exertions and ambition of the English king, and changed altogether the
policy of the remainder of his reign. Hitherto, the object that may be
said to have mainly occupied him had been that inherited from his father
and his grandfather, the subjugation of Scotland; his efforts were now
to be withdrawn to a much more extraordinary, daring, and magnificent
scheme, that of the conquest of France. Upon this attempt he adventured
on the strength of a right which he professed to derive through his
mother. Isabella, it will be recollected, was the daughter of the French
king Philip IV. Philip died in 1314, and was succeeded by his eldest son
Louis X. (styled Le Hutin, or the Quarrelsome). Louis died in 1316, and
was in the first instance succeeded by a posthumous son, named John,
who, however, as he lived only a few days, is not usually reckoned among
the kings of France. It was then determined, for the first time, that
the French crown, by what was called the Salic law, did not descend to
females; and, to the exclusion of the daughter of Louis, Joanna,
Countess of Evreux, afterwards Queen of Navarre, his brother became king
as Philip V. (surnamed the Long). In like manner, when Philip died in
1322, although he left four daughters, he was succeeded by his next
brother, Charles IV. (styled Le Bel, or the Fair). The event which
happened in 1328, and which we have described as having been attended
with important consequences both to France and to England, was the death
of Charles IV. He also left two daughters, but no son. In these
circumstances, according to the two last precedents, it seemed that the
heir to the crown was to be sought for in the nearest male who could
claim through an unbroken male descent; the principle apparently being,
as in other cases in which male descent only was recognised, that
females should be regarded as nullities, or should not be introduced
into the genealogical tree at all. The individual thus circumstanced was
indisputably Philip of Valois, whose father, Charles of Valois, was the
second son of Philip III. (the Hardy), and the younger brother of Philip
IV. (the Fair). Against his right, however, Edward III. set up a
principle or rule of succession which was at least new. He admitted that
females were excluded from actually reigning in France, otherwise the
Queen of Navarre would have succeeded her father Louis X., and would
have excluded not only both himself and his present competitor, but also
the two last kings, Philip V. and Charles IV. But he contended that,
although females could not be called to the throne themselves, they
nevertheless conveyed a right of succession to their male descendants;
and that he therefore, as the grandson, through his mother, of Philip
IV., had a preferable claim to Philip of Valois, who was only the
grandson of Philip III. If this had been the whole case, Edward's
pretensions might have had some plausibility; it might have been
conceived and understood how, in conformity with the general principles
of feudalism, a female, though excluded in her own person from a certain
office or possession, might still serve as a link for transmitting a
right to it to her male descendant. She might be held only as it were to
step aside and allow him to take her place in a function which her sex
was deemed to disqualify her from discharging. But the real weakness and
inadmissibility of Edward's claim lay in the necessity he was under of
qualifying this principle upon which he founded it by a limitation
entirely opposed to the genius and spirit of the feudal system, and
which would have made the law of descent a self-contradictory mass of
confusion and absurdity. For, if a female universally might transmit a
right which she could not herself exercise or enjoy to her male
descendant, then in the present case, before Edward, who was the
grandson, through a female, of Philip IV., would come all the existing
and possible male descendants of the three subsequent kings, Louis X.,
Philip V., and Charles IV., all of whom left daughters, though no sons.
To this conclusion the principle upon which Edward took his stand,
stated broadly and without limitation, would incontrovertibly have led.
He therefore drew an ingenious distinction, and maintained his own right
as the son of the daughter of Philip IV. to be preferable to that of the
son of any daughter of any of the kings that had since reigned, on the
ground that he alone had been born in the lifetime of his grandfather.
The novelty and gratuitous nature of this assumption would alone have
formed its sufficient answer and refutation. But it was fraught with the
most absurd and inconvenient consequences. If there be one principle
which more than another may be said to belong to the essence of the
feudal system of descent, it is that the position and rights of a line
in relation to other lines are not to be affected by the date of the
birth of any individual forming a link of it. Thus, no priority of birth
can enable a nephew to come in before a son. So absolutely does this
principle operate, that, even if there be no son in existence at the
time of the death of a married man, his next relation does not inherit,
or only inherits conditionally, till the time has passed within which it
is possible that his widow should bring him a son. We had an instance in
the case of the descent of the English crown on the death of the late
king, William IV., when the present queen assumed the government at
first only as it were provisionally, or with reservation of the rights
of any possible unborn cousin. But the claim set up to the crown of
France by Edward III., on the death of Charles IV., would have
contravened this essential principle in the most flagrant and wholesale
manner. It would have excluded in his favour more than half a dozen
lines, all otherwise entitled to come in before that to which he
belonged--those, namely, of the descendants, actual or possible, of the
two daughters of Charles IV., of the four daughters of Philip V., and of
the daughter of Louis X., all of which kings had reigned since his
ancestor Philip IV. And this transposition it would have made
permanently; these seven lines would all have been extruded out of their
proper places by his for ever, or at any rate until some one of them,
possibly the last of all, should be again suddenly lifted over the heads
of all the rest, and made the first, by the operation of the same
strange principle which Edward contended had now produced that effect in
his favour.
Strange as were the principles or grounds upon which Edward advanced
his claim to the French crown, his means of enforcing it seemed at least
proportionally inadequate, and his chances of success still more slight
and visionary. It was not a case of the heads of two great national
parties, dividing between them the adherence and support of the
community. Edward had no party in France; the kingdom the succession to
which was disputed was wholly with his opponent. The English crown had
even been stripped in the course of the last century and a half of the
greater part of the territories which it anciently possessed in France.
Bretagne, Normandy, Anjou, Maine, and Touraine had all been wrested from
it in the disastrous reign of John; and the loss of Poitou had followed
in that of his equally unfortunate son Henry III. Of all the vast
continental possessions of that great king the second Henry, there
remained only the Duchy of Aquitaine or Guienne; and even that had
fallen more than once into the hands of the French monarchs, and the
prevalent popular feeling was probably already more French than English.
Edward's bold project, therefore, was nothing less than to effect the
conquest of France by the sole force of England; and that, too, while he
had already upon his hands the war with Scotland, the object of which
was also the subjugation of that kingdom, and the annexation of its
crown to his own. The latter scheme, indeed, he found himself obliged to
abandon soon after he had involved himself in his contest with France.
But Scotland continued, nevertheless, for a time to divide his
attention, if not his ambition; and at least, it may be said, to occupy
his left arm.
Strangest of all was the measure of success he attained. In
September, 1339, he entered France from Flanders, with a small army of
fifteen thousand men, and immediately proceeded to lay waste the
country. In January following, by the advice of his ally Jacob von
Artaveldt, the famous brewer of Ghent, and leader of the democratic
interest in Flanders, he publicly assumed the title of King of France,
and quartered the French lilies with the English lions. On the 24th of
June, 1340, he obtained a great naval victory over the fleet of Philip
off Blakenberg. Hostilities were then for some time suspended: but arms
were resumed in the summer of 1345 with much more formidable
preparations on both sides. On the 26th of August, 1346, was won the
ever memorable victory of Creci by seven or eight thousand English from
a hundred or a hundred and twenty thousand French, in which eighty of
the enemy's banners were captured, while in the carnage of that and the
following day above thirty thousand of them were slain, including twelve
hundred knights and eleven persons of princely rank, among the rest the
aged John, King of Bohemia, from whom the Princes of Wales are said,
though doubts have been lately cast upon the old story, to have borrowed
their plume of three ostrich feathers, with the motto _Ich dien_ (I
serve). The young Prince of Wales, called the Black Prince from the
colour of his armour, shared, at any rate, among the foremost, boy as he
was (he had just entered his fifteenth year), in the peril and glory of
the day. Assisted by the Earls of Warwick and Oxford, he commanded the
first division of the little army which bore the brunt of the battle.
The king himself remained with the reserve. Pressed by the multitude of
the enemy, "they with the prince," says Froissart, "sent a messenger to
the king, who was on a little windmill hill. Then the knight said to the
king, Sir, the Earl of Warwick and the Earl of Oxford, Sir Reynold
Cobham, and other such as be about the prince your son, are fiercely
fought withal and are sore handled; wherefore they desire you that you
and your battle will come and aid them; for if the Frenchmen increase,
as they doubt they will, your son and they shall have much ado. Then the
king said, Is my son dead or hurt, or on the earth felled? No, Sir,
quoth the knight; but he is hardly matched; wherefore he hath need of
your aid. Well, said the king, return to him, and to them that sent you
hither, and say to them that they send no more to me for any adventure
that falleth, as long as my son is alive; and also say to them that they
suffer him this day to win his spurs; for, if God be pleased, I will
this journey[13] be his, and the honour thereof, and to them that be
about him." The king's answer, when it was brought to them, only gave
new life and courage to the heroic combatants. "This Saturday," the old
chronicler further writes, "the Englishmen never departed fro their
battles for chasing of any man, but kept still their field, and ever
defended themself against all such as came to assail them. This battle
ended about evensong time. On this Saturday, when the night was come,
and that the Englishmen heard no more noise of the Frenchmen, then they
reputed themself to have the victory, and the Frenchmen to be
discomfited, slain, and fled away. Then they made great fires, and
lighted up torches and candles, because it was very dark. Then the king
availed[14] down from the little hill whereas he stood, and of all that
day then his helm came never off on his head. Then he went with all his
battle to his son the prince, and embraced him in his arms and kissed
him, and said, Fair son, God give you good perseverance: ye are my good
son: thus ye have acquitted you nobly: ye are worthy to keep a realm.
The prince inclined himself to the earth, honouring the king his father.
This night they thanked God for their good adventure, and made no boast
thereof; for the king would that no man should be proud, or make boast,
but every man humbly to thank God." As for Philip of Valois, he had only
been able to escape with his life from this disastrous field. "In the
evening," says Froissart, "the French king, who had left about him no mo
than a threescore persons, one and other, whereof Sir John of Hainault
was one, who had remounted once the king, for his horse was slain with
an arrow, then he said to the king, Sir, depart hence, for it is time;
lese[15] not yourself wilfully; if ye have loss at this time, ye shall
recover it again another season. And so he took the king's horse by the
bridle, and led him away in a manner per force. Then the king rode till
he came to the castle of La Broyes; the gate was closed, because it was
by this time dark. Then the king called the captain, who came to the
walls, and said, Who is it that calleth there this time of night? Then
the king said, Open your gate quickly, for this is the fortune of
France. The captain knew that it was the king, and opened the gate, and
let down the bridge. Then the king entered, and he had with him but five
barons, Sir John of Hainault, Sir Charles of Montmorency, the Lord of
Beauvieu, the Lord Daubigny, and the Lord of Montford. The king would
not tarry there, but drank and departed thence about midnight; and so
rode by such guides as knew the country, till he came in the morning to
Amiens, and there he rested."
Within two months after the defeat and rout of the French at Creci,
another great victory broke the power of the Scots. As soon as King
David found Edward fairly engaged in his continental war, he made
preparations for crossing the borders. Setting out from Perth at the
head of an army of three thousand men-at-arms, and thirty thousand
others mounted on hackneys, he advanced by Edinburgh and Roxburgh,
entered Cumberland, took the pile, or castle, of Liddel, and then,
burning and wasting as he passed, directed his course into the
bishopric. The energetic English king allowed no one of his family to be
idle, any more than himself, and seems to have made it a principle to
accustom his sons at the earliest possible age to at least the
consciousness of the duties of their high position, and the sense if not
the actual exercise of authority and power; he had left the nominal
guardianship of the kingdom in the hands of his second son Lionel, a boy
only eight years old; the actual charge and direction of affairs he had
intrusted to his queen, the admirable Philippa. In those days, when the
chivalrous spirit was at its height, heroism was the virtue of both
sexes, as well as of all classes; a few years before this, the principal
military personage that had figured in a war for the possession of the
duchy of Bretagne was the famous Jane, Countess de Montfort; while her
husband, one of the rival claimants, lay fast bound in a French prison,
she took what would have been his place in the command of fortresses, at
the head of armies, and in the thick of battles;[16] and now Queen
Philippa was to do the same thing in the absence of Edward. The English
force that had been hurriedly assembled to meet the Scots amounted to a
body of fifteen or sixteen thousand men, and a considerable part of it
was composed of the clergy of the northern counties--the class of
persons that could be most easily spared or got at, and quite as ready
and as apt for the work to be done as any others. "The queen of
England," says Froissart, "who desired to defend her country, came to
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and there tarried for her men, who came daily fro
all parts. When the Scots knew that the Englishmen assembled at
Newcastle, they drew thitherward, and their couriers came running before
the town; and at their returning they brent certain small hamlets
thereabout, so that the smoke thereof came into the town of Newcastle;
some of the Englishmen would a issued out to have fought with them that
made the fires, but the captains would not suffer them to issue out."
The two armies, however, at last encountered, on the 17th of October, at
Nevil's Cross, in the neighbourhood of the city of Durham. On the
English side, after the divisions were all drawn up in array--the first
under the command of the Bishop of Durham, the second under that of the
Archbishop of York, the third under that of the Bishop of London, the
fourth under that of the Archbishop of Canterbury, each warlike prelate,
however, having a lay lord as his coadjutor--"the queen," Froissart
informs us, "went fro battle to battle, desiring them to do their
devoir,[17] to defend the honour of her lord the King of England, and,
in the name of God, every man to be of good heart and courage, promising
them that, to her power, she would remember them as well, or better, as
though her lord the king were there personally. Then the queen departed
fro them, recommending them to God and to Saint George. Then, anon
after, the battles of the Scots began to set forward, and in like wise
so did the Englishmen; then the archers began to shoot on both parties;
the shots of the Scots endured but a short space, but the archers of
England shot fiercely, so that when the battles approached there was a
hard battle; they began at nine and endured till noon. The Scots had
great axes, sharp and hard, and gave with them many great strokes;
howbeit, finally the Englishmen obtained the place and victory." The
slaughter was considerable on both sides, but far the greatest on that
of the Scots, fifteen thousand of whom, including many of their chief
nobility, were left dead on the field. The greatest loss of all,
however, was the capture of their young and gallant king. Refusing to
fly, he had, after receiving two dangerous wounds from arrows, one of
which pierced his head, been dragged or fallen from his horse; but still
he fought on; till at last, overpowered by numbers, he was disarmed and
carried off by John Copland, a gentleman of Northumberland, who did not,
however, secure his prize without a violent struggle, in which the king,
deprived of his sword, wounded him with his gauntlet. David Bruce
remained in captivity in England for more than ten years.
Meanwhile Edward was engaged abroad in the memorable siege of Calais,
the garrison of which, after a blockade of nearly a year, was forced to
surrender by famine, on the 4th of August, 1347. All our readers are no
doubt familiar with the scene of the appearance in the English camp of
Eustace de St. Pierre and his five fellow-townsmen, come to offer
themselves, barefoot and bare-headed, and with halters about their
necks, as sacrifices to appease the anger of their long-baffled
conqueror, in which Queen Philippa again shines forth so nobly. The
story rests upon the authority of Froissart, but has no air of
improbability or even of much fanciful embellishment. When Sir Walter
Manny, we are told, "presented these burgesses to the king, they kneeled
down, and held up their hands and said, 'Gentle king, behold here, we
six, who were burgesses of Calais, and great merchants, we have brought
to you the keys of the town and of the castle, and we submit ourself
clearly into your will and pleasure, to save the residue of the people
of Calais, who have suffered great pain: Sir, we beseech your grace to
have mercy and pity on us through your high nobless.' Then all the earls
and barons, and other that were there, wept for pity. The king looked
felly on them, for greatly he hated the people of Calais for the great
damages and displeasures they had done him on the sea before. Then he
commanded their heads to be stricken off. Then every man required the
king for mercy, but he would hear no man in that behalf. Then Sir Walter
of Manny said, 'Ah, noble king, for God's sake, refrain your courage; ye
have the name of sovereign nobless, therefore now do not a thing that
should blemish your renown, nor to give cause to some to speak of you
villainy; every man will say it is a great cruelty to put to death such
honest[18] persons, who by their own wills put themself into your grace
to save their country.' Then the king wried away from him, and commanded
to send for the hangman, and said, 'They of Calais had caused many of my
men to be slain; wherefore these shall die in like wise.' The queen,
being great with child, kneeled, down, and sore weeping said, 'Ah!
gentle sir, sith I passed the sea in great peril, I have desired nothing
of you: therefore now I humbly require[19] you, in the honour of the son
of the Virgin Mary, and for the love of me, that ye will take mercy of
these six burgesses.' The king beheld the queen, and stood still in a
study a space, and then said, 'Ah, dame, I would ye had been as now in
some other place; ye make such request to me that I cannot deny you;
wherefore I give them to you to do your pleasure with them.' Then the
queen caused them to be brought into her chamber, and made the halters
to be taken fro their necks, and caused them to be new clothed, and gave
them their dinner at their leisure; and then she gave each of them six
nobles, and made them to be brought out of the host in safeguard, and
set at their liberty." Calais, thus won, remained an English town for
more than two centuries--till it was lost in the reign of Mary, in the
year 1558.