Part 14

Such severity was most impolitic, and Lancaster was ere long hailed as a saint and a martyr. But for the moment the king seemed triumphant; he called a parliament which revoked the "ordinances" of 1311, and replaced the Despensers in power. For the remaining four years of his reign they were omnipotent; but able and unscrupulous as they were, they could not solve the problem of successful governance. To their misfortune the Scottish war once more recommenced, King Robert having refused to continue the truce. The fortune of Edward II. now hung on the chance that he might be able to maintain the struggle with success; he raised a large army and invaded Lothian, but Bruce refused a pitched battle, and drove him off with loss by devastating the countryside around him. Thereupon Edward, to the deep humiliation of the people, sued for another cessation of hostilities, and obtained it by conceding all that Robert asked, save the formal acknowledgment of his kingly title. But peace did not suffice to end Edward's troubles; he dropped back into his usual apathy, and the Despensers showed themselves so harsh and greedy that the general indignation only required a new leader in order to take once more the form of open insurrection. The end came in an unexpected fashion. Edward had quarrelled with his wife Isabella, who complained that he made her the "handmaid of the Despensers," and excluded her from her proper place and honour. Yet in 1325 he was unwise enough to send her over to France on an embassy to her brother Charles IV., and to allow his eldest son Edward, prince of Wales, to follow her to Paris. Having the boy in her power, and being surrounded by the exiles of Lancaster's faction, she set herself to plot against her husband, and opened up communications with the discontented in England. It was in vain that Edward besought her to return and to restore him his son; she came back at last, but at the head of an army commanded by Roger, Lord Mortimer, the most prominent survivor of the party of Earl Thomas, with whom she had formed an adulterous connexion which they for some time succeeded in keeping secret.

Deposition and murder of Edward II.

When she landed with her son in Essex in September 1326, she was at once joined by Henry of Lancaster, the heir of Earl Thomas, and most of the baronage of the eastern counties. Even the king's half-brother, the earl of Norfolk, rallied to her banner. Edward and the Despensers, after trying in vain to raise an army, fled into the west. They were all caught by their pursuers; the two Despensers were executed--the one at Bristol, the other at Hereford. Several more of Edward's scanty band of friends--the earl of Arundel and the bishop of Exeter and others--were also slain. Their unhappy master was forced to abdicate on the 20th of January 1327, his fourteen-year old son being proclaimed king in his stead. He was allowed to survive in close prison some eight months longer, but when his robust constitution defied all attempts to kill him by privations, he was murdered by the orders of the queen and Mortimer at Berkeley Castle on the 21st of September.

Regency of Isabella and Mortimer.

The three years regency of Isabella, during the minority of Edward III., formed a disgraceful episode in the history of England. She was as much the tool of Mortimer as her husband had been the tool of the Despensers, and their relations became gradually evident to the whole nation. All posts of dignity and emolument were kept for their personal adherents, and a new and formidable dignity was conferred on Mortimer himself, when he was made both justiciar of the principality of Wales, and also earl of March, in which lay both his own broad lands and the estates of Despenser and Arundel, which he had shamelessly appropriated. It is surprising that the adulterous pair succeeded in maintaining themselves in power for so long, since the ignominy of the situation was evident. They were even able to quell the first attempt at a reaction, by seizing and beheading Edmund, earl of Kent, the late king's half-brother, who was betrayed while organizing a plot for their destruction. The one politic act of Mortimer's administration, the conclusion of a permanent peace with Scotland by acknowledging Bruce as king (1328), was not one which made him more popular. The people called it "the shameful peace of Northampton," and firmly believed that he had been bribed by the Scots.

Edward III.

Yet Isabella and her paramour held on to power for two years after the peace, and were only overthrown by a blow from an unexpected quarter. When the young king had reached the age of eighteen he began to understand the disgraceful nature of his own situation. Having secured promise of aid from Henry of Lancaster, his cousin, and other barons, he executed a _coup de main_, and seized Mortimer in his chamber at midnight. The queen was also put under guard till a parliament could be called. It met, and at the king's demand passed sentence on the earl for the murder of Edward II. and other crimes. He was hanged at Tyburn (Nov. 1330); the queen suffered nothing worse than complete exclusion from power, and lived for more than twenty years in retirement on the manors of her dowry.

Edward III., who thus commenced his reign ere he was out of his boyhood, was, as might have been foretold from his prompt action against Mortimer, a prince of great vigour and enterprise. He showed none of his father's weakness and much of his grandfather's capacity. He fell short of Edward I. in steadiness of character and organizing power, but possessed all his military capacity and his love of work. Unfortunately for England his ambition was to be the mirror of chivalry rather than a model administrator. He took up and abandoned great enterprises with equal levity; he was reckless in the spending of money; and in times of trouble he was careless of constitutional precedent, and apt to push his prerogative to extremes. Yet like Edward I. he was popular with his subjects, who pardoned him much in consideration of his knightly virtues, his courage, his ready courtesy and his love of adventure. In most respects he was a perfect exponent of the ideals and foibles of his age, and when he broke a promise or repudiated a debt he was but displaying the less satisfactory side of the habitual morality of the 14th century the chivalry of which was often deficient in the less showy virtues. With all his faults Edward during his prime was a capable and vigorous ruler; and it was not without reason that not England only but all western Europe looked up to him as the greatest king of his generation.

Edward III. invades Scotland.

His early years were specially fortunate, as his rule contrasted in the most favourable way with that of his infamous mother and his contemptible father. The ministers whom he substituted for the creatures of Mortimer were capable, if not talented administrators. He did much to restore the internal peace of the realm, and put down the local disorders which had been endemic for the last twenty years. Moreover, when the war with Scotland recommenced he gave the English a taste of victory such as they had not enjoyed since Falkirk. Robert Bruce was now dead and his throne was occupied by the young David II., whose factious nobles were occupied in civil strife when, in 1332, a pretender made a snatch at the Scottish throne. This was Edward, the son of John Baliol, an adventurous baron who collected all the "disinherited" Scots lords, the members of the old English faction who had been expelled by Bruce, and invaded the realm at their head. He beat the regent Mar at the battle of Dupplin, seized Perth and Edinburgh, and crowned himself at Scone. But knowing that his seat was precarious he did homage to the English king, and made him all the promises that his father had given to Edward I. The temptation was too great for the young king to refuse; he accepted the homage, and offered the aid of his arms. It was soon required, for Baliol was ere long expelled from Scotland. Edward won the battle of Halidon Hill (July 19, 1333)--where he displayed considerable tactical skill--captured Berwick, and reconquered a considerable portion of Scotland for his vassal. Unfortunately for himself he made the mistake of requiring too much from Baliol--forcing him to cede Lothian, Tweeddale and the larger part of Galloway, and to promise a tribute. These terms so irritated the Scots, who had shown signs of submission up to this moment, that they refused to accept the pretender, and kept up a long guerilla warfare which ended in his final expulsion. But the fighting was all on Scottish ground, and Edward repeatedly made incursions, showy if not effective, into the very heart of the northern realm; on one occasion he reached Inverness unopposed. He held Perth till 1339, Edinburgh till 1341, and was actually in possession of much Scottish territory when his attention was called off from this minor war to the greater question of the struggle with France. Meanwhile he had acquired no small military reputation, had collected a large body of professional soldiers whose experience was to be invaluable to him in the continental war, and had taught his army the new tactics which were to win Crecy and Poitiers. For the devices employed against the Scottish "schiltrons" of pikemen at Dupplin and Halidon, were the same as those which won all the great battles of the Hundred Years' War--the combination of archery, not with cavalry (the old system of Hastings and Falkirk), but with dismounted men-at-arms. The nation, meanwhile prosperous, not vexed by overmuch taxation, and proud of its young king, was ready and willing to follow him into any adventure that he might indicate.

IV. THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR (1337-1453)

Causes of the Hundred Years' War.

Wars between England and France had been many, since William the Conqueror first linked their fortunes together by adding his English kingdom to his Norman duchy. They were bound to recur as long as the kings who ruled on this side of the Channel were possessed of continental dominions, which lay as near, or nearer, to their hearts than their insular realm. While the kingdom of France was weak, monarchs like Henry II. and Richard I. might dream of extending their transmarine possessions to the detriment of their suzerain at Paris. When France had grown strong, under Philip Augustus, the house of Plantagenet still retained a broad territory in Gascony and Guienne, and the house of Capet could not but covet the possession of the largest surviving feudal appanage which marred the solidarity of their kingdom. There had been a long interval of peace in the 13th century, because Henry III. of England was weak, and Louis IX. of France an idealist, much more set on forwarding the welfare of Christendom than the expansion of France. But the inevitable struggle had recommenced with the accession of the unscrupulous Philip IV. Its cause was simple; France was incomplete as long as the English king ruled at Bordeaux and Bayonne, and far up the valleys of the Garonne and the Adour. From 1293 onward Philip and his sons had been striving to make an end of the power of the Plantagenets in Aquitaine, sometimes by the simple argument of war, more frequently by the insidious process of encroaching on ducal rights, summoning litigants to Paris, and encouraging local magnates and cities alike to play off their allegiance to their suzerain against that to their immediate lord. Both in the time of Edward II. and in that of his son active violence had several times been called in to aid legal chicanery. Fortunately for the duke of Guienne the majority of his subjects had no desire to become Frenchmen; the Gascons felt no national sympathy with their neighbours of the north, and the towns in especial were linked to England by close ties of commerce, and had no wish whatever to break off their allegiance to the house of Plantagenet. The English rule, if often weak, had never proved tyrannical, and they had a great dread of French taxes and French officialism. But there were always individuals, more numerous among the noblesse than among the citizens, whose private interests impelled them to seek the aid of France.

The root of the Hundred Years' War, now just about to commence, must be sought in the affairs of Guienne, and not in any of the other causes which complicated and obscured the outbreak of hostilities. These, however, were sufficiently important in themselves. The most obvious was the aid which Philip VI. had given to the exiled David Bruce, when he was driven out of Scotland by Edward and his ally Baliol. The English king replied by welcoming and harbouring Robert of Artois, a cousin whom Philip VI. had expelled from France. He also made alliances with several of the dukes and counts of the Netherlands, and with the emperor Louis the Bavarian, obviously with the intention of raising trouble for France on her northern and eastern frontiers.

Beginning of the war.

It was Philip, however, who actually began the war, by declaring Guienne and the other continental dominions of Edward III. forfeited to the French crown, and sending out a fleet which ravaged the south coast of England in 1337. In return Edward raised a claim to the throne of France, not that he had any serious intention of pressing it--for throughout his reign he always showed himself ready to barter it away in return for sufficient territorial gains--but because such a claim was in several ways a useful asset to him both in war and in diplomacy. It was first turned to account when the Flemings, who had scruples about opposing their liege lord the king of France, found it convenient to discover that, since Edward was the real king and not Philip, their allegiance was due in the same direction whither their commercial interests drew them. Led by the great demagogue dictator, Jacob van Artevelde, they became the mainstay of the English party in the Netherlands.

Edward III. and the French crown.

Edward's claim--such as it was--rested on the assertion that his mother, Isabella, was nearer of kin to her brother Charles IV., the last king of the main line of the house of Capet, than was Charles's cousin Philip of Valois. The French lawyers ruled that heiresses could not succeed to the crown themselves, but Edward pleaded that they could nevertheless transmit their right to their sons. He found it convenient to forget that the elder brother of Charles IV., King Louis X., had left a daughter, whose son, the king of Navarre, had on this theory a title preferable to his own. This prince, he said, had not been born at the time of his grandfather's death, and so lost any rights that might have passed to him had he been alive at that time. A far more fatal bar to Edward's claim than the existence of Charles of Navarre was the fact that the peers of France, when summoned to decide the succession question nine years before, had decided that Philip of Valois had the sole valid claim to the crown, and that Edward had then done homage to him for Guienne. If he pleaded that in 1328 he had been the mere tool of his mother and Mortimer, he could be reminded of the unfortunate fact that in 1331, after he had crushed Mortimer, and taken the power into his own hands, he had deliberately renewed his oath to King Philip.

Edward's claim to the French crown embittered the strife in a most unnecessary fashion. It was an appeal to every discontented French vassal to become a traitor under a plausible show of loyalty, and from first to last many such persons utilized it. It also gave Edward an excuse for treating every loyal Frenchman as guilty of treason, and, to his shame, he did not always refrain from employing such a discreditable device. Yet, as has been already said, he showed his consciousness of the fallacy of his claim by offering to barter it again and again during the course of the war for land or money. But he finally passed on the wretched fiction as a heritage of his descendants, to cause untold woes in the 15th century. It is seldom in the world's history that a hollow legal device such as this has had such long enduring and deplorable results.

Battle of Sluys.

In the commencement of his continental war Edward took little profit either from his assumption of the French royal title, or from the lengthy list of princes of the Low Countries whom he enrolled beneath his banner. His two land-campaigns of 1339 and 1340 led to no victories or conquests, but cost enormous sums of money. The Netherland allies brought large contingents and took high pay from the king, but they showed neither energy nor enthusiasm in his cause. When Philip of Valois refused battle in the open, and confined his operations to defending fortified towns, or stockading himself in entranched camps, the allies drifted off, leaving the king with his English troops in force too small to accomplish anything. The sole achievement of the early years of the war which was of any profit to Edward or his realm was the great naval triumph of Sluys (June 24, 1340), which gave the English the command of the sea for the next twenty years. The French king had built or hired an enormous fleet, and with it threatened to invade England. Seeing that he could do nothing on land while his communications with the Low Countries were endangered by the existence of this armada, Edward levied every ship that was to be found, and brought the enemy to action in the Flemish harbour of Sluys. After a day of desperate hand to hand fighting--for the vessels grappled and the whole matter was settled by boarding--the French fleet was annihilated. Henceforth England was safe from coast raids, could conduct her commerce with Flanders without danger, and could strike without difficulty at any point of the French littoral. But it was not for some years that Edward utilized the advantage that Sluys had given him. As long as he persevered in the attempt to conduct the invasion of the northern frontier of France he achieved nothing.

Financial crisis. Trial of Archbishop Stratford.

Such schemes were finally abandoned simply because the king discovered that his allies were worthless and that his money was all spent. On his return from Flanders in 1340 he became involved in an angry controversy with his ministers, whom he accused, quite unjustly, of wasting his revenue and wrecking his campaign thereby. He imprisoned some of them, and wished to try his late chancellor, Archbishop Stratford, for embezzlement, in the court of the exchequer. But the primate contended very vigorously for the right to be tried before his peers, and since the king could get no subsidies from his parliament till he acknowledged the justice of this claim, he was forced to concede it. Stratford was acquitted--the king's thriftlessness and not the chancellor's maladministration had emptied the treasury. Edward drifted on along the path to financial ruin till he actually went bankrupt in 1345, when he repudiated his debts, and ruined several great Italian banking houses, who had been unwise enough to continue lending him money to the last. The Flemings were also hard hit by this collapse of the king's credit, and very naturally lost their enthusiasm for the English alliance. Van Artevelde, its chief advocate, was murdered by his own townsmen in this same year.

War in Brittany.

The second act of the Hundred Years' War, after King Edward had abandoned in despair his idea of invading France from the side of the Netherlands, was fought out in another quarter--the duchy of Brittany. Here a war of succession had broken out in which (oddly enough) Edward took up the cause of the pretender who had male descent, while Philip supported the one who represented a female line--each thus backing the theory of heritage by which his rival claimed the throne of France. By espousing the cause of John of Montfort Edward obtained a good foothold on the flank of France, for many of the Breton fortresses were put into his hands. But he failed to win any decisive advantage thereby over King Philip. It was not till 1346, when he adopted the new policy of trusting nothing to allies, and striking at the heart of France with a purely English army, that Edward found the fortune of war turning in his favour.

Edward invades France.

Battle of Crecy.

Capture of Calais.

In this year he landed in Normandy, where the English banner had not been seen since the days of King John, and executed a destructive raid through the duchy, and up the Seine, till he almost reached the gates of Paris. This brought out the king of France against him, with a mighty host, before which Edward retreated northward, apparently intending to retire to Flanders. But after crossing the Somme he halted at Crecy, near Abbeville, and offered battle to the pursuing enemy. He fought relying on the tactics which had been tried against the Scots at Dupplin and Halidon Hill, drawing up his army with masses of dismounted men-at-arms flanked on either side by archery. This array proved as effective against the disorderly charges of the French noblesse as it had been against the heavy columns of the Scottish pikemen. Fourteen times the squadrons of King Philip came back to the charge; but mowed down by the arrow-shower, they seldom could get to handstrokes with the English knights, and at last rode off the field in disorder. This astonishing victory over fourfold numbers was no mere chivalrous feat of arms, it had the solid result of giving the victors a foothold in northern France. For Edward took his army to beleaguer Calais, and after blockading it for nearly a year forced it to surrender. King Philip, after his experience at Crecy, refused to fight again in order to raise the siege. From henceforth the English possessed a secure landing-place in northern France, at the most convenient point possible, immediately opposite Dover. They held it for over two hundred years, to their own inestimable advantage in every recurring war.

Battle of Neville's Cross.

The years 1345-1347 saw the zenith of King Edward's prosperity; in them fell not only his own triumphs at Crecy and Calais, but a victory at Auberoche in Perigord won by his cousin Henry of Lancaster, which restored many long-lost regions of Guienne to the English suzerainty (Oct. 21, 1345), and another and more famous battle in the far north. At Neville's Cross, near Durham, the lords of the Border defeated and captured David Bruce, king of Scotland (Oct. 17, 1346). The loss of their king and the destruction of a fine army took the heart out of the resistance of the Scots, who for many years to come could give their French allies little assistance.

Truce with France. The Black Death.