The Hundred Years War - Desmond Seward [6]
In May 1334 the ten-year-old David II of Scotland took refuge in France at the invitation of Philip VI, who announced that any future negotiations between himself and the English must take into consideration the interests of the King of Scots. Edward, infuriated at being encircled, henceforward regarded the French King as his enemy. For a time Pope Benedict XII managed to keep an increasingly angry Philip quiet; in November 1335 Papal envoys succeeded in arranging a truce between England and Scotland. But in March 1336 the Pope reluctantly announced that as there was no genuine peace between King Edward and King Philip the Crusade would have to be postponed. A few weeks later the erstwhile Crusader fleet sailed out of Marseilles, bound for new moorings in the Norman ports. Though the fleet itself remained inactive, French privateers began to terrorize the Channel and the Bay of Biscay—oared galleys made quick work of becalmed English merchantmen. In July the Archbishop of Rouen announced in a sermon that Philip was going to send 6,000 men to Scotland. In September a great council at Nottingham, supported by an assembly of merchants, condemned the perfidy of the King of France and voted special taxes of a ‘tenth’ and a ‘fifteenth’ to enable Edward to fight the French. In March 1337 a Parliament at Westminster would renew these taxes for three years. But it was not yet open war.
What finally made Edward go to war? Some modern commentators credit him with an excessively sophisticated policy, that of a holding operation; they assume that by attacking France he hoped for no more than to deflect the attention of the French from Guyenne. But this ‘maintenance of the status quo’ interpretation is a little too subtle. Personal motives still seem more plausible. Probably Edward really did feel cheated of his rightful inheritance and had every intention of reconquering France if it was possible; at the least he was determined to hold Guyenne against the Valois.
Edward III was one of England’s most formidable kings, somewhere between Edward I and Henry VIII. Nobody will ever know what drove him—a father complex or simple megalomania—but for over thirty years he showed a demonic energy. After dispossessing Mortimer, he swiftly established his authority over the barons, and by his mid-twenties he had reached the height of his powers. In person he was an immensely tall, strikingly handsome young man with a pointed yellow beard and long drooping moustaches, his features ‘like the face of a god’ according to a contemporary. He had abundant dignity and charm, speaking English as well as he spoke French, in a caressing voice. (He also spoke and wrote Latin and seems to have understood German and Flemish.) His esoteric cult of chivalry, so much admired in his day, has obscured the man beneath, yet a personality nevertheless emerges—extravagantly elegant, warm in friendship, mercilessly cruel and hardhearted in enmity. He was at the same time self-indulgent, a relentless womanizer, who eventually ruined his health. One can only guess at what must have been a Napoleonic confidence in himself and an oddly self-conscious determination to be a hero-king. With all this he was also realistic—his motto was ‘It is as it is’.
Edward’s glittering court, a constant round of banquets and jousting, provided him with an excellent general staff. His friends, professional soldiers by virtue of their