Part 45 (2/2)

It was the most appalling disaster that had befallen the arms of the English people since the memorable defeat of Harold at Hastings.

The independence of Scotland really dates from the great victory of Bannockburn, but the English were too proud to acknowledge it until fourteen years more of war. Finally, in the year 1328, the young king Edward III. gave up all claim to the Scottish crown, and Scotland with the hero Bruce as its king, took its place as an independent power among the nations of Europe.

The independence gained by the Scotch at Bannockburn was maintained for nearly three centuries,--until 1603,--when the crowns of England and Scotland were peacefully united in the person of James Stuart VI. of Scotland. During the greater part of these three hundred years the two countries were very quarrelsome neighbors.

_The Hundred Years' War_ (1336-1453).

CAUSES OF THE WAR.--The long and wasteful war between England and France, known in history as the Hundred Years' War, was a most eventful one, and its effects upon both England and France so important and lasting as to ent.i.tle it to a prominent place in the records of the closing events of the Middle Ages. Freeman likens the contest to the Peloponnesian War in ancient Greece.

The war with Scotland was one of the things that led up to this war. All through that struggle, France, as the jealous rival of England, was ever giving aid and encouragement to the Scotch rebels. Then the English lands in France, for which the English king did homage to the French king as overlord, were a source of constant dispute between the two countries.

Furthermore, upon the death of Charles IV., the last of the Capetian line, Edward III. laid claim, through his mother, to the French crown, in much the same way that William of Normandy centuries before had laid claim to the crown of England.

THE BATTLE OF CReCY (1346).--The first great combat of the long war was the memorable battle of Crecy. Edward had invaded France with an army of 30,000 men, made up largely of English bowmen, and had penetrated far into the country, ravaging as he went, when he finally halted, and faced the pursuing French army near the village of Crecy, where he inflicted upon it a most terrible defeat; 1200 knights, the flower of French chivalry, and 30,000 foot-soldiers lay dead upon the field.

The great battle of Crecy is memorable for several reasons, but chiefly because Feudalism and Chivalry there received their death-blow. The yeomanry of England there showed themselves superior to the chivalry of France. ”The churl had struck down the n.o.ble; the bondsman proved more than a match, in sheer hard fighting, for the knight. From the day of Crecy, Feudalism tottered slowly but surely to its grave.” The battles of the world were hereafter, with few exceptions, to be fought and won, not by mail-clad knights with battle-axe and lance, but by common foot- soldiers with bow and gun.

THE CAPTURE OF CALAIS.--From the field of Crecy Edward led his army to the siege of Calais. At the end of a year's investment, the city fell into the hands of the English. The capture of this sea-port was a very important event for the English, as it gave them control of the commerce of the Channel, and afforded them a convenient landing-place for their expeditions of invasion into France.

THE BATTLE OF POITIERS (1356).-The terrible scourge of the ”Black Death,”

[Footnotes: The Black Death was so called on account of the black spots which covered the body of the person attacked. It was a contagious fever, which, like the pestilence in the reign of Justinian, entered Europe from the East, and made terrible ravages during the years 1347-49. In Germany over 1,000,000 persons fell victims to the plague, while in England, according to some authorities, one-half of the population was swept away.

The pestilence was also especially severe in Florence, in Italy. Under the terror and excitement of the dreadful visitation, religious penitents, thinking to turn away the wrath of heaven by unusual penances, went about in procession, lacerating themselves with whips (hence they were called _flagellants_). This religious frenzy had its most remarkable manifestation in Germany.] which desolated all Europe about the middle of the fourteenth century, caused the contending nations for a time to forget their quarrel. But no sooner had a purer atmosphere breathed upon the continent than the old struggle was renewed with fresh eagerness.

Edward III. planned a double invasion of France. He himself led an army through the already wasted provinces of the North, while the Black Prince with another army ravaged the fields of the South. As the Prince's army, numbering about 8000 men, loaded with booty, was making its way back to the coast, it found its path, near Poitiers, obstructed by a French army of 50,000. A battle ensued which proved for the French a second Crecy. The arrows of the English bowmen drove them in fatal panic from the field, which was strewn with 11,000 of their dead.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHARGE OF FRENCH KNIGHTS AND FLIGHT OF ENGLISH ARROWS.]

BATTLE OF AGINCOURT (1415).--For half a century after the Peace [Footnote: The Treaty of Bretigny (1360).] that followed the battle of Poitiers there was a lull in the war. But while Henry V. (1413-1422) was reigning in England, France was unfortunate in having an insane king, Charles VI.; and Henry, taking advantage of the disorder into which the French kingdom naturally fell under these circ.u.mstances, invaded the country with a powerful army, defeated the French in the great battle of Agincourt (1415), and five years later concluded the Treaty of Troyes, in which, so discouraged had the French become, a large party agreed that the crown of France should be given to him upon the death of Charles.

JOAN OF ARC.--But patriotism was not yet wholly extinct among the French people. There were many who regarded the concessions of the Treaty of Troyes as not only weak and shameful, but as unjust to the Dauphin Charles, who was thereby disinherited, and they accordingly refused to be bound by its provisions. Consequently, when the poor insane king died, the terms of the treaty were not carried out, and the war dragged on. The party that stood by their native prince, afterwards crowned as Charles VII., were at last reduced to most desperate straits. A great part of the northern section of the country was in the hands of the English, who were holding in close siege the important city of Orleans.

But the darkness was the deep gloom that precedes the dawn. A strange deliverer now appears,--the famous Joan of Arc, Maid of Orleans. This young peasant girl, with imagination all aflame from brooding over her country's wrongs and sufferings, seemed to see visions and hear voices, which bade her undertake the work of delivering France. She was obedient unto the heavenly vision.

The warm, impulsive French nation, ever quick in responding to appeals to the imagination, was aroused exactly as it was stirred by the voice of the preachers of the Crusades. Religious enthusiasm now accomplished what patriotism alone could not do.

Received by her countrymen as a messenger from heaven, the maiden kindled throughout the land a flame of enthusiasm that nothing could resist.

Inspiring the dispirited French soldiers with new courage, she forced the English to raise the siege of Orleans (from which exploit she became known as the Maid of Orleans), and speedily brought about the coronation of Prince Charles at Reims (1429). Shortly afterward she fell into the hands of the English, and was condemned and burned as a heretic and witch.

But the spirit of the Maid had already taken possession of the French nation. From this on, the war, though long continued, went steadily against the English. Little by little they were pushed back and off from the soil they had conquered, until, by the middle of the fifteenth century, they were driven quite out of the country, retaining no foothold in the land save Calais (see p. 553).

Thus ended the Hundred Years' War, in 1453, the very year which saw Constantinople fall before the Turks.

EFFECTS UPON ENGLAND OF THE WAR.--The most lasting and important effects upon England of the war were the enhancement of the power of the Lower House of Parliament, and the awakening of a national spirit and feeling.

The maintaining of the long and costly quarrel called for such heavy expenditures of men and money that the English kings were made more dependent than hitherto upon the representatives of the people, who were careful to make their grants of supplies conditional upon the correction of abuses or the confirming of their privileges. Thus the war served to make the Commons a power in the English government. Again, as the war was partic.i.p.ated in by all cla.s.ses alike, the great victories of Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt roused a national pride, which led to a closer union between the different elements of society. Normans and English were fused by the ardor of a common patriotic enthusiasm into a single people.

The real _national_ life of England dates from this time. (For the effects of the war on France, see p. 494.)

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