



Produced by David Widger





MARGUERITE DE NAVARRE

MEMOIRS OF MARGUERITE DE VALOIS



MEMOIRS OF MARGUERITE DE VALOIS QUEEN OF NAVARRE

Being Historic Memoirs of the Courts of France and Navarre



BOOK III.



HISTORY OF THE HOUSE OF VALOIS.

[Author unknown]


CHARLES, COMTE DE VALOIS, was the younger brother of Philip the Fair, and
therefore uncle of the three sovereigns lately dead.  His eldest son
Philip had been appointed guardian to the Queen of Charles IV.; and when
it appeared that she had given birth to a daughter, and not a son, the
barons, joining with the notables of Paris and the, good towns met to
decide who was by right the heir to the throne, "for the twelve peers of
France said and say that the Crown of France is of such noble estate that
by no succession can it come to a woman nor to a woman's son," as
Froissart tells us.  This being their view, the baby daughter of Charles
IV. was at once set aside; and the claim of Edward III. of England, if,
indeed, he ever made it, rested on Isabella of France, his mother, sister
of the three sovereigns.  And if succession through a female had been
possible, then the daughters of those three kings had rights to be
reserved.  It was, however, clear that the throne must go to a man, and
the crown was given to Philip of Valois, founder of a new house of
sovereigns.

The new monarch was a very formidable person.  He had been a great feudal
lord, hot and vehement, after feudal fashion; but he was now to show that
he could be a severe master, a terrible king.  He began his reign by
subduing the revolted Flemings on behalf of his cousin Louis of Flanders,
and having replaced him in his dignities, returned to Paris and there
held high state as King.  And he clearly was a great sovereign; the
weakness of the late King had not seriously injured France; the new King
was the elect of the great lords, and they believed that his would be a
new feudal monarchy; they were in the glow of their revenge over the
Flemings for the days of Courtrai; his cousins reigned in Hungary and
Naples, his sisters were married to the greatest of the lords; the Queen
of Navarre was his cousin; even the youthful King of England did him
homage for Guienne and Ponthieu.  The barons soon found out their
mistake.  Philip VI., supported by the lawyers, struck them whenever he
gave them opening; he also dealt harshly with the traders, hampering them
and all but ruining them, till the country was alarmed and discontented.
On the other hand, young Edward of England had succeeded to a troubled
inheritance, and at the beginning was far weaker than his rival; his own
sagacity, and the advance of constitutional rights in England, soon
enabled him to repair the breaches in his kingdom, and to gather fresh
strength from the prosperity and good-will of a united people.  While
France followed a more restricted policy, England threw open her ports to
all comers; trade grew in London as it waned in Paris; by his marriage
with Philippa of Hainault, Edward secured a noble queen, and with her the
happiness of his subjects and the all-important friendship of the Low
Countries.  In 1336 the followers of Philip VI. persuaded Louis of
Flanders to arrest the English merchants then in Flanders; whereupon
Edward retaliated by stopping the export of wool, and Jacquemart van
Arteveldt of Ghent, then at the beginning of his power, persuaded the
Flemish cities to throw off all allegiance to their French-loving Count,
and to place themselves under the protection of Edward.  In return Philip
VI. put himself in communication with the Scots, the hereditary foes of
England, and the great wars which were destined to last 116 years, and to
exhaust the strength of two strong nations, were now about to begin. They
brought brilliant and barren triumphs to England, and, like most wars,
were a wasteful and terrible mistake, which, if crowned with ultimate
success, might, by removing the centre of the kingdom into France, have
marred the future welfare of England, for the happy constitutional
development of the country could never have taken place with a sovereign
living at Paris, and French interests becoming ever more powerful.
Fortunately, therefore, while the war evoked by its brilliant successes
the national pride of Englishmen, by its eventual failure it was
prevented from inflicting permanent damage on England.

The war began in 1337 and ended in 1453; the epochs in it are the Treaty
of Bretigny in 1360, the Treaty of Troyes in 1422, the final expulsion of
the English in 1453.

The French King seems to have believed himself equal to the burdens of a
great war, and able to carry out the most far-reaching plans.  The Pope
was entirely in his hands, and useful as a humble instrument to curb and
harass the Emperor.  Philip had proved himself master of the Flemish,
and, with help of the King of Scotland, hoped so to embarrass Edward III.
as to have no difficulty in eventually driving him to cede all his French
possessions.  While he thought it his interest to wear out his antagonist
without any open fighting, it was Edward's interest to make vigorous and
striking war.  France therefore stood on the defensive; England was
always the attacking party.  On two sides, in Flanders and in Brittany,
France had outposts which, if well defended, might long keep the English
power away from her vitals.  Unluckily for his side, Philip was harsh and
raw, and threw these advantages away.  In Flanders the repressive
commercial policy of the Count, dictated from Paris, gave Edward the
opportunity, in the end of 1337, of sending the Earl of Derby, with a
strong fleet, to raise the blockade of Cadsand, and to open the Flemish
markets by a brilliant action, in which the French chivalry was found
powerless against the English yeoman-archers; and in 1338 Edward crossed
over to Antwerp to see what forward movement could be made.  The other
frontier war was that of Brittany, which began a little later (1341). The
openings of the war were gloomy and wasteful, without glory.  Edward did
not actually send defiance to Philip till 1339, when he proclaimed
himself King of France, and quartered the lilies of France on the royal
shield.  The Flemish proved a very reed; and though the French army came