Edward III and the Origins of the Hundred Years' War

Edward III and the Origins of the Hundred Years' War

Edward III was perhaps the most popular king England has ever had. I think this is because he was not only a great soldier, but also a great knight. To his subjects at least he was not just the man who won victories that made them proud to be English. He was also personally admirable, a man of generosity, courage, and style. He symbolized the virtues of his age in the way Victoria symbolized the virtues of hers.

If Edward III was popular and revered because he symbolized 14th century aristocratic virtue, and since it was his job to excel in warfare, then we need hardly look for any special causes for the Hundred Years' War that he launched. Edward came to the throne after a period of defeat and disgrace for the monarchy. He quite naturally sought to restore the prestige of his line and vindicate his rights -- by war.

For Edward, a warlike young man, there were several possible ways to show his stuff, including the Crusade. But in the end, it was the two quarrels of the past generation or two, the Scottish war and the dispute over Gascony, that together pulled Edward III into the great enterprise of his career.

The conquest of Scotland attempted by his grandfather seemed to have come to a definitive end with the treaty of 1328 that Mortimer had concluded in Edward III's name. But almost immediately after the treaty was signed, the new peace between England and Scotland broke down. Robert Brus died in 1329, which was followed or preceded by the deaths of many of his closest supporters. The new king, David II, was only five years old.

This gave an opening for a group of Anglo-Scottish lords known as the Disinherited. Some of the greatest families had supported the English cause during the War of Independence, and lost their lands when Brus won. They hoped to regain their old estates. The Disinherited had a leader, too -- Edward Balliol, son of King John Balliol, who claimed that he was the rightful King of Scots. So, in the early 1330s, the uncertain regime of the child king David II was threatened by a "contra" group based in England.

Edward III found it convenient to give surreptitious and irregular encouragement to the Disinherited. This support paid dividends. In 1332, Edward Balliol invaded Scotland and won a stunning victory over David's army. He was able to have himself crowned Edward I of Scotland. His period of power was very brief, but in supporting him Edward of England got involved in a Scottish war that would simmer on for the rest of the fourteenth century.

The two Edwards also drove David II and his supporters right into the arms of the King of France. Now Edward III was already having problems with the king of France, who at this point was Philip VI. The main issue was the usual -- Gascony.

This time, however, the situation was a bit touchier. There was the uncertainty of Philip VI's royal title. Philip VI was a cousin of his predecessor, not his son, and there were other claimants to the throne. One of these was Edward III. The Scottish war, which forced David II's court to flee to France, introduced between the two kings another issue that had no easy solution.

By 1337, war between France and England seemed inevitable. Edward was already seeking continental allies. In May of that year, Philip confiscated Gascony. This confiscation

became the first shot in a dynastic and eventually national war that would turn the English and the French into traditional enemies.

When Edward decided to fight, he adopted the old strategy of finding allies to the north of France, in Germany and the Netherlands. He then attacked France from the north in concert with them. This policy plunged him into a war, the expense of which could hardly be imagined.

Edward III, one of the richer monarchs of the time, had a normal yearly revenue of no more than Ð'Ј30,000 a year. This was scarcely enough to meet his ordinary expenses. Borrowing money was a normal royal expedient. When war came, Ð'Ј30,000 was a drop in the bucket. For instance, in 1337 Edward III promised his allies Ð'Ј124,000 before the end of the year. Edward raised taxes through Parliament, of course, but these were enough to raise his annual income to no more than Ð'Ј57,000 a year.

Perhaps Edward promised his allies too much. Some people thought that at the time. But his allies had some justification for asking for lots of money to risk themselves in a war with France. Warfare, which had been getting increasingly costly for a long time now, was now horrendously expensive.

Take, for instance, the big, well-designed castles that Edward I built to control Wales. Just one of these, Caernarfon Castle, cost Ð'Ј20-25,000 between 1284 and 1330, when it was essentially finished. This is as if Canada had bought a small fleet of submarines, each of which cost 80 billion dollars. Caernarfon Castle was exceptional, but not unique.

When war came, it cost a lot to knock such fortifications down, or starve out their garrisons.

Another factor was the routine use of wages to pay the soldiers who fought the wars. This was not entirely new. For a long time kings had preferred professional soldiers to unpaid amateurs. By the time of Edward I, the feudal levy had become quite useless for any serious military expedition. During his wars, Edward I paid almost all of his troops, from earls on down.

Perhaps the most important factor in raising military expenses was the greater ambition of the combatants. In the 14th century, many principalities and kingdoms were more unified and strongly governed than earlier. Kings and princes fought for absolute lordship, not simply hegemony or tribute. Thus bigger political units, with greater resources, fought each other in bigger and more destructive wars.

In any war, vast borrowing was necessary, because sufficient tax revenue was politically impossible to raise. Unfortunately for the peace of Europe, borrowing was easier than ever. . In the early 14th century, pioneering merchant bankers (mostly Italian) were out looking for investment opportunities. In the early years of the war, Edward made frequent resort to Italian firms willing and able to lend tens of thousands of pounds at a time.

Edward also resorted to manipulating trade to achieve both political and economic gains.

Like his grandfather before him, Edward taxed wool, seized wool to sell it himself, gave wool export monopolies to those who would lend him money up front, and pledged future wool revenues to guarantee loans. He