Читать книгу The Three Edwards: The Pageant of England - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 37

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One of the measures adopted by St. Louis to make sure that his people did not suffer from injustice under feudal law was the appointment of a corps of inspectors, known as inquisitor-reformers. These men were everywhere throughout the kingdom, attending the trials and listening to evidence, and reporting cases where any degree of unfairness could be charged. The greathearted king had, it is said, thousands of these inspectors at work to keep an eye on the dukes and counts and their bailiffs. In a world where police rule has so often been supreme, this practice in a faraway day is like a glimpse of Utopia.

Philip the Fair decided to have his own inquisitor-reformers, ostensibly for the same reason. He did not, however, content himself with the scope of his grandfather’s plan. He used them for political purposes as well.

The English were still governing Aquitaine and Gascony, the sole remnants of the once great Plantagenet holdings in France. The inquisitor-reformers swarmed in these provinces, and anyone in trouble with the English authorities could appeal the case to the King of France. It reached a stage where the courts of Gascony were empty, although crime was rife in the land. Every malefactor or innocent man, as the case might be, cried out for French protection when laid by the heels. The inquisitors would take the prisoner away, and that would be the last heard of the case. The French courts were swamped, quite apparently, and it took a long time to bring a man to trial. Perhaps they did not make any effort to try them.

Finally the English bailiffs went about their work with large gags made of wood. When they took a prisoner, they pried his jaws open and clamped in one of the gags, saying, “Now, appeal your case to the King of France!”

The explanation was, of course, that the owl-like king had made up his mind to a drastic course of action. He was determined to make it impossible for the English to govern as much as a foot of French soil.

There was trouble between the two countries on the high seas also. The rivalry began when an English ship was seized in the Channel and a cargo taken which amounted to two hundred pounds’ worth of wool. The owner demanded justice. When nothing came of the sharp protest lodged with those gimlet-eyed notaries of Philip the Fair, the merchant applied to Edward for letters of marque so he could seize a French merchantman which was lying conveniently in an English port. This request was granted and two hundred pounds’ worth of wine was taken. A scream of protest rose from St. Malo, and in no time at all letters of marque were being issued right and left on both sides of the Channel. No merchant ships felt safe in venturing out from port. Cargoes were being seized with piratical thoroughness and in many cases the ships were destroyed. The two-hundred-pound limit was no longer regarded. There was no way of keeping an accounting of the gains and losses, and so it could not be told where the advantage lay.

Finally the shipowners of the two countries decided to fight it out among themselves. A fleet of two hundred English vessels, all privately owned but with towers built above their prows for offensive purposes, put out into the Channel. A fleet of two hundred and twenty-five French ships came out to meet them. A battle was fought off the coast of Brittany, with arrows blackening the sky and clouds of quicklime puffed out when the wind was right, and with maneuvering of ships to make boarding possible. The English won in the end. Most of the French ships disappeared. Some were sunk; some were captured and taken back to English ports. There was considerable loss of blood on both sides.

This episode came close to provoking war between the two countries. Furious protests reached Westminster from Paris, and Edward, in his role of Duke of Aquitaine, was summoned before Philip to answer for what had happened. Needless to state, the English king was too busy with other matters to obey.

But a more vital incitement to hostilities was the English alliance with Flanders. This alliance was the most natural arrangement in the world. The great Flemish cities—Ghent, Bruges, Courtrai, Lille, Ypres—had grown large and wealthy and powerful by their control of the cloth industry of Europe. The Flemish were master weavers, an industrious and practical people. To make the cloth they depended on England and Scotland for wool. This dependence worked both ways, for the English needed Flanders as a market for the loaded wool barges which came down the Thames to London. The alliance called for mutual support in case either country was attacked.

But France had always interfered in the affairs of the Flemish cities. When Guy de Dampierre, Count of Flanders, entered into an open alliance with England, Philip the Fair took the country over and imprisoned Count Guy in Paris. The Flemish cities were too wealthy and powerful and the citizens too stout of heart to remain under alien control, and in 1301 the weavers of Ghent rose in rebellion and massacred the French garrison. Philip sent an army to subdue the uprising under the command of Robert of Artois, who had won two battles and was regarded as invincible as well as the very pink of chivalry.

The confident Robert took his army up to the city of Courtrai (then a place of 200,000 population, which ranked it second to Paris) without any regard to the conditions he might expect to find there. Courtrai was well situated for defense, being surrounded by ditches and swampy land. The French commander had no belief in foot soldiers. He had a great array of mounted knights and a relatively small force of archers. He sent the archers in first and, when they seemed to have the advantage over the army of weavers, he was in such a hurry to finish the battle with his noble horsemen that he rode over the French archers without giving them time to get out of the way. When his knights came out in the open they floundered in the swampy ground and could neither advance nor retreat.

It was the practice of chivalry to take as many prisoners as possible and hold the captured knights for ransom, a very tidy way of making money. The armed weavers did not seem aware of any such rule. All they had ever wanted was to be left alone to make and sell their cloth and live in comfort and honor. Their idea seems to have been that battles were won by killing as many of the enemy as possible. They swarmed over the soft terrain where the knights were floundering in their heavy armor and proceeded to slaughter them all, including the invincible leader.

This victory has been called variously the Battle of the Bloody Marsh and the Battle of the Golden Spurs, the latter term rising from the fact that more than seven hundred pairs of gold spurs were taken from the heels of the victims and kept on display in an abbey of the city.

Although the English were under obligation to assist the Flemish cities and the French had their alliance with Scotland, neither country seemed disposed to take such matters seriously. When a plan for a truce between England and France was finally evolved, neither party to it had any hesitation in throwing allies to the wolves. The peace they made, however, was a patched-up affair which was not expected to work for any length of time. The issue between them was too deep to be settled over a council table. The French would never rest until the English had been expelled from the land. On the other hand, every Plantagenet king dreamed still of the days of greatness when Plantagenets held Normandy, Anjou, Brittany, Aquitaine, and Gascony. In the pact they reached, moreover, there was a clause which would later give the English kings a still more glittering objective, the conquest of France.