Roads to war

When looking at the history of medieval conflict, it is vital to take a broader perspective. The modern tendency is to focus on one's own country - because 'your' country is the best and most interesting, obviously - to the exclusion of everyone else. When one considers the nature of medieval states, the multiple shifting alliances and confederations and so on, this is a hopelessly one-eyed view.

That is certainly true of the Anglo-French wars. The famous Hundred Years War was rooted in a private dispute over sovereignty between two Francophone dynasties, the Plantagenets and the Capets (although strictly speaking I should refer to the former as 'Angevins', since they didn't call themselves Plantagenet until the fifteenth century). By the time of Edward I, my particular interest, Angevin dominions in France had shrunk to the duchy of Gascony and the county of Ponthieu. Both were held as fiefdoms of the Capets, which meant that one crowned head was subordinate to another. 

The tension of this impossible relationship led to war. If one is looking for a culprit, then the finger must be pointed at Philip the Fair, King of France from 1285-1314. It was Philip, probably egged on by his ambitious brother Charles of Valois, who chose to light the touchpaper and renew war with England after decades of peace. 

Without going into the fine detail - I have described it elsewhere - Philip seized upon a convenient pretext to invade Gascony and provoke war with his cousin, Edward I. His devious and ruthless policy was mirrored by Edward's own conduct in Scotland: as Sir Maurice Powicke remarked, the one situation almost reads like a sick parody of the other. Both kings were much alike, fixated on expanding their territory by any means. 

This was very much in the spirit of the time. Remove the patriotic goggles for a moment, and the likes of Prince Llywelyn of Wales and King Robert I of Scotland were no different. Llywelyn's aggressive expansionism inside Wales alienated the majority of his Welsh subjects, while the Bruces invaded Ireland and seriously contemplated making a grab for Wales. 

The war in Gascony, which cost Edward more than his Welsh and Scottish wars combined and beggared France, ended in an unsatisfactory stalemate. Philip had to return the duchy to his cousin, but at the cost of restoring Capetien sovereignty. Thanks to the Treaty of Paris, the Angevins were snared, tied up in a legal bind partially of their own making. The frantic efforts of English lawyers to slide out of the treaty came to nothing. 

Thanks to Philip's aggression (for which many French historians have condemned him, in case this sounds like an Anglocentric view), the old trust between the courts of Paris and London would never be restored. As for the marriage alliance, between the future Edward II and Philip's daughter Isabella, this simply handed the Angevins a (distinctly dubious) claim to the throne of France. All roads led to war.