seizing the pretext of a quarrel between an English and a Norman sailor, he embroiled the two nations, mixing up a considerable part of Europe in the quarrel. Edward was summoned, as duke of Guienne and vassal of France, to appear in his liege lord's court at Paris, and answer for the offences his subjects had committed. The king had no alternative but to consent to the sequestration of the duchy of Aquitaine (1293). After this, seeing his possessions invaded by French commissaries, he protested against the perfidy of his rival, summoned to his aid the duke of Brabant, the counts of Flanders and Guelders, and the war at first broke out in the south. But the difficulties with which he had to contend against in Scotland, prevented the king from directing the campaign in person : the English were beaten in Guienne, the Flemings in their own territory. When Edward entered the Scheldt with his fleet, it was only for the purpose of asking for a truce, which was shortly followed by a treaty of peace between France and England. This treaty was the source of incalculable misfortunes; for in consequence of it the daughter of Philip was betrothed to the son of Edward, and thus led, on the part of the kings of England, to those pretensions to the crown of France which resulted in such long and deplorable wars (1299). Philip and Edward naturally abandoned their allies respectively to each other. The count of Flanders, left to his own resources, abandoned the prolongation of an unequal struggle, submitted to the king of France, who made him a prisoner, and annexed the country of Flanders, for the time, to the crown (1300). Flemings were then treated as a conquered people, the fortifications of their towns were destroyed, their privileges violated, and thirty chiefs of corporations of artizans thrown into fetters for having dared to protest. The artizans of Bruges then took to arms, attacked the French, and were joined by the neighbouring towns, the whole of Flanders rising, Count Robert d'Artois himself, with an army of fifty thousand men, and many of the first nobles of France, were massacred at Courtray, where the Flemings had posted themselves behind a canal. The victors collected on the field of battle four thousand gilt spurs, and hung them up in the church of Courtray as a trophy (1302).

The

Philip was not discouraged, but he stood in need of treasure, and from the Jews and Lombards, whom he had drained so often, he had nothing more to hope. The king ordered the bailiffs and other responsible officers of the crown to carry all their silver plate to the mint; he renewed the prohibition of exporting out of the kingdom provisions of whatever description, which might serve the enemy; and, finally, he established the first general impost, which the people rudely called extortion. When he had thus prepared for the success of his expeditions, he marched against the Flemings; but the campaign, without being decisive, was not fortunate. Philip and the two sons of the count of Flanders concluded a truce, which left to each the hope of soon resuming hostilities with greater advantage.

In the meantime, pope Boniface VIII. was creating for Philip embarrassments of another description; the question related to the very principle of the two powers which divided the world. For several years the pope and the king had not been on good terms. Pontiff and monarch were equally haughty, irritable, and possessed with high ideas of their Sovereign power. A tenth that Philip raised on his clergy, without the

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pope's consent, and the refusal of the French king to abide by the arbitration of Boniface betwixt him and England, were the first causes of rupture. The pope sent a French bishop as legate to expostulate; the bishop took the opportunity to insult his sovereign. The pope, in the jubilee of 1300, caused to be carried before him the sword and the sceptre. Philip opposed to these pretensions that "kings had exercised their power in France and given laws before priests were known there." The pope's legate was arrested and imprisoned, the pope's bull was burnt, and the news was announced by sound of trumpet. Boniface summoned to Rome all the French bishops, to which Philip replied by a great assembly in which the burgesses of the towns sat by the side of the barons and the bishops; these were the first states-general (1302).

The king of France was resolved to maintain the prerogatives of the crown in their full integrity. He treated as rebellious subjects the bishops who obeyed the summons of Boniface, and seized their temporalities. Boniface launched bull after bull, in which he formally declared that the two powers belonged to the church, and he excommunicated the king, without, however, daring to designate him by name. On this the king called a council, in which one of his lawyer favourites, after denouncing the bulls as interfering with the prerogatives of the crown, openly attacked the pope himself as an usurper whom the council should depose. The university assented, the towns, and even the churches, sided with that opinion. And whilst the pope was excommunicating Philip anew, and absolving his subjects from their oath of fidelity, the king employed one of his agents, also a man of the law, to excite a conspiracy against the pope. He united with the Colonnas, levied an armed troop, and surprised Boniface at his country residence, in Anagni. Making themselves masters of his person, they bound, insulted, and menaced him. The pontiff bared is neck to their swords, but they feared to strike; and even found that to bring him away captive was impracticable. At length a body of the faithful subjects of Boniface rose and delivered him from the conspirators. The vengeance of Philip was complete, however, despite of this rescue. Boniface died soon after, of a fever caused by the indignities, the hunger, and privation he had suffered (1303).

Delivered from all apprehension by this bold stroke, Philip was enabled to resume hostilities against the Flemings; he purchased a fleet from the Genoese, and defeated the Flemish fleet. He himself marched against them, entered Flanders at the head of a numerous army, encountered them at Mons-en-Puelle, and won a great victory (1304). On hearing, however, that a new army of sixty thousand was advancing against him, he consented to a peace; by it he acquired French Flanders, with the towns of Lille and Douay, and setting their count at liberty, he recognised the independence of the Flemish.

In the meantime, the king of France was on the point of terminating his differences with the pope. The influence of the French party had caused the choice of the conclave to fall upon the archbishop of Bordeaux, Bertrand de Goth, a mere tool in the hands of Philip. He was immediately sent for by Philip, who showed him that he was master of the election, and could insure the elevation of the archbishop, provided the latter would become his partisan. Bertrand de Goth grasped at the high offer, and refused no terms: he promised to fulfil five demands that

the king made of him, amongst which was one to condemn the memory of Boniface, and exculpate his assaulters; and another to grant a sixth, which Philip reserved the liberty of thereafter specifying. This was the condemnation of the order of templars. Bertrand de Goth became pope Clement V. in consequence of this intrigue.

In 1305 the pope himself summoned the grand master of the templars, James de Molay, to Paris, where he was received with distinction by the king. Two years after, on Friday, the 13th of October, 1307, the templars were seized in all parts of France-the grand master and sixty knights in Paris-they were thrown into prison, and all the possessions of the order confiscated. The most abominable charges were brought against them :-those of committing the most indecent of crimes, of worshipping a head, spitting on the cross, and avowing infidelity. Torturing the accused, and promising him pardon if he confessed, were the chief and only modes of proof. Many, in order to escape torment, confessed what their torturers put into their mouths; and these avowals were conclusive of their guilt. Fifty-nine templars were burnt at Paris; a proportional number in the provinces. Clement V., in obedience to Philip, abolished the order. When the venerable James de Molay, graduate of the Temple, was brought to execution, he was said to have uttered, amidst protestations of his innocence, a solemn summons to his chief accusers, king Philip and pope Clement, to appear before the throne of the Almighty, one in fifty days, the other in the space of a year and a day. They died within these periods respectively. Philip expired at Fontainebleau, in November, 1314, from the fall of his horse as he was hunting in the forest of Fontainebleau. On his death-bed he was touched with repentance, and taking pity on his oppressed people, he besought his son Louis to moderate the taxes, maintain justice and order, and coin no base money. He was harsh, irascible, and covetous; he put no restraint upon his wishes, and enforced his meanness with despotic power. No prince had recourse to more iniquitous and violent measures to supply his treasures; he was brave, persevering, jealous of his rights, but proud.

Philip the Fair transmitted to his successors a power strengthened by an able government, and armed with the irresistible weapon of right. He had instituted the states-general, called the burgesses of the towns around royalty, and completed the work of St. Louis, by constituting a new monarchy, and by founding civil order in modern France. But so great a revolution could not be accomplished without considerable sacrifices. This immense administration exercised a tyranny hitherto unknown, and introduced into the government the fiscal spirit. Philip the Fair, in order to provide for so great an expenditure in a state of society in which industry did not as yet create wealth, had been the first to have recourse to taxation, to confiscation, and to exactions of every kind, even to the falsifying of coin, which became in his hands, and in those of his successors, so deplorable a source of revenue.

The Sons of Philip the Fair.-The feudal aristocracy had not waited for the death of Philip the Fair to protest against the encroachments of royalty. Under the first of his three sons, who reigned one after another, a strong reaction broke out, in which the barons had at first the advantage. The young Louis, surnamed Hutin from his disorderly

youth, suffered a portion of the new prerogatives of the crown to be wrested from him. He himself aided his enemies against his father's former advisers. Judicial combat was again revived, together with great disorders in the finances, and continued outrages against the public morals marked the course of his short and worthless reign. Charles count of Valois, brother of Philip, held the chief influence over his nephew. He employed it to destroy Enguerrand de Marigny, minister of Philip the Fair, whom he accused of malversation and sorcery, and whom he caused to be hanged upon the common gallows. Louis led an army against the Flemings, but was obliged to disband it, without a single action or conquest.

But the reaction was not destined to be of long duration. Royalty had entered on a path in which its very embarrassments prevented it from retrograding. Louis X. wanted money: after having sold to the Jews, whom Philip the Fair had driven from the country in order to appropriate their wealth to the uses of the state, the right to collect new treasure, he issued a proclamation to enfranchise all the serfs in the royal domains, on paying a certain sum; and those who were not desirous of freedom he actually compelled to purchase it against their will. Thus was the work of Philip IV. continued. Louis X. died, it is supposed, by poison, in 1316, after reigning one year, eight months, and six days. His two other sons, Philip V. (the Tall) and Charles IV. (the Fair), followed in the same track. Philip V. died in 1322, after reigning six years, and Charles IV. in 1328, after reigning seven years. In him ended the Capetian dynasty. In the midst of atrocious crimes and hideous executions, which stained France under their reign, order was everywhere dawning through the barbarism of the middle ages.

VI. WAR WITH ENGLAND.

SECTION I.-DECLINE OF FEUDAL FRANCE.

Philip VI., 1328-1350.-The thirteenth century was in Europe a period of comparative repose. Each nation was for the most part occupied at home, reconciling discordant interests, struggling to form some kind of system, and developing the natural resources of commerce and industry. In France the royal power obtained ascendancy over its rivals, repressing the great feudatories, putting the yoke of its legal authority over the necks of all, balancing the power of the nobility in the mass, by calling the commons into political existence, and securing the co-operation of the clergy in resisting the encroaching power of Rome. In the interior the king of France had no longer a rival, the king of England even did him homage for his French provinces. His cousins reigned at Naples, in Hungary, and Navarre. He protected the king of Scotland. He was surrounded by kings who regarded the court of France as the most chivalrous abode in the world. As for the pope, he had not raised himself from the humiliation inflicted on Boniface VIII., and feared to be pursued as a heretic by the university of Paris. Philip of Valois contemplated at the same time to drive away Edward III. out of his French provinces, and to place the imperial diadem on his own brow.

War against Flanders. But he knew not how to confide in the people, who had constituted the strength of his predecessors. Ambitious and warlike, loving splendour and perilous adventure, he had rallied the nobility around him. The count of Flanders felt that he could with impunity harass and annoy the citizens of Ghent and Bruges, whose municipal privileges he despised. He calculated upon the support of the new king of France, who did not disguise his contempt for popular freedom, and the nobles were burning for a second revenge of the battle of Courtray. The Flemings, driven to extremities, drove their count away. The latter had not deceived himself. Philip VI. marched against the Flemings with a brilliant army, joined by nearly the entire of the Flemish nobility, and took up his position near Cassel. The town was impregnable, and the people of Bruges and Ypres shut themselves up in it. But being desirous of returning to their vocations, they grew impatient at the inactivity of their opponents, ventured upon giving battle, and attacked the French in their camp. After the first surprise, the French rallied, surrounded and slaughtered the enemy: 13,000 are said to have fallen in the field, and 10,000 on the scaffold. The country was reestablished under the yoke of the tyrant whom the people had expelled (1328).

Commencement of the War with England.-In the meanwhile, the mother of Edward III. had protested against the homage which her