This prospect pleased Edward mightily:  but “it irked him to take the name and arms of that of which he had as yet won no tittle.”  He consulted his allies.  Some of them hesitated; but “his most privy and especial friend,” Robert d’Artois, strongly urged him to consent to the proposal.  So a French prince and a Flemish burgher prevailed upon the King of England to pursue, as in assertion of his avowed rights, the conquest of the kingdom of France.  King, prince, and burgher fixed Ghent as their place of meeting for the official conclusion of the alliance; and there, in January, 1340, the mutual engagement was signed and sealed.  The King of England “assumed the arms of France quartered with those of England,” and thenceforth took the title of King of France.

Then burst forth in reality that war which was to last a hundred years; which was to bring upon the two nations the most violent struggles, as well as the most cruel sufferings, and which, at the end of a hundred years, was to end in the salvation of France from her tremendous peril, and the defeat of England in her unrighteous attempt.  In January, 1340, Edward thought he had won the most useful of allies; Artevelde thought the independence of the Flemish communes and his own supremacy in his own country secured; and Robert d’Artois thought with complacency how he had gratified his hatred for Philip of Valois.  And all three were deceiving themselves in their joy and their confidence.

Edward, leaving Queen Philippa at Ghent with Artevelde for her adviser, had returned to England, and had just obtained from the Parliament, for the purpose of vigorously pushing on the war, a subsidy almost without precedent, when he heard that a large French fleet was assembling on the coasts of Zealand, near the port of Ecluse (or Sluys), with a design of surprising and attacking him when he should cross over again to the Continent.  For some time past this fleet had been cruising in the Channel, making descents here and there upon English soil, at Plymouth, Southampton, Sandwich, and Dover, and everywhere causing alarm and pillage.  Its strength, they said, was a hundred and forty large vessels, “without counting the smaller,” having on board thirty-five thousand men, Normans, Picards, Italians, sailors and soldiers of all countries, under the command of two French leaders, Hugh Quiret, titular admiral, and Nicholas Bchuchet, King Philip’s treasurer, and of a famous Genoese buccaneer, named Barbavera.  Edward, so soon as he received this information, resolved to go and meet their attack; and he gave orders to have his vessels and troops summoned from all parts of England to Orewell, his point of departure.  His advisers, with the Archbishop of Canterbury at their head, strove, but in vain, to restrain him.  “Ye are all in conspiracy against me,” said he; “I shall go; and those who are afraid can abide at home.”  And go he did on the 22d of June, 1340, and aboard of his fleet “went