François Guizot - History of France from the Earliest Times (Vol. 1-6)

Which side were the Flemings themselves to take in a conflict of such importance, and already so hot even before it had reached bursting point? It was clearly in Flanders that each king was likely to find his most efficient allies; and so it was there that they made the most strenuous applications. Edward III. hastened to restore between England and the Flemish communes the commercial relations which had been for a while disturbed by the arrest of the traders in both countries. He sent into Flanders, even to Ghent, ambassadors charged to enter into negotiations with the burghers; and one of the most considerable amongst these burghers, Solver of Courtrai, who had but lately supported Count Louis in his quarrels with the people of Bruges, loudly declared that the alliance of the King of England was the first requirement of Flanders, and gave apartments in his own house to one of the English envoys. Edward proposed the establishment in Flanders of a magazine for English wools; and he gave assurance to such Flemish weavers as would settle in England of all the securities they could desire. He even offered to give his daughter Joan in marriage to the son of the Count of Flanders. Philip, on his side, tried hard to reconcile the communes of Flanders to their count, and so make them faithful to himself; he let them off two years’ payment of a rent due to him of forty thousand livres of Paris per annum; he promised them the monopoly of exporting wools from France; he authorized the Brugesmen to widen the moats of their city, and even to repair its ramparts. The King of England’s envoys met in most of the Flemish cities with a favor which was real, but intermingled with prudent reservations, and Count Louis of Flanders remained ever closely allied with the King of France, “for he was right French and loyal,” says Froissart, “and with good reason, for he had the King of France almost alone to thank for restoring him to his country by force.”

Whilst, by both sides, preparations were thus being made on the Continent for war, the question which was to make it burst forth was being decided in England. In the soul of Edward temptation overcame indecision. As early as the month of June, 1336, in a Parliament assembled at Northampton, he had complained of the assistance given by the King of France to the Scots, and he had expressed a “hope that if the French and the Scots were to join, they would at last offer him battle, which the latter had always carefully avoided.” In September of the same year he employed similar language in a Parliament held at Nottingham, and he obtained therefrom subsidies for the war going on not only in Scotland, but also in Aquitaine, against the French king’s lieutenants. In April and May of the following year, 1337, he granted to Robert of Artois, his tempter for three years past, court favors which proved his resolution to have been already taken. On the 21st of August following he formally declared war against the King of France, and addressed to all the sheriffs, archbishops, and bishops of his kingdom a circular in which he attributed the initiative to Philip; on the 26th of August he gave his ally, the Emperor of Germany, notice of what he had just done, whilst, for the first time, insultingly describing Philip as “setting himself up for King of France.” At last, on the 7th of October, 1337, he proclaimed himself King of France, as his lawful inheritance, designating as representatives and supporters of his right the Duke of Brabant, the Marquis of Juliers, the Count of Hainault, and William de Bohun, Earl of Northampton.

The enterprise had no foundation in right, and seemed to have few chances of success. If the succession to the crown of France had not been regulated beforehand by a special and positive law, Philip of Valois had on his side the traditional right of nearly three centuries past and actual possession without any disputes having arisen in France upon the subject. His title had been expressly declared by the peers of the kingdom, sanctioned by the Church, and recognized by Edward himself, who had come to pay him homage. He had the general and free assent of his people: to repeat the words of the chroniclers of the time, “There was no mind in France to be subjects of the King of England.” Philip VI. was regarded in Europe as a greater and more powerful sovereign than Edward III. He had the pope settled in the midst of his kingdom; and he often traversed it with an array of valiant nobility whom he knew how to support and serve on occasion as faithfully as he was served by them. “He was highly prized and honored,” says Froissart, “for the victory he had won (at Cassel) over the Flemings, and also for the handsome service he had done his cousin Count Louis. He did thereby abide in great prosperity and honor, and he greatly increased the royal state; never had there been king in France, it was said, who had kept state like King Philip, and he provided tourneys and jousts and diversions in great abundance.” No national interest, no public ground, was provocative of war between the two peoples; it was a war of personal ambition, like that which in the eleventh century William the Conqueror had carried into England. The memory of that great event was still, in the fourteenth century, so fresh in France, that when the pretensions of Edward were declared, and the struggle was begun, an assemblage of Normans, barons and knights, or, according to others, the Estates of Normandy themselves, came and proposed to Philip to undertake once more, and at their own expense, the conquest of England, if he would put at their head his eldest son, John, their own duke. The king received their deputation at Vincennes, on the 23d of March, 1339, and accepted their offer. They bound themselves to supply for the expedition four thousand men-at-arms and twenty thousand foot, whom they promised to maintain for ten weeks, and even a fortnight beyond, if, when the Duke of Normandy had crossed to England, his council should consider the prolongation necessary. The conditions in detail and the subsequent course of the enterprise thus projected were minutely regulated and settled in a treaty published by Dutillet in 1588, from a copy found at Caen when Edward III. became master of that city in 1346. The events of the war, the long fits of hesitation on the part of both kings, and the repeated alternations from hostilities to truces and truces to hostilities, prevented anything from coming of this proposal, the authenticity of which has been questioned by M. Michelet amongst others, but the genuineness of which has been demonstrated by M. Adolph Despont, member of the appeal-court of Caen, in his learned Histoire du Cotentin.

Edward III., though he had proclaimed himself King of France, did not at the outset of his claim adopt the policy of a man firmly resolved and burning to succeed. From 1337 to 1340 he behaved as if he were at strife with the Count of Flanders rather than with the King of France. He was incessantly to and fro, either by embassy or in person, between England, Flanders, Hainault, Brabant, and even Germany, for the purpose of bringing the princes and people to actively co-operate with him against his rival; and during this diplomatic movement such was the hostility between the King of England and the Count of Flanders that Edward’s ambassadors thought it impossible for them to pass through Flanders in safety, and went to Holland for a ship in which to return to England. Nor were their fears groundless; for the Count of Flanders had caused to be arrested, and was still detaining in prison at the castle of Rupelmonde, the Fleming Sohier of Courtrai, who had received into his house at Ghent one of the English envoys, and had shown himself favorable to their cause. Edward keenly resented these outrages, demanded, but did not obtain, the release of Sohier of Courtrai, and by way of revenge gave orders in November, 1337, to two of his bravest captains, the Earl of Derby and Walter de Manny, to go and attack the fort of Cadsand, situated between the Island of Walcheren and the town of Ecluse (or Sluys), a post of consequence to the Count of Flanders, who had confided the keeping of it to his bastard brother Guy, with five thousand of his most faithful subjects. It was a sanguinary affair. The besieged were surprised, but defended themselves bravely; the landing cost the English dear; the Earl of Derby was wounded and hurled to the ground, but his comrade, Walter de Manny, raised him up with a shout to his men of “Lancaster, for the Earl of Derby;” and at last the English prevailed. The Bastard of Flanders was made prisoner; the town was pillaged and burned; and the English returned to England, and “told their adventure,” says Froissart, “to the king, who was right joyous when he saw them and learned how they had sped.”