Edward III
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WARS The Scotch war, inherited from the late reign, was
concluded in 1328, but in 1332 the private enterprise of the disinherited lords renewed it, In 1333 the defeat
of the Scots at Halidon Hill, near Berwick, appeared to establish the throne of Edward Baliol, but after two years
of warfare the English were only in possession of Berwick, and Baliol was living in England. |
In 1364 Charles of Blois, the claimant supported by the French in Britanny, was defeated and killed at Auray by
the English ally De Montfort.
In 1367 the Black Prince defeated Henry of Trastamare, King of Castile, and Du Guesclin, at Navaretta, on the Ebro.
The war, after its renewal in 1369, was mainly one of sieges and minor operations, the French avoiding pitched
battles. In 1372, however, the Spaniards completely defeated the Earl of Pembroke in a naval battle off La Rochelle.
This was really the decisive battle of the war, and fatal to the English supremacy in Aquitaine.
The real objects of Edward, the safety of Guienne and Gascony, and free intercourse for English trade with these
countries, Britanny, and Flanders; had been secured by the previous naval victories, and by the taking of Calais,
but were rendered impossible by this defeat The whole commercial policy of England was modified in consequence
of it in the succeeding regn.
WAR WITH FRANCE
Another field of glory was beckoning there were many causes of difference with France, the principal of which were England's claims on Gascony and commercial rivalry. Time, moreover, fomented the ill feeling into ferocious hatred. The inevitable conflict was given a national character by Edward's preposterous claim to the Crown of France itself by right of descent through his French mother, Isabella. So, in 1337, began the stupendous folly of the Hundred Years War.
Apart from an annihilating victory (that even Nelson might have envied) over a powerful French fleet at Sluys in
1340, nothing noteworthy occurred till 1346 - and then came Crecy. In that memorable contest, against odds approaching
four to one, the English longbowmen and the new battle tactics Won a spectacular triumph. They taught an astonished
Europe the might of the English archer and the passing of the supremacy of the old heavy cavalry. Next year Edward
took another mighty draught to stake his thirst for fame. He captured Calais and so opened a door into the Continent
that English garrisons were to hold for 200 years. Then, in 1356, the lesson of Crecy was driven home. Edward's
famous son, the Black Prince, won the hard-fought battle of Poitiers and captured the French King for good measure.
The peak of Edward's triumph was scaled in 1360. By the treaty of Calais, France ceded all the vast Duchy of Aquitaine
in the southwest, which had been lost by John and Henry III, together with Calais and Ponthieu in the north. And
then came the break-neck fall. The humiliating treaty could never be enforced against a proud nation. When Edward
lay on his death-bed nothing of his dazzling conquests in the south remained save a strip of the Gascony coast.
His one great lasting gain was Calais.