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the sceptre. Had only one existed, he might perhaps have fancied that he could maintain her celibacy, and himself have lived in hope; but the direful plurality made hope impossible.

Nearly ten years elapsed before he could solve this difficulty. At length, in the year 1337, his ruminations gave birth to the paradox, that though the Salique law operated to prevent a female from succeeding to the throne, it did not prevent her from transmitting the succession to a male heir; and therefore, as son and representative of Isabella, daughter of Philip the Fair, he was now rightful king of France. This clumsy and audacious invention was the happiest expedient which even the ingenious Edward could find to fulfil the double purpose of excluding both classes of his competitors, and of substantiating his own claims to the throne. Nothing can give a more forcible idea of the badness of his cause than the version which he employed to enforce it. Yet so licentious and insensible was his ambition, that upon these preposterous pleas he plunged the two people into those furious wars which begot national antipathies, not yet extinct. Thus, by that mysterious permission of Providence, which has been so often and so dismally made manifest to the world, countless generations have been doomed to suffer the consequence of the misdeed of one selfish and aspiring man.

In 1338 Edward crossed over into Flanders with his forces, preparatory to his invasion of France. His object was to confer with James d'Arteville, and to strengthen his army and his alliances by his influence. This man and Robert d'Artois were the two principal confederates of Edward, and well worthy were the characters of both of the cause in which they were engaged. The one was the insurrectionary brewer and popular tyrant of Ghent: no license or crime which he did not permit to himself; and he retained around his person guards, who instantly assassinated whoever excited either his suspicions or dislike. Robert d'Artois was worthy to constitute

the other moiety of this par nobile, Arcades ambo. He was the brother-in-law of Philip the Fair, and having been deprived of Artois, he attempted to substantiate his claim to it by an act which seems to be the basest and most infamous which could have been committed in those feudal times-forgery. For this crime he was expelled the kingdom, and from that moment he became its ruthless foe.

But vainly Edward tarnished his honour and chivalry by this profligate alliance; the condescension was made, the ignominy was endured, but his cause, never.heless, did not prosper. With an army of nearly fifty thousand men, composed principally of foreigners, he appeared in the fields of Vironfosse, near Capelle, and Philip advanced to meet him with a force almost double in numbers; but no battle ensued. Edward thought that he risked enough if he did not retreat, and Philip was too prudent to undergo the hazard of an assault. After, therefore, gazing at each other during a few days, the two armies separated, and, Edward retiring into Flanders, disbanded his troops.

Hume says, "Such was the fruitless and almost ridiculous conclusion of Edward's mighty preparations; and as these measures were the most prudent that could be embraced in his situation, he might learn, from experience, in what a hopeless enterprise he was engaged."

During this campaign, and subsequently to his return from it, Edward was engaged in long pecuniary bickerings with his parliament, but which, interesting and instructive as they are to the lawyer and legislator, cannot be narrated here. A modern biographer of Philippa says, "The English people chose always to be at war;" but the poor English people are much libelled by this statement. Almost the exact contrary is the fact. To the parliament and the people the war was distasteful, and only the strong will and power of the monarch forced them to sanction and sustain it. For a time, after the splendid military

successes of Edward, the nation was dazzled and stimulated; and while the brief excitement lasted, the thirst for conquest spread among many classes. But, fortunately for England, in the hearts of the English multitude lurks a large stock of honesty, and of grave, prudent, prosaic, common senseinvaluable qualities, often latent and inert, but, nevertheless, always existing, and frequently prominent. With these salutary and fine features in their character, war can never long be popular with them, nor can they be brought to sanction it for a time, but in a stern submission to a supposed inevitable necessity. An Englishman may proudly declare that spoliation, territorial acquisitiveness, and that lust of strife and supposititious glory, so perniciously and fatally inherent in one European people, are, as national passions, utterly unknown to the hearts of his countrymen. They never have chosen, and never will choose, "always to be at war."

The reader has been acquainted that the army which Edward has disbanded was composed almost entirely of foreigners; a strong presumptive proof that the English could not have been very desirous to enlist, for it is scarcely possible to suppose that Edward refused to receive them. But however little inclined were both parliament and people to support his pretensions to the French crown, the monarch's strong will and energy induced them to yield to him reluctantly the assistance he needed. A great military leader, Montecuculi, used to say, that to obtain success in war only three things were requisite the first was money; the second was money; and the third was money. This significant dictum was expressed long after the establishment of standing armies; yet Edward, the feudal sovereign, could he have heard it, must have poignantly felt its truth. Money, indeed-or, at least, his own coin, the coin of his own realm-he seems scarcely ever to have even scen; packs of wool, sheafs of corn, and lambs were dilatorily granted to him, accompanied by an

unstinted supply of stipulations and remonstrances; and with the concession of this spacious and substantial medium of barter, he was always forced to be content.

During the last century a whimsical epithet existed, and may still exist, to characterise a general dealer and trader in every thing et quibusdam aliis. So apposite is the designation to Edward, that it must be applied to him; and the reader may have the satisfaction of being acquainted that the royal and martial "slopseller" sold his goods to the very best advantage. Hume says of him, in reference to the period of which we are now treating, "He had contracted nearly three hundred thousand pounds of debt; he had anticipated all his revenue; he had pawned every thing of value belonging to himself or his queen; he was obliged, in some measure, even to pawn himself to his creditors, by not quitting the continent until he obtained their permission, and by promising, on his honour, to return his person if he did not remit their money." But as the contemplation of so great a king in so ignominious a position must be exceedingly painful to well-regulated minds, we will hasten to state that, with the foreign gold into which he had converted the last bulky grant of his parliament, he not only paid his most pressing debts, and redeemed his jewels and himself from pawn, but contrived to hire and bring into the field, one hundred thousand men.

In the impatience, however, to show the judgment with which Edward disbursed his money, and the extreme point to which he made it extend, we have omitted to report some important stages in the road to the climax; for to snatch a king suddenly out of pawn, and to place him in an instant at the head of the largest army which an English monarch had ever possessed, was a coup de théâtre which presented a temptation utterly irresistible to any but writers of a remarkably stoical and well-balanced temperament.

With only thirty thousand men, or perhaps less, Edward

sailed from England; and Philip, who was prepared for the invasion, opposed him with a great armament composed of four hundred vessels. The rival forces engaged off the coast of Flanders, and the French sustained an entire defeat. Two hundred and fifty of their ships were taken, and it is affirmed that thirty thousand Frenchmen were slain. The éclat attached to this great naval discomfiture was such that Edward's hitherto wavering and reluctant allies immediately united their forces to his, and the result was what we have stated, an aggregate of one hundred thousand men.

Nevertheless, this great army had a fate similar to that of the previous one; numerous as it was, Philip opposed him with a still larger body; and the consequence was, that again the two monarchs confronted each other, with a mutual and prudent fear of an engagement. Edward undertook the siege of Tournay; and Philip contented himself with abundantly garrisoning it. After a time, finding that all assaults were vain, the English monarch attempted to subdue the city by blockade; but still the enemy only occasionally attempted to throw succours of food and men into the place. Edward was both so damaged and provoked by this Fabian policy, that he then strove to irritate his competitor into a decision of their claims by a single combat à outrance, or a hundred against a hundred, or a general engagement between their entire forces; but the cool Frenchman wisely replied to this bravado, that he should have been very happy to have complied, but that a sovereign could never descend to accept a defiance from his vassal. In this hopeless and seemingly interminable position of affairs, both parties were very glad to avail themselves of the mediation of Jane, Countess-dowager of Hainault, the sister of Philip, and the mother of Philippa. By her good offices, a truce was concluded for nine months; and both monarchs withdrew their forces. Thus ended this second fruitless, and almost ridiculous campaign, but most disastrous

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