he Empire, the captivity of the Papacy at Avignon, left her
without a rival among European powers. The French chivalry was the envy of
the world, and its military fame had just been heightened by a victory over
the Flemish communes at Cassel. In numbers, in wealth, the French people
far surpassed their neighbours over the Channel. England can hardly have
counted more than four millions of inhabitants, France boasted of twenty.
The clinging of our kings to their foreign dominions is explained by the
fact that their subjects in Gascony, Aquitaine, and Poitou must have
equalled in number their subjects in England. There was the same
disproportion in the wealth of the two countries and, as men held then, in
their military resources. Edward could bring only eight thousand
men-at-arms to the field. Philip, while a third of his force was busy
elsewhere, could appear at the head of forty thousand. Of the revolution in
warfare which was to reverse this superiority, to make the footman rather
than the horseman the strength of an army, the world and even the English
king, in spite of Falkirk and Halidon, as yet recked little. Edward's whole
energy was bent on meeting the strength of France by a coalition of powers
against her, and his plans were helped by the dread which the great
feudatories of the empire who lay nearest to him, the Duke of Brabant, the
Counts of Hainault and Gelders, the Markgrave of Juliers, felt of French
annexation. They listened willingly enough to his offers. Sixty thousand
crowns purchased the alliance of Brabant. Lesser subsidies bought that of
the two counts and the Markgrave. The king's work was helped indeed by his
domestic relations. The Count of Hainault was Edward's father-in-law; he
was also the father-in-law of the Count of Gelders. But the marriage of a
third of the Count's daughters brought the English king a more important
ally. She was wedded to the Emperor, Lewis of Bavaria, and the connexion
that thus existed between the English and Imperial Courts facilitated the
negotiations which ended in a formal alliance.

[Sidenote: Its Relation to the Papacy]

But the league had a more solid ground. The Emperor, like Edward, had his
strife with France. His strife sprang from the new position of the Papacy.
The removal of the Popes to Avignon which followed on the quarrel of
Boniface the Eighth with Philip le Bel and the subjection to the French
court which resulted from it affected the whole state of