As every fule nose, in March-April 1296 the armies of Edward I overran the lowlands of Scotland. What is sometimes not appreciated is that this was part of a much wider conflict, and that Edward’s dastardly invasion took place at the same time as an equally dastardly French invasion of Plantagenet Gascony. If we’re talking moralism and the right to autonomy, then a medieval Gascon had just as much right to these things as a medieval Scot. But might makes right…
In April 1296 Robert II of Artois was appointed the French lieutenant in Gascony and the duchy of Aquitaine. He was given extensive powers by Philip le Bel to act ‘as if the king were personally present’. He was to issue pardons, negotiate alliances and truces, conclude ‘paréages’ (a form of land transaction), inspect garrisons and fortresses, instigate inquiries into the crimes of royal officials and confer knighthood. Robert was also to take homages, fealties and oaths from all those living in the lands ‘which the king of England was wont to hold within our kingdom’. Edward had been treated by Philip in exactly the same way as Edward treated John Balliol, all part of the vicious merry-go-round of medieval politics.
Robert was effectively appointed as Philip’s viceroy in Gascony, a territory which the French had laid claim to via perfectly illegal means: this was an even more naked power grab than the invasion of Scotland, but who cared so long as you got away with it? At the start of April, just a day or two after the sack of Berwick in Scotland, Robert took an army of Artesian and other northern French troops into Gascony. On the 28, the same day as Edward arrived at Dunbar, he had reached Angouleme. Here he summoned nobles of the surrounding region for two months’ service in the host, before moving on to Périgord.
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