ng truces incessantly
violated and as incessantly renewed. They had made use of this expedient
in 1340; and they had recourse to it again in 1342, 1343, and 1344. The
last of these truces was to have lasted up to 1346; but, in the spring of
1345, Edward resolved to put an end to this equivocal position, and to
openly recommence war. He announced his intention to Pope Clement IV.,
to his own lieutenants in Brittany, and to all the cities and
corporations of his kingdom. He accused Philip of having "violated,
without even sending us a challenge, the truce which, out of regard to
the sovereign pontiff, we had agreed upon with him, and which he had
taken an oath, upon his soul, to keep. On account whereof we have
resolved to proceed against him, him and all his adherents, by land and
sea, by all means possible, in order to recover our just rights." It is
not quite clear what pressing reasons urged Edward to this decisive
resolution. The English Parliament and people, it is true, showed more
disposition to support their king in his pretensions to the throne of
France, and the cause of the Count of Montfort was maintaining itself
stubbornly in Brittany, but nothing seemed to call for so startling a
rupture, or to promise Edward any speedy and successful issue. He had
lost his most energetic and warlike adviser; for Robert d'Artois, the
deadly enemy of Philip of Valois, had been so desperately wounded in the
defence of Vannes against Robert de Beaumanoir, that he had returned to
England only to die. Edward felt this loss severely, gave Robert a
splendid funeral in St. Paul's church, and declared that "he would listen
to nought until he had avenged him, and that he would reduce the country
of Brittany to such plight that, for forty years, it should not recover."
Philip of Valois, on his side, gave signs of getting ready for war. In
1343 he had convoked at Paris one of those assemblies which were
beginning to be called the states-general of the kingdom, and he obtained
from it certain subventions. It was likewise in 1343 and at the
beginning of 1344, that he ordered the arrest, at a tournament to which
he had invited them, and the decapitation, without any form of trial, of
fourteen Breton and three Norman lords whom he suspected of intriguing
against him with the King of England. And so Edward might have
considered himself threatened with imminent peril; and, besides, he had
friends to avenge. But it is not unreasona