The only means then of taking the town was by starvation. With dogged determination the English set about it, and after eleven months Calais yielded.
Edward at once turned Calais into an English colony, settling it with several thousand English merchants and their families. It very quickly became of immense importance, both from a military and a commercial point of view. It was henceforth through this town that English armies were poured into France, and being on the borders of Flanders it became also the centre of distribution for the wool trade. For two hundred years it remained an English possession in spite of strenuous efforts on the part of the French to recover it. When at length it was regained, the loss made little difference to England. It was only of value to them during the aggressive and wholly unjustifiable wars of the Middle Ages.
For some years the pope, Clement VI, had been trying to mediate between the kings of France and England. But he had joined with his efforts an endeavour to extend his power over the English Church, and Edward had received his advances coldly. Now, however, pleased with the result of his campaign, he listened to Clement, and a nine months' truce was signed. But no lasting peace could come of it. For Edward, flushed with victory, was not in a mood to resign any of his claims; he still called himself king of France and denied Philip's right to the title.
But the truce was destined to last longer and men were to have little heart for war. In 1348 a pest, more baneful even than the sword, swept over Europe from the East. This dreadful pestilence, known as the Black Death, wiped out in France and England nearly a half of the population.
Battle of Poitiers
In 1350 Philip VI died and was succeeded by his son John. Under him the war continued, and ten years after Creçy the battle of Poitiers was fought. Except that the pride of chivalry suffered an even greater defeat it was but a repetition of Creçy. At Poitiers King John of France had one of the most magnificent of feudal armies about him. All he had to do was to surround the little English army brought against him, and starve it into surrender.
But that was not the chivalrous manner of waging war. The nobles were anxious to wipe out the shame of Creçy in brilliant fashion. Merely to starve an army into surrender could bring no renown. So once again the chivalry of France pitted itself against the English peasantry. Once again the uselessness of unscientific courage was proved, and the knight went down before the churl.
The flower of French nobility lay dead upon the field. The king himself was taken prisoner to England, there "to enjoy the insolent courtesy" of his captors. But in spite of Creçy, in spite of Poitiers, the conquest of France was as far off as ever. Every feudal castle was a fortress, and the development of the art of fortification had far outdistanced the invention of siege machines. Almost the only means of reducing a fortress was by starvation or by treachery. An army might sit down for months before a fortress, and when at last the endurance of the defenders was exhausted and they yielded, the conquerors only found themselves master of a few more miles of territory, and the business of reducing the next fortress had to be begun.
Even had it been possible by siege after siege to win the country it would have been impossible to hold it. After a time then, weary of sieges, the English left the cities alone and ravished the land, making it a desert. For four years they marched up and down practically unhindered, burning, plundering, and destroying, until the once rich country was a wilderness of ashes and blood-stained ruins.
The Black Death had already carried off hundreds and thousands, and added to this the land was torn by civil wars, the nobles fighting among themselves, and the peasants, driven mad by misery, rising against the nobles.
Treaty of Bretigny
The unhappy people, pushed at length to desperation, yielded to Edward's demands, and by the Treaty of Bretigny half of France south of the Loire was given up to the English. It was given, too, not as a fief but to be held outright "in the manner in which the kings of France had held it." On his side Edward resigned his claim to the throne of France, and for a time there was peace.
It was, however, only exhaustion which had made France yield to the English yoke. Nine years later, when the country had to some extent recovered from that exhaustion, Charles V, who had succeeded his father in 1364, found an excuse for rejecting the Treaty of Bretigny, and the Hundred Years' War broke out again. It now entered upon a new phase. Edward III had to a great extent lost his Flemish allies, he was old, and his great general and son, the Black Prince, was ill. On the French side Charles V, the politic and not over-chivalrous king, was aided by the military genius of Du Guesclin. So, for a time, all went well with France, and misfortune after misfortune pursued the English, until at length little of Edward's conquests remained save Bordeaux, Bayonne, and Calais.
But Charles V died at the age of forty-six, leaving his son, a child of twelve, to succeed him, and France fell once more on evil days. During the minority of Charles VI the country was torn by strife between the nobles, who quarrelled for the power of regent. Then he, scarce grown to manhood, became insane, and once more the country drifted fast into civil war.
Renewal of the War by Henry V
It was then that Henry V, the young and ambitious king of England, determined to reassert the English claim to the crown of France. Once again at Agincourt the story of Creçy and of Poitiers was repeated, and fifteen thousand English archers defeated an army of fifty thousand knights and nobles. After this prodigious victory Henry's army was, however, too exhausted to do more, and he led it back to England.
In spite of the English menace civil war continued in France. When Henry returned with a fresh army he was encouraged by the rebels, and in 1420 the poor, mad king was forced to sign the Treaty of Troyes. By this Treaty Charles VI gave his daughter Catharine in marriage to Henry, and acknowledged him as his heir, thus disinheriting his own son Charles, and making a gift of the French crown to a foreigner.
Henry, however, never became king of France, for he died in 1422 a little less than two months before his father-in-law. And although upon the death of Charles VI the baby king of England, Henry VI, was proclaimed in Paris as in England, many of the French rejected him. The Dauphin also was proclaimed as Charles VII, and the miserable war dragged on.
FRANCE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER XXX
Germany: Continued Struggles with the Pope
WITH the death of Frederick II (see Chapter XXVII) the Mediæval Empire may be said to end. After him came Conrad IV, the last of the Hohenstaufens, and the Great Interregnum, when for a space of nineteen years there was no real emperor, and the crown was bandied about among foreign princes. Then followed a period of a hundred and sixty-four years, when the crown passed from one house of nobles to another, in all ten emperors. During this time the borders of the Empire shrank considerably. Italy was entirely lost. In the north the great trading cities became independent republics, the middle was held by the pope. In the south the kingdoms of Sicily and Naples were conquered by Charles of Anjou. He was called in by Pope Urban IV to crush the Hohenstaufens, and by him Conradin, the last of the German-Norman kings, was put to death.
Poland became an independent monarchy and rendered no more allegiance to the German crown. Denmark and Hungary also became free of the Empire. To the emperors there remained only Germany itself. It was a Germany more hopelessly divided than ever. While every other kingdom in Europe had been moving steadily towards united nationality, Germany had moved in the opposite direction and now contained two hundred and seventy-six independent states.
The rulers of these states were constantly at variance with each other. They were always ready to fight each other, but never to combine and fight a foreign foe. There was no sense of nationality among them, and their loyalty to their overlord the emperor was of the slightest. These overlords still regarded themselves as emperors, but for two centuries few went to Rome to receive the crown at the hands of the pope, and after the middle of the fifteenth century none did so. As kings they h
ad little power, they had no capital, and no government worthy of the name. Thus striving for world dominion the emperors ceased even to rule in Germany.
During this time the power of the electors who chose the emperor grew rapidly. In early days the emperors had been elected by the whole of the nobles. But by degree most of them lost this right, which was at last usurped by seven men only, three churchmen and four nobles. The churchmen were the archbishops of Mainz, Cologne, and Treves. The nobles were the King of Bohemia, the Margrave of Brandenburg, the Duke of Saxony, and the Count Palatine. In the seventeenth century the princes of Bavaria and of Hanover were added, making the number of electors nine.
As time went on the power of these electors increased enormously, until at length they claimed to be the seven pillars upon which the Empire rested. They forced the emperor of their choice to agree to any conditions they liked to impose. If he tried to go his own way they waged war against him, and sometimes even deposed him. And in this they always found a friend in the pope, to whose advantage it was to have a weak emperor on the throne.
Lewis IV
In 1313 the electors could not agree and two emperors were elected, Lewis IV and Frederick the Handsome. In consequence the land was torn with civil war for many years. The popes were by this time living in Avignon, little more than vassals of the French king. Yet Pope John XXII still tried to impose his will upon Germany. He more or less took the part of Frederick and commanded Lewis to give up the crown in three months under pain of excommunication.
Lewis replied with fury. The election of a German king he declared lay with the German people only and needed no sanction from the pope. As to the quarrel between the two rival emperors, that should be settled by the sword and not by the pope's decree. It was so settled, and after long years of warfare Lewis became reconciled to Frederick and agreed to share the throne with him.
Lewis then marched to Rome, deposed John, and enthroned an anti-pope of his own choosing. At first the Roman people received him with joy. But soon their mood changed, and anti-pope and emperor alike fled for their lives. In 1330 Frederick died, and three years later Lewis, weary of the long conflict, tried to make peace with the pope. He declared himself willing to be recrowned by the rightful pope, and do any penance that he should lay upon him.
But Benedict XII, who had now succeeded John XXII, asked too much. He demanded that Lewis should give up the imperial title until the Church should decide whether he had a right to it or not. At this both the emperor and the electors were filled with wrath, and they issued a solemn manifesto in which they declared that the emperor took his rank and crown from them, and that there was no need whatever for confirmation from the pope. Thus the independence of the Empire from all papal interference was made legal.
Charles IV
But although the princes of Germany had by this manifesto at last shown some dawning loyalty the popes clung obstinately to their powers, and in 1346 Clement VI deposed Lewis and called upon the electors to choose another emperor. By this time the electors were weary of Lewis, and they obeyed the pope and chose Charles the son of the blind king of Bohemia.
GERMANY, A.D. 1254 TO 1500
This happened in July. In August the battle of Creçy was fought, and in it both King John and his son Charles fought on the side of France. King John was killed, and Charles fled back to Germany. Here once again the land was torn with civil strife. For Charles was not the choice of the people. They felt that he had been imposed by the pope, and called him "a priest's king," and would have nothing to say to him.
Then in 1347 Lewis died, and the crown went begging. It was offered to Edward III of England, refused by him and one German prince after another, and finally by dint of enormous bribes secured by Charles.
During his reign Germany, like the rest of Europe, was devastated by the Black Death, which carried off nearly half the inhabitants. It was followed by a terrible persecution of the Jews who, according to the superstition of the times, were believed to have caused the plague. But "Germany," said a later emperor, Maximilian I, "never suffered from a more pestilent plague than the reign of Charles IV." He utterly neglected Germany, but did everything in his power to aggrandize his own kingdom of Bohemia.
On the other hand he issued a great document, which from the colour of its seal has come to be known as the Golden Bull of Charles IV. It was a document almost as important for Germany as the Magna Carta for England, forming as it did the groundwork of the laws for more than four hundred years.
One of its chief aims was to put an end to strife over the election of the emperor. By it the electors were made still more important. They were given full sovereign rights in their own lands. They could coin money, levy taxes, and make war as they chose. From their courts of justice there was no appeal even to the emperor, and the smallest crime against their persons was punishable as high treason. They were thus raised far above all other princes of the realm. Taken together they were far more powerful than the emperor himself. In the whole Bull there was no mention of the pope and his claims, or even of Italy.
CHAPTER XXXI
France: The End of the Hundred Years' War—The Reign of Louis XI
AT the beginning of the fifteenth century France was in a pitiable state. The horrors of the Civil War (see Chapter XXIX), the crimes it had induced, seemed to have crushed out all national spirit. So much so was this that the noxious Treaty of Troyes aroused little opposition. Few realized the national humiliation it involved, and at first it was received almost everywhere with something like satisfaction. Yet from the degradation of the Treaty of Troyes and its consequences France was to awake to true nationality.
In 1422 two kings held sway over France. In Paris, John Duke of Bedford ruled in the name of his baby nephew, Henry VI of England. At Bourges Charles VII of France established himself. The latter seemed far the weaker of the two. Only a small portion of France in the valley of the Loire was true to him, his army consisted chiefly of foreign hired troops, and the English contemptuously called him king of Bourges. They feared him not at all, but they determined to wrest from him all that he had, and they laid siege to Orleans.
Charles was vacillating and weak, and while Orleans struggled in the toils of the foe he idled uncertainly at the castle of Chinon. But now at length France found its soul as a nation. Patriotism awoke. A few years before one part of France had not greatly cared if another part had been devasted. One town had not greatly cared if another was besieged. Now Orleans was besieged, and all France cared, under the yoke of the foreigner although it was. The people of France cared, and in their cottages the peasants wept for the sorrows of their king and country, and armed only with their scythes and axes, they rose against the hated foreigner.
Joan of Arc
In the village of Domremy on the borders of Burgundy and Lorraine, there lived a simple peasant girl named Joan of Arc. All her short life she had heard of war and disaster, of divisions among the nobles, of invasion by a foreign foe. Now she heard how the rightful king of France was an outcast in his kingdom, denied his just inheritance by that foe.
She thought and dreamed of all these things, until at length she seemed to hear the voices of the saints calling her to go forth to save her country and her king. At first she feared to listen to these voices. Then, greatly daring, she determined to obey what seemed to her a heaven-sent command.
So she set forth on the long and perilous journey across the war-ridden land. God protected her and she reached the castle of Chinon in safety. She found it hard at first to make the king believe in her mission; but she was so filled with holy enthusiasm and devotion that none who came in contact with her could long remain unbelieving. Joan of Arc therefore was accepted as a soldier and a leader, and set forth for Orleans.
FRANCE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
All that the awakened patriotism of France required was a leader who could command unquestioning obedience and direct its disunited efforts. Only a miracle was needed, and the miracle happen
ed. Under the leadership of a girl of eighteen the undisciplined herd of nobles and their followers became a fighting machine. Men brutalized by long warfare became gentle as doves and fierce as lions. They swore no more, but they fought as if inspired. Before long Orleans was relieved, Charles VII was crowned at Reims, and the Maid's work was done. But she was not allowed to go back, to her peaceful village life as she desired, and in May of 1430 she fell into the hands of the enemy. By them she was cruelly burned as a witch.
This brutal act availed them nothing. The English and their Burgundian allies might kill the Maid, they could not kill her glorious work. For little more than a year only she had led France, but she had led it successfully to nationality and victory. The English cause was dead from the moment Joan of Arc carried her white banner into Orleans. So, in spite of weakness, divisions, intrigues, and even civil war, the English were, by slow degrees, driven out of France. At length only Calais remained to them, and the Hundred Years' War was at an end.
Earlier in this same year, Constantinople had fallen before the Turks, and they had laid hold of a great part of eastern Europe. That they were able to do so was due greatly to the enfeebled state of the Holy Roman Empire, and in part to the exhausted state of France. The emperor did little to stay the triumphant march of the Turks. France, which all through the Crusades had taken a leading part in combating their power, was too stricken and exhausted now, to attempt a crusade against their aggression.
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