A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [51]
What was he really fighting for? What was the real cause of a war that was to stretch beyond imagining halfway into the next century? As in most wars, the cause was a mixture of the political, economic, and psychological. Edward wanted to obtain the ultimate sovereignty of Guienne and Gascony, that lower western corner of France remaining from the Duchy of Aquitaine which the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine had brought to his ancestor Henry II five generations before. The King of France still retained superior sovereignty under the formula of superioritas et resortum, which gave the inhabitants the right of appeal to the ultimate sovereign. Since his decisions were more than likely to go in their favor against their English overlord, and since the citizens, knowing this, exercised the right frequently, the situation was an endless source of conflict. To the English superioritas et resortum was politically and psychologically intolerable.
The situation was the more galling because of Guienne’s importance to the English economy. With its fertile valleys, long coast, and network of navigable rivers all leading to the main port of Bordeaux, it was the greatest wine-exporting region in the world. England imported the wine and other products and sent back wool and cloth, taking on every transaction a handsome revenue from export taxes at Bordeaux and import taxes at English ports. Between Bordeaux and Flanders the same flourishing commerce was exchanged, arousing the envy of central France. To the French monarchy the English foothold within the realm was unacceptable. Every French king for 200 years had tried by war, confiscation, or treaty to regain Aquitaine. The quarrel was old and deep and bound for war as the sparks fly upward.
Edward III was fifteen years old when he ascended the throne in 1327, 25 when he embarked on war with France, and 34 at the time of the second attempt in 1346. Well built and vigorous with long-flowing golden hair, mustache, and beard, he was at the height of his energies, expansive and kingly, vain, gracious, willful, and no stranger to the worst in man. Having grown up under the vicious strife surrounding the murder of his father’s favorites, the deposition and murder of his father, and the overthrow and hanging of his mother’s lover, Mortimer, who had seized power, he seemed, as far as history knows, unscarred by the experience. He understood practical politics without possessing any larger sense of rulership. He had no great qualities apart from or ahead of his time, but shone in those qualities his time admired in a king: he loved pleasure, battle, glory, hunts and tournaments, and extravagant display. One analysis of his character contains the phrases “boyish charm” and “a certain youthful petulance,” suggesting that the King of England too showed signs of the characteristic medieval juvenility.
When Edward launched his claim to be the rightful King of France, it is uncertain how seriously he took it, but as a device it was of incomparable value in giving him the appearance of a righteous cause. While desirable in any epoch, a “just war” in the 14th century was virtually a legal necessity as the basis for requisitioning feudal aids in men and money. It was equally essential for securing God on one’s side, for war was considered fundamentally an appeal to the arbitrament of God. A “just war” had to be one of public policy declared by the sovereign, and it had to be in a “just” cause—that is, directed against some “injustice” in the form of crime or fault on the part of the enemy. As formulated by the inescapable Thomas Aquinas, it required a third criterion: right intention on the part of the participants, but how this could be tested, the great expounder did not say. Even more convenient