Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/502

 426 Outlines of European History The Scottish nation differs from the English In the course of their struggles with England the Scotch people of the Lowlands had become more closely welded to- gether, and the independence of Scotland, although it caused much bloodshed, first and last, served to develop certain per- manent differences between the little Scotch nation and the rest of the English race. No Scotchman to the present day likes to be mistaken for an Englishman. The peculiarities of the lan- guage and habits of the people north of the Tweed have been made familiar to all readers of good literature by the novels of Sir Walter Scott and Robert L. Stevenson and by the poems of Robert Burns. The Hun- dred Years' War Edward III claims the French crown Edward III invades France Section 72. The Hundred Years' War England and France were both becoming strong states in the early fourteenth century. The king in both of these countries had got the better of the feudal lords, and a parliament had been established in France as well as in England, in which the towns- people as well as the clergy and nobility were represented. But both countries were set back by a long series of conflicts known as the Hundred Years' War, which was especially disastrous to France. The trouble arose as follows : It will be remembered that King John of England had lost all the French possessions of. the Plantagenets except the duchy of Guienne (see above, pp. 417-418). For this he had to do hom- age to the king of France and become his vassal. This arrange- ment lasted for many years, but in the times of Edward HI the old French line of kings died out, and Edward declared that he himself was the rightful ruler of all France because his mother, Isabella, was a sister of the last king of the old line (see table on the next page). The French lawyers, however, decided that Edward had no claim to the French throne and that a very distant relative of the last king was the rightful heir to the crown (Philip VI). Edward, nevertheless, maintained that he was rightfully king of