between them began in 1340. France was not averse to it. In fact,
her King, Philip of Valois, rather welcomed the opportunity of wresting
away Guienne, the last remaining French fief of the English kings.
France, as we have seen, was regarded as the strongest land of Europe.
England was thought of as little more than a French colony, whose Norman
dukes had in the previous century been thoroughly chastised and deprived
of half their territories by their overlord. To be sure, France was
having much trouble with her Flemish cities, which were in revolt again
under the noted brewer-nobleman, Van Artevelde,[18] yet it seemed
presumption for England to attack her--England, so feeble that she had
been unable to avenge her own defeat by the half-barbaric Scots at
Bannockburn.

But the English had not nearly so small an opinion of themselves as had
the rest of Europe. The heart of the nation had not been in that strife
against the Scots, a brave and impoverished people struggling for
freedom. But hearts and pockets, too, welcomed the quarrel with France,
overbearing France, that plundered their ships when they traded with
their friends the Flemings. The Flemish wool trade was at this time a
main source of English wealth, so Edward III of England, than whom
ordinarily no haughtier aristocrat existed, made friends with the brewer
Van Artevelde, and called him "gossip" and visited him at Ghent, and
presently Flemings and English were allied in a defiance of France. By
asserting a vague ancestral claim to the French throne, Edward eased the
consciences of his allies, who had sworn loyalty to France; and King
Philip had on his hands a far more serious quarrel than he realized.[19]

In England's first great naval victory, Edward destroyed the French
fleet at Sluys and so started his country on its wonderful career of
ocean dominance. Moreover, his success established from the start that
the war should be fought out in France and not in England.[20] Then, in
1346, he won his famous victory of Crecy against overwhelming numbers of
his enemies. It has been said that cannon were effectively used for the
first time at Crecy, and it was certainly about this time that gunpowder
began to assume a definite though as yet subordinate importance in
warfare. But we need not go so far afield to explain the English
victory. It lay in the quality of the fighting men. Through a century
and a half of freedom, England had been building up a class of stu