France Author:Robert Black, M. François Guizot, Henriette Elizabeth Witt, Mayo Williamson Hazeltine Volume: 2 General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1898 Original Publisher: P. F. Collier Subjects: France History / Europe / France Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you ... more »get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER XX. THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. -- PHILIP VI. AND JOHN U. We have just been spectators at the labor of formation of the French kingship and the French nation. We have seen monarchical unity and national unity rising little by little out of and above the feudal system, which had been the first result of barbarians settling upon the ruins of the Koman empire. In the fourteenth century a new and a vital question arose: Will the French dominion preserve its nationality? Will the kingship remain French or pass to the foreigner? This question brought ravages upon France and kept her fortunes in suspense for a hundred years of war with England, from the reign of Philip of Valois to that of Charles VII.; and a young girl of Lorraine, called Joan of Arc, had the glory of communicating to France that decisive impulse which brought to a triumphant issue the independence of the French nation and kingship. As we have seen in the preceding chapter, the elevation of Philip of Valois to the throne, as representative of the male line amongst the descendants of Hugh Capet, took place by virtue not of any old written law, but of a traditional right recognized and confirmed by two recent resolutions taken at the death of the two eldest sons of Philip the Handsome. The right thus promulgated became at once a fact accepted by the whole of France; Philip of Valois had for rival none but a foreign prince, and "there was no mind in France," say contemporary chroniclers, " to be subjects of the king of England." Some weeks after his a...« less