was Edward's siege of Tournai, which resisted with such energy that he was soon at the end of his resources. At last, in despair, Edward challenged Philip VI. to decide their claim to France by single combat. The Valois answered that he would gladly do so if, in the event of his winning, he might obtain Edward's kingdom. In the same spirit of caution, Philip tarried half-way between Saint Omer and Tournai, watching both armies and afraid to strike at either. The armies wore themselves out in this game of waiting until the widowed Countess of Hainault, then abbess of the Cistercian nuns of Fontenelles, was moved by the desolation of the country to intervene between the two kings. The mother of the Queen of England and the sister of the King of France, she succeeded not only by reason of her prayers, but through the refusal of the Duke of Brabant, the Count of Hainault, and the other imperial vassals to remain longer at the war. On September 25, 1340, a truce was signed at the solitary chapel of Esplechin, situated in the open country a little south of Tournai. By it hostilities between both kings and their respective allies were suspended, until midsummer day, 1341. Each king was to enjoy the lands actually in his possession, and commerce was to be carried on as if peace had been made. The most significant clause of the truce was that by which both kings pledged themselves that they "procure not that any innovation be done by the Church of Rome, or by others of Holy Church on either of the said kings. And if our most holy father the pope will do that, the two kings shall prevent it, so far as in them lies."
The truce of Esplechin, renewed until 1345, put an end to the first, or Netherlandish, period of the Hundred Years' War. The imperial alliance, which had failed Edward, was soon to be solemnly dissolved. Early in 1341, Louis of Bavaria revoked Edward's vicariate, and announced his intention of becoming henceforth the friend of his uncle, the King of France. This alliance between Philip and Louis completed the discomfiture of Benedict XII. In 1342 he died, and his successor was Peter Roger, the sometime Archbishop of Rouen, who assumed the title of Clement VI. By persuading Brabant and Hainault to be neutral between France and England, the new pontiff broke up the last remnant of the Anglo-imperial alliance. Even Flanders and England became estranged. Artevelde, who found it a hard matter to govern Flanders after the truce, would willingly have supported Edward. But Edward had henceforth less need of Artevelde than Artevelde had of him. In 1345 Edward again appeared at Sluys and had an interview with him, and then returned to his own country without setting foot on Flemish soil. Artevelde soon afterwards met his death in a popular tumult. His family fled to England, where they lived on a pension from Edward. This was the end of the Anglo-Flemish alliance.
After the treaty of Esplechin, Edward returned to Ghent. The conclusion of military operations was a signal to all his creditors to clamour for immediate settlement of their debts. Neither subsidies nor wool came from England, though the king wrote in piteous terms to his council. Edward was convinced that the real cause of his failure was the remissness of the home government, and resolved to wreak his vengeance on his ministers. He was encouraged to this effect by Bishop Burghersh, who still remembered his old feuds with Archbishop Stratford, and may well have believed that the archbishop, who had a financier's dread of war, had wilfully ruined his rival's diplomacy. But Edward dared not openly return to England, for his Flemish creditors regarded his personal presence as the best security for his debts. He was therefore reduced to the pitiful expedient of running away from them. One day he rode out of Ghent on the pretext of taking exercise, and hurried secretly and without escort to Sluys. Thence he took ship for England, and, after a tempestuous voyage of three days and nights, sailed up the Thames, and landed at the Tower on November 30, 1340, after nightfall. At cockcrow next morning, he summoned his ministers before him, denounced them as false traitors and drove them all from office. The judges were thrown into prison, and with them some of the leading merchants, including William de la Pole of Hull. A special commission, like that of 1289, scrutinised the acts of the royal officials throughout the kingdom, and exacted heavy fines from the many who were found wanting. Nothing but fear of provoking the wrath of the Church prevented Edward from consigning to prison the dismissed chancellor, Robert Stratford, Bishop of Chichester, and the late treasurer, Roger Northburgh, Bishop of Coventry. Their successors were lay knights, the new chancellor, Sir Robert Bourchier, being the first keeper of the great seal who was not a clerk.
Earlier in the year the king had quarrelled with Archbishop Stratford, who resigned the chancellorship. But before Edward sailed from Orwell in June there had been a partial reconciliation, and the king left Stratford president of the council during his absence. When his brother and colleagues were dismissed, the archbishop was at Charing. Conscious that he was the chief object of Edward's vengeance, he at once took sanctuary with the monks of his cathedral. Every effort was made to drag him from his refuge. Some Louvain merchants, to whom he had bound himself for the king's debts, demanded that he should be surrendered to their custody until the money was paid. He was summoned to court and afterwards to parliament. But he prudently remained safe within the walls of Christ Church, and preached a course of sermons to the monks, in which he compared himself to St. Thomas of Canterbury, and hinted at the danger of his incurring his prototype's fate. Edward replied to this challenge by a lengthy pamphlet, called the libellus famosus. The violence and unmeasured terms of the tractate suggest the hand of Bishop Orleton, Stratford's lifelong foe, who had by Burghersh's recent death become the most prominent of the courtly prelates. The archbishop was declared to be the sole cause of the king's failures. He had left Edward without funds, and in trusting to him the king had leant on a broken reed. Stratford justified himself in another sermon in which he invited inquiry and demanded trial by his peers.
Edward so far relented as to issue letters of safe-conduct enabling the archbishop to attend the parliament summoned for April 23, 1341. But when Stratford took his place, the king refused to meet him, and ordered him to answer in the exchequer the complaints brought against him. The lords upheld the primate's cause, and declared that in no circumstances could a peer of parliament be brought to trial elsewhere than in full parliament. Edward's fury abated when he saw that he would get no grant unless he gave way. He restored Stratford to his favour, and acceded to his request that he should answer in parliament and not in the exchequer. The childish controversy ended with the personal victory of the primate and the formal re-assertion of the important principle of trial by peers. But not even then was Edward able to get a subsidy. He was further forced to embody in the statute of the year the doctrines that auditors of the accounts of the royal officers should be elected in parliament, and that all ministers should be chosen by the king, after consultation with his estates, and should resign their offices at each meeting of parliament and be prepared to answer all complaints before it.
Thus the fallen minister brought the estates the greatest triumph over the prerogative won during Edward's reign. Before long Edward was magnanimous enough to resume friendly relations with him, but he was never suffered to take a prominent part in politics. He died in 1348, after spending his later years in the business of his see. It was a strange irony of fate that this worldly and politic ecclesiastic should have perforce become the champion of the rights of the Church and the liberties of the nation. His victory established a remarkable solidarity between the high ecclesiastical party and the popular opposition, which was to last nearly as long as the century. Disgust at this alliance moved Edward to take up the anti-clerical attitude which henceforth marks the policy of the crown until the accession of the house of Lancaster.
The victory of the estates of 1341 was too complete to last. For a medieval king to hand over the business of government to a nominated ministry was in substance a return to the state of things in 1258 or 1312. Edward was not the sort of man to endure the thraldom that his father and great-grandfather had both found intolerable. Even at the moment of sealing the statute, he and his ministers protested that they were not bound to observe laws contrary to the constitution of the realm. Five months later, on October 1, 1341, the king issued letters, revoking the laws of the previous session. "We have never," he impudently declared, "really given our consent to the aforesaid pretended statute. But inasmuch as our rejecting it would have dissolved parliament in confusion, without any business having been transacted, and so all our affairs would have been ruined, we dissembled, as was our duty, and allowed the pretended statute to be sealed." For more than two years he did not venture to face a parliament, but the next gathering of the estates in April, 1343, repealed the offensive acts of 1341. Parliament was so reluctant to ratify the king's high-handed action, that he did not venture to ask it for any extraordinary grant of money. The only other important act of this parliament was a petition from lords and commons, urging the king to check the claims of a French pope, friendly to the "tyrant of France," to exercise ever-increasing rights of patronage over English benefices. The anti-clerical tide was still flowing.
Before parliament met in 1343, the French war had been renewed on another pretext. A new source of trouble arose in a disputed succession to the duchy of Brittany. The duke John III., the grandson of John II. and Edward I.'s sister Beatrice, died in April, 1341. He left no legitimate children, and his succession was claimed by his half-brother, John of Montfort, and his niece Joan of Penthièvre. Montfort, the son of Duke Arthur II. by his second wife, had inherited from his mother the Norman county of Montfort l'Amaury, which became her possession as the representative on the spindle side of the line of Simon de Montfort the Albigensian crusader. Joan was the daughter of Guy, John III.'s brother of the full blood, in whose favour the great county of Penthièvre-Tréguier, including the whole of the north coast of the duchy from the river of Morlaix to within a few miles of the Rance, had been dissociated from the demesne and reconstituted as an appanage.[1] The heiress of Penthièvre thus ruled directly over nearly a sixth of Brittany, and her power was further strengthened by her marriage with Charles of Blois, who, though a younger son, enjoyed great influence as the sister's son of Philip VI., and also by reason of his simple, saintly, honourable, and martial character. The house of Penthièvre not only stood to Brittany as the house of Lancaster stood to England, as the natural head of the higher nobility; it also enjoyed the favour and protection of the French king, who was ever anxious to find friends among the chief sub-tenants of his great vassals. Against so formidable an opponent John of Montfort could only secure his rights by promptitude. Accordingly he made his way to Nantes and, receiving a warm welcome from his burgesses, proclaimed himself duke. Very few of the great feudatories threw in their lot with him. His strength was in the petty noblesse, the townsmen, and the enthusiasm of the Celtic population of La Brétagne bretonnante, which made Léon, Cornouailles, and Vannes the strongholds of his cause. Yet the Penthièvre influence took with it the Breton-speaking inhabitants of the diocese of Tréguier, and the piety of Charles made the clergy, and especially the friars, devoted to him.
[1] On the importance of Penthièvre, see A. de la Borderie, La Géographie feodale de la Brétagne (1889), pp. 60-65.
The fight was not waged in Brittany only. Montfort had to contend against the general sentiment of the French nobility and the strong interest and affection which bound Philip VI. to uphold the claims of Charles of Blois. After a few months the parliament of Paris decided in favour of the king's nephew against Montfort. Charles's wife was the nearest heir of the deceased duke, and had therefore a prior claim over her uncle. Montfort urged in vain that the superior rights of the male, which had made the Count of Valois King of France, equally gave the Count of Montfort the duchy of Brittany. He had to fight for his duchy. John, Duke of Normandy, the heir of France, marched to Brittany with a strong force, to secure the establishment of his cousin in accordance with the decree of parliament. The union of the royal troops, with the levies of Penthièvre and the great feudatories of Brittany, was too powerful a combination to withstand. Montfort was shut up in Nantes, was forced to capitulate, and sent prisoner to Paris. His place was taken by his wife, Joan of Flanders, a daughter of Louis of Nevers. This lady shewed "the heart of a man and of a lion," as Froissart says. Her efforts, however, did not prevail against her formidable enemies. Bit by bit she was driven from one stronghold to another, until at last she was closely besieged in Hennebont by Charles of Blois. Before that, she had recognised Edward as King of France, and offered him the homage of her husband and son. Edward III. readily took up the cause of Montfort. He recked little of the inconsistency involved in the prince, who claimed France through his mother, supporting in Brittany a duke, whose pretensions were based upon grounds similar to the claim advanced by Philip of Valois on the French throne. As in Flanders, he found two rival nations contending in the bosom of a single French fief. He at once supported the Celtic party in Brittany as he had supported the Flemish party in Flanders. Both his allies had the same enemies in feudalism, the French monarchy, and the pretensions of high clericalism. Afraid to renew the attack in France without allies, Edward welcomed the support of the Montfort party, as giving him a chance of renewing his assaults on his adversary of Valois. He invested Montfort with the earldom of Richmond, of which John III had died possessed. He sent Sir Walter Manny with a force sufficient to raise the siege of Hennebont. The heroic Joan of Flanders was almost at the end of her resources, when on an early June morning, in 1342, she espied the white sails of Manny's fleet working its way from the sea up the estuary of the Blavet, which bathes the walls of Hennebont. After the arrival of the English, Charles of Blois abandoned the siege in despair. For the rest of the year the war was waged on a more equal footing. In August Edward sent to Brest an additional force under William Bohun, Earl of Northampton, who attempted, though with little success, to invade the domains of the house of Penthièvre. A hard-won victory against great odds near Morlaix was made memorable by Northampton's first applying the tactics of Halidon Hill to a pitched battle on the continent.[1] But the earl's troops were so few that they were forced to withdraw after their success into more friendly regions. Leon and Cornouailles then resumed allegiance to the house of Montfort. In the midst of the struggle Robert of Artois received a wound which soon ended his tempestuous career.
[1] Baker, p.76, gives the place, Knighton, ii., 25, the details. See also my note in Engl. Hist. Review, xix. (1904), 713-15.
Edward was eager to enter the field in person. Since his return to England in 1340, his only military experience had been a luckless winter campaign in the Lothians against King David. In October, 1342, he left the Duke of Cornwall as warden of England during his absence, and took ship at Sandwich for Brittany. He remained in the country until the early months of 1343, raiding the land from end to end, receiving many of the greater barons into his obedience, and striving in particular to conquer the regions included in the modern department of the Morbihan. There he besieged Vannes, the strongest and largest city of Brittany, says Froissart, after Nantes. The triumphs of his rival at last brought Philip VI. into Brittany. While Edward laboriously pursued the siege of Vannes, amidst the hardships of a wet and stormy winter, Philip watched his enemy from Ploermel, a few miles to the north. For a third time the situation of Buironfosse and Tournai was renewed. The rivals were within striking distance, but once more both Edward and Philip were afraid to strike. History still further repeated itself; for the cardinal-bishops of Palestrina and Frascati, sent by Clement VI. to end the struggle, travelled from camp to camp with talk of peace. The sufferings of both armies gave the kings a powerful reason for listening to their advances. At last, on January 19, 1343, a truce for nearly four years was signed at Malestroit, midway between Ploermel and Vannes, "in reverence of mother church, for the honour of the cardinals, and that the parties shall be able to declare their reasons before the pope, not for the purpose of rendering a judicial decision, but in order to make a better peace and treaty". Scotland and the Netherlands were included in the truce, and it was agreed that each belligerent should continue in the enjoyment of the territories which he held at the moment. Vannes, the immediate apple of discord, was put into the hands of the pope.
The spring of 1343 saw Edward back in England. The scene of interest shifted to the papal court at Avignon, where ambassadors from Edward and Philip appeared to declare their masters' rights. The protracted negotiations were lacking in reality. The English, distrusting Clement as a French partisan, did their best to complicate the situation by complaints against papal provisions in favour of aliens "not having knowledge of the tongue nor condition of those whose governance and care should belong to them". English indignation rose higher when, despite the terms of the truce and the promise of the cardinals, Montfort remained immured in his French prison, while Breton nobles of his faction were kidnapped and put to death by Philip. Clement declared himself against Edward's claims to the French throne, and, long before the negotiations had reached a formal conclusion, it was clear that nothing would come of them. At last in 1345 the English King denounced the truce and prepared to renew the war. His first concern was, necessarily finance, and he had already exhausted all his resources as a borrower. The financial difficulties, which had stayed his career in the Netherlands five years before, had reached their culmination. Stratford was avenged for the outrages of 1340, for Edward was in worse embarrassments than on that winter night when the glare of torches illuminated the sovereign's sudden return to the Tower. The king's Netherlandish, Rhenish, and Italian creditors would trust him no longer and vainly clamoured for the repayment of their advances. "We grieve," he was forced to reply to the Cologne magistrates, "nay, we blush, that we are unable to meet our obligations at the due time." Edward's anxiety to prepare for fresh campaigns made him careless as to his former obligations. His wholesale neglect to repay his debts drove the great banking houses of the Bardi and the Peruzzi into bankruptcy, and the failure of the English king's creditors plunged all Florence into deep distress. One good result came from the king's dishonour. The foreign sources of supply having dried up, Edward was forced to lean more exclusively upon his English subjects. A wealthy family of Hull merchants, recently transferred to London, became very flourishing. Its head, William de la Pole, who had financed every government scheme since the days of Mortimer, became a knight, a judge, a territorial magnate, and the first English merchant to found a baronial house. And as the credit of the English merchants was limited, Edward was forced more and more to rely upon parliamentary grants. The memory of the king's want of faith to the estates of 1341 had died away, and a parliament, which met in 1344, once more made Edward liberal contributions. Secure of his subjects' support, the frivolous king largely employed his resources in the chivalrous pageantry which stirred up the martial ardour of his barons and made the war popular. It was then that he resolved to set up a "round table" at Windsor after the fabled fashion of King Arthur. From this came the foundation of the Round Tower which Edward was to erect in his favourite abode, and the organised chivalry that was soon to culminate in the Order of the Garter. In the summer of 1345 Edward made that journey to Sluys, which has already been noted, and he held on ship-board his last interview with James van Artevelde. His immediate return to England showed that he had no mind to renew his Flemish alliances. In the same year the death of the queen's brother, William of Avesnes, established the rule of Louis of Bavaria in the three counties of Holland, Zealand, and Hainault in the right of his wife, Philippa's elder sister. Edward put in a claim on behalf of his queen, which further embittered his already uneasy relations with Louis, and led him to seek his field of combat anywhere rather than in the Netherlands. In Brittany the murder of the nobles of Montfort's faction had given an excuse for the renewal of partisan warfare as early as 1343, but Montfort was still under surveillance in France, even after his release from Philip's prison, and Joan of Flanders, the heroic defender of Hennebont, was hopelessly insane in England. At last in 1345 Montfort ventured to flee from France to England, where he did homage to Edward as King of France for the duchy which he claimed. He then went to Brittany, and there shortly afterwards died. The new Duke of Brittany, also named John, was a mere boy when he was thus robbed of both his parents' care, and his cause languished for want of a head. Edward took upon himself the whole direction of Brittany as tutor of the little duke. Northampton was once more sent thither, but for a time the war degenerated into sieges of castles and petty conflicts.
While action was thus impracticable in the Netherlands, and ineffective in Brittany, Gascony became, for the first time during the struggle, the scene of military operations of the first rank. The storm of warfare had hitherto almost spared the patrimony of the English king in southern France. No great effort was made either by the French to capture the last bulwarks of the Aquitanian inheritance, or by Edward to extend his duchy to its ancient limits. Cut off from other fields of expansion, Edward threw his chief energies into the enlargement of his power in southern France. He won over many of those Gascon nobles, including the powerful lord of Albret, who had been alienated by his former indifference. All was ready for action, and in June, 1345, Henry of Grosmont, Earl of Derby, the eldest son of Henry of Lancaster, landed at Bayonne with a sufficient English force to encourage the lords of Gascony to rally round the ducal banner. Soon after his landing, the death of his blind father made Derby Earl of Lancaster. During the next eighteen months, the earl successfully led three raids into the heart of the enemies' territory.[1] The first, begun very soon after his landing, occupied the summer of 1345. Advancing from Libourne, the limit of the Anglo-Gascon power, Henry made his way up the Dordogne, a fleet of boats co-operating with his land forces. He took the important town of Bergerac, and thence, mounting the stream as far as Lalinde, he crossed the hills separating the Dordogne from the Isle, and unsuccessfully assaulted Périgueux. Thence he advanced still further, and captured the stronghold of Auberoche, dominating the rocky valley of the Auvézère. Leaving a garrison at Auberoche, Henry returned to his base, but upon his withdrawal the French closely besieged his conquest, and the earl made a sudden move to its relief. On October 21 he won a brisk battle outside the walls of Auberoche before the more sluggish part of his army had time to reach the scene of action. This famous exploit again established the Gascon duke in Périgord.
[1] For these campaigns, see Ribadieu, Les Campagnes du Comté de Derby en Guyenne, Saintonge et Poitou (1865).
Early in 1346 the victor of Auberoche led his forces up the Garonne valley. La Réole, lost since 1325, was taken in January, and thence Earl Henry marched to the capture of many a town and fortress on the Garonne and the lower Lot. His most important acquisition was Aiguillon, commanding the junction of the Lot and the Garonne, for its possession opened up the way for the reconquest of the Agenais, the rich fruit of the last campaign of Charles of Valois. Duke John of Normandy then appeared upon the scene, and Henry of Lancaster withdrew before him to the line of the Dordogne. Aiguillon stood a siege from April to August, when the Duke of Normandy, then at the end of his resources, solicited a truce. News having come to Lancaster at Bergerac that Edward had begun his memorable invasion of Normandy, he contemptuously rejected the proposal. Before long, Duke John raised the siege and hurried to his father's assistance. Thereupon Lancaster returned to the Garonne and revictualled Aiguillon. Immediately after he started on his third raid. This time he bent his steps northwards, and late in September was at Châteauneuf on the Charente, whence he threatened Angoulême, and finally obtained its surrender. Crossing the Charente, he entered French Saintonge, where the important town of Saint-Jean-d'Angely opened its gates and took oaths to Edward as duke and king. Then he boldly dashed into the heart of Poitou, marching by Lusignan to Poitiers. "We rode before the city," wrote Lancaster, "and summoned it, but they would do nothing. Thereupon on the Wednesday after Michaelmas we stormed the city, and all those within were taken or slain. And the lords that were within fled away on the other side, and we tarried full eight days. Thus we have made a fair raid, God be thanked, and are come again to Saint-Jean, whence we propose to return to Bordeaux." This exploit ended Lancaster's Gascon career. In January, 1347, he was back in England, having restored the reputation of his king in Gascony, and set an example of heroism soon to be emulated by his cousin, the Black Prince.
Edward resolved to take the field in person in the summer of 1346. Special efforts were made to equip the army, and lovers of ancient precedent were dismayed when the king called upon all men of property to equip archers, hobblers, or men-at-arms, according to their substance, that they might serve abroad at the king's wages. But the nation responded to the king's call, and a host of some 2,400 cavalry and 10,000 archers and other infantry collected at Portsmouth between Easter and the early summer.[1] There were the usual delays of a medieval muster, and it was not until July was well begun that Edward, having constituted his second son Lionel of Antwerp, a boy of six, as regent, took ship at Portsmouth with his eldest son, then sixteen years of age, and, since 1343, Prince of Wales as well as Duke of Cornwall. The destination of the army was a secret, but Edward's original idea seems to have been to join Henry of Lancaster in Gascony, though we may well believe that the resources of medieval transport were hardly adequate to convey so large a force for so great a distance. Moreover, a persistent series of south-westerly winds prohibited all attempts to round the Breton peninsula, while Godfrey of Harcourt, a Norman lord who had incurred the wrath of Philip VI. and had been driven into exile, persistently urged on Edward the superior attractions of his native coast. When the fleet set sail from Portsmouth, it was directed to follow in the admiral's track; and as soon as the open sea was gained, the ships were instructed to make their way to the Côtentin. On July 12 the English army reached Saint-Vaast de la Hougue, and spent five days in disembarking and ravaging the neighbourhood.[2] Immediately on landing, Edward dubbed the Prince of Wales a knight, along with other young nobles, one of whom was Roger Mortimer, the grandson and heir of the traitor Earl of March. At last, on July 18, the English army began to move by slow stages to the south. It met with little resistance, and plundered and burnt the rich countryside at its discretion. The English marvelled at the fertility of the country and the size and wealth of its towns. Barfleur was as big as Sandwich, Carentan reminded them of Leicester, Saint-Lo was the size of Lincoln, and Caen was more populous than any English city save London.
[1] On the details of this force, see Wrottesley, Crecy and Calais, in Collections for a History of Staffordshire, vol. xviii. (1897); cf. J.E. Morris in Engl. Hist. Review, xiv., 766-69.
[2] Besides the sources for this campaign mentioned in Sir E.M. Thompson, Chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker, pp. 252-57, the disregarded Acta bellicosa Edwardi, etc., published in Moisant, Le Prince Noir en Aquitaine, pp. 157-74, from a Corpus Christi Coll. Cambridge MS., should be mentioned. It has first been utilised in H. Pientout's valuable paper, La prise de Caen par Édouard III. en 1346, in Mémoires de l'Académie de Caen (1904).