The extension of French influence and domain toward the north and east was the result of resourceful diplomacy at the expense of the empire. Philip’s interest in that direction was emphasized when his sister married the son of Albert I of Germany and when he proposed first his brother and later his son as candidates for the imperial title. But it was against the English holdings in France that Philip exercised his most aggressive and portentous diplomacy.
Questions over spheres of administrative rights in Aquitaine had been creating tensions for many years. By the Treaty of Amiens (1279) the Agenais, whose status had been left in doubt when Alphonse of Poitiers died, passed to Edward I of England, who also had unsettled claims in Quercy. Serious conflict was precipitated in 1293, when clashes between French and English seamen caused Philip the Fair to summon his vassal to Parlement. When Gascon castles occupied by the French as part of the settlement were not returned to the English on schedule, Edward renounced his homage and prepared to fight for Aquitaine. The war that ensued (1294–1303) went in favour of Philip the Fair, whose armies thrust deep into Gascony. Edward retaliated by allying with Flanders and other northern princes. His dangerous campaign, concerted with the count of Flanders in 1297, met defeat from a French force led by Robert of Artois, and during a truce from 1297 to 1303 the rival monarchs reestablished the status quo ante. Edward married Philip’s sister, and a marriage was projected between Prince Edward and Philip’s daughter.
A consequence of this first war was to be the chronic insubordination of Flanders. After the count’s surrender and imprisonment, it was left to the Flemish burghers to revolt against the French garrisons, and the French knights suffered a terrible defeat at Courtrai in July 1302. Thereafter the tide turned. But it was only in 1305 that a settlement satisfactory to the king could be reached; even then it proved impossible to win full ratification from the Flemish townsmen, whose resistance remained an invariable factor in the latent hostility between France and England.
In 1320 Philip the Fair’s son, Philip V, obtained Edward II’s personal homage, but friction was increasing in Gascony again. When Edward refused to do homage to Philip V’s brother and successor, Charles IV, an old issue relating to French rights in Saint-Sardos (in Agenais) flamed into a war that once again went in favour of the French. By the Treaty of Paris (March 1327) France recovered Agenais and Bazadais and imposed a heavy indemnity on England, but a number of issues were left unresolved. Meanwhile, having married the emperor Henry VII’s daughter, Charles was tempted to negotiate for the vacant imperial title in 1324; but nothing came of this. The last Capetians, although troubled at home, retained their international standing among neighbouring states, which were no less troubled. The period of the Hundred Years’ War The kings and the war, 1328–1429
At the accession of the Valois" class="md-crosslink">house of Valois in 1328, France was the most powerful kingdom in Europe. Its ruler could muster larger armies than his rivals elsewhere; he could tap enormous fiscal resources, including taxes authorized by sympathetic popes of French extraction; there remained only four great fiefs—the duchies of Aquitaine, Brittany, and Burgundy and the county of Flanders—outside the direct royal domain; and the king’s courts continued to press a jurisdictional supremacy that was felt everywhere in the realm. It did not follow, however, that France’s superior armies would fight better than its foes or that its resources would not sometimes be dissipated or withheld. France remained a collection of traditional provinces whose peoples believed that a king should “live off his own,” while military success continued to depend on the personal leadership of dynastic rulers whose qualifications as strategists had been less refined by experience and institutional progress than their judicial or administrative competence. The history of France in the 14th century is dominated by efforts of its kings to maintain their suzerainty over the Plantagenets in Aquitaine—efforts that, despite French advantages, were long frustrated. The sufferings inflicted on the kingdom by a century of intermittent warfare were exacerbated by other hardships, especially the devastating Black Death of 1347–50. After more than three centuries generally characterized by peace, prosperity, and a growing population, France entered a period of troubles that would last in some respects until the early 1700s. The ongoing warfare between England and France would be known later as the Hundred Years’ War. Philip VI
Philip VI of Valois (reigned 1328–50), grandson of Philip III, was of mature age when he became regent of France in 1328. Upon the birth of a daughter to the widow of his cousin Charles IV, the familiar issue of the succession was posed anew. It was the regent’s experience, together with the circumstance that Edward III of England, grandson of Philip the Fair, was under the influence of his disreputable mother, Isabella of France, that probably disposed the council at Vincennes to recognize Philip as king (April 1328).
Philip VI, detail from a French manuscript, 14th century; in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (MS. Fr. 18437)Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris
Philip’s reign began well. Within months he crushed a revolt of the Flemish cloth towns that concluded at the Battle of Cassel in August 1328, thereby recovering the effective suzerainty over Flanders that had eluded his predecessors for a generation. And in 1329 he obtained Edward III’s personal homage for the duchy of Aquitaine, an act that not only secured Philip’s leadership but also nullified Edward’s claim to the crown of France.
This initial success was soon undone. Jurisdictional questions in Gascony remained unsettled. In 1336 Philip VI appeared to be preparing massive support for David II, the Scottish king at war with Edward; and in 1337, alleging defaults in feudal service, Philip ordered the confiscation of Aquitaine. Edward III renounced his homage and again laid claim to the crown of France, starting the period of conflict that would come to be known as the Hundred Years’ War. Despite the new Plantagenet pretensions, the basic causes of conflict were feudal and jurisdictional, not dynastic.
Edward proceeded deliberately and ominously. He fomented discontent among the Flemish cloth workers and then treated with the towns; in so doing he negated the count’s fidelity to France; he also purchased the fidelity and service of many princes in the Rhineland and Low Countries. But, to succeed, the English needed a prompt and massive victory on French soil, something Philip VI was able to prevent. Despite Edward’s naval triumph off Sluys (1340), which confirmed English control of the seas, his initial advantage was lost as his resources and allies melted away. A truce in September 1340 was extended for several years, during which time Edward intervened in a disputed succession to the duchy of Brittany, while Philip’s officials increased their pressure on Gascony. In 1345 English armies counterattacked French posts on the duchy’s borders; their success emboldened Edward. Landing in Normandy (July 1346) with a well-disciplined army, he captured Caen, only to be overtaken in Picardy by a much larger French army as he moved to join his Flemish allies. At Crécy (August 26, 1346), despite serious disadvantages, the English forces won the first major battle of the war. Their victory, however, proved difficult to exploit; Edward moved on to capture Calais after a long siege, but he could then only return to England with more glory than accomplishment to his credit.