Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/581

 THE HOUSE OF VA.LOIS.] FRANCE 545 -28. decreed by Clement V., and their wealth, in large part, fell into the king s hands. These gloomy years fitly close the reign of Philip IV.; he died in 1314 from the effects of a hunting accident. He had not added much to the dimensions of the kingdom ; the addition of Lyons (1312) was his greatest achievement in this way ; he had immensely increased the royal authority at home, and had triumphed over the papacy, the conqueror of the empire. I sons Philip IV. died, leaving three sons, who all succeeded 1 P him. In the house of Capet, there had hitherto been alter- air&amp;gt; nately weak and strong monarchs ; now, however, the vigour of the race was gone. The reign of Louis X., &quot;le Hutin,&quot; the quarreller, was brief and unimportant ; it was naturally enough a time of reaction, in which things seemed to fall back into feudal anarchy and weakness. There was great distress and famine in France in 1315-1316, and a campaign against the Flemings was a complete failure. In June 1316 Louis died, leaving his queen with child. She bore a son, named John, who lived seven days, being during that time nominal king of France ; on his death, the late king s next brother Philip V., &quot;the Tall,&quot; succeeded to the throne, basing his claims on the so-styled Salic law of France, according to which &quot; no woman could succeed to Salian soil,&quot; and, a fortiori, no woman could succeed to the Salian, that is, to the French throne. He reigned six miserable years, without credit, though he published not a few ordinances. He died in 1322, and was succeeded by his youngest brother Charles IV., &quot;the Fair,&quot; whose six years reign ended in 1328. With him the direct line of the house of Capet came to an end, cursed with barrenness and incapacity, men held, by the curse of the dying Tem plars. Charles, count of Valois, was the younger brother of Philip the Fair, and therefore uncle of the three sovereigns lately dead. His eldest son Philip had been appointed guardian to the queen of Charles IV.; and when it ap peared that she had given birth to a daughter and not a son, the barons, joining with the notables of Paris and the good towns, met to decide who was by right the heir to the throne, &quot; for the twelve peers of France said and say that the crown of France is of such noble estate that by no succession can it come to a woman nor to a woman s son,&quot; as Froissart tells us. This being their view, the baby daughter of Charles IV. was at once set aside, and the claim of Edward III. of England, if, indeed, he ever made it, rested on Isabella of France, his mother, sister of the three sovereigns. And if succession through a female had been possible, then the daughters of those three kings had rights to be reserved. It was, however, clear that the throne must go to a man, and the crown was given to Philip of Valois, founder of a new house of sovereigns. The new monarch was a very formidable person. He had been a great feudal lord, hot and vehement, after feudal fashion ; he was now to show that he could be a severe master, a terrible king. He began his reign by subduing the revolted Flemings on behalf of his cousin Louis of Flanders, and having replaced him in his dignities, re turned to Paris, and there held high state as king. And he clearly was a great sovereign : the weakness of the late king had not seriously injured France ; the new king was the elect of the great lords, and they believed that his would be a new feudal monarchy ; they were in the glow of their revenge over the Flemings for the day of Courtrai ; his cousins reigned in Hungary and Naples, his sisters were married to the greatest of the lords; the queen of Navarre was his cousin ; even the youthful king of Eng land did him homage for Guienne and Ponthieu. The barons soon found out their mistake. Philip VI., supported by the lawyers, struck them whenever they gave him open- ing ; he also dealt harshly with the traders, hampering 1323-39. and all but ruining them, till the country was alarmed and discontented. On the other hand, young Edward of Eng land had succeeded to a troubled inheritance, and at the beginning was far weaker than his rival ; his own sagacity, and the advance of constitutional rights in England, soon enabled him to repair the breaches in his kingdom, and to gather fresh strength from the prosperity and good-will of a united people. While France followed a more restrictive policy, England threw open her ports to all comers ; trade grew in London as it waned in Paris ; by his marriage with Philippa of Hainault, Edward secured a noble queen, and with her the happiness of his subjects and the all-important friendship of the Low Countries. In 133G the folly of Begin- Philip VI. persuaded Louis of Flanders to arrest the Eng- nill K s ot lish merchants then in Flanders : whereon Edward retali- } va, r ated by stopping the export of wool ; and Jacquemart van England Arteveldt of Ghent, then at the beginning of his power, and persuaded the Flemish cities to throw off all allegiance to France, their French-loving count, and to place themselves under the protection of Edward. In return Philip VI. put him self in communication with the Scots, the hereditary foes of England ; and the great wars which were destined to last 116 years, and to exhaust the strength of two strong nations, were now about to begin. They brought brilliant and barren triumphs to England, and, like most wars, were a wasteful and terrible mistake, which, if crowned with ultimate success, might, by removing the centre of the kingdom into France, have marred the future welfare of England ; for the happy constitutional development of the country could never have taken place with a sovereign living at Paris, and French interests becoming ever more powerful. Fortunately, therefore, while the war evoked by its brilliant successes the national pride of Englishmen, by its eventual failure it was prevented from inflicting per manent damage on England. The war began in 1337, and ended in 1453 ; the epochs in it are the treaty of Bretigny in 1360, the treaty of Troyes in 1422, the final expulsion of the English in 1453. The French king seems to have believed himself equal The to the burdens of a great war, and able to carry out the H&quot;&quot;- most far-reaching plans. The pope was entirely in his &quot;1, , hands, and useful as a humble instrument to curb and var. &quot; harass the emperor. Philip had proved himself master of the Flemish, and, with help of the king of Scotland, hoped so to embarrass Edward III. as to have no difficulty in eventually driving hinvto cede all his French possessions. While he thought it his interest to wear out his antagonist without any open fighting, it was Edward s interest to make vigorous and striking war. France therefore stood on the defensive ; England was always the attacking party. On two sides, in Flanders and in Brittany, France had out posts which,, if well-defended, might long keep the English power far away from her vitals. Unluckily for his side, Philip was harsh and rash, and threw these advantages away. In Flanders the repressive commercial policy of the count, dictated from Paris, gave Edward the opportunity, in the end of 1 337, of sending the earl of Derby with a strong fleet to raise the blockade of Cadsand, and to open the Flemish markets by a brilliant action, in which the French chivalry was found powerless against the English yeomen-archers; and in 1338 Edward crossed over to Antwerp to see what forward movement could be made. The other frontier war was that of Brittany, which began a little later (1341). The openings of the war were gloomy and wasteful, without glory. Edward did not actually send defiance to Philip till 1339, when he proclaimed himself king of France, and quartered the lilies of France on the royal shield. The Flemish proved a very reed ; and though the French army came up to meet the English in the IX. 69