The Hundred Years War Volume I by Sumption Jonathan

Author:Sumption, Jonathan [Sumption, Jonathan]
Language: zho
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780571266586
Publisher: Faber and Faber Ltd
Published: 2011-05-04T16:00:00+00:00

The French war effort called for expenditure on a scale vastly greater than Edward III’s in a country not as used to heavy taxation. In the northern provinces, where alone the threat to France’s security was taken seriously by tax-payers, the subsidies voted in the previous year began to come in in February 1340. Fresh grants were made by the nobility and no less than thirty-two towns imposed sales taxes for the support of the war. Paris offered a subsidy of more than 20,000 l.t. Substantial funds were being collected from the clergy with the consent of the Pope to fight a coalition whose leader was the Vicar of an excommunicated heretic. Philip abandoned the reticence of earlier years about raiding the treasure accumulated for the crusade. The French clergy, intimately involved in the business of government, abetted him as those of England had abetted Edward III. The steady devaluation of the French coinage, a hidden tax, continued. In the provinces of France rich bourgeois and monastic houses received personal visits from insistent commissioners deploying much the same mixture of threats and promises as Edward III’s agents were using in England at the same moment.32

The year 1340 proved, like 1339, to be a good one for Philip’s finances. Even so the war treasurers lived from hand to mouth. The French government lacked its rival’s ingenious way with financial improvisation and its skill in manipulating credit. Revenue arrived in unpredictable spurts from taxation decreed long before, vitiating financial planning and therefore much military planning as well. In January 1340 the important garrison of Tournai was threatening ‘from day to day’ to desert for want of pay in spite of Philip’s personal assurances that he would shortly be in funds. French troops received a reasonable wage and knights a generous one, which began to accrue as soon as they left home and continued until they returned. They too were by tradition entitled to an advance of two months’ wages at the beginning of their service, and while there was some elasticity about the settlement of final accounts the men expected and normally obtained punctilious payment of the advance. In May 1340 the men of Douai were refusing to fight because their pay was overdue and the field treasurers had run out of money. In July the bailli of Macon, who had brought his men from Burgundy to Paris, announced that he would go no further until he was paid. The war treasurers, poor men, expressed amazement at how fast their resources were being consumed.33

Philip VI had two strategic ends in view. In the first place he wanted to be revenged on the Count of Hainault for what he conceived to be the treachery of the previous year. The Count had not earned Philip’s gratitude by changing sides at the crucial moment of the autumn campaign but only his greater contempt. Hainault was a useful lesson for other members of Edward III’s coalition, vulnerable because bordering on France and politically divided. Moreover it was the gateway to Brabant, Philip’s second objective.

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