The Hundred Years War

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I will cross the ocean, my subjects with me, and I will go through the Cambresis . . . I will set the nation on fire and there I will anticipate my human foe, Philip of Valois, who wears the fleur-de-lys . . . I will fight him . . . regardless of whether I have just one man to his ten. Does he accept he can take my property from me? I once paid him praise, which frustrates me now, I was youthful; that isn’t worth two ears of corn. I vow to him as ruler, by St George, and St-Denis that . . . neither youth nor respectable at any point claimed such tribute in France as I mean to do.1Anon., Vow of the Heron (c.1340)According to the unknown creator of the Vow of the Heron, King Edward III started the Hundred Years War with these words. The sonnet tells how the French aristocrat Robert d’Artois looked for a haven in England and urged the youthful ruler into waging war against Philippe VI. Robert is said to have freely insulted Edward, blaming him for downright weakness, and to underscore his point he gave him a heron pie – the heron being the most cowardly of flying creatures.