by Galeazzo Visconti that he had, in fact, yielded everything while believing himself victorious, and had come home without even having engaged in a skirmish. One needed to beware above all of any enterprise in which he was engaged. None of which prevented Philippe of Valois being Robert’s best and closest friend, as well as his brother-in-law. But, indeed, you can think what you like of your friends, provided you don’t tell them.
Roger Mortimer had paled a little on hearing Philippe of Valois’s suggestion. For if he was King Edward’s adversary and enemy, England was nevertheless still his country.
‘For the moment,’ he said, ‘the Scots are being more or less peaceful; they appear to be respecting the treaty they imposed on Edward a year ago.’
‘But, really,’ said Robert, ‘to get to Scotland you have to cross the sea. Let’s keep our ships for the crusade. But we have better grounds on which to defy that bugger Edward. He has failed to render homage for Aquitaine. If we forced him to come and defend his rights to his duchy in France, and then went and crushed him we should, in the first place, all be avenged and, in the second, he’d stay quiet enough during our absence.’
Valois was fiddling with his rings and reflecting. Once again Robert was showing himself to be a wise counsellor. Robert’s suggestion was still vague, but already Valois was visualizing its implications. Aquitaine was far from unknown territory to him; he had campaigned there – his first, great and victorious campaign – in 1294.
‘It would undoubtedly be good training for our knights, who have not been properly to war for a long time now,’ he said; ‘and also an opportunity of trying out this gunpowder artillery the Italians are beginning to make use of and which our old friend Tolomei offers to supply us with. And the King of France can certainly sequester the Duchy of Aquitaine owing to the default in rendering homage for it.’
He thought for a moment.
‘But it won’t necessarily lead to a real campaign,’ he went on. ‘As usual, there’ll be negotiations; it’ll become a matter for parliaments and embassies. And eventually the homage will be rendered with a bad grace. It’s not really a completely safe pretext.’
Robert of Artois sat down again, his elbows on his knees, his fists supporting his chin.
‘We can find a more sure pretext than a mere failure to render homage,’ he said. ‘I have no need to inform you, Cousin Mortimer, of all the difficulties, quarrels and battles to which Aquitaine has given rise since Duchess Alienor, having made her first husband, our King Louis VII, so notorious a cuckold that their marriage was dissolved, took her wanton body and her duchy to your King Henry II of England. Nor need I tell you of the treaty with which our good King Saint Louis, who did his best to put things on an equitable basis, tried to put a term to a hundred years of war.15 But equity goes for nothing in settlements between kingdoms. The treaty Monseigneur Saint Louis concluded with Henry III Plantagenet, in the Year of Grace 1259, was so confused that a cat couldn’t have found her kittens in it. Even the Seneschal de Joinville, your wife’s great-uncle, Cousin Mortimer, who was devoted to the sainted King, advised him not to sign it. Indeed, we have to admit frankly that the treaty was a piece of folly.’
Robert felt like adding: ‘As was also everything else Saint Louis did, for he was undoubtedly the most disastrous king we ever had. What with his ruinous crusades, his botched treaties, and his moral laws in which what is black in one passage is discovered to be white in another … Oh, how much happier France would have been had she been spared that reign! And yet, since Saint Louis’s death, everyone regrets him, for their recollection is at fault; they remember only how he dealt out justice under an oak and, through listening to the lies of bumpkins, wasted the time he should have been devoting to the kingdom.’
He went on: ‘Since the death of Saint Louis, there has been nothing but disputes, arguments, treaties concluded and broken, homage paid with reservations, hearings by Parliament, plaintiffs non-suited or condemned, rebellions in those lands and then further prosecutions. But when you, Charles, were sent by your brother Philip the Fair into Aquitaine,’ Robert asked, turning to Valois, ‘and so effectively restored order there, what were the actual motives given for your expedition?’
‘Serious rioting in Bayonne, where French and English sailors had come to blows and shed blood.’
‘Very well!’ cried Robert. ‘We must organize an occasion for more rioting like that of Bayonne. We must take steps to see that somewhere or other the subjects of the two Kings come to serious blows and that a few people get killed. And I believe I know the very place for it.’
He pointed his huge forefinger at them and went on: ‘In the Treaty of Paris, confirmed by the peace of 1303, and reviewed by the jurists of Périgueux in the year 1311, the case of certain lordships, which are called privileged, has always been reserved, for though they lie within the borders of Aquitaine, they owe direct allegiance to the King of France. And these lordships themselves have dependencies, vassal territories, in Aquitaine, but it has never been definitely decided whether these dependencies are subject to the King of France or to the Duke of Aquitaine. You see the point?’
‘I do,’ said Monseigneur of Valois.
His son, Philippe, did not see it. He opened wide blue eyes and his failure to understand was so obvious that his father explained: ‘It’s quite simple, my boy. Suppose I gave you, as if it were a fief, the whole of this house, but reserved to myself the use and free disposal of this room in which we are now sitting. And this room has, as a dependency, the ante-room which controls this door. Which of us enjoys rights over the ante-room and is responsible for its furnishing and cleaning? The whole plan,’ Valois added, turning back to Robert, ‘depends on being able to arrange action of sufficient importance to compel Edward to make a rejoinder.’
‘There’s a very suitable dependency,’ the giant replied, ‘in the lands of Saint-Sardos, which appertain to the Priory of Sarlat in the diocese of Périgueux. Their status was argued when Philip the Fair agreed to a Treaty of Association with the Prior of Sarlat, which made the King of France co-lord of that lordship. Edward I appealed to the Parliament of Paris, but nothing was decided.16 If the King of France, as co-lord of Sarlat, builds a castle in the dependency of Saint-Sardos and puts into it a strong garrison threatening the surrounding territory, what does the King of England, as Duke of Aquitaine, do about it? He must clearly give orders to his Seneschal to oppose it, and will want to station troops there himself. And the first time a couple of soldiers meet, or an officer of the King is maltreated or even insulted …’
Robert spread wide his great hands as if the result was obvious. And Monseigneur of Valois, in his blue, gold-embroidered, velvet robes, rose from his throne. He could already see himself in the saddle, at the head of his banners; he would leave for Guyenne where, thirty years ago, he had won a great victory for the King of France.
‘I congratulate you, Brother,’ cried Philippe of Valois, ‘on the fact that so distinguished a knight as you are should also have as great a knowledge of procedure as a lawyer.’
‘Oh, there’s no great merit attached to that, you know, Brother. It’s not from any particular liking that I’ve been led to inquire into the laws of France and the edicts of Parliament; it’s due to my lawsuit about Artois. And since, so far, it has been no use to me, let it at least be some use to my friends,’ said Robert of Artois, bowing slightly to Roger Mortimer, as if this whole great affair was being organized entirely for his benefit.
‘Your coming has been of great assistance to us, my lord,’ said Charles of Valois, ‘for our causes are linked, and we shall not fail to ask you most strictly for your counsel throughout this enterprise, which may God protect!’
Mortimer
