ongst the states-general to the "burghers of the good
towns," substituted the third estate for the communes, and the united
action of the three great classes of Frenchmen for their local struggles,
we did well to halt a while, in order clearly to mark the position and
part of the new actor in the great drama of national life. We will now
return to the real business of the drama, that is, to the history of
France, which became, in the fourteenth century, more complex, more
tragic, and more grand than it had ever yet been.

CHAPTER XX.----THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR.--PHILIP VI. AND JOHN II.

We have just been spectators at the labor of formation of the French
kingship and the French nation. We have seen monarchical unity and
national unity rising, little by little, out of and above the feudal
system, which had been the first result of barbarians settling upon the
ruins of the Roman empire. In the fourteenth century, a new and a vital
question arose: Will the French dominion preserve its nationality? Will
the kingship remain French, or pass to the foreigner? This question
brought ravages upon France, and kept her fortunes in suspense for a
hundred years of war with England, from the reign of Philip of Valois to
that of Charles VII.; and a young girl of Lorraine, called Joan of Arc,
had the glory of communicating to France that decisive impulse which
brought to a triumphant issue the independence of the French nation and
kingship.

As we have seen in the preceding chapter, the elevation of Philip of
Valois to the throne, as representative of the male line amongst the
descendants of Hugh Capet, took place by virtue, not of any old written
law, but of a traditional right, recognized and confirmed by two recent
resolutions taken at the death of the two eldest sons of Philip the
Handsome. The right thus promulgated became at once a fact accepted by
the whole of France; Philip of Valois had for rival none but a foreign
prince, and "there was no mind in France," say contemporary chroniclers,
"to be subjects of the King of England." Some weeks after his accession,
on the 29th of May, 1328, Philip was crowned at Rheims, in presence of a
brilliant assemblage of princes and lords, French and foreign; and next
year, on the 6th of June, Edward III., King of England, being summoned to
fulfil a vassal's duties by doing homage to the King of France for the
duchy of Aquitaine, which he held, appeared in the cathedral of Amiens,