admirably elucidates the situation.

On which side did the responsibility for the war rest? National
prejudices have complicated the question. English historians have seen
in the aggression of Philip in Gascony, his intervention in Scottish
affairs, and the buccaneering exploits of the Norman mariners, reasons
adequate to provoke the patience even of a peace-loving monarch. French
writers, unable to deny these facts, have insisted upon the slowness of
Philip to requite provocation, his servile deference to papal
authority, his willingness to negotiate, and his dislike to take
offence even at the denial of his right to the crown which he wore.
Either king seems hesitating and reluctant when looked at from one
point of view, and pertinaciously aggressive when regarded from the
opposite standpoint. It is safer to conclude that the war was
inevitable than to endeavour to apportion the blame which is so equally
to be divided between the two monarchs. The modern eye singles out
Edward's baseless claim and makes him the aggressor, but there was
little, as the best French historians admit, in Edward's pretension
that shocked the idea of justice in those days. Moreover this view,
held too absolutely, is confuted by the secondary position taken by the
claim during the negotiations which preceded hostilities. If in the
conduct of the preliminaries we may assign to Edward the credit of
superior insight, more resolute policy, and a more clearly perceived
goal, the intellectual superiority, which he possessed over his rival,
was hardly balanced by any special moral obliquity on his part; though
to Philip, with all his weakness, must always be given the sympathy
provoked by the defence of his land against the foreign invader. It is
useless to refine the issue further. The situation had become
impossible, and fighting was the only way out of the difficulty. When
in the late summer of 1339 the curtain was rung down on the
long-drawn-out diplomatic comedy, Edward had not yet finally assumed
that title of King of France, which made an inevitable strife
irreconcilable, and so prolonged hostilities that the struggle became
the Hundred Years' War.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE EARLY CAMPAIGNS OF THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR.

In the late summer of 1339 Edward III. was at last able to take the
offensive against France. During the negotiations England strained
every effort to provide her absent sovereign with men and money, but
neither the troops