History of France | Page 8

Templars. The order was now abandoned by the Pope,
and its knights were invited in large numbers to Paris, under pretence
of arranging a crusade. Having been thus entrapped, they were accused
of horrible and monstrous crimes, and torture elicited a few supposed
confessions. They were then tried by the Inquisition, and the greater
number were put to death by fire, the Grand Master last of all, while
their lands were seized by the king. They seem to have been really a
fierce, arrogant, and oppressive set of men, or else there must have
been some endeavour to save them, belonging, as most of them did, to
noble French families. The "Pest of France," as Dante calls Philip the
Fair, was now the most formidable prince in Europe. He contrived to
annex to his dominions the city of Lyons, hitherto an imperial city
under its archbishop. Philip died in 1314; and his three sons--_Louis
X._, _Philip V._, and _Charles IV._,--were as cruel and harsh as
himself, but without his talent, and brought the crown and people to
disgrace and misery. Each reigned a few years and then died, leaving
only daughters, and the question arose whether the inheritance should
go to females. When Louis X. died, in 1316, his brother Philip, after
waiting for the birth of a posthumous child who only lived a few days,
took the crown, and the Parliament then declared that the law of the old
Salian Franks had been against the inheritance of women. By this
newly discovered Salic law, Charles IV., the third brother, reigned on
Philip's death; but the kingdom of Navarre having accrued to the family
through their grandmother, and not being subject to the Salic law, went
to the eldest daughter of Louis X., Jane, wife of the Count of Evreux.
CHAPTER II.
THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR.
1. Wars of Edward III.--By the Salic law, as the lawyers called it, the

crown was given, on the death of Charles IV., to _Philip, Count of
Valois_, son to a brother of Philip IV., but it was claimed by Edward
III. of England as son of the daughter of Philip IV. Edward contented
himself, however, with the mere assertion of his pretensions, until
Philip exasperated him by 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. Creçy 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 _Creçy_ 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
forced to blockade it, and