Part 9
This bold burgher of Ghent, who was born about 1285, was sprung from a family the name of which had been for a long while inscribed in their city upon the register of industrial corporations. His father, John van Artevelde, a cloth-worker, had been several times over-sheriff of Ghent, and his mother, Mary van Groete, was great-aunt to the grandfather of the illustrious publicist called in history Grotius. James van Artevelde in his youth accompanied Count Charles of Valois, brother of Philip the Handsome, upon his adventurous expeditions in Italy, Sicily, and Greece, and to the island of Rhodes; and it had been close by the spots where the soldiers of Marathon and Salamis had beaten the armies of Darius and Xerxes that he had heard of the victory of the Flemish burghers and workmen attacked in 1302, at Courtrai, by the splendid army of Philip the Handsome.
James van Artevelde, on returning to his country, had been busy with his manufactures,[46] his fields, the education of his children, and Flemish affairs up to the day when, at his invitation, the burghers of Ghent thronged to the meeting on December 28, 1337, in the grounds of the monastery of Biloke. There he delivered an eloquent speech, pointing out unhesitatingly but temperately the policy which he considered good for the country. "Forget not," he said, "the might and the glory of Flanders. Who, pray, shall forbid that we defend our interests by using our rights? Can the King of France prevent us from treating with the King of England? And may we not be certain that if we were to treat with the King of England, the King of France would not be the less urgent in seeking our alliance? Besides, have we not with us all the communes of Brabant, of Hainault, of Holland, and of Zealand?" The audience cheered these words; the commune of Ghent forthwith assembled, and on January 3, 1337, reestablished the offices of captains of parishes according to olden usage, when the city was exposed to any pressing danger.
It was carried that one of these captains should have the chief government of the city; and James van Artevelde was at once invested with it. From that moment the conduct of Van Artevelde was ruled by one predominant idea: to secure free and fair commercial intercourse for Flanders with England, while observing a general neutrality in the war between the kings of England and France, and to combine so far all the communes of Flanders in one and the same policy. And he succeeded in this twofold purpose. On April 29, 1338, the representatives of all the communes of Flanders--the city of Bruges numbering among them a hundred and eight deputies--repaired to the castle of Male, a residence of Count Louis, and then James van Artevelde set before the Count what had been resolved upon among them. The Count submitted, and swore that he would thenceforth maintain the liberties of Flanders in the state in which they had hitherto existed. In the month of May following a deputation, consisting of James van Artevelde and other burghers appointed by the cities of Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres scoured the whole of Flanders, from Bailleul to Termonde, and from Ninove to Dunkirk, "to reconcile the good folk of the communes to the Count of Flanders, as well for the Count's honor as for the peace of the country." Lastly, on June 10, 1338, a treaty was signed at Anvers between the deputies of the Flemish communes and the English ambassadors, the latter declaring: "We do all to wit that we have negotiated the way and substance of friendship with the good folk of the communes of Flanders, in form and manner hereinafter following:
"First, they shall be able to go and buy the wools and other merchandise which have been exported from England to Holland, Zealand, or any other place whatsoever; and all traders of Flanders who shall repair to the ports of England shall there be safe and free in their persons and their goods, just as in any other place where their ventures might bring them together.
"_Item_, we have agreed with the good folk and with all the common country of Flanders that they must not mix nor intermeddle in any way, by assistance in men or arms, in the wars of our lord the King and the noble Sir Philip of Valois (who holdeth himself for King of France)."
Three articles following regulated in detail the principles laid down in the first two, and, by another charter, Edward III ordained that "all stuffs marked with the seal of the city of Ghent might travel freely in England without being subject according to ellage and quality to the control to which all foreign merchandise was subject."
Van Artevelde was right in telling the Flemings that, if they treated with the King of England, the King of France would be only the more anxious for their alliance. Philip of Valois and even Count Louis of Flanders, when they got to know of the negotiations entered into between the Flemish communes and King Edward, redoubled their offers and promises to them. But when the passions of men have taken full possession of their souls, words of concession and attempts at accommodation are nothing more than postponements or lies. Philip, when he heard about the conclusion of a treaty between the Flemish communes and the King of England, sent word to Count Louis "that this James van Artevelde must not, on any account, be allowed to rule or even live, for if it were so for long, the Count would lose his land." The Count, very much disposed to accept such advice, repaired to Ghent and sent for Van Artevelde to come and see him at his hotel. He went, but with so large a following that the Count was not at the time at all in a position to resist him. He tried to persuade the Flemish burgher that "if he would keep a hand on the people so as to keep them to their love for the King of France, he having more authority than anyone else for such a purpose, much good would result to him; mingling, besides, with this address, some words of threatening import."
Van Artevelde, who was not the least afraid of the threat, and who at heart was fond of the English, told the Count that he would do as he had promised the communes. "Hereupon he left the Count, who consulted his confidants as to what he was to do in this business, and they counselled him to let them go and assemble their people, saying that they would kill Van Artevelde secretly or otherwise. And, indeed, they did lay many traps and made many attempts against the captain; but it was of no avail, since all the commonalty was for him." When the rumor of these projects and these attempts was spread abroad in the city, the excitement was extreme, and all the burghers assumed white hoods, which was the mark peculiar to the members of the commune when they assembled under their flags; so that the Count found himself reduced to assuming one, for he was afraid of being kept captive at Ghent, and, on the pretext of a hunting-party, he lost no time in gaining his castle of Male.
The burghers of Ghent had their minds still filled with their late alarm when they heard that by order, it was said, of the King of France--Count Louis had sent and beheaded at the castle of Rupelmonde, in the very bed in which he was confined by his infirmities, their fellow-citizen Sohier of Courtrai, Van Artevelde's father-in-law, who had been kept for many months in prison for his intimacy with the English. On the same day the Bishop of Senlis and the Abbot of St. Denis had arrived at Tournai, and had superintended the reading out in the market-place of a sentence of excommunication against the Ghentese.
It was probably at this date that Van Artevelde in his vexation and disquietude assumed in Ghent an attitude threatening and despotic even to tyranny. "He had continually after him," says Froissart, "sixty or eighty armed varlets, among whom were two or three who knew some of his secrets. When he met a man whom he hated or had in suspicion, this man was at once killed, for Van Artevelde had given this order to his varlets: 'The moment I meet a man, and make such and such a sign to you, slay him without delay, however great he may be, without waiting for more speech.' In this way he had many great masters slain. And as soon as these sixty varlets had taken him home to his hotel, each went to dinner at his own house; and the moment dinner was over they returned and stood before his hotel and waited in the street until that he was minded to go and play and take his pastime in the city, and so they attended him to supper-time.
"And know that each of these hirelings had _per diem_ four groschen of Flanders for their expenses and wages, and he had them regularly paid from week to week. And even in the case of all that were most powerful in Flanders, knights, esquires, and burghers of the good cities, whom he believed to be favorable to the Count of Flanders, them he banished from Flanders and levied half their revenues. He had levies made of rents, of dues on merchandise and all the revenues belonging to the Count, wherever it might be in Flanders, and he disbursed them at his will, and gave them away without rendering any account. And when he would borrow of any burghers on his word for payment, there was none that durst say him nay. In short there was never in Flanders, or in any other country, duke, count, prince, or other who can have had a country at his will as James van Artevelde had for a long time." It is possible that, as some historians have thought, Froissart, being less favorable to burghers than to princes, did not deny himself a little exaggeration in this portrait of a great burgher-patriot transformed by the force of events and passions into a demagogic tyrant.
While the Count of Flanders, after having vainly attempted to excite an uprising against Van Artevelde, was being forced, in order to escape from the people of Bruges, to mount his horse in hot haste, at night and barely armed, and to flee away to St. Omer, Philip of Valois and Edward III were preparing on either side, for the war which they could see drawing near. Philip was vigorously at work on the Pope, the Emperor of Germany, and the princes neighbors of Flanders, in order to raise obstacles against his rival or rob him of his allies. He ordered that short-lived meeting of the states-general about which we have no information left us, save that it voted the principle that "no talliage could be imposed on the people if urgent necessity or evident utility should not require it, and unless by concession of the estates."
Philip, as chief of feudal society rather than of the nation which was forming itself little by little around the lords, convoked at Amiens all his vassals great and small, laic or cleric, placing all his strength in their cooperation, and not caring at all to associate the country itself in the affairs of his government. Edward, on the contrary, while equipping his fleet and amassing treasure at the expense of the Jews and Lombard usurers, was assembling his parliament, talking to it "of this important and costly war," for which he obtained large subsidies, and accepting, without making any difficulty, the vote of the commons' house, which expressed a desire "to consult their constituents upon this subject, and begged him to summon an early parliament, to which there should be elected, in each county, two knights taken from among the best landowners of their counties."
The King set out for the Continent; the parliament met and considered the exigences of the war by land and sea, in Scotland and in France; traders, shipowners, and mariners were called and examined; and the forces determined to be necessary were voted. Edward took the field, pillaging, burning, and ravaging, "destroying all the country for twelve or fourteen leagues in extent," as he himself said in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury. When he set foot on French territory, Count William of Hainault, his brother-in-law and up to that time his ally, came to him and said that "he would ride with him no farther, for that his presence was prayed and required by his uncle the King of France, to whom he bore no hate, and whom he would go and serve in his own kingdom, as he had served King Edward on the territory of the Emperor, whose vicar he was," and Edward wished him "Godspeed!" Such was the binding nature of feudal ties that the same lord held himself bound to pass from one camp to another according as he found himself upon the domains of one or the other of his suzerains in a war one against the other.
Edward continued his march toward St. Quentin, where Philip had at last arrived with his allies the kings of Bohemia, Navarre, and Scotland, "after delays which had given rise to great scandal and murmurs throughout the whole kingdom." The two armies, with a strength, according to Froissart, of a hundred thousand men on the French side, and forty-four thousand on the English, were soon facing one another, near Buironfosse, a large burgh of Picardy. A herald came from the English camp to tell the King of France that the King of England "demanded of him battle. To which demand," says Froissart, "the King of France gave willing assent and accepted the day which was fixed at first for Thursday the 21st, and afterward for Saturday the 25th of October, 1339."
To judge from the somewhat tangled accounts of the chroniclers and of Froissart himself, neither of the two kings was very anxious to come to blows. The forces of Edward were much inferior to those of Philip; and the former had accordingly taken up, as it appears, a position which rendered attack difficult for Philip. There was much division of opinion in the French camp. Independently of military grounds, a great deal was said about certain letters from Robert, King of Naples, "a mighty necromancer and full of mighty wisdom, it was reported, who, after having several times cast their horoscopes, had discovered, by astrology and from experience, that, if his cousin, the King of France, were to fight the King of England, the former would be worsted."
"In thus disputing and debating," says Froissart, "the time passed till full mid-day. A little afterward a hare came leaping across the fields, and rushed among the French. Those who saw it began shouting and making a great halloo. Those who were behind thought that those who were in front were engaging in battle; and several put on their helmets and gripped their swords. Thereupon several knights were made; and the Count of Hainault himself made fourteen, who were thenceforth nicknamed Knights of the Hare."
Whatever his motive may have been, Philip did not attack; and Edward promptly began a retreat. They both dismissed their allies; and during the early days of November Philip fell back upon St. Quentin, and Edward went and took up his winter-quarters at Brussels.
For Edward it was a serious check not to have dared to attack the King whose kingdom he made a pretence of conquering; and he took it grievously to heart. At Brussels he had an interview with his allies and asked their counsel. Most of the princes of the Low Countries remained faithful to him and the Count of Hainault seemed inclined to go back to him; but all hesitated as to what he was to do to recover from the check. Van Artevelde showed more invention and more boldness. The Flemish communes had concentrated their forces not far from the spot where the two kings had kept their armies looking at one another; but they had maintained a strict neutrality, and at the invitation of the Count of Flanders, who promised them that the King of France would entertain all their claims, Artevelde and Breydel, the deputies from Ghent and Bruges, even repaired to Courtrai to make terms with him. But as they got there nothing but ambiguous engagements and evasive promises, they let the negotiation drop, and, while Count Louis was on his way to rejoin Philip at St. Quentin, Artevelde with the deputies from the Flemish communes started for Brussels.
Edward, who was already living on very confidential terms with him, told him that "if the Flemings were minded to help him to keep up the war and go with him whithersoever he would take them, they should aid him to recover Lille, Douai, and Bethune, then occupied by the King of France. Artevelde, after consulting his colleagues, returned to Edward, and, 'Dear sir,' said he, 'you have already made such requests to us, and verily, if we could do so while keeping our honor and faith, we would do as you demand: but we be bound, by faith and oath, and on a bond of two millions of florins entered into with the Pope, not to go to war with the King of France without incurring a debt to the amount of that sum and a sentence of excommunication; but if you do that which we are about to say to you, if you will be pleased to adopt the arms of France, and quarter them with those of England, and openly call yourself King of France, we will uphold you for the true King of France; you, as King of France, shall give us quittance of our faith; and then we will obey you as King of France, and will go whithersoever you shall ordain.'"
This prospect pleased Edward mightily: but "it irked him to take the name and arms of that of which he had as yet won no title." He consulted his allies. Some of them hesitated; but "his most privy and especial friend," Robert d'Artois, strongly urged him to consent to the proposal. So a French prince and a Flemish burgher prevailed upon the King of England to pursue, as in assertion of his avowed rights, the conquest of the kingdom of France. King, prince, and burgher fixed Ghent as their place of meeting for the official conclusion of the alliance; and there, in January, 1340, the mutual engagement was signed and sealed. The King of England "assumed the arms of France quartered with those of England," and thenceforth took the title of King of France.
BATTLES OF SLUYS AND CRECY
A.D. 1340-1346
SIR JOHN FROISSART[47]
The sea fight of Sluys began the Hundred Years' War between England and France. It is also memorable as England's first great naval victory. The origin of the war lay in the Salic Law, which excludes women from the throne of France. This overruled the claims of Queen Isabella of England, and her son Edward III in 1328, when the twelve peers and barons of France unanimously gave the crown to Isabella's cousin, Philip of Valois, who ascended the throne as Philip VI of France.
Edward III ingeniously maintained that though the Salic Law prevented his mother from filling the throne, it did not destroy the rights of her male descendants, and he early entertained the project of enforcing this contention; but it was not until 1337 that he felt able to assert formally his claim to the French crown and to assume the title of king of France.
The following year, with a considerable body of troops to support his presumed rights, he crossed to the Continent, and passed the winter at Antwerp among the Flemings who had taken up his cause, and with whom, as well as with the Emperor-King of Germany, he effected aggressive alliances. He made a formal declaration of war in 1339, beginning hostilities which were prolonged into the Hundred Years' War, and which as a contest of the English kings for the sovereignty of France produced a series of important revolutions in the fortunes of that country.
The first serious action of the war was a naval battle at Sluys, near the Belgian frontier just northeast of Bruges, June 23, 1340. King Edward and his entire navy sailed from the Thames June 22, and made straight for Sluys. Sir Hugh Quiriel and other French officers, with over one hundred and twenty large vessels, were lying near Sluys for the purpose of disputing the English King's passage. Froissart, with his usual terseness, has graphically recorded the combat which ensued.
A more important victory was that won in the land battle at Crecy in 1346, which, however, simply paved the way to the capture of Calais, for it was not until the battle of Poitiers, ten years later, that Edward made any progress toward the conquest of France. In 1346, after landing with a force of troops at Cape La Hogue, Edward reduced Cherbourg, Carentan, and Caen, and, with the intention of crossing the Seine at Rouen, commenced his march on Calais, where he was to be joined by his Flemish allies. Philip, making a rapid march from Paris to Amiens, had posted detachments of soldiers along the right bank of the river Somme, guarding every ford, breaking down every bridge, and gradually shutting up the invaders in the narrow space between the Somme and the sea.
Edward sent out his marshals with their battalions to find a passage, but they were unsuccessful, until a peasant led them to the tidal ford of Blanchetaque. Although desperately opposed by fully twelve thousand French, under the Norman baron Sir Godemar du Fay, they effected a crossing, and, marching on, encamped in the fields near Crecy. The King of France with the main body of his troops had taken up his quarters in Abbeville.
BATTLE OF SLUYS
When the King's fleet was almost got to Sluys, they saw so many masts standing before it that they looked like a wood. The King asked the commander of his ship what they could be, who answered that he imagined they must be that armament of Normans which the King of France kept at sea and which had so frequently done him much damage, had burned his good town of Southampton, and taken his large ship the Christopher. The King replied: "I have for a long time wished to meet with them, and now, please God and St. George, we will fight them; for, in truth, they have done me so much mischief that I will be revenged on them if it be possible."
The King drew up all his vessels, placing the strongest in the front, and on the wings his archers. Between every two vessels with archers there was one of men-at-arms. He stationed some detached vessels as a reserve, full of archers, to assist and help such as might be damaged. There were in this fleet a great many ladies from England, countesses, baronesses, and knights' and gentlemen's wives, who were going to attend on the Queen at Ghent. These the King had guarded most carefully by three hundred men-at-arms and five hundred archers.