VIII. CHAP. of France the whole country from the Loire to the Mediterranean. And it was the preponderance thus acquired by the French crown that rendered all efforts of the English to recover their continental dominions vain. The Pope had favoured the French king in his encroachments upon Germany. He gave him Provence, and tried to give him Aragon; he endowed Charles of Anjou with Sicily, and made the same prince master of Italy for a time. In return, it was a French monarch who dealt the Papacy the first fatal blow, who trod it under foot, and reduced it to the most ignominious and lasting servitude. The commencement of the quarrel, which took place at the close of the fourteenth century, was this general tax upon clergy and laity. Pope Boniface had been till then most friendly to France, and anxious to observe towards its monarch the same kindness that his predecessors had shown. Philip, on his part, no doubt shared that general and growing feeling of disrespect for the Court of Rome, which was the result of its vindictive and profane policy. The wanton destruction of the Houses of Suabia and of Toulouse, with all the massacres perpetrated in those European wars by the Church of Rome, for its own positive interests, whilst the cause of Christendom was betrayed and allowed to perish in the East, were facts too glaring to be forgotten. They had produced an aversion for Rome, which the rapacity of its agents increased. The legist class had started up especially in France, to represent, to exagge rate, and to be themselves the instrument of this dislike, and they, no doubt, impelled Philip the Fair to set aside the old claims of the Church to immunity from taxation. The immediate consequence was, a papal bull, issued in 1296 by Boniface, which but too truly marks the spirit of the time. It began by admitting and complaining that the lay portion of society had become antagonistic to the clerical, and that the Church must do battle in its own defence. The Pontiff therefore denounced the tithe or semi-tithe that the king had laid on the clergy, and excommunicated both those who should pay and those who exacted it. Philip might have defended his decree by strong and tranquil argument. He might have pleaded that the land of every country was bound to its military defence; that in feudal times the Church had not shaken off those duties, and had furnished either its tenants or its substitutes and avoués for the king's armies. Now that feudal service was fast sinking into monied contribution, it became the duty of the clergy to pay as of the State to exact. These, however, were the same arguments which the German emperor had urged against the popes in vain. And neither Boniface nor Philip were endowed with that command of temper which might permit them to discuss national rights and necessities, so as to make the one accord with the other, as well as with the progress of their time. The King answered the Pope's bull by an edict, forbidding any money or valuables to be sent out of the kingdom: and the Pope refulminated another bull, reasserting all the unmitigated pretensions of the preceding century. It was such a bull as Innocent the Third might have issued against Raymond of Toulouse, when the popes certainly enjoyed the power of deposing monarchs. But a century had since rolled past, and carried away with it a great portion of the reverence paid, and the authority allowed, to Rome. Philip, therefore, persevered in his determination to tax the clergy; he at the same time publishing a number of ordonnances in their favour, protecting them from any arbitrary conduct of his own bailiffs, who, it would appear, did not scruple to seize the goods of the clergy to pay the tax. Philip restrained and regulated these seizures, and did all in his power to conciliate the national clergy. Whilst preparing to reduce the Count of Flanders, CHAP. CHAP. VIII. the French king induced another noble, equally powerful, and hitherto even more independent, to rally to his support, and do homage to his crown. This was the Duke of Brittany, a province which originally followed the fate of Normandy, but which had maintained its independence of France by alliance with England. The loss of Guienne, however, and of all the English provinces in the vicinity of Brittany, left its duke isolated. The offers of France were therefore listened to. Philip guaranteed the Breton against any overweening encroachment by his court or parliament. The duke was given a French princess, and declared a peer of the kingdom of France. The care and zeal which Philip the Fair showed in his preparations for war were answered by complete success. He mustered his troops at Compiegne, to the number of 1000 knights, and infantry proportionate. With these, in 1297, he entered Flanders, and laid siege to Lille, which was defended by Guy Robert, eldest son of the count. At the same time Robert of Artois, returning from Guienne and raising the forces of his county, invaded maritime Flanders, and took Furnes and Cassel. The only resistance made was by the Flemings of Furnes. They mustered 600 horse and 16,000 foot, but were defeated by Robert of Artois with great slaughter. Lille hearing this, surrendered. Edward arriving from England with a very small force in the midst of the disaster, king and count retired before the French to Bruges, where the King of France had insidiously represented himself as the protector of the municipal liberties and popular party. In consequence of their disasters, the English king and Flemish count were obliged to fly from Bruges to Ghent. There their hopes of resistance being no better, they sent to demand a truce. This, as it left Philip in possession of French and maritime Flanders, was too advantageous not to be accepted. And thus was Philip the Fair the victor in a struggle with two potent monarchs, those of Germany and England; and conqueror of two great provinces, Gascony and Flanders. To crown his triumph, the Pope submitted; and, as Philip announced to his parliament, granted the tenth and whatever taxes necessary to the war, that might be demanded of the clergy. All his foes, indeed, rendered powerless by the ability and success of Philip the Fair, submitted to him. Boniface, instead of an enemy, came forward as an arbiter, to put an end to the difference between the English and French Kings. Edward could not object, for he had become again involved in the difficulties of a Scottish war; nor did Philip show himself inveterate. He consented to a marriage not only between Edward and his sister, but to one between his daughter Isabel and Edward's son, the future Edward the Second. One of the conditions of this agreement was similar to that which Philip had before consented to and broken; the restoration of Guienne. It was now to be placed in the hands of the Pope, and awarded by him in just delimitation.* Both the Pope and Philip left the question a long time in abeyance, and thus deferred the conclusion of a definitive treaty. The death of the Emperor Adolph in battle, and the election of Albert of Austria, whose cause Philip had favoured, restored peace also on the side of Germany. The two monarchs met in 1299 at Vaucouleurs, on which occasion, says Nangis, the frontier of France was extended from the Meuse to the Rhine. This somewhat exaggerated statement was, however, warranted by the acquisition of Lyons, the extension of French suzerainty over Franche Comté, and the submission of the Count of Bar. The Count of Flanders had not been included in the The Pope, however, wrote to Philip, that he would not give final judgment with respect to Guienne without first consulting the French king and obtaining his consent to CHAP. VIII. VIII. CHAP. pacification by Edward. Edward. Charles of Valois entered that county with a French army in 1299, and defeated the young count. The next year he took Dam, and was preparing to follow up his successes by the reduction of Ghent and of Ypres. Offers were made at the same time to Charles of Valois by the Pope, to give him, if he would bring a French army over the Alps, the same position in Italy which Charles of Anjou had held. The Count of Valois, therefore, in order to terminate the war in Flanders, offered to its prince his restoration if he would submit to the king, and surrender his remaining towns. To this the Count of Flanders, worn by age and misfortune, consented, and repaired to Paris with his son. Philip, however, paid no regard to the promises of the Count of Valois, and with his wonted perfidy consigned the princes of Flanders to prison. The Flemings were not so much attached to them as to repine or rebel. If we may believe Villani, the magnates, or rich citizens of the Flemish towns, were inclined to France, and desirous of making use of the king's power to keep down the influence of the democracy. Philip visited these cities in 1301, received their homage, and confirmed their privileges. But his greed and his queen's jealousy were excited by the display of the riches which they beheld. The Flemings knew not the master they had given themselves, nor did the monarch know the subjects he had acquired. Philip gave them Jacques de St. Pol as governor. Thus the dominions of the King of France extended from the Mediterranean to the Scheldt, if not altogether, as Nangis boasted, from the ocean to the Rhine. The monarchy at the close of the thirteenth century had, in fact, very nearly attained the developement which it was enabled to consolidate but several centuries later. Its rapid growth and wide expansion at that early period were premature. Neither the mili |