Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/549

 THE GROWTH OF ROYAL POWER IN FRANCE 499 England. The count was sometimes on one side and some* times on the other. Philip rather than Edward I was the aggressor in break- ing the Peace of Paris arranged by their predecessors, St. Louis and Henry III. On the other hand, Wars of it was Edward's aggressions against Scotland England 1 and which led that country to form the alliance with Flanders France which was renewed again and again through the later Middle Ages. In the third place, it was French aggres- sion which now drove the Count of Flanders into an Eng- lish alliance. After considerable fighting Edward and Philip made peace and arranged marriages between their families, and left their allies, Flanders and Scotland, to each other's mercies. What the Scots did to Edward II at Bannockburn has already been noted, and the Flemish artisans treated the French in very similar fashion. In 1300 Philip impris- oned the Count of Flanders, declared that fief forfeit, and occupied the country. Two years later in the "Matins of Bruges" the French were massacred as they had been in the Sicilian Vespers twenty years before. Uprisings in the other towns followed. Then in the battle of Courtrai (1302) the townsmen successfully withstood the charge of the French chivalry. The conflict is also called the " Battle of the Spurs," from the many spurs taken from the fallen French knights and hung up on exhibition in the cathedral of Courtrai. Indecisive warfare and vain attempts at treaties of peace then occupied many years, and the last of the three sons of Philip IV also made war upon England again. As Edward I's wars with France and Scotland forced him to appeal to the English Parliament and resort to other devices to secure sufficient revenue, so Philip's, , expensive wars with England and Flanders royal caused him to adopt all sorts of methods of rais- ing money, from gifts and loans which he seldom repaid, to direct property taxes of one, two, or four per cent on the capital and five, ten, or twenty per cent on income. Some of his methods were ill-advised, notably: (1) the burden- some taxes upon trade and the sale of commodities (gabelles)