Although Edward III. by supporting with troops and officers, and sometimes even in person, the cause of the Countess of Montfort, and Philip of Valois by assisting in the same way Charles of Blois and Joan of Penthievre, took a very active, if indirect, share in the war in Brittany, the two kings persisted in not calling themselves at war; and when either of them proceeded to acts of unquestionable hostility, they eluded the consequences of them by hastily concluding truces incessantly violated and as incessantly renewed.  They had made use of this expedient in 1340; and they had recourse to it again in 1342, 1343, and 1344.  The last of these truces was to have lasted up to 1346; but, in the spring of 1345, Edward resolved to put an end to this equivocal position, and to openly recommence war.  He announced his intention to Pope Clement IV., to his own lieutenants in Brittany, and to all the cities and corporations of his kingdom.  He accused Philip of having “violated, without even sending us a challenge, the truce which, out of regard to the sovereign pontiff, we had agreed upon with him, and which he had taken an oath, upon his soul, to keep.  On account whereof we have resolved to proceed against him, him and all his adherents, by land and sea, by all means possible, in order to recover our just rights.”  It is not quite clear what pressing reasons urged Edward to this decisive resolution.  The English Parliament and people, it is true, showed more disposition to support their king in his pretensions to the throne of France, and the cause of the Count of Montfort was maintaining itself stubbornly in Brittany, but nothing seemed to call for so startling a rupture, or to promise Edward any speedy and successful issue.  He had lost his most energetic and warlike adviser; for Robert d’Artois, the deadly enemy of Philip of Valois, had been so desperately wounded in the defence of Vannes against Robert de Beaumanoir, that he had returned to England only to die.  Edward felt this loss severely, gave Robert a splendid funeral in St. Paul’s church, and declared that “he would listen to nought until he had avenged him, and that he would reduce the country of Brittany to such plight that, for forty years, it should not recover.”  Philip of Valois, on his side, gave signs of getting ready for war.  In 1343 he had convoked at Paris one of those assemblies which were beginning to be called the states-general of the kingdom, and he obtained from it certain subventions.  It was likewise in 1343 and at the beginning of 1344, that he ordered the arrest, at a tournament to which he had invited them, and the decapitation, without any form of trial, of fourteen Breton and three Norman lords whom he suspected of intriguing against him with the King of England.  And so Edward might have considered himself threatened with imminent peril; and, besides, he had friends to avenge.  But it is not unreasonable to suppose that his fiery ambition, and his impatience