Nobody needs a war

JR Strayer, biographer of Philip le Bel, on the reasons for the war in Aquitaine.

“No one has ever satisfactorily explained why Philip IV drifted into war with Edward I of England in 1294. The Treaty of Paris in 1259 had made the king of England, in his capacity of Duke of Aquitaine, a vassal of the king of France, but it had not stated expressly what the obligations of the duke were, nor had it defined the boundaries of the duchy. In fact the matter of boundaries was left for later negotiations, negotiations that dragged on for decades.

Edward was anxious to avoid war with France at almost any cost. His objectives were not unlike Philip’s; he wanted above everything else to be recognized as sovereign throughout the island of Great Britain. Wales was his Aquitaine, Scotland was his Flanders, and he was having serious troubles with both of them. The last thing in the world he wanted was a war on the continent.

In accepting terms, Edward had demonstrated that he did not want a war. Philip should have then realized that he did not need a war. Edward had clearly recognized the sovereignty of the king of France, and the token occupation force could have acted as a tripwire to prevent any attempt to weaken that sovereignty. Instead Philip sent in a large army, made it impossible for Edward to defend himself in the Parlement by refusing a safe-conduct, and thus forced Edward to renounce his allegiance.

Philip le Bel

Both countries found it difficult to pay for wars that they really wanted to win - the English conquest of Scotland and the French conquest of Flanders - because they wasted so much on a war they had not desired”. 

All of which dovetails neatly with the bare statistics for Edward’s Scottish wars. Between 1298-1302 he found it difficult to pay his troops in Scotland, which led to mass desertions and scuppered one campaign after another. This was a direct consequence of the war in Aquitaine, which Edward had done his best to avoid: along with the Flanders campaign, it devoured precisely 85% of his available financial resources. Such a drain had an inevitable knock-on effect.

Edward I

In light of which, it seems incredible that Edward was able to gather himself for one final push in Scotland in 1303. Even this was directly connected to affairs on the continent, as his last Scottish campaign kicked off on the very day that Gascony was restored to the English. If there had been no war with France, one has to wonder how the Scottish wars of independence might have turned out.