to transmit her rights to her Son.  These contentions, sacred and profane, did not touch the vital issue.  It was not the dynastic question that brought about the war, though, war being inevitable, Edward might well, as he himself said, use his claim as a buckler to protect himself from his enemies.  The fundamental difference between the two nations lay in the impossible position of Edward in Gascony.  He could not abandon his ancient patrimony, and Philip could not give up that policy of gradually absorbing the great fiefs which the French kings had carried on since the days of St. Louis.  The support given to the Scots, the Anglo-imperial alliance, the growing national animosity of the two peoples, the rivalry of English and French merchants and sailors, all these and many similar causes were but secondary.[1] At this stage the claim to the French throne, though immensely complicating the situation, and interposing formidable technical obstacles to the conduct of negotiations, loomed larger in talk than in acts.  It was only in 1340, when Edward saw in his pretensions the best way of commanding the allegiance of Philip’s sworn vassals, that the question of the French title became a serious matter.

    [1] Deprez, Les Preliminaires de la Guerre de Cent Am, pp.
    400-406, 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