Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/336

Rh 318 ENGLAND [HISTORY. deep in the difference of the political condition of the two countries. In France political privilege was the exclusive possession of the noblesse and the chartered towns. In England freedom was the birthright of all above the villain, and even the villain had many ways of reaching freedom open to hiui. France therefore had a gallant cavalry in her noblesse ; for infantry she had either foreign mercenaries or an unwarlike rabble. In an English army the infantry, furnished by the mass of the freemen, formed its main strength, and, more than any other arm, won the great battles. In the course of the fourteenth century, the chivalrous type of warfare received a series of deadly blows dealt by a trained infantry of burghers or yeomen. The Flemings at Courtrai, the men of the Three Lands at Morgarten, the men of the more extended League at Sempach, the Scots at Bannockburn, the English at Crecy, are all instances of the same law. Edward III., pre eminently the chivalrous king, helped to give chivalry its death-stroke. The Of his reign the most prominent feature was the war French with France in which that death-stroke was dealt. It is a wars- war which may be looked at from two sides. On the part of the king himself, it was less the warfare of an English king than the warfare of a French prince seeking the French crown. On the part of the English nation it was distinctly a national war. The French influence on England, as distinguished from the earlier Norman element in England, the influence which had been going on ever since the beginning of the thirteenth century, reached its height in Edward the son of the Frenchwoman Isabel. The follies of chivalry, follies so conspicuously French as distinguished from either English or Norman, were now in all their glory. We have reached the days of Froissart, chronicler of knights and ladies. We instinctively feel Charac- that Edward III. is less of an Englishman than Edward I. ter of But the nation is purely English. If anything was needed jj r wa to wipe out the last feeble memory of old distinctions, it was the warfare which Englishmen waged in what was now the French province of Normandy. But, in common justice both to Edward and to his people, it must not be forgotten that, though the French war was in form a war waged to win the crown of France for an English king, it was a war which neither king nor people could well have Causes of avoided. Edward was goaded into the war by the cease- the war. } ess attempts which the French king made on his duchy of Aquitaine, and by the help which the French king gave to the Scottish enemies of England. In 1328 the French throne became vacant by the death of Charles IV., the youngest son and last male descendant Edward s of Philip the Fair. Edward claimed the crown in right of claim his mother, the sister of the deceased king. The claim to^the f oun( j no support in France, and the crown passed to Philip crown. f Valois, the first cousin of Charles, and the next in succes sion to the male line. By this decision, just as by the decision of the dispute for the crown of Scotland, a principle was settled, a principle which ever after made the French law of succession different from that of England, Scotland, and Spain. During the 341 years which had passed since the election of Hugh Capet, every king of the French had been succeeded by his own son, and in several cases the succession had been made yet more certain by the coronation of the son in the lifetime of his father. It thus came about that both the notion of hereditary succession as opposed to election, and the notion of direct male suc cession as opposed to any other rule of succession, had, by Heredi- this time, taken firmer root in France than in any other tary sue- kingdom in Europe. The result of a genealogical accident France *&quot; Was tnere ^ ore supposed to spring from an ancient law of the kingdom. As a new jurisprudence had been called up out of the romances of Charlemagne to insure the forfeiture of The sup John, so a new rule of succession was called up out of the posed ancient Frankish codes to bar the claim of Edward. We Saliclav now hear for the first time of the imaginary Salic law, which was held to shut out females from the succession to the French crown. According to modern English law, neither Edward nor Philip was the heir ; there were females nearer to the crown than either of them. But Edward s doctrine was that, though a female could not herself inherit, yet her son could inherit through her. He claimed as the male person nearest of kin to the late king. Philip claimed in the simpler character of the next in the male line, passing by females altogether. The question was new ; but, as the French crown had never passed either to or through a female, the claim of Philip naturally seemed more in accordance Succes- with earlier precedent. But, had the argument lain the sion. of other way, had female succession been asserted by the p Frenchman and male succession by the foreign prince, we may believe that the native candidate would have found his way to the French crown all the same. How little these genealogical subtleties really went for was shown a little later, when, in the dispute for the duchy of Britanny, Edward appeared as the champion of male, and Philip of female succession. When Edward s claim to the French crown was rejected, Scottish he did homage (1329) to his rival for his Gascon duchy, war of though with some reservations which might keep controversy ar alive. Matters were hastened by a new Scottish war. The English lords who had held and lost estates in Scotland were, by the treaty of Northampton, to receive them again. This article had not been carried out, and in 1332 the dis inherited lords made an attempt on Scotland under Edward Balliol, son of the former king John. Once by their own forces, and a second time by English help, they succeeded in placing their candidate on the Scottish throne. He re warded his allies by ceding southern Scotland to England, and renewing the old dependent relation for the rest of the kingdom. The state of war between England and Scotland thus began again, and with far less show of reason on the English side than there had been in the days of Edward I. But the Scottish war led to consequences still more import ant than itself. Philip, ever on the watch for opportunities Philip against Aquitaine, gave help to the Scots (1337), as his helps th predecessor had done ill the earlier war. It appears that Edward now for the first time called himself King of France, Edward though the regular use of the title did not begin till three in ^ cs *) years later. As in former wars with France, Edward formed g- of alliances with the Flemish cities and with the emperor Lewis; France. and it was to satisfy the scruples of the Flemings, whose land was a French fief, that he finally took the title of King of France. 1 Then followed the first part of the War of a The Hu Hundred Years, a struggle of twenty years, broken once or (lrecl , twice by truces. This stage is famous for the naval victory of Sluys in 1340, for the more famous land fights of Crecy g j ns- in 134G and Poitiers in 1356, and for the capture of Calais in 1347. The captivity of King John of France at Poitiers led to negotiations, and this first stage of the war ended with the peace of Bretignyin 1360. By its terms Edward Peace o: renounced all claim to the French crown and gave up his Bretign. French title. On the other hand, all his possessions on the continent, both his hereditary dominions and his recent Plate V conquests, Aquitaine, Ponthieu, and Calais, were released from all homage to the French crown. Calais may be said to have been incorporated with England, and it was afterwards 1 The usual Latin title of the French kings had always been national and not territorial: &quot; Rex Francorum,&quot; not &quot;Rex Franciae.&quot; But, as the territorial style was now fully established in England, Edward called himself &quot; Rex Franciae et Anglian&quot; The territorial style was finally adopted by the French kings when the French crown passed to a king of Navarre. The style then became &quot; Rex Franciae et Navame, till the ancient title was revived in 1791-