The Plantagenets: The Kings Who Made England by Jones Dan

Author:Jones, Dan [Jones, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography
ISBN: 9780007213924
Goodreads: 12254442
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2012-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

War on All Fronts

The sea routes across the English Channel and along the Atlantic coast of France were major trading arteries during the thirteenth century, as merchants from the wealthy countries of Europe ferried goods between far-flung territories, risking rough conditions and the peril of the open seas to make profits in port towns and markets from Flanders to the Iberian peninsula and beyond. Mercantile activity was constant, and traders of all nationalities rubbed regularly alongside one another. During the early 1290s, however, a fierce trade war broke out between various shipping merchants of England, Normandy, Flanders, Gascony and Castile. It resulted in running battles and pirate raiding from the Cinque Ports to Lisbon. The seaways and estuaries turned dangerously violent as banners of war were raised and private naval battles spilled the blood of all nations into the sea.

The causes of the shipping war are now obscure. Trouble began between English and Norman sailors with a scuffle in Normandy in 1292. It escalated during the following year, until on 15 May 1293 a series of skirmishes were fought between private armies flying English and Norman banners. At this point, the seriousness of the disorder demanded government intervention. Edward, who had little desire to be drawn into a national conflict by the activity of pirate traders, made every effort to appease. An English embassy was sent to France with the aim of arranging peace with Philip IV, who had acceded to the French throne aged seventeen when his father Philip III died after contracting dysentery during an invasion of Aragon in 1285.

Philip IV viewed Edward from much the same lofty position that Edward viewed the kings of Scotland. Philip was a handsome king whose popular epithet – Le Bel, ‘The Fair’ – he shared with Geoffrey, count of Anjou, founder of the house of Plantagenet. But this handsome demeanour masked a cold, inflexible personality. Dante called him ‘the Pest of France’, and the bishop of Pamiers wrote: ‘He is neither man nor beast. He is a statue.’ During the course of his reign, Philip would persecute numerous groups and subjects who offended his authority. He tortured Knights Templar and suppressed their order. In 1306 he rounded up and expelled the French Jews (although they were invited back in 1315). And in the notorious Tour de Nesle affair he had three of his daughters-in-law imprisoned for adultery, while their supposed lovers were tortured to death in public.

This, then, was a man whose intransigence and capacity for ruthless cruelty perhaps exceeded even Edward’s. And although Edward did homage to Philip for Gascony in a lavish ceremony in 1286, the world was entering an age in which France would once again prove too small for a Plantagenet and Capetian king to cohabit peacefully.

It was ironic that Edward was attempting to stamp his own feudal lordship on John Balliol when Philip moved to humiliate him in Gascony. Using the shipping war as a pretext, Philip demanded that he be allowed to pass judgement on a number of Gascon citizens and officials who had been involved in violent attacks.

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