n of
Champagne, Count Edmund's step-daughter, for his son, the future Philip
the Fair. When Joan attained her majority, Edmund lost the custody of
Champagne, which went to the King of France as the natural protector of
his son and his son's bride. With his brother's withdrawal from Provins
to Lancaster, Edward lost one of his means of influencing the course of
French politics.

A compensation for these failures was found in 1282 when the Sicilian
vespers rang the knell of the Angevin power in Sicily. When the
revolted islanders chose Peter, King of Aragon, as their sovereign,
Charles, seeking to divert him from Sicily by attacking him at home,
inspired his partisan, Pope Martin IV., to preach a crusade against
Aragon. It was in vain that Edward strove to mediate between the two
kings.

The only response made to his efforts was a fantastic proposal that
they should fight out their differences in a tournament at Bordeaux
with him as umpire, but Edward refused to have anything to do with the
pseudo-chivalrous venture. At last, in 1285, Philip III. lent himself
to his uncle's purpose so far as to lead a papalist crusade over the
Pyrenees. The movement was a failure. Philip lost his army and his life
in Aragon, and his son and successor, Philip IV., at once withdrew from
the undertaking. In the year of the crusade of Aragon, Charles of
Anjou, Peter of Aragon, and Martin IV. died. With them the struggles,
which had begun with the attack on Frederick II, reached their
culminating point. Their successors continued the quarrel with
diminished forces and less frantic zeal, and so gave Edward his best
chance to pose as the arbiter of Europe. Though Edward's continental
policy lay so near his heart that it can hardly be passed over, it was
fuller of vain schemes than of great results. Yet it was not altogether
fruitless, since twelve years of resolute and moderate action raised
England, which under Henry III. was of no account in European affairs,
to a position only second to that of France, and that under conditions
more nearly approaching the modern conception of a political balance
and a European state system than feudalism, imperialism, and papalism
had hitherto rendered possible.

In domestic policy, seven years of monotonous administration had in a
way prepared for vigorous reforms. Edward's return to England in 1274
was quickly followed by the dismissal of Walter of Merton, the
chancellor of the years of quiescence. He w