ments, or apparently irreconcilable conditions,
this must be left to his own power of discrimination and to the reader's
estimate of his ability to weigh evidence. He is in duty bound--as I have
attempted to do very briefly in certain notes--to give the grounds of his
decision, and, having done so, he admits his reader to be a judge over
himself: with this warning, however, that historical judgment is based
upon a vast accumulation of detail acquired in many fields besides those
particularly under consideration, and that a competent historian
generally claims an authority in his decisions superior to that reposing
upon no more than a mere view of limited contemporary materials.

I

THE POLITICAL CIRCUMSTANCES

The Battle of Crecy was the first important decisive action of what is
called "The Hundred Years' War." This war figures in many history books as
a continued struggle between two organised nations, "England" and
"France." To present it in its true historical character it must be stated
in far different terms.

The Hundred Years' War consisted in two groups of fighting widely distant
in time and only connected by the fact that from first to last a
Plantagenet king of England claimed the Crown of France against a Valois
cousin. Of these two groups of fighting the first was conducted by Edward
III., and covers about twenty years of his reign. It was magnificently
successful in the field, and gave to the English story the names of
_Crecy_ and of _Poitiers_. So far as the main ostensible purpose of that
first fighting was concerned, it was unsuccessful, for it did not result
in placing Edward III. upon the French throne.

The second group of actions came fifty years later, and is remembered by
the great name of _Agincourt_.

This latter part of the Hundred Years' War was conducted by Henry V., the
great-grandson of Edward III. and the son of the Lancastrian usurper. And
Henry was successful, not only in the tactical results of his battles, but
in obtaining the Crown of France for his house. After his death his
success crumbled away; and a generation or so after Agincourt, rather more
than one hundred years after the beginning of this long series of fights,
the power of the kings of England upon the Continent had disappeared. As a
visible result of all their efforts, nothing remained but the important
bastion of Calais, the capture of which was among the earliest results of
their invasions.

When we say