attacks on the borders of Guienne, which the
French kings had long been coveting to complete their possession of the
south, and by demanding the surrender of Robert of Artois, who, being
disappointed in his claim to the county of Artois by the judgment of the
Parliament of Paris, was practising by sorcery on the life of the King
of France. Edward then declared war, and his supposed right caused a
century of warfare between France and England, in which the broken,
down-trodden state of the French peasantry gave England an immense
advantage. The knights and squires were fairly matched; but while the
English yeomen were strong, staunch, and trustworthy, the French were
useless, and only made a defeat worse by plundering the fallen on each
side alike. The war began in Flanders, where Philip took the part of the
count, whose tyrannies had caused his expulsion. Edward was called in to
the aid of the citizens of Ghent by their leader Jacob van Arteveldt;
and gained a great victory over the French fleet at Sluys, but with no
important result. At the same time the two kings took opposite sides in
the war of the succession in Brittany, each defending the claim most
inconsistent with his own pretensions to the French crown--Edward
upholding the male heir, John de Montfort, and Philip the direct female
representative, the wife of Charles de Blois.

2. Crecy and Poitiers.--Further difficulties arose through Charles the
Bad, King of Navarre and Count of Evreux, who was always on the watch to
assert his claim to the French throne through his mother, the daughter
of Louis X., and was much hated and distrusted by Philip VI. and his son
John, Duke of Normandy. Fearing the disaffection of the Norman and
Breton nobles, Philip invited a number of them to a tournament at Paris,
and there had them put to death after a hasty form of trial, thus
driving their kindred to join his enemies. One of these offended
Normans, Godfrey of Harcourt, invited Edward to Normandy, where he
landed, and having consumed his supplies was on his march to Flanders,
when Philip, with the whole strength of the kingdom, endeavoured to
intercept him at _Crecy_ in Picardy, in 1348. Philip was utterly
incapable as a general; his knights were wrong-headed and turbulent, and
absolutely cut down their own Genoese hired archers for being in their
way. The defeat was total. Philip rode away to Amiens, and Edward laid
siege to Calais. The place was so strong that he was force