of his land against the foreign invader.  It is useless to refine the issue further.  The situation had become impossible, and fighting was the only way out of the difficulty.  When in the late summer of 1339 the curtain was rung down on the long-drawn-out diplomatic comedy, Edward had not yet finally assumed that title of King of France, which made an inevitable strife irreconcilable, and so prolonged hostilities that the struggle became the Hundred Years’ War.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE EARLY CAMPAIGNS OF THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR.

In the late summer of 1339 Edward III. was at last able to take the offensive against France.  During the negotiations England strained every effort to provide her absent sovereign with men and money, but neither the troops nor the supplies were adequate.  The army which assembled in September in the neighbourhood of Brussels consisted largely of imperial vassals, hired by the English King, and clamorous for the regular payment of their wages.  Already Edward told his ministers that, had not “a good friend in Flanders” advanced him a large sum, he would have been obliged to return with shame to England.  As it was, enough was raised to set the unwieldy host in motion, and on September 20 he marched from Valenciennes, and thence advanced into the bishopric of Cambrai, whose lord, though an imperial vassal, had declared for France and the papacy.

The rolling uplands of the Cambresis were devastated with fire and sword.  One night an English baron took the Cardinal Bertrand, who with his comrade Peter still accompanied Edward’s host, to the summit of a high tower, whence they could witness the flaming homesteads and villages of the fertile and populous district.  In that woeful spectacle the churchman saw the futility of his last two years of constant labour, and fell in a swoon to the ground.  But the confederates could do little more than devastate the open country.  Cambrai itself was besieged to no purpose, and Edward pressed on to the invasion of France.  On October g he spent his first night on French soil at the abbey of Mont Saint-Martin.  He learnt how slender was the tie which bound his foreign allies to him, for his brother-in-law, William of Hainault, refused to serve, except on imperial soil, against his uncle Philip VI.  Consoled for this defection by the arrival of the sluggish Duke of Brabant and of the Elector of Brandenburg, the eldest son of the emperor, Edward marched through the Vermandois, the Soissonais, and the Laonnais, burning and devastating, without meeting any serious resistance.  Philip of Valois timidly held aloof in the neighbourhood of Peronne.