Troubles arose between France and England soon after Edward had settled the Scottish succession. Neither Edward nor Philip the Fair sought a conflict. Edward was satisfied with his diplomatic successes, and Philip's designs upon Gascony were better pursued by chicane than by warfare. But questions arose of a different kind from the disputes as to feudal right, which had been hitherto the principal matters in debate between the two crowns.
There had long been keen commercial rivalry between the Cinque Ports and the traders of Normandy. The sailors of Bayonne and other Gascon harbours had associated themselves with the English against the Normans, and both sides loudly complained to their respective rulers of the piracies and homicides committed by their enemies. Edward and Philip did what they could to smooth over matters, but were alike unable to prevent their subjects flying at each other's throats. The story spread that a Norman ship was to be seen in the Channel with' English sailors and dogs hanging suspended from her yard-arms: "And so," says Hemingburgh, "they sailed over the sea, making no difference between a dog and an Englishman". Indignation at this outrage drove the English to act together in large organised squadrons. The French adopted the same tactics, and a collision soon ensued. On May 15, 1293, an Anglo-Gascon merchant fleet encountered a Norman fleet off Saint Mahe in Brittany. A pitched battle, probably prearranged, at once ensued. It ended in a complete victory for the less numerous English squadron, which immediately returned to Portsmouth, laden with booty.
Even after this, Edward strove to keep the peace, and endeavoured to exact compensation from his subjects. They answered with a highly coloured narrative of the dispute which threw the whole blame upon the Normans. Philip, changing his policy, took up his subjects' cause, and summoned Edward to answer in January, 1294, before the Parliament of Paris for the piracy exercised by his mariners, the misdeeds of his Gascon subjects, and the violent measures taken by his officers against any who appealed to the court of Paris. Edward sent his brother, Edmund, to reply for him. As Count of Champagne and the step-father of Philip's wife, Joan, Edmund seemed a peculiarly acceptable negotiator. After long debates, the personal intervention of the French queen, and Philip's step-mother, Mary of Brabant, resulted in an agreement being arranged. The overlord's grievances could not be denied, and it was urged that the formal surrender of part of Gascony might be made by way of recognising them. French garrisons were therefore to be admitted into six Gascon strongholds; twenty Gascon hostages were to be delivered over to Philip, while the seisin of the duchy was also to be transferred to the French king, who pledged himself not to change the officials nor to occupy the land in force. The whole business was in fact to be as formal as the delivery of the seisin of Scotland to Edward during the suit for the succession. Meanwhile, Edward and Philip were to arrange a meeting at Amiens to settle the conditions of a permanent peace, by which Edward was to take Philip's sister, Margaret, as his second wife, and the Gascon duchy was to be settled upon the offspring of the union. That Edward or Edmund should ever have contemplated such terms is a strong proof of their zeal for peace. It soon became clear that Edmund had been outrageously duped, and that the whole negotiation was a trick to secure for Philip the permanent possession of Gascony. The constable of France appeared on the Aquitanian frontier. The English seneschal surrendered the six castles and the seisin of the land. Gradually the French king began to take actual possession of the government. Moreover, after three months, the proceedings against Edward in the parliament of Paris were resumed; Edward was declared contumacious on the ground of his non-appearance, and sentence of forfeiture was passed.
Philip's treachery was thus manifest? and in great disgust Edmund withdrew from France. Edward was deeply indignant. In a parliament, held in June, 1294, which was attended by the King of Scots, war was resolved upon. The feudal tenants were summoned to assemble at Portsmouth on September 1; and Edward appealed for help to his Gascon subjects, beseeching their pardon for having negotiated the fatal treaty, and promising a speedy effort to restore them to his obedience. He sent them his nephew, John of Brittany, as his lieutenant and captain-general, under whom John of St. John was to act as seneschal of Gascony. Ambassadors were despatched to all neighbouring courts to build up a coalition against the French. Strenuous efforts were made to get together men and money, and the clergy were forced to make a grant of a half of their spiritual income. Edward overbore their opposition amidst a scene of excitement in which the Dean of St. Paul's fell dead at the king's feet. The shires were mulcted of a tenth and the boroughs of a sixth. And besides these constitutional exactions, the king laid violent hands on all the coined money deposited in the treasuries of the churches, and appropriated the wool of the merchants, which he only restored on the payment of a heavy pecuniary redemption. Meanwhile, about Michaelmas the lieutenant and the seneschal sailed with a fairly strong force. Further levies were summoned to assemble at Portsmouth at later dates. Besides the ordinary tenants of the crown, writs were sent to the chief magnates of Ireland and Scotland; and Wales and its march were called upon to furnish all the men that could be mustered. The Earls of Cornwall and Lincoln were appointed to the command, and Edward himself proposed to follow them to Gascony as soon as he could.
At the moment of the departure of John of Brittany a sudden insurrection in Wales frustrated Edward's plans. All Wales was ripe for revolt. In the principality the Cymry resented English rule, and the sulky marchers stood aloof in sullen discontent, while their native tenants, seeing in the recent humiliation of Gloucester and Hereford the degradation of all their lords, lost respect for such powerless masters. Both in the principality and in the marches, Edward's demand for compulsory service in Gascony was universally regarded as a new aggression. The intensity of the resistance to his demand can be measured by the general nature of the insurrection, and by the admirable way in which it was organised. As by a common signal all Wales rose at Michaelmas, 1294. One Madog, probably a bastard son of Llewelyn, son of Griffith, raised all Gwynedd, took possession of Carnarvon castle, and closely besieged the other royal strongholds. In west Wales a chieftain named Maelgwn was equally successful in Carmarthen and Cardigan. The marches were in arms equally with the principality. In the north, Lincoln's tenants in Rhos and Rhuvoniog besieged Denbigh, and threatened the king's fortresses in Flint. Maelgwn's sphere of operations included the earldom of Pembroke, while Brecon rose against Hereford, and Glamorgan against Gilbert of Gloucester. Morgan, the leader of the Glamorganshire rebels, loudly declared that he did not rebel against the king but against the Earl of Gloucester. With the beginning of winter the state of Wales was more critical than in the worst times of the winter of 1282.
Edward postponed his attack on Philip in order to throw all his energies into the reduction of Wales. The levies assembled at Portsmouth for the Gascon expedition were hurried beyond the Severn. The king held another parliament and exacted a fresh supply. Criminals were offered pardon and good wages, if they would serve, first in Wales and then in Gascony. Before Christmas about a thousand men-at-arms were mustered at various border centres under the royal standards, while every marcher lord was busily engaged in putting down his own rebels. Before so great a force the Welsh could do but little, and the spring saw the extinction of the rebellion. But there was hard fighting both in the south and in the north. Edward himself undertook the reconquest of Gwynedd. He was at Conway before the end of the year, and in his haste he threw himself into the town while the mass of his army remained on the right bank of the river. High tides and winter floods made the crossing of the stream impossible, and for a short time the king was actually besieged by the rebels. Conway was unprepared for resistance and almost destitute of supplies. The garrison thought it a terrible hardship that they had to live on salt meat and bread, and to drink water mixed with honey. They were encouraged by Edward refusing to taste better fare than his troopers, and declining to partake of the one small measure of wine reserved for his use. William Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, conveyed his troops across the estuary and raised the siege. Yet the insurgents were still able to fight a pitched battle. About January 22, 1295, Warwick found the Welsh established in a strong position in a plain between two woods. They had fixed the butts of their lances into the ground, hoping thus to resist the shock of a cavalry charge. Improving on the tactics of Orewyn bridge, the earl stationed between his squadrons of knights, archers and crossbowmen, whose missiles inflicted such loss on the Welsh lines that the cavalry soon found it safe to charge. The Welsh were utterly broken, and never in a single day did they suffer such enormous losses. Even more important than its results in breaking the back of Madog's insurrection, this battle of Maes Madog—or Madog's field, as the Welsh called the place of their defeat—is of the highest importance in the development of infantry tactics. The order of the victorious force strikingly anticipates the great battles in Scotland and France of a later generation. In obscure fights, like Orewyn bridge and Maes Madog, the English learnt the famous battle array which was to overwhelm the Scots in the later years of Edward's reign and prepare the way for the triumphs of Crecy and Poitiers.
Madog still held out, and with the advent of spring, 1295, Edward began to hunt him from his lairs. Gwynedd was cleared of the enemy and Anglesey was reconquered. Carnarvon castle arose from its ruins in the stately form that we still know, while on the Anglesey side of the Menai the new stronghold of Beaumaris arose, to ensure the subjection of the granary of Gwynedd. In May Edward felt strong enough to undertake a progress in South Wales. After receiving the submissions of the rebels of Cardigan and Carmarthen, he won back for the lords of Brecon and Glamorgan the lands which, without his help, they had been unable to conquer. The Welsh chieftains were leniently treated. While Madog was imprisoned in the Tower, Morgan was at once set at liberty. By July Edward was able to leave Wales. Yet his triumph had taxed all his resources, and left him, overwhelmed with debt, to face the irritation of subjects unaccustomed to such demands upon their loyalty and patriotism. But nothing broke his dauntless spirit, and once more he busied himself in obtaining revenge on the false King of France.
It was inevitable that the Welsh war should have reduced to slender proportions the expedition of John of Brittany and John of St. John for the recovery of Gascony. After a tedious voyage the English expedition sailed up the Gironde late in October, 1294. Their forces, strong enough to capture Bourg and Blaye, were not sufficient to attack Bordeaux. Leaving the capital in the hands of its conquerors, the English sailed past Bordeaux to Rioms, where they disembarked. The small towns of the neighbourhood were taken and garrisoned, and the Gascon lords began to flock to the camp of their duke. Before long the army was large enough to be divided. John of Brittany remained at Rioms, while John of St. John marched overland to Bayonne. The French garrison was unable to overpower the enthusiasm of the Bayonnais for Edward, and the capture of the second town of Gascony was the greatest success attained by the invaders. With the spring of 1295, however, Charles of Valois, brother of the King of France, was sent to operate against John of Brittany. The English and Gascons found themselves unable to make head against him. There was ill-feeling between the two nations that made up the army, and also between the nobly-born knights and men-at-arms and the foot soldiers. The infantry mutinied, and John of Brittany fled by night down the river from Rioms, leaving many of his knights and all his horses and armour in the town. Next day Rioms opened its gates to Charles of Valois, who gained immense spoils and many distinguished prisoners. Save for the capture of Bayonne, the expedition had been a disastrous failure.
Edward failed even more signally in his efforts to defeat Philip by diplomacy. He had left no effort unspared to build up a great coalition against the French king. He "sent a great quantity of sterling money beyond the sea," and made alliances with all the princes and barons that he could find.[1] At first it seemed that he had succeeded. Adolf of Nassau, the poor and dull, but strenuous and hard-fighting King of the Romans, concluded a treaty with England, and did not think it beneath the dignity of the lord of the world to take the pay of the English monarch. Many vassals of the empire, especially in the Netherlands, the Rhineland, and Burgundy followed Adolf's example. Edward strengthened his party further by marrying three of his daughters to the Duke of Brabant, the son of the Count of Holland, and the Count of Bar as the price of their adherence to the coalition. He made closer his ancient friendship with Guy of Dampierre, the old Count of Flanders, by betrothing Edward of Carnarvon to his daughter Philippine. At the same time he sought the friendship of the lords of the Pyrenees, such as the Count of Foix, and of the kings of the Spanish peninsula. But nothing came of the hopes thus excited, save fair promises and useless expenditure. Before long Philip of France was able to build up a French party in appearance as formidable-in reality as useless as Edward's attempted confederation. Edward's most important ally, Guy of Flanders, was forced to renounce his daughter's marriage to the heir of England and hand her over to Philip's custody. The time was not yet come for effective European coalitions; the real fighting had to be done by the parties directly interested in the quarrel.
[1] See a contemporary notice printed by F. Funck-Brentano in Revue Historique, xxxix. (1889), pp. 329-30.