in the reign of Philip the Bold that there took place in Sicily, on the 30th of March, 1282, that notorious massacre of the French which is known by the name of Sicilian Vespers, which was provoked by the unbridled excesses of Charles of Anjou’s comrades, and through which many noble French families had to suffer cruelly.
At the same time, the celebrated Italian Admiral Roger de Loria inflicted, by sea, on the French party in Italy, the Provincal navy, and the army of Philip the Bold, who was engaged upon incursions into Spain, considerable reverses and losses. At the same period the foundations were being laid in Germany and in the north of Italy, in the person of Rudolph of Hapsburg, elected emperor, of the greatness reached by the House of Austria, which was destined to be so formidable a rival to France. The government of Philip III. showed hardly more ability at home than in Europe; not that the king was himself violent, tyrannical, greedy of power or money, and unpopular; he was, on the contrary, honorable, moderate in respect of his personal claims, simple in his manners, sincerely pious and gentle towards the humble; but he was at the same time weak, credulous, very illiterate, say the chroniclers, and without penetration, foresight, or intelligent and determined will. He fell under the influence of an inferior servant of his house, Peter de la Brosse, who had been surgeon and barber first of all to St. Louis and then to Philip III., who made him, before long, his chancellor and familiar counsellor. Being, though a skilful and active intriguer, entirely concerned with his own personal fortunes and those of his family, this barber-mushroom was soon a mark for the jealousy and the attacks of the great lords of the court. And he joined issue with them, and even with the young queen, Maria of Brabant, the second wife of Philip III. Accusations of treason, of poisoning and peculation, were raised against him, and, in 1276, he was hanged at Paris, on the thieves’ gibbet, in presence of the Dukes of Burgundy and Brabant, the Count of Artois, and many other personages of note, who took pleasure in witnessing his execution. His condemnation, “the cause of which remained unknown to the people,” says the chronicler William of Nangis, “was a great source of astonishment and grumbling.” Peter de la Brosse was one of the first examples, in French history, of those favorites who did not understand that, if the scandal caused by their elevation were not to entail their ruin, it was incumbent upon them to be great men.
In spite of the want of ability and the weakness conspicuous in the government of Philip the Bold, the kingship in France had, in his reign, better fortunes than could have been expected.
The death, without children, of his uncle Alphonso, St. Louis’s brother, Count of Poitiers and also Count of Toulouse, through his wife, Joan, daughter of Raymond VII., put Philip in possession of those fair provinces. He at first possessed the count-ship of Toulouse merely with the title of count, and as a private domain which was not definitively incorporated with the crown of France until a century later. Certain disputes arose between England and France in respect of this great inheritance; and Philip ended them by ceding Agenois to Edward I., King of England, and keeping Quercy. He also ceded to Pope Urban IV. the county of Venaissin, with its capital Avignon, which the court of Rome claimed by virtue of a gift from Raymond VII., Count of Toulouse, and which, through a course of many disputations and vicissitudes, remained in possession of the Holy See until it was reunited to France on the 19th of February, 1797, by the treaty of Tolentino. But, notwithstanding these concessions, when Philip the Bold died, at Perpignan, the 5th of October, 1285, on his return from his expedition in Aragon, the sovereignty in Southern France, as far as the frontiers of Spain, had been won for the kingship of France.
A Flemish chronicler, a monk at Egmont, describes the character of Philip the Bold’s successor in the following words: “A certain King of France, also named Philip, eaten up by the fever of avarice and cupidity.” And that was not the only fever inherent in Philip IV., called The Handsome; he was a prey also to that of ambition, and, above all, to that of power. When he mounted the throne, at seventeen years of age, he was handsome, as his nickname tells us, cold, taciturn, harsh, brave at need, but without fire or dash, able in the formation of his designs, and obstinate in prosecuting them by craft or violence, by means of bribery or cruelty, with wit to choose and support his servants, passionately vindictive against his enemies, and faithless and unsympathetic towards his subjects, but from time to time taking care to conciliate them, either by calling them to his aid in his difficulties or his dangers, or by giving them protection against other oppressors. Never, perhaps, was king better served by circumstances or more successful in his enterprises; but he is the first of the Capetians who had a scandalous contempt for rights, abused success, and thrust the king-ship, in France, upon the high road of that arrogant and reckless egotism which is sometimes compatible with ability and glory, but which carries with it in the germ, and sooner or later brings out in full bloom, the native vices and fatal consequences of arbitrary and absolute power.
Away from his own kingdom, in his dealings with foreign countries, Philip the Handsome had a good fortune, which his predecessors had lacked, and which his successors lacked still more. Through William the Conqueror’s settlement in England and Henry II.‘s marriage with Eleanor of Aquitaine, the Kings of England had, by reason of their possessions and their claims in France, become the natural enemies of the Kings of France, and war was almost incessant between the two kingdoms. But Edward I., King of England, ever since his accession to the throne, in 1272, had his ideas fixed upon, and his constant efforts directed towards, the conquests of the countries of Wales and Scotland, so as to unite under his sway the whole island of Great Britain. The Welsh and the Scotch, from prince to peasant, offered an energetic resistance in defence of their independence; and it was only after seven years’ warfare, from 1277 to 1284, that the conquest of Wales by the English was accomplished, and the style of Prince of Wales became the title of the heir to the throne of England. Scotland, in spite of dissensions at home, made a longer and a more effectual resistance; and though it was reduced to submission, it was not conquered by Edward I. Two national heroes, William Wallace and Robert Bruce, excited against him insurrections which were often triumphant and always being renewed; and after having, during eighteen years of strife, maintained a precarious dominion in Scotland, Edward I. died, in 1307, without having acquired the sovereignty of it. But his persevering ardor in this two-fold enterprise kept him out of war with France; he did all he could to avoid it, and when the pressure of circumstances involved him in it for a time, he was anxious to escape from it. Being summoned to Paris by Philip the Handsome, in 1286, to swear fealty and homage on account of his domains in France, he repaired thither with a good grace, and, on his knees before his souzerain, repeated to him the solemn form of words, “I become your liegeman for the lands I hold of you this side the sea, according to the fashion of the peace which was made between our ancestors.” The conditions of this peace were confirmed, and, by a new treaty between the two princes, the annual payment of fifty thousand dollars to the King of England, in exchange for his claims over Normandy, was guaranteed to him, and Edward renounced his pretensions to Querey in consideration of a yearly sum of three thousand livres of Tours. In 1292, a quarrel and some hostilities at sea between the English and Norman commercial navies grew into a war between the two kings; and it dragged its slow length along for four years in the south-west of France. Edward made an alliance, in the north, with the Flemish, who were engaged in a deadly struggle with Philip the Handsome, and thereby lost Aquitaine for a season; but, in 1296, a truce was concluded between the belligerents, and though the importance of England’s commercial relations with Flanders decided Edward upon resuming his alliance with the Flemish, when, in 1300, war broke out again between them and France, he withdrew from it three years afterwards, and made a separate peace with Philip the Handsome, who gave him back Aquitaine. In 1306, fresh differences arose between the two kings; but before they had rekindled the torch of war, Edward I. died at the opening of a new campaign in Scotland, and his successor, Edward II., repaired to Boulogne, where he, in his turn, did homage to Philip the Handsome for the duchy of Aquitaine, and espoused Philip’s daughter Isabel, reputed to be the most beautiful woman in Europe. In spite, then, of frequent interruptions, the reign of Edward I. was on the whole a period of peace between England and France, being exempt, at any rate, from premeditated and obstinate hostilities.
In Southern France,
