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.