to all the sheriffs, archbishops, and bishops of his kingdom a circular in which he attributed the initiative to Philip; on the 26th of August he gave his ally, the Emperor of Germany, notice of what he had just done, whilst, for the first time, insultingly describing Philip as “setting himself up for King of France.”  At last, on the 7th of October, 1337, he proclaimed himself King of France, as his lawful inheritance, designating as representatives and supporters of his right the Duke of Brabant, the Marquis of Juliers, the Count of Haiiiault, and William de Bohun, Earl of Northampton.

The enterprise had no foundation in right, and seemed to have few chances of success.  If the succession to the crown of France had not been regulated beforehand by a special and positive law, Philip of Valois had on his side the traditional right of nearly three centuries past and actual possession without any disputes having arisen in France upon the subject.  His title had been expressly declared by the peers of the kingdom, sanctioned by the Church, and recognized by Edward himself, who had come to pay him homage.  He had the general and free assent of his people:  to repeat the words of the chroniclers of the time, “There was no mind in France to be subjects of the King of England.”  Philip VI. was regarded in Europe as a greater and more powerful sovereign than Edward III.  He had the pope settled in the midst of his kingdom; and he often traversed it with an array of valiant nobility whom he knew how to support and serve on occasion as faithfully as he was served by them.  “He was highly prized and honored,” says Froissart, “for the victory he had won (at Cassel) over the Flemings, and also for the handsome service he had done his cousin Count Louis.  He did thereby abide in great prosperity and honor, and he greatly increased the royal state; never had there been king in France, it was said, who had kept state like King Philip, and he provided tourneys and jousts and diversions in great abundance.”  No national interest, no public ground, was provocative of war between the two peoples; it was a war of personal ambition, like that which in the eleventh century William the Conqueror had carried into England.  The memory of that great event was still, in the fourteenth century, so fresh in France, that when the pretensions of Edward were declared, and the struggle was begun, an assemblage of Normans, barons and knights, or, according to others, the Estates of Normandy themselves, came and proposed to Philip to undertake once more, and at their own expense, the conquest of England, if he would put at their head his eldest son, John, their own duke.  The king received their deputation at Vincennes, on the 23d of March, 1339, and accepted their offer.  They bound themselves to supply for the expedition four thousand men-at-arms and twenty thousand foot, whom they promised to maintain for ten weeks, and even a fortnight beyond, if, when the Duke of Normandy