Philip IV of France - War With The English

War With The English

As Duke of Aquitaine, the English king Edward I was a vassal to Philip, and had to pay him homage. Following the Fall of Acre in 1291 however, the former allies started to show dissent.

In 1293 following a naval incident between the Normans and the English, Philip summoned Edward to the French court. The English King sought to negotiate the matter and sent ambassadors to Paris but they were turned away with a blunt refusal. Negotiation was for Kings, Edward was addressed by Philip as a Duke, a vassal and nothing more, despite the incident having been an international one between England and France and not an internal one involving Gascony.

Attempting to use their family connections to achieve what open politics hadn't, Edward sent his brother Edmund Crouchback (who was both Philip's cousin and step-father-in-law) to come to an agreement with the French Royal family that would avert war. This agreement stated that Edward would voluntarily relinquish his continental lands to Philip as a sign of submission in his capacity as Duke of Aquitaine and in return Philip would forgive him and restore his land after a grace period.

But Edward, Edmund and the English were deceived. The French had no intention of returning the land to the English monarch. Edward kept up his part of the deal and turned over his continental estates to the French but Philip used the pretext that the English King had refused his summons to strip Edward of all his possessions in France, thereby initiating hostilities with England.

The outbreak of hostilities with England in 1294 was the inevitable result of the competitive expansionist monarchies, triggered by a secret Franco-Scottish pact of mutual assistance against Edward I, who was Philip's brother-in-law, having married Philip's sister Margaret; inconclusive campaigns for the control of Gascony to the southwest of France were fought in 1294–98 and 1300–03. Philip gained Guienne but was forced to return it. The search for income to cover military expenditures set its stamp on Philip's reign and his contemporary reputation. Pursuant to the terms of the Treaty of Paris (1303), the marriage of Philip's daughter Isabella to the Prince of Wales, heir of Philip's enemy, celebrated at Boulogne, 25 January 1308, was meant to seal a peace; instead it would produce an eventual English claimant to the French throne itself, and the Hundred Years' War.