The Historical Geography of Europe, Vol. I, Text

by Edward A. Freeman

♦The Hundred Years’ War with England.♦

The former of these struggles was the great war between England and France, called by French writers the Hundred Years’ War. This war might be called either a war for the annexation of France to England or a war for the annexation of Aquitaine to France. ♦Designs of the French kings on Aquitaine.♦ By the peace between Henry the Third and Saint Lewis, Aquitaine became a land held by the king of England as a vassal of the French crown. From that time it was one main object of the French kings to change their feudal superiority over this great duchy into an actual possession. This object had been once obtained for a moment by the marriage of Eleanor and Lewis the Seventh. ♦Momentary occupation by Philip the Fair. 1294.♦ It was again obtained for a moment by the negotiations between Edward the First and Philip the Fair. The Hundred Years’ war began through the attempts of Philip of Valois on the Aquitanian dominions of Edward the Third. ♦1337.♦ Then the King of England found it politic to assume the title of King of France. ♦1339.♦ But the real nature of the controversy was shown by the first great settlement. ♦Peace of Bretigny. 1360.♦ At the Peace of Bretigny Edward gave up all claim to the crown of France, in exchange for the independent sovereignty of his old fiefs and of some of his recent conquests. Aquitaine and Gascony, including Poitou but not including Auvergne, together with the districts on the Channel, Calais with Guines and the county of Ponthieu, were made over to the King of England without the reservation of any homage or superiority of any kind. These lands became a territory as foreign to the French kingdom as the territory of her German and Spanish neighbours. ♦Renewal of the war. 1370-1374.
Losses of the English.♦ But in a few years the treaty was broken on the French side, and the actual possessions of England beyond the sea were cut down to Calais and Guines, with some small parts of Aquitaine adjoining the cities of Bourdeaux and Bayonne. ♦Conquests of Henry the Fifth.♦ Then the tide turned at the invasion of Henry the Fifth. ♦Treaty of Troyes. 1420.♦ The Treaty of Troyes united the crowns of England and France. ♦1431.♦ Aquitaine and Normandy were won back; Paris saw the crowning of an English king, and only the central part of the country obeyed the heir of the Parisian kingdom, no longer king of Paris but only of Bourges. ♦Conquest of Aquitaine. 1451-1453.♦ But the final result of the war was the driving out of the English from all Aquitaine and France, except the single district of Calais. The geographical aspect of the change is that Aquitaine, which had been wholly cut off from the kingdom by the Peace of Bretigny, was finally incorporated with the kingdom. ♦Final union of Aquitaine with France.♦ The French conquest of Aquitaine, the result of the Hundred Years’ War, was in form the conquest of a land which had ceased to stand in any relation to the French crown. Practically it was the incorporation with the French crown of its greatest fief, balanced by the loss of a small territory the value of which was certainly out of all proportion to its geographical extent. In its historical aspect the annexation of Aquitaine was something yet more. The first foreshadowing of the modern French kingdom was made by the addition of Aquitaine to Neustria, of southern to northern Gaul.[20] Now, after so many strivings, the two were united for ever. Aquitaine was merged in France. The grant to Charles the Bald took effect after six hundred years. ♦Beginning of the modern Kingdom of France.♦ France, in the sense which the word bears in modern use, may date its complete existence from the addition of Bourdeaux to the dominions of Charles the Seventh.

♦Growth of the Dukes of Burgundy.♦

Thus, in the course of somewhat less than four hundred years, the conquest of England by a vassal of France, followed by the union of a crowd of other French fiefs in the hands of a common sovereign of England and Normandy, had led to the union with France of all the continental possessions of the prince who thus reigned on both sides of the sea. Meanwhile, on the eastern side of the kingdom, the holder of a great French fief swelled into an European power, the special rival of his French overlord. ♦Escheat of the duchy of Burgundy. 1361.
Grant to Philip the Hardy. 1364.♦ The duchy of Burgundy, granted to a branch of the royal house in the earliest days of the Parisian kingdom, escheated to the crown in the fourteenth century, and was again granted out to a son of the reigning king. ♦Advance of the Valois Dukes.♦ A series of marriages, purchases, conquests, transactions of every kind, gathered together, in the hands of the Burgundian dukes, a crowd of fiefs both of France and of the Empire.[21] The duchy of Burgundy with the county of Charolois, and the counties of Flanders and Artois, were joined under a common ruler with endless Imperial fiefs in the Low Countries and with the Imperial County of Burgundy. ♦Advance to the Somme.♦ More than this, under Philip the Good and Charles the Bold, the Burgundian frontier was more than once advanced to the Somme, and Amiens was separated from the crown. ♦Annexations at the death of Charles the Bold. 1479.♦ The fall of Charles the Bold laid his dominions open to French annexation both on the Burgundian and on the Flemish frontier. ♦Momentary annexation of Artois and the County of Burgundy.♦ In the first moments of his success, Lewis the Eleventh possessed himself of a large part of the Imperial as well as the French fiefs of the fallen Duke. ♦Treaty of Arras. 1435.♦ But in the end Flanders and Artois remained French fiefs held by the House of Burgundy, which also kept the county of Burgundy and the isolated county of Charolois. ♦Incorporation of the duchy of Burgundy. 1479.♦ But France not only finally recovered the towns on the Somme, but incorporated the Burgundian duchy, one of the greatest fiefs of the crown. ♦French advance to the east.♦ This was the addition of a territory which the kings of France had never before ruled, and it marks an important stage in the advance of the French power towards the Imperial lands on its eastern border. By the marriage of Mary of Burgundy and Maximilian of Austria, the remains of the Burgundian dominions passed to the House of Austria, and thereby in the end to Spain. The result was that a French king had for a moment an Emperor for his vassal in his character of Count of Flanders and Artois. ♦Flanders and Artois relieved from homage. 1525.♦ But by the treaty of Madrid Flanders and Artois were relieved from all homage to France, exactly as Aquitaine had been by the Peace of Bretigny. They now became lands wholly foreign to France, and, as foreign lands, large parts of them were afterwards conquered by France, just as Aquitaine was. But the history of their acquisition belongs to the story of the advance of France at the expense of the Empire.

♦All the great fiefs annexed except Britanny.♦

Thus, by the end of the reign of Lewis the Eleventh, all the fiefs of the French crown which could make any claim to the character of separate sovereignties had, with a single exception, been added to the dominions of the crown. The one which had escaped was that one which, more than any other, represented a nationality altogether distinct from that of France. Britanny still remained distinct under its own Dukes. ♦1491-1499; incorporated 1532.♦ The marriages of its Duchess Anne with two successive French kings, Charles the Eighth and Lewis the Twelfth, added Britanny to France, and so completed the work. The whole of the Western Kingdom, except those parts which had become foreign ground—that is to say, insular Normandy and Calais, Barcelona, Flanders, and Artois—was now united under the kings of Paris. Their duchy of France had spread its power and its name over the whole kingdom. We have now to see how it also spread itself over lands which had never formed part of that kingdom.

§ 2. Foreign Annexations of France.

♦Foreign neighbours of Karolingia.
Imperial and Spanish neighbours.♦

When the Western Kingdom finally parted off from the body of the Empire, its only immediate neighbours were the Imperial kingdoms to the east, and the Spanish kingdoms to the south. ♦England.♦ The union of Normandy and England in some sort made England and France immediate neighbours. And the long retention of Aquitaine by England, the English possession of Calais for more than two hundred years and of the insular Normandy down to our own day, have all tended to keep them so. ♦Small acquisitions of France from England and Spain.♦ But the acquisitions of France from England, and from Spain, in its character as Spain, have been comparatively small. Indeed the separation of the Spanish March and the insular Normandy may be thought to turn the balance the other way. From England France has won Aquitaine and Calais, territories which had once been under the homage of the French King. ♦English conquest of Boulogne. 1544-1550.
1663.♦ So in the sixteenth century Boulogne was lost to England and won back again; so in the seventeenth century Dunkirk, which had become an English possession, was made over to France. Since the final loss of Aquitaine, the wars between England and France have made most important changes in the English and French possessions in distant parts of the world, but they have had no effect on the geography of England, and very little on that of France.

♦Boundary of the Pyrenees.♦