Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/55

 feudal authority, and at the moment of greatest need there was no chance of a combination of forces such as would have sufficed to drive back the Turkish hordes. Edward III. proposed it to the French king, and Pope John proposed it to more than one of the monarchs; but it was too late. The seething of Europe had begun. The seventy years' exile of the popes at Avignon, 'the hundred years' war between England and France, the desperate civil wars in both those countries, were already fore-doomed and inevitable. The establishment of the new order in western Christendom could not come to pass—as the history of the world was being developed—save at the cost of liberty and civilisation in the Eastern Empire.

Whilst the Turk was forcing the gates of Europe, Calais was sacked, and the battles of Crécy and Poitiers were fought and won. Whilst the infidels overran Thrace and closed round the devoted city of Constantinople, two of the most powerful Christian nations were exhausting their strength in wars which had but the slightest shadow of justification. The delusive treaty of Brétigny (1360), which coincided in date with the capture of Adrianople, gave to England the provinces of Gascony, Guienne, Poitou, Saintonge, Angoumais, and Limousin, with Calais and Ponthieu in the north-east; and, though much of the territory was lost again before the reign of Edward had closed, France was convulsed by invasion and civil war for another sixty years.

Such was the condition of Europe during the life of Wyclif and of the youngest of his disciples. He