XVIII
THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR
During fourteen years, from 1314 to 1328, three sons of Philip IV reigned in rapid succession; but with the death of the last the main line of the House of Capet came to an end, and the crown passed to his nephew and namesake Philip of Valois.[26] The latter declared that his claims were based on a clause of the old Salic Law[27] forbidding a woman to inherit landed property, because as it happened Philip IV had left a daughter Isabel, who had married Edward II of England, and their son Edward III loudly protested that his right to the throne of France was stronger than that of the Valois. The Salic Law, Edward maintained, might prevent a woman from succeeding to the throne, but there was nothing in this restriction to forbid the inheritance passing to her male heirs.
Causes of the Hundred Years’ War
The question of the Salic Law is important because its different interpretations were the immediate excuse for opening hostilities between England and France in that long and weary struggle called the ‘Hundred Years’ War’. There were of course other and far deeper reasons. One of these reasons was that English kings had never forgotten or forgiven John’s expulsion from Normandy. They wanted to avenge this ignominious defeat and also Philip IV’s encroachments in the Duchy of Guienne, that, united to his policy of supporting the Scottish chieftains in their war of independence, had been a steady source of disaster to England since the beginning of the fourteenth century.
Because of his failure in Scotland and the revolts of his turbulent barons Edward II was murdered; and Edward III, taking warning from his father’s fate, welcomed the war with France, not merely in the hope of revenge and glory, but still more in order to find an occupation for the hot English blood that might otherwise in the course of its embittered feuds murder him.
He rode forth to battle, the hero of his court and of the chivalry of England; but no less, as it happened, the champion of her middle classes, who cheerfully put their hands in their pockets to pay for his first campaigns. The reason of their enthusiasm for this war was that Philip of Valois, in order to annoy his rival, had commanded his Flemish subjects to trade no longer with the English. Now English sheep were the best in Europe (so valuable that their export was forbidden lest another nation should obtain the breed), and English wool was the raw material of all others on which Flanders depended for the wealth and prosperity gained by her looms and factories. Before this time English kings had encouraged Flemish trade, establishing ‘Staple’ markets in certain towns under their protection, where merchants of both countries could meet and bargain over their wares. Wishing to retaliate on Philip VI, however, Edward III stopped the export of wool, though at the same time he offered good terms and advantages to any of the manufacturers of Bruges and Ghent who might care to settle in Norfolk or on the East Coast and set up factories there as English subjects.
Such a suggestion could not satisfy the Flemish national spirit, and in the large towns discontent with the French king grew daily. At last one of the popular leaders, Jacob van Artevelde, ‘the Brewer of Ghent’, began to rouse his countrymen by inflammatory speeches. ‘He showed them’, says the chronicler, ‘that they could not live without the King of England’; and his many commercial arguments he strengthened with others intended to win those who might hesitate to break their oath of allegiance, assuring them that Edward III was in truth by right of birth King of France.
Rebellion sprang up on all sides in response; and when, in 1338, Edward III actually embarked on the war, he had behind him not only the English wool-farmers, but also the majority of Flemish merchants and artisans, alike convinced that his victory would open Flemish markets to trade across the Channel.
The Hundred Years’ War falls into two distinct periods: the first, the contest waged by the Angevin Edward III against the House of Valois, a struggle that lasted until 1375; the second, a similar effort begun by the Lancastrian Kings of England in 1415 after a time of almost suspended hostilities under Richard II. In each period there is the same switchback course to the campaigns, as they rise towards a high-water mark of English successes only to sink away to final French achievement.