THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR
[Sidenote: Plan of the following four chapters.]
105. In dealing with the history of Europe during the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries the following order has been adopted. (1) England
and France are treated together, since the claims of the English kings
to the French crown, and the long Hundred Years' War between the two
countries, bring them into the same tale of disorder and final
reorganization. (2) Next the history of the papal power and the
remarkable efforts to better the Church at the great Council of
Constance (1414) are considered. (3) Then the progress of enlightenment
is taken up, particularly in the Italian towns, which were the leaders
in culture during this period. This leads to an account of the invention
of printing and the extraordinary geographical discoveries of the latter
part of the fifteenth century. (4) In a fourth chapter the situation of
western Europe at the opening of the sixteenth century is described, in
order that the reader may be prepared to understand the great revolt
against the Church under the leadership of Martin Luther.
[Sidenote: Extent of the king of England's realms before Edward I
(1272-1307).]
We turn first to England. The English kings who preceded Edward I had
ruled over only a portion of the island of Great Britain. To the west of
their kingdom lay the mountainous district of Wales, inhabited by that
remnant of the original Britons which the German invaders had been
unable to conquer. To the north of England was the kingdom of Scotland,
which was quite independent except for an occasional vague recognition
on the part of its rulers of the English kings as their feudal
superiors. Edward I, however, succeeded in conquering Wales permanently
and Scotland temporarily.
[Illustration: THE BRITISH ISLES]
[Sidenote: The Welsh and their bards.]
For centuries a border warfare had been carried on between the English
and the Welsh. William the Conqueror had found it necessary to establish
a chain of earldoms on the Welsh frontier, and Chester, Shrewsbury, and
Monmouth became the outposts of the Normans. While the raids of the
Welsh constantly provoked the English kings to invade Wales, no
permanent conquest was possible, for the enemy retreated into the
mountains about Snowdon and the English soldiers were left to starve in
the wild regions into which they had ventured. The long and successful
resistance which the Welsh made against the English must be attributed
not only to their inaccessible retreats but also to the patriotic
inspiration of their bards. These fondly believed that their people
would sometime reconquer the whole of England, which they had possessed
before the coming of the Angles and Saxons.[176]
[Sidenote: Edward I conquers Wales.]
[Sidenote: The title of 'Prince of Wales.']
When Edward I came to the throne he demanded that Llewelyn, Prince of
Wales, as the head of the Welsh clans was called, should do him homage.
Llewelyn, who was a man of ability and energy, refused the king's
summons, and Edward marched into Wales. Two campaigns were necessary
before the Welsh finally succumbed. Llewelyn was killed (1282), and with
him expired the independence of the Welsh people. Edward divided the
country into shires and introduced English laws and customs, and his
policy of conciliation was so successful that there was but a single
rising in the country for a whole century. He later presented his son to
the Welsh as their prince, and from that time down to the present the
title of "Prince of Wales" has usually been conferred upon the heir to
the English throne.
[Sidenote: Scotland before Edward I.]
[Sidenote: The Highlands and Lowlands.]
The conquest of Scotland proved a far more difficult matter than that of
Wales. The early history of the kingdom of Scotland is a complicated
one. When the Angles and Saxons landed in Britain, a great part of the
mountainous region north of the Firth of Forth was inhabited by a Celtic
tribe, the Picts. There was, however, on the west coast a little kingdom
of the Irish Celts, who were then called Scots. By the opening of the
tenth century the Picts had accepted the king of the Scots as their
ruler, and the annalists begin to refer to the highland region as the
land of the Scots. As time went on the English kings found it to their
advantage to grant to the Scottish rulers certain border districts,
including the Lowlands, between the river Tweed and the Firth of Forth.
This region was English in race and speech, while the Celts in the
Highlands spoke, and still speak, Gaelic.
[Sidenote: Character of the inhabitants of the Lowlands.]
It was very important in the history of Scotland that its kings chose to
dwell in the Lowlands rather than in the Highlands, and made Edinburgh,
with its fortress, their chief town. With the coming of William the
Conqueror many Englishmen, and also a number of discontented Norman
nobles, fled across the border to the Lowlands of Scotland, and founded
some of the great families, like those of Balliol and Bruce, who later
fought for Scottish liberty. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
the country, especially in the south, developed rapidly under the
influence of the neighboring Anglo-Norman civilization, and the towns
increased in size and importance.
[Sidenote: Edward intervenes in Scotch affairs.]
[Sidenote: Alliance between Scotland and France.]
It was not until the time of Edward I that the long series of troubles
between England and Scotland began. The death of the last representative
of the old line of Scotch kings in 1290 was followed by the appearance
of a number of claimants to the crown. In order to avoid civil war,
Edward was asked to decide who should be king. He agreed to make the
decision on condition that the one whom he selected should hold Scotland
as a fief from the English king. This arrangement was adopted, and the
crown was given to Robert Balliol. But Edward unwisely made demands upon
the Scots which aroused their anger, and their king renounced his
homage to the king of England. The Scotch, moreover, formed an alliance
with Edward's enemy, Philip the Fair of France; thenceforth, in all the
difficulties between England and France, the English kings had always to
reckon with the disaffected Scotch, who were glad to aid England's
enemies.
[Sidenote: Edward attempts to incorporate Scotland with England.]
Edward marched in person against the Scotch (1296) and speedily put down
what he regarded as a rebellion. He declared that Balliol had forfeited
his fief through treason, and that consequently the English king had
become the immediate lord of the Scotch nobles, whom he forced to do him
homage. He emphasized his claim by carrying off the famous Stone of
Scone, upon which the kings of Scotland had been crowned for ages.
Continued resistance led Edward to attempt to incorporate Scotland with
England in the same way that he had treated Wales. This was the
beginning of three hundred years of intermittent war between England and
Scotland, which ended only when a Scotch king, James VI, succeeded to
the English throne in 1603 as James I.
[Sidenote: Scotland gains its independence under Robert Bruce.]
[Sidenote: Battle of Bannockburn, 1314.]
That Scotland was able to maintain her independence was mainly due to
Robert Bruce, a national hero who succeeded in bringing both the
nobility and the people under his leadership. Edward I died, old and
worn out, in 1307, when on his way north to put down a rising under
Bruce, and left the task of dealing with the Scotch to his incompetent
son, Edward II. The Scotch acknowledged Bruce as their king and
decisively defeated Edward II in the great battle of Bannockburn, the
most famous conflict in Scottish history. Nevertheless, the English
refused to acknowledge the independence of Scotland until forced to do
so in 1328.
[Sidenote: 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 together, and the independence
of Scotland, although it caused much bloodshed, first and last, served
to develop certain permanent differences between the little Scotch
nation and the rest of the English race. The peculiarities of the people
north of the Tweed have been made familiar by the writings of gifted
Scotchmen like Burns, Scott, and Stevenson.
[Sidenote: Growth of the power of Parliament.]
Edward II's numerous enemies took advantage of his weakness to bring
about his downfall, but it is noteworthy that they worked through
Parliament and in that way strengthened that fundamental national
institution. We have seen how Edward I called representatives of the
townspeople, as well as the nobles and prelates, to the Model Parliament
of 1295.[177] This important innovation was formally ratified by his
son, who solemnly promised that all questions relating to his realm and
its people should be settled in parliaments in which the commons should
be included. Thereafter no statute could be legally passed without their
consent. In 1327 Parliament showed its power by forcing Edward II to
abdicate in favor of his son, and thereby established the principle that
the representatives of the nation might even go so far as to depose
their ruler, should he show himself clearly unfit for his high duties.
About this time Parliament began to meet in two distinct divisions,
which later became the House of Lords and the House of Commons. In
modern times this form of legislative assembly has been imitated by most
of the countries of Europe.
[Sidenote: Cause of the Hundred Years' War.]
106. The so-called Hundred Years' War, which we must now review, was a
long but frequently interrupted series of conflicts between the English
and the French kings. It began in the following manner. The king of
England, through John's misconduct, had lost Normandy and other portions
of the great Plantagenet realm on the continent.[178] He still retained,
however, the extensive duchy of Guienne, for which he did homage to the
king of France, whose most powerful vassal he was. This arrangement was
bound to produce constant difficulty, especially as the French kings
were, as we have discovered, bent upon destroying as fast as possible
the influence of their vassals, so that the royal power should
everywhere take the place of that of the feudal lords. It was obviously
out of the question for the king of England meekly to permit the French
monarch to extend his control directly over the people of Guienne, and
yet this was the constant aim of Philip the Fair[179] and his
successors.
THE FRENCH KINGS DURING THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES
Louis IX (Saint Louis) (1226-1270)
|
Philip III (1270-1285)
|
+-------------+--------------------------------+
| |
| |
Philip IV, the Fair Charles of Valois,
(1285-1314) ancestor of the house of Valois
| |
+-----+--------+-------------+------------+ |
| | | | |
Louis X Isabella, m. Philip V Charles IV |
(1314-1316) Edward II (1316-1322) (1322-1328) |
| | | | |
+--+----+ | | | |
| | Edward daughters daughter |
daughter | III of Philip VI
| England (1328-1350)
John |
(1316), |
an |
infant John II
who died (1350-1364)
when but |
a few |
days old +------------+
| |
Charles V Philip,
(1364-1380) founder of
| the powerful
Charles VI house
(1380-1422) of Burgundy
|
Charles VII (1422-1461)
|
Louis XI (1461-1483)
|
Charles VIII (1483-1498)
[Sidenote: The French succession in 1328.]
The inevitable struggle between England and France was rendered the more
serious by the claim made by Edward III that he was himself the rightful
king of France. He based his pretensions upon the fact that his mother
Isabella was the daughter of Philip the Fair. Philip, who died in 1314,
had been followed by his three sons in succession, none of whom had left
a male heir, so that the direct male line of the Capetians was
extinguished in 1328. The lawyers thereupon declared that it was a
venerable law in France that no woman should succeed to the throne. The
principle was also asserted that a woman could not even transmit the
crown to her son. Consequently Edward III appeared to be definitely
excluded, and Philip VI of Valois, a nephew of Philip the Fair, became
king.
[Sidenote: Edward III claims the French crown.]
At first Edward III, who was a mere boy in 1328, appeared to recognize
the propriety of this settlement and did qualified homage to Philip VI
for Guienne. But when it became apparent later that Philip was not only
encroaching upon Edward's prerogatives in Guienne but had sent French
troops to aid the Scotch, the English king bethought him of his
neglected claim to the French crown.
[Sidenote: The Flemish towns.]
The advantage of publicly declaring himself the rightful king of France
was increased by the attitude of the flourishing towns of Flanders.
Philip VI had assisted the count of Flanders in a bitter struggle to
prevent the towns from establishing their independence. Consequently the
Flemish burghers now announced their willingness to desert Philip and
acknowledge and aid Edward as their king.
[Sidenote: Commercial relations between the Flemish towns and England.]
[Sidenote: English wool.]
Flanders at this period was the most important trading and manufacturing
country in western Europe. Ghent was a great manufacturing town, like
Manchester to-day, and Bruges a busy port, like modern Antwerp or
Liverpool. All this prosperity was largely dependent upon England, for
it was from there that the Flemish manufacturers procured the fine, long
wool which they wove on their looms into cloth and spun into yarn. In
1336 the count of Flanders, perhaps at Philip's suggestion, ordered the
imprisonment of all the Englishmen in Flanders. Edward promptly
retaliated by prohibiting the export of wool from England and the
importation of cloth. At the same time he protected and encouraged the
Flemish artisans who had emigrated across the Channel and were carrying
on their industry in the county of Norfolk.
[Illustration: Royal Arms of Edward III]
It is clear, then, that the Flemish burghers had good reason for wishing
Edward to become their king, so that their relations with England might
not be broken off. They did their part in inducing him to undertake the
conquest of France, and (in 1340) we find him adding the _fleur de lis_
of France to the lions of the English royal arms.
[Sidenote: Edward III invades France, 1346.]
[Sidenote: The English victory at the battle of Crécy, 1346.]
Edward did not invade France for some years, but his sailors destroyed
the French fleet and began to show themselves able to maintain their
king's claim to be lord of the English seas upon every side. In 1346
Edward himself landed in Normandy, devastated the country, and marched
up the Seine almost to Paris, but was then obliged to retreat northward
before a large army which Philip had collected. Edward made a halt at
Crécy, and here one of the most celebrated battles of history took
place. It taught the world a great lesson in warfare by proving once
more, as the battle of Bannockburn had already done, that foot soldiers,
properly armed and trained to act in concert, could defeat the feudal
cavaliers in spite of their lances and heavy armor. The proud mounted
knights of France performed prodigies of valor, each for himself, but
they did not act together and could not hold their ground against the
deadly shower of arrows poured into their midst from the long bows of
the English archers. The flower of French chivalry was routed with
terrible slaughter by the serried ranks of the humble English foot
soldiers.[180] It was at Crécy that Edward's son, the Black Prince,--so
named from his black armor,--won his spurs.[181]
[Sidenote: The English take Calais.]
[Sidenote: The Black Prince wins a second great victory at Poitiers,
1356.]
After this great victory the English king proceeded to lay siege to
Calais, the French coast town nearest England. This he took, drove out a
great part of the inhabitants, and substituted Englishmen for them. The
town remained subject to England for two centuries. When the war was
renewed the Black Prince, now at the height of his fame, was able to
deal the enemy a still more crushing blow than at Crécy. He again put
the French knights to flight in the battle of Poitiers; he even captured
the French king, John, and carried him off to London.
[Sidenote: The Estates General attempt to control the king and reform
the government.]
107. The French quite properly attributed the signal disasters of Crécy
and Poitiers to the inefficiency of their king and his advisers.
Accordingly, after the second defeat, the Estates General, which had
been summoned to approve the raising of more money, attempted to take
matters into their own hands. The representatives of the towns, whom
Philip the Fair had first called in,[182] were on this occasion more
numerous than the members of the clergy and nobility. A great list of
reforms was drawn up, which provided, among other things, that the
Estates should meet regularly whether summoned by the king or not, and
that the collection and expenditure of the public revenue should be no
longer entirely under the control of the king but should be supervised
by the representatives of the people. The city of Paris rose in support
of the revolutionary Estates, but the violence of its allies discredited
rather than helped the movement, and France was soon glad to accept the
unrestricted rule of its king once more.[183]
[Sidenote: Contrast between the position of the Estates General and the
English Parliament.]
This unsuccessful attempt to reform the French government is interesting
in two ways. In the first place, there was much in the aims of the
reformers and in the conduct of the Paris mob that suggests the great
successful French revolution of 1789, which at last fundamentally
modified the organization of the state. In the second place, the history
of the Estates forms a curious contrast to that of the English
Parliament, which was laying the foundation of its later power during
this very period. While the French king occasionally summoned the
Estates when he needed money, he did so only in order that their
approbation of new taxes might make it easier to collect them. He never
admitted that he had not the right to levy taxes if he wished without
consulting his subjects. In England, on the other hand, the kings ever
since the time of Edward I had repeatedly agreed that no new taxes
should be imposed without the consent of Parliament. Edward II had gone
farther and accepted the representatives of the people as his advisers
in all important matters touching the welfare of the realm. While the
French Estates gradually sank into insignificance, the English
Parliament soon learned to grant no money until the king had redressed
the grievances which it pointed out, and thus it insured its influence
over the king's policy.
[Sidenote: Treaty of Bretigny, 1360.]
Edward III found it impossible to conquer France in spite of the
victories of the Black Prince and the capture of John. He was glad in
1360 to sign the treaty of Bretigny, in which he not only renounced his
pretensions to the French crown but agreed to say no more of the old
claims of his family to Normandy and the Plantagenet provinces north of
the Loire. In return for these concessions he received, in full
sovereignty and without any feudal obligations to the king of France,
Poitou, Guienne, Gascony, and the town of Calais, amounting to about one
third of the territory of France.
[Illustration: French Territory ceded to England by the Treaty of
Bretigny, 1360]
[Sidenote: England loses most of its French territory before the death
of Edward III, 1377.]
The promising peace of Bretigny was however soon broken. The Black
Prince, to whom the government of Guienne was delegated by his father,
levied such heavy taxes that he quickly alienated the hearts of a people
naturally drawn to France rather than to England. When the sagacious
Charles V of France (1364-1380) undertook to reconquer the territory
which his father had ceded to England, he met with no determined
opposition; Edward III was getting old and his warlike son, the Black
Prince, had fallen mortally ill. So when Edward died in 1377 nothing
remained to the English king except Calais and a strip of land from
Bordeaux southward.
[Sidenote: Miserable condition of France.]
For a generation after the death of Edward III the war with France was
almost discontinued. France had suffered a great deal more than England.
In the first place, all the fighting had been done on her side of the
Channel, and in the second place, the soldiers who found themselves
without occupation after the treaty of Bretigny had wandered about in
bands maltreating and plundering the people. Petrarch, who visited
France at this period, tells us that he could not believe that this was
the same kingdom which he had once seen so rich and flourishing.
"Nothing presented itself to my eyes but fearful solitude and extreme
poverty, uncultivated land and houses in ruins. Even about Paris there
were everywhere signs of fire and destruction. The streets were
deserted; the roads overgrown with weeds."
[Sidenote: The bubonic plague of 1348-1349, commonly called the 'black
death.']
The horrors of war had been increased by the deadly bubonic plague which
appeared in Europe early in 1348. In April it had reached Florence; by
August it was devastating France and Germany; it then spread over
England from the southwest northward, attacking every part of the
country during the year 1349. This disease, like other terrible
epidemics, such as smallpox and cholera, came from Asia. Those who were
stricken with it usually died in two or three days. It is impossible to
tell what proportion of the population perished. Reports of the time say
that in one part of France but one tenth of the people survived, in
another but one sixteenth; and that for a long time five hundred bodies
were carried from the great hospital of Paris every day. A careful
estimate shows that in England toward one half of the population died.
At the Abbey of Newenham only the abbot and two monks were left alive
out of twenty-six. There were constant complaints that certain lands
were no longer of any value to their lords because the tenants were all
dead.
[Sidenote: Conditions of English labor.]
108. In England the growing discontent among the agricultural classes
may be ascribed partly to the results of the great pestilence and partly
to the new taxes which were levied in order to prolong the disastrous
war with France. Up to this time the majority of those who cultivated
the land belonged to some particular manor, paid stated dues to their
lord, and performed definite services for him. Hitherto there had been
relatively few farm hands who might be hired and who sought employment
anywhere that they could get it. The black death, by greatly decreasing
the number of laborers, raised wages and served to increase the
importance of the unattached laborer. Consequently he not only demanded
higher wages than ever before, but readily deserted one employer when
another offered him more money.
[Sidenote: The Statutes of Laborers issued in 1351 and following years.]
This appeared very shocking to those who were accustomed to the
traditional rates of payment; and the government undertook to keep down
wages by prohibiting laborers from asking more than had been customary
during the years that preceded the pestilence. Every laborer, when
offered work at the established wages, was ordered to accept it on pain
of imprisonment. The first "Statute of Laborers"[184] was issued in
1351; but apparently it was not obeyed and similar laws were enacted
from time to time for a century. Nevertheless complaints continued that
serfs and laborers persisted in demanding "outrageous and excessive
hire." This seems to indicate that the efforts of Parliament to
interfere with the law of supply and demand were unsuccessful.
[Sidenote: Breaking up of the mediæval manors in England.]
The old manor system was breaking up. Many of the laboring class in the
country no longer held land as serfs but moved from place to place and
made a living by working for wages. The _villain_, as the serf was
called in England, began to regard the dues which he had been accustomed
to pay to his lord as unjust. A petition to Parliament in 1377 asserts
that the villains are refusing to pay their customary services to their
lords or to acknowledge the obligations which they owe as serfs.
[Sidenote: Causes of discontent among the English peasants.]
[Sidenote: 'The Vision of Piers Ploughman.']
The discontent was becoming general. We see it reflected in a remarkable
poem of the time, "The Vision of Piers Ploughman," in which the
unfortunate position of the peasant is vividly portrayed.[185] This is
only the most notable example of a great number of pamphlets, some in
prose and some in bad verse, which were calculated to make the people
more discontented than ever. The efforts to enforce the provisions of
the Statutes of Laborers had undoubtedly produced much friction between
the landlords and their employees. A new form of taxation also caused
much irritation. A general poll tax, which was to be paid by every one
above sixteen years of age, was established in 1379 and another one in
the following year to meet the expenses of the hopeless French war which
was now being conducted by incapable and highly unpopular ministers.
[Sidenote: The peasant revolt of 1381.]
In 1381 rioting began among the peasants in Kent and Essex, and several
bodies of the insurgents determined to march upon London. As they passed
along the road their ranks were swelled by discontented villagers and by
many of the poorer workingmen from the towns. Soon the revolt spread all
through southern and eastern England. The peasants burned some of the
houses of the gentry and of the rich ecclesiastics, and took particular
pains to see that the lists for the collection of the hated poll tax
were destroyed, as well as the registers kept by the various lords
enumerating the obligations of their serfs. The gates of London were
opened to the insurgents by sympathizers within the walls, and several
of the king's officers were seized and put to death. Some of the simple
people imagined that they might induce the boy king, Richard II, to
become their leader. He had no idea of aiding them; he went out,
however, to meet them and induced them to disperse by promising that he
would abolish serfdom.
[Sidenote: Final disappearance of serfdom in England.]
Although the king did not keep his promise, serfdom decayed rapidly. It
became more and more common for the serf to pay his dues to the lord in
money instead of working for him, and in this way he lost one of the
chief characteristics of a serf. The landlord then either hired men to
cultivate the fields which he reserved for his own use[186] or rented
the land to tenants. These tenants were not in a position to force their
fellow-tenants on the manor to pay the full dues which had formerly been
exacted by the lord. Sixty or seventy years after the Peasants' War the
English rural population had in one way or another become free men, and
serfs had practically disappeared.
[Sidenote: Deposition of Richard II and accession of Henry IV of
Lancaster, 1399-1413.]
[Sidenote: Henry V claims the French crown, 1414.]
109. The war with France had, as we have seen, almost ceased for a
generation after the death of Edward III. The young son of the Black
Prince, Richard II, who succeeded his grandfather on the throne, was
controlled by the great noblemen whose rivalries fill much space in the
annals of England. He was finally forced to abdicate in 1399. Henry IV,
of the powerful house of Lancaster,[187] was recognized as king in spite
of the fact that he had less claim than another descendant of Edward
III, who was, however, a mere boy. Henry IV's uncertain title may have
made him less enterprising than Edward III; at any rate, it was left for
his son, Henry V (1413-1422), to continue the French war. The conditions
in France were such as to encourage the new claim which Henry V made to
the French crown in 1414.
[Sidenote: Civil war in France between the houses of Burgundy and
Orleans.]
The able French king, Charles V, who had delivered his country for a
time from the English invaders,[188] had been followed in 1380 by
Charles VI, who soon lost his mind. The right to govern France
consequently became a matter of dispute among the insane king's uncles
and other relations. The country was divided between two great factions,
one of which was headed by the powerful duke of Burgundy, who was
building up a new state between France and Germany, and the other by the
duke of Orleans. In 1407 the duke of Orleans was brutally murdered by
order of the duke of Burgundy,--a by no means uncommon way at that time
of disposing of one's enemies in both France and England. This led to a
prolonged civil war between the two parties, and saved England from an
attack which the duke of Orleans had been planning.
[Sidenote: Position of Henry V.]
[Sidenote: Agincourt, 1415.]
Henry V had no real basis for his claim to the French crown. Edward III
had gone to war because France was encroaching upon Guienne and aiding
Scotland, and because he was encouraged by the Flemish towns. Henry V,
on the other hand, was merely anxious to make himself and his house
popular by deeds of valor. Nevertheless his very first victory, the
battle of Agincourt, was as brilliant as that of Crécy or Poitiers. Once
more the English bowmen slaughtered great numbers of French knights. The
English then proceeded to conquer Normandy and march upon Paris.
[Sidenote: Treaty of Troyes, 1420.]
Burgundians and Orleanists were upon the point of forgetting their
animosities in their common fear of the English, when the duke of
Burgundy, as he was kneeling to kiss the hand of his future sovereign,
the Dauphin,[189] was treacherously attacked and killed by a band of his
enemies. His son, the new duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, immediately
joined the English against the Dauphin, whom he believed to be
responsible for his father's murder. Henry then forced the French to
sign the treaty of Troyes (1420), which provided that he was to become
king of France upon the death of the mad Charles VI.
[Sidenote: Henry VI recognized as king in northern France.]
Both Henry V and Charles VI died two years later. Henry V's son, Henry
VI, was but nine months old; nevertheless according to the terms of the
treaty of Troyes he succeeded to the throne in France as well as in
England. The child was recognized only in a portion of northern France.
Through the ability of his uncle, the duke of Bedford, his interests
were defended with such good effect that the English succeeded in a few
years in conquering all of France north of the Loire, although the south
continued to be held by Charles VII, the son of Charles VI.
[Sidenote: Joan of Arc.]
Charles VII had not yet been crowned and so was still called the Dauphin
even by his supporters. Weak and indolent, he did nothing to stem the
tide of English victories or restore the courage and arouse the
patriotism of his distressed subjects. This great task was reserved for
a young peasant girl from a remote village on the eastern border of
France. To her family and her companions Joan of Arc seemed only "a good
girl, simple and pleasant in her ways," but she brooded much over the
disasters that had overtaken her country, and a "great pity on the fair
realm of France" filled her heart. She saw visions and heard voices that
bade her go forth to the help of the king and lead him to Rheims to be
crowned.
[Sidenote: Relief of Orleans by Joan, 1429.]
It was with the greatest difficulty that she got anybody to believe in
her mission or to help her to get an audience with the Dauphin. But her
own firm faith in her divine guidance triumphed over all doubts and
obstacles. She was at last accepted as a God-sent champion and placed at
the head of some troops despatched to the relief of Orleans. This city,
which was the key to southern France, had been besieged by the English
for some months and was on the point of surrender. Joan, who rode on
horseback at the head of her troops, clothed in armor like a man, had
now become the idol of the soldiers and of the people. Under the
guidance and inspiration of her indomitable courage, sound sense, and
burning enthusiasm, Orleans was relieved and the English completely
routed. The Maid of Orleans, as she was henceforth called, was now free
to conduct the Dauphin to Rheims, where he was crowned in the cathedral
(July 17, 1429).
[Illustration: Possessions of the English King in France upon the
Accession of Henry VI, 1424]
[Sidenote: Execution of Joan, 1431.]
The Maid now felt that her mission was accomplished and begged
permission to return to her home and her brothers and sisters. To this
the king would not consent, and she continued to fight his battles with
undiminished loyalty. But the other leaders were jealous of her, and
even her friends, the soldiers, were sensitive to the taunt of being led
by a woman. During the defense of Compiègne in May, 1430, she was
allowed to fall into the hands of the duke of Burgundy, who sold her to
the English. They were not satisfied with simply holding as prisoner
that strange maiden who had so discomfited them; they wished to
discredit everything that she had done, and so declared, and undoubtedly
believed, that she was a witch who had been helped by the Evil One. She
was tried by a court of ecclesiastics, found guilty of heresy, and
burned at Rouen in 1431. Her bravery and noble constancy affected even
her executioners, and an English soldier who had come to triumph over
her death was heard to exclaim: "We are lost--we have burned a saint."
The English cause in France was indeed lost, for her spirit and example
had given new courage and vigor to the French armies.[190]
[Sidenote: England loses her French possessions.]
[Sidenote: End of the Hundred Years' War, 1453.]
The English Parliament became more and more reluctant to grant funds
when there were no more victories gained. Bedford, through whose ability
the English cause had hitherto been maintained, died in 1435, and Philip
the Good, Duke of Burgundy, renounced his alliance with the English and
joined Charles VII. Owing to his acquisition of the Netherlands, the
possessions of Philip were now so great that he might well be regarded
as a European potentate whose alliance with France rendered further
efforts on England's part hopeless. From this time on the English lost
ground steadily. They were expelled from Normandy in 1450. Three years
later, the last vestige of their long domination in southern France
passed into the hands of the French king. The Hundred Years' War was
over, and although England still retained Calais, the great question
whether she should extend her sway upon the continent was finally
settled.
[Sidenote: The Wars of the Roses between the houses of Lancaster and
York, 1455-1485.]
110. The close of the Hundred Years' War was followed in England by the
Wars of the Roses, between the rival houses which were struggling for
the crown. The badge of the house of Lancaster, to which Henry VI
belonged, was a red rose, and that of the duke of York, who proposed to
push him off his throne, was a white one. Each party was supported by a
group of the wealthy and powerful nobles whose rivalries, conspiracies,
treasons, murders, and executions fill the annals of England during the
period which we have been discussing. Vast estates had come into the
hands of the higher nobility by inheritance, and marriages with wealthy
heiresses. Many of the dukes and earls were related to the royal family
and consequently were inevitably drawn into the dynastic struggles.
[Sidenote: Retainers.]
The nobles no longer owed their power to vassals who were bound to
follow them to war. Like the king, they relied upon hired soldiers. It
was easy to find plenty of restless fellows who were willing to become
the retainers of a nobleman if he would agree to clothe them with his
livery and keep open house, where they might eat and drink their fill.
Their master was to help them when they got into trouble, and they on
their part were expected to intimidate, misuse, and even murder at need
those who opposed the interests of their chief. When the French war was
over, the unruly elements of society poured back across the Channel and,
as retainers of the rival lords, became the terror of the country. They
bullied judges and juries, and helped the nobles to control the
selection of those who were sent to Parliament.
[Sidenote: Edward IV secures the crown.]
It is needless to speak of the several battles and the many skirmishes
of the miserable Wars of the Roses. These lasted from 1455, when the
duke of York set seriously to work to displace the weak-minded
Lancastrian king, Henry VI, until the accession of Henry VII, of the
house of Tudor, thirty years later. After several battles the Yorkist
leader, Edward IV, assumed the crown in 1461 and was recognized by
Parliament, which declared Henry VI and the two preceding Lancastrian
kings usurpers.[191] Edward was a vigorous monarch and maintained his
own until his death in 1483.
[Sidenote: Edward V, 1483; Richard III, 1483-1485.]
[Sidenote: Death of Richard in the battle of Bosworth Field.]
[Sidenote: Accession of Henry VII of the house of Tudor, 1485.]
[Sidenote: End of the Wars of the Roses.]
Edward's son, Edward V, was only a little boy, so that the government
fell into the hands of the young king's uncle, Richard, Duke of
Gloucester. The temptation to make himself king was too great to be
resisted, and Richard soon seized the crown. Both the sons of Edward IV
were killed in the Tower of London, and with the knowledge of their
uncle, as it was commonly believed. This murder made Richard unpopular
even at a time when one could kill one's political rivals without
incurring general opprobrium. A new aspirant to the throne organized a
conspiracy. Richard III was defeated and slain in the battle of Bosworth
Field in 1485, and the crown which had fallen from his head was placed
upon that of the first Tudor king, Henry VII. The latter had no
particular right to it, although he was descended from Edward III
through his mother. He hastened to procure the recognition of
Parliament, and married Edward IV's daughter, thus blending the red and
white roses in the Tudor badge.[192]
[Illustration: FRANCE UNDER LOUIS XI]
[Sidenote: The despotism of the Tudors.]
The Wars of the Roses had important results. Nearly all the powerful
families of England had been drawn into the fierce struggles, and a
great part of the nobility, whom the kings had formerly feared, had
perished on the battlefield or lost their heads in the ruthless
executions carried out by each party after it gained a victory. This
left the king far more powerful than ever before. He could now dominate
Parliament, if he could not dispense with it. For a century and more the
Tudor kings enjoyed almost despotic power. England ceased for a time to
enjoy the free government for which the foundations had been laid under
the Edwards and the Lancastrian kings, whose embarrassments at home and
abroad had made them constantly dependent upon the aid of the
nation.[193]
[Sidenote: France establishes a standing army, 1439.]
111. In France the closing years of the Hundred Years' War had witnessed
a great increase of the king's power through the establishment of a
well-organized standing army. The feudal army had long since
disappeared. Even before the opening of the war the nobles had begun to
be paid for their military services and no longer furnished troops as a
condition of holding fiefs. But the companies of soldiers, although
nominally under the command of royal officers, were often really
independent of the king. They found their pay very uncertain, and
plundered their countrymen as well as the enemy. As the war drew to a
close, the lawless troopers became a terrible scourge to the country and
were known as _flayers_, on account of the horrible way in which they
tortured the peasants in the hope of extracting money from them. In 1439
the Estates General approved a plan devised by the king, for putting an
end to this evil. Thereafter no one was to raise a company without the
permission of the king, who was to name the captains and fix the number
of the soldiers and the character of their arms.[194]
[Sidenote: The permanent tax fatal to the powers of the Estates
General.]
The Estates agreed that the king should use a certain tax, called the
_taille_, to support the troops necessary for the protection of the
frontier. This was a fatal concession, for the king now had an army and
the right to collect what he chose to consider a permanent tax, the
amount of which he later greatly increased; he was not dependent, as was
the English king, upon the grants made for brief periods by the
representatives of the nation.
[Sidenote: The new feudalism.]
Before the king of France could hope to establish a compact,
well-organized state it was necessary for him to reduce the power of his
vassals, some of whom were almost his equals in strength. The older
feudal dynasties, as we have seen, had many of them succumbed to the
attacks and the diplomacy of the kings of the thirteenth century,
especially of St. Louis. But he and his successors had raised up fresh
rivals by granting whole provinces, called _appanages_,[195] to their
younger sons. In this way new and powerful lines of feudal nobles were
established, such, for example, as the houses of Orleans, Anjou,
Bourbon, and, above all, of Burgundy. The accompanying map shows the
region immediately subject to the king--the royal domain--at the time of
the expulsion of the English. It clearly indicates what still remained
to be done in order to free France from feudalism and make it a great
nation. The process of reducing the prerogatives of the nobles had been
begun. They had been forbidden to coin money, to maintain armies, and to
tax their subjects, and the powers of the king's judges had been
extended over all the realm. But the task of consolidating France was
reserved for the son of Charles VII, the shrewd and treacherous Louis XI
(1461-1483).
[Sidenote: Extent of the Burgundian possessions in the fifteenth
century.]
By far the most dangerous of Louis' vassals were Philip the Good, Duke
of Burgundy (1419-1467), and his impetuous son, Charles the Bold
(1467-1477). Just a century before Louis XI came to the throne, the old
line of Burgundian dukes had died out, and in 1363 the same King John
whom the English captured and carried off to England, presented Burgundy
to his younger son Philip.[196] By fortunate marriages and lucky
windfalls the dukes of Burgundy had added a number of important fiefs to
their original possessions, and Philip the Good ruled over
Franche-Comté, Luxembourg, Flanders, Artois, Brabant, and other
provinces and towns which lie in what is now Holland and Belgium.
[Illustration: Louis XI]
[Sidenote: Ambition of Charles the Bold, 1467-1477.]
Charles the Bold busied himself for some years before his father's death
in forming alliances with the other powerful French vassals and
conspiring against Louis. Upon becoming duke himself he set his heart
upon two things. He resolved, first, to conquer Lorraine, which divided
his territories into two parts and made it difficult to pass from
Franche-Comté to Luxembourg. In the second place, he proposed to have
himself crowned king of the territories which his forefathers had
accumulated and in this way establish a strong new state between France
and Germany.
[Sidenote: Charles defeated by the Swiss at Granson and Murten, 1476.]
Naturally neither the king of France nor the emperor sympathized with
Charles' ambitions. Louis taxed his exceptional ingenuity in frustrating
his aspiring vassal; and the emperor refused to crown Charles as king
when he appeared at Trier eager for the ceremony. The most humiliating,
however, of the defeats which Charles encountered came from an
unexpected quarter. He attempted to chastise his neighbors the Swiss for
siding with his enemies and was soundly beaten by that brave people in
two memorable battles.
[Illustration: BRONZE STATUES OF PHILIP THE GOOD AND CHARLES THE BOLD
AT INNSBRUCK]
[Sidenote: Death of Charles, 1477.]
[Sidenote: Marriage of Mary of Burgundy to Maximilian of Austria.]
The next year Charles fell ingloriously in an attempt to take the town
of Nancy. His lands went to his daughter Mary, who was immediately
married to the emperor's son, Maximilian, much to the disgust of Louis,
who had already seized the duchy of Burgundy and hoped to gain still
more. The great importance of this marriage, which resulted in bringing
the Netherlands into the hands of Austria, will be seen when we come to
consider Charles V (the grandson of Mary and Maximilian) and his vast
empire.[197]
[Sidenote: Work of Louis XI.]
Louis XI did far more for the French monarchy than check his chief
vassal and reclaim a part of the Burgundian territory. He had himself
made heir to a number of provinces in central and southern
France,--Anjou, Maine, Provence, etc.,--which by the death of their
possessors came under the king's immediate control (1481). He humiliated
in various ways the vassals who in his early days had combined with
Charles the Bold against him. The duke of Alençon he imprisoned; the
rebellious duke of Nemours he caused to be executed in the most cruel
manner. Louis' political aims were worthy, but his means were generally
despicable. It sometimes seemed as if he gloried in being the most
rascally among rascals, the most treacherous among the traitors whom he
so artfully circumvented in the interests of the French monarchy.[198]
[Sidenote: England and France establish strong national governments.]
Both England and France emerged from the troubles and desolations of the
Hundred Years' War stronger than ever before. In both countries the
kings had overcome the menace of feudalism by destroying the power of
the great families. The royal government was becoming constantly more
powerful. Commerce and industry increased the national wealth and
supplied the monarchs with the revenue necessary to maintain government
officials and a sufficient armed force to execute the laws and keep
order throughout their realms. They were no longer forced to rely upon
the uncertain pledges of their vassals. In short, the French and the
English were both becoming nations, each with a strong national feeling
and a king whom every one, both high and low, recognized and obeyed as
the head of the government.
[Sidenote: Influence of the development of modern states upon the
position of the mediæval Church.]
It is obvious that the strengthening of the royal power could hardly
fail to alter the position of the mediæval Church. This was, as we have
seen, not simply a religious institution but a sort of international
state which performed a number of important governmental duties. We
must, therefore, now turn back and review the history of the Church from
the time of Edward I and Philip the Fair to the opening of the sixteenth
century.
General Reading.--For the political history of this period, LODGE,
_Close of the Middle Ages_ (The Macmillan Company, $1.75), is the
best work, although rather dry and cumbered with names which might
have been omitted. For the general history of France, see in
addition to ADAMS, _Growth of the French Nation_ (The Macmillan
Company, $1.25), DURUY, _A History of France_ (T.Y. Crowell,
$2.00). The economic history of England is to be found in the works
mentioned at the end of Chapter XVIII. The following collections of
documents furnish illustrative material in abundance: LEE,
_Source-book of English History_ (Holt, $2.00); COLBY, _Selections
from the Sources of English History_, (Longmans, Green & Co.,
$1.50); ADAMS & STEPHENS, _Select Documents of English
Constitutional History_ (The Macmillan Company, $2.25); KENDALL,
_Source Book of English History_ (The Macmillan Company, 80 cents).