Chapter 9
Section 9 of Edward III by William Parsons Warburton. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by Pamela Nagami. First Decade, Chapter 3, The States of Europe, etc., in the 14th century, Part 2. Along the middle shore of the Baltic on the south lay the territories of the Teutonic Knights and the Knights of the Sword. These two half-military, half-religious orders, had established themselves in Prussia, Pomerania, and Livonia, and waged
incessant wars with their heathen subjects and neighbors. These neighbors no doubt were superstitious and bloodthirsty. They immolated human victims and burnt slaves on the graves of their departed heroes, but the real attractiveness of the Crusades against them lay not in the wish to extirpate infidelity and barbarism, but in the fact that war was then universally regarded as a noble field sport, and this was, as it were, the most accessible hunting ground. Religious fanaticism
lent an additional inducement by holding out the same hopes of expiation to the European crusader as to the warrior pilgrim to the distant holy places in the East, by washing out his sins in the blood of unbelievers. Denmark, Norway, and Sweden were at this time powerful and aggressive states and were making conquests on the Baltic seaboard, but they do not figure largely on the stage of the history of Edward III. It is impossible to omit all mention of the very
remarkable discovery of documentary and architectural evidence of the former existence of a European and Christian colony from Norway, with churches, monasteries, and a succession of bishops for two and a half centuries on the main of Greenland, a colony which is especially notable in this place because it vanished altogether from the face of the earth at the end of the 14th century. And when Hans Segeda, the famous Norwegian missionary, disembarked in Greenland in 1721,
he had no idea that he was about to visit the ruined or deserted haunts of predecessors of his own country, faith, and tongue. There is also good reason to believe that the Northmen, under the adventurous leaf, had already made their way beyond Greenland and been the first discoverers of America, trading with the natives for furs, 450 years before Columbus first went to Iceland to collect information to guide him in his transatlantic researches. The whole of the
center of Europe was occupied by the empire, a territorial expression of vast import. The emperor was in theory the successor of Charles the Great, or Charlemagne. If the imperial Teuton must always be known in England by a Frenchified form of his name, whose dominion extended over the whole of the European continent, south and west of the Elba and Danube, with the exception of a fragment of Italy and the greater part of Spain. This empire of the Franks was divided among the
grandsons of Charles, and western Francia passed away forever from the empire and became the kingdom of France. Lothar, the eldest, succeeded to the title of emperor, and as it was necessary that the imperial dominions should include the two capitals of Rome and Aachen, or Aix-la-Chapelle, he had a strip of territory assigned to him, running north and south between the eastern frontier of France and the Rhine, from the Seidersee to the Mediterranean, including the
country within the semicircle of the Alps and the northern half of Italy, and called after him Lothringen, Lorraine. The remainder of the empire of Charles the Great, those peoples who spoke German and not the Romance tongue, east and north of the Rhine and the Alps, fell to the share of his third grandson, Eastern Franks, Saxons, Bavarians, Austrians, Corinthians, with a doubtful dominion over Czechs and Moravians beyond the Danube. After many vicissitudes, the empire was
nearly reunited, with the exception of France, by Henry the Fowler of Germany in the early part of the 10th century. He conquered and annexed Lothringen, which he divided into Upper Lothringen, or the Moselle, and Lower Lothringen, or Brabant, and raised his kingdom. For the title of emperor was an abeyance to the first rank among European monarchies. The imperial dignity was revived in favor of his son Otto, who was crowned in 962, and the empire as he left it, though the title
of its rulers had often varied in the interval, was, with respect to its extent and constituents, the Germany of the time of Edward III. It must be borne in mind, however, that Germany, like France, was an aggregate of almost independent principalities under a titular head, and that their bond of union was even slenderer than the tie which bound together the constituents of the French kingdom. For the succession to the imperial crown was not hereditary like that of France,
but elective, and the intrigues of the candidates and of their respective partisans were constantly stirring up the elements of disunion. On the sudden death of the emperor Henry VII in 1313, Louis of Bavaria and Frederick of Austria were both elected. Louis by four of the seven electors and Frederick by three. But the votes were disputed, and for eight years from the accession of Louis in 1314, Germany saw her fertile fields wasted and her cities laid in ruins
by the struggle between the Austrian and Bavarian parties, till at last in the Battle of Mühldorf in 1322, the Austrians were finally defeated, and Frederick carried off a prisoner. Among the northern fiefs of the empire were the dukedom of Brabant, one portion of Flanders, and the great cities of the Hanseatic League, while on the south, the powerful commonwealths of Lombardy and the dukes of Savoy, who ruled around the Lake of Geneva, all owed a nominal allegiance to the
imperial crown. One more constituent of the empire claims a passing notice. South of Germany, between Italy and France, there had sprung up, almost unnoticed by the greater kingdoms, a new European power, the Swiss Confederation, about fifty years before this time. The mountaineers of the three ancient cantons, Uri, Unterwalden, and Schweiz, had been driven to unite in an offensive and defensive league in 1291 to protect their freedom against the Austrians,
over whom they won a famous battle at Moagarten in 1315. This was a victory of great importance, as confirming the possession of the central mountains of Europe to a hardy, warlike, and independent race. Several neighboring cities joined their alliance, and by the latter end of the 14th century, they had formed a confederation of eight states and came to be called Swiss, from the name of the famous canton of Schweiz, which formed the nucleus of the League.
In 1386, they won another great victory over the Austrians at Sempach, which confirmed the independence of their republic. But they never reached the same point of political importance or social culture as the neighboring Italian commonwealths, though far surpassing them in nobility of character and warlike virtues. For the love of liberty was to these rugged mountaineers what the pursuit of wealth, literature, art, and luxury was to the more
favored communities on the southern side of the Alps. But of all the secondary powers of Europe, none played so important a part in the history of these times as the Flemings, part of whose territory was held under the French king and part under the emperor. The Flemings, having been the first people in northern Europe to cultivate industrial arts and manufactures, a rich middle class had sprung up among them, plebeian in origin,
but imbued with ideas of self-importance and political independence unknown elsewhere in persons of that condition under feudal institutions. Their sovereign, Count Louis of Flanders and Nevers, had been brought up in France and was thoroughly French in habitant in character, and feeling no sympathy with the political aspirations for the new estate, cared little for the prosperity or reverses of his busy subjects, so long as their punctual
payment of his revenues enabled him to lead an easy life amidst the pleasures of Paris. Some years after his expulsion and forcible reinstatement, of which mention has already been made, the Flemings, weary of continued misrule, chose for their ruvart or president, James van Artevelde, the Brewer of Ghent, so-called because, though by birth an aristocrat, he had enrolled himself in the Guild of Brewers and thrown in his lot with the traders,
in their resistance to the selfish exactions of Count Louis. His authority was limited, for the sturdy burgomasters were not men to submit to despotism under the disguise of a commonwealth, but his administrative ability, his wealth, and his eloquence gained him practically unbounded influence over his countrymen, and though the use which he made of it was not always judicious or unblameable, he claims to rank at least as the purest and most patriotic of demagogues.
The importance of securing the alliance of the Flemings had been strongly urged upon the English king by Robert of Artois, a French noble who, having made a bitter enemy of King Philip, had thrown himself into the arms of Edward and become his most trusted confidant and advisor. Acting upon Robert's suggestions, the king had written to the brother of his queen Philippa, William, Count of Eno, and now by failure of the elder branch, Count of Holland also,
and at the same time to his brother-in-law, the Margrave of Jülich, authorizing them to form alliances for him with their neighbors in Flanders and Brabant. Now the Flemings and the English had a common interest, which throughout the war kept them almost always on the same side, though they had more than one lover's quarrel in the course of it. The Flemings were at this time the most successful workers in woolen fabrics of northern Europe, and their principal towns had
risen from very small beginnings to their present importance, chiefly by this manufacture. But the English wool, and especially that of the eastern counties, then enjoyed the same preeminence of excellence above all the wools of the known world, which the Sea Island cotton possessed or possesses over all other staples of that article, and commanded an enormous price for the factories of the Flemings. It was their interest to pay highly for prime wool,
and it was England's interest to sell in the dearest market, irrespective of all political or strategical considerations. But it was also highly important to the English king to secure the goodwill of a country which could give him a landing and an unmolested passage for his troops on their march to France. Now the Count of Flanders was the liegeman of the French crown, but it was to him that Edward first made overtures in the hope of detaching him from the
interest of Philip, and he endeavored on more than one occasion to bring about a marriage between the Count's heir and the Princess Joan of England. Finally, however, Edward determined on allying himself with the popular party, and in order to satisfy the scruples of the French Flemings, who, in spite of their democratic aspirations, were proud of their position as the first fief of the crown of France, he constituted himself their lawful suzerain by publicly
assuming the title of King of France, and challenging Philip as a usurper. These steps were taken under the influence of Van Artevelde, who was determined at all hazards to prevent the probable intended absorption of the Fief of Flanders in the French monarchy, and looked to the English alliance as the best security against this danger. The Duke of Brabant was another powerful feudatory of the empire whom Edward much wished to gain over to his side. His people were
the most successful rivals of the Flemings in the manufacture of wool, and like them, wished to secure the raw material of the best quality from England. The Duke accordingly asked for the establishment in Brabant of a wool staple or privileged wool market, to which alone that article could be consigned from England, and in which alone it could be legally purchased by the foreign manufacturer. End of Section 9.
