Edward III. (England)

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Edward III. with Eduard Plantagenet . Contemporary book illumination

Edward III. ( English Edward ; born November 13, 1312 at Windsor Castle ; † June 21, 1377 in Sheen Palace , Richmond ) came from the Anjou-Plantagenet dynasty , was King of England from 1327 to 1377 and is considered one of the most important English rulers of the Middle Ages . After restoring the authority of the English king, he made his empire one of the best organized military powers in Europe. During his reign there was both the legislature - the English Parliamentgained power - as well as profound changes in the government. He remained on the English throne for 50 years, surpassed only by Henry III. , George III. , Victoria and Elizabeth II.

Life

Childhood and adolescence

Edward III, the eldest son of King Edward II and Isabella of France , had a difficult childhood. His father Edward II was considered a weak king. Allegations of favoritism and rumors of homosexual tendencies aroused resentment towards his rule.

In 1325 Edward III came. to the French court, where he took the feudal oath to Charles IV for the Duchy of Guyenne , which ended the war of Saint-Sardos between France and England. There had already been disputes between his two predecessors Eduard I and Eduard II and the French crown over the refusal to pay homage. The young heir to the throne recognized with his feudal oath the feudal sovereignty of France over this area and for himself the vassal status in the question of this possession. Shortly afterwards he was engaged to be married to Philippa von Hainaut . This included payments to his mother Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer , which enabled them to invade England and successfully campaign against Edward II. They found ample support among the discontented nobles, so that the king was imprisoned on November 16, 1326 and had to renounce the throne in January 1327. A few days after the abdication of his father Eduard III. crowned as King of England. The reign for the then 14-year-old was taken over by his mother and Roger Mortimer. Mortimer probably had Edward II murdered in prison on September 21, 1327.

Edward was theoretically King of England, but real rule was ruled by Roger Mortimer, the Earl of March. At the age of 16 Eduard married Philippa von Hennegau in 1328. When the two had a son two years later, Mortimer realized that his situation had worsened. After he had taken property and fiefdoms from some nobles and had the popular Earl of Kent executed, the nobility gradually withdrew their support.

Shortly before his 18th birthday, Eduard took advantage of this development and overthrew Roger Mortimer and Isabella in 1330. Mortimer was executed shortly afterwards while Isabella was placed under house arrest at Castle Rising Castle . From then on Eduard could actually exercise the rule over England.

War in Scotland

After taking power, Eduard managed to get the nobles who had supported Mortimer on his side.

After his father's defeat against the Scots, Eduard resumed the fight against the northern neighbors. He broke the Agreement between Edinburgh and Northampton and renewed the English claim to sovereignty in Scotland. He quickly won Berwick back and gained a victory in the Battle of Halidon Hill (1333) against King David II of Scotland. Then he procured the Scottish crown for his follower Edward Balliol . However, the Scots quickly recovered under Andrew Murray and defeated Balliol's followers, who were only a minority of the Scottish nobility, in the Battle of Culblean (1335). Even with the use of large armed forces, Eduard could not defeat the Scots. In 1337 only a few castles such as Edinburgh, Roxburgh and Stirling were owned by the English. Although Eduard concluded the Treaty of Berwick with David II in 1357 , who made him his vassal, he could no longer submit Scotland directly to the English crown.

The Hundred Years War

Edward III coat of arms with the coat of arms of the Plantagenet and the Capetians

After the death of the King of France, Charles IV. , In 1328, Edward III claimed. the French throne as the grandson of Philip IV . There followed a period of increasing tension in which the French King Philip VI. David II, who was in exile in France, and French ships attacked southern English coastal cities. In 1337 French troops occupied Edward's fiefdoms Aquitaine and the county of Ponthieu. In the same year Eduard Philipp declared war. Presumably, the dispute over Gascony played a bigger role than Edward's claim to the throne, which was comparatively weakly founded. This started the Hundred Years War .

Eduard made an alliance with Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian , he was Ludwig's guest in 1338 during his court days in Koblenz . He was also supported by numerous nobles and cities on the Rhine and in Flanders that had close economic ties with England. He also received loans from Italian banks such as Peruzzi and Bardi from Florence . Despite these allies, his successes were initially rather modest - with the exception of the naval battle of Sluis in 1340.

On January 26, 1340 Edward III declared himself. to the king of France . Only six years later, in 1346, did the first military successes follow: Eduard began a large-scale offensive by landing in Normandy with 15,000 men. His army captured Caen and marched through northern France. On August 26th he met the forces of the French king at Crécy , where he won one of the greatest victories of the war. In the meantime, his troops captured the returning Scottish King David II at home. After the pacification of the northern border, Eduard was able to concentrate on France.

Another success soon followed: the year-long siege of Calais ended with its conquest in 1347. According to tradition, Eduard wanted to hang six citizens out of anger over the long siege. Thereupon the pregnant Queen Philippa knelt before him to pray for her, whereupon Eduard spared her. Calais became a symbol for both sides: for the English it was a “bridgehead” to France, for the French it was a great disgrace.

From around 1346, Edward's eldest son, Edward of Woodstock , the "Black Prince", largely took over the warfare in France, while the king himself concentrated on Scotland. In 1347 Edward's ally, Emperor Ludwig, died and his son Ludwig V, Duke of Bavaria , offered his support to the English king should Eduard compete for the title of Roman Emperor against his rival Karl of Böhmen . On January 10, 1348, Eduard was elected the anti-king in Lahnstein, but on May 10, he finally renounced the Roman-German crown because he did not want to open a second theater of war in the empire. In 1348 the plague , which killed about a third of the European population, put an end to any further warfare. The Eduards family was not spared either: his daughter Johanna, who was on her way to her wedding with the King of Castile, died in Bordeaux.

Because of the prince's military successes, including the Battle of Poitiers (1356), the Peace of Brétigny came about in 1360 , in which Eduard renounced his claim to the French throne, but got Calais, Ponthieu and Aquitaine. In 1369 fighting broke out again in France, which in the following years led to the loss of the areas that had been won in the peace treaty.

The ongoing wars with their constantly rising costs also had domestic political consequences. The financial problems were exacerbated by two plague epidemics, the one already mentioned in 1348 and another from 1359 to 1361, as well as severe inflation . Eduard tried with the unpopular Statute of Laborers to contain the economic problems, but was largely unsuccessful. Since the parliament had to approve the tax collection by the king, it received numerous concessions from him. Eduard also bought the support of individual magnates through financial and legal concessions and a marriage policy that tied the large families of the country closely to the royal family.

In religious policy, Eduard pursued an anti-papal course, which culminated in 1366 with the revocation of papal suzerainty over England, which King John Ohneland had accepted in 1212.

old

In old age (from around 1371) Eduard III. senile and his once energetic rule was increasingly marked by indolence and military failures. After the death of his most important confidants and advisers, such as his wife Philippa or Henry von Grosmonts , one of Edward's most capable officers, power of government passed to a group of favorites and mistresses. Only his younger son John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster , who ran the affairs of state after the death of the Black Prince, knew anything about politics, but even he could not prevent the military failures. An attempt led by the king's second son, Lionel, to gain control of the Irish princes failed. In addition, after Poitiers there had been a series of setbacks for the English on the French front, since the new French King Charles V, together with his connectable Bertrand du Guesclin, thwarted every military project of the English and gradually regained the country that his father had had lost. After all, the English had only a small remnant of their possessions in France, namely Bordeaux, Calais and Bayonne.

The high taxes for failing companies in France led to the " Good Parliament " in 1376 , which forced the overthrow of powerful favorites around Alice Perrers in a development of power that was unique in English parliaments . The MPs also demanded an annual parliamentary session, the election and not the appointment of MPs, and laws against arbitrary government practices. The parliamentary decisions were directed mainly against John of Gaunt, who, however, curtailed the autonomy of parliament again a year later.

Eduard no longer had much to do with these events, since around 1375 he had given up all interference in politics. He probably died of a stroke in Sheen in 1377 and was buried in Westminster Abbey . His grandson, Richard II , succeeded him on the throne.

Cultural-historical aspects

Depiction of Edward with the Order of the Garter donated by him (illumination from the 15th century)

Language and art

During the time of Edward and his successor Richard II, one of the most important cultural and political turning points in English history took place. In the completion of a process that began with Edward I , Middle English was formed from the various English dialects as a common high-level language, which quickly replaced French. This was preceded by an assimilation process of the originally Norman, i.e. French-speaking, upper class. Edward III. was the last English king whose mother tongue was French. In 1362, English became the official language instead of the previously used French. In the same year, the Chancellor gave an opening speech in English to Parliament for the first time. In 1386 an English-language petition was received by parliament for the first time. In art, too, the English culture of this epoch increasingly broke away from French models.

National consciousness and nobility

The entire policy of Edward III. built on the nobility as a support for war and administration. While his father Eduard was constantly in conflict with most of the nobility, Eduard managed to establish a community between himself and his subordinates. Eduard made an ingenious move to unite the nobility with the establishment of the Order of the Garter (1348), which was modeled on King Arthur 's round table . In contrast to his predecessors, who had rarely bestowed the dignity of an earl, Eduard enfeoffed six followers with it in just one day in 1337. In addition, he created the new title of duke, which was given to his close relatives. Because of his war policy, the king needed the nobility and at the same time a strengthening of the national identity. The fear of a French invasion created a sense of national unity and increasingly included the aristocrats in the emerging nation; Until then, since the conquest of England in 1066, they had often felt more like French than English. Only under Edward did the upper class finally begin to understand themselves as English, which was also reflected in the increasing use of the English language.

Judgment by historians

Edward III. enjoyed a popularity hitherto unknown to English kings and even the problems during his later reign were never blamed on the king himself. Edward's contemporary, the historian and most important chronicler of the Hundred Years War, Jean Froissart , wrote in his chronicles that "there has been no one of his kind since the days of King Arthur". This view persisted long before the image of the king changed. The historian and Bishop of Oxford William Stubbs found that his efforts to conquer France had been unnecessary and criticized that he had neglected his responsibility for his own nation and did too little to develop Parliament. This view has long remained a historical common property because of Stubbs' great influence. It was not until the mediaevalist May McKisack practiced Edward III in an article in 1960 . and the Historians Criticism of Stubbs' Opinion. In their view, it was not the job of a medieval king to work for a parliamentary monarchy, but rather to maintain order and solve problems. According to McKisack, Edward III succeeded. this. This positive view is also shared in more recent research. It was not until the historian Norman Cantor described Eduard as "greedy and sadistic" and as "destructive and merciless". W. Mark Ormrod, who spent decades with Eduard III. and published the new standard biography in 2011, regards Eduard very positively and as a great ruler.

character

Edward's youth were marked by power struggles that led to the murder of his father's confidants. He had to stand idly by the fact that his mother and her lover had his father murdered and then ran the business of government themselves. For all that is known of Edward's character, he was impulsive and spirited. At the same time, however, he was also known for his gentleness, which was probably also due to his wife Philippa. So, at their request, he spared the citizens of Calais .

Both in his religious views and in his interests Eduard was an ordinary man for this time. His favorite pastimes were war, hunting and tournaments. What was unusual for his time was his extraordinary affection for his wife Philippa. While marriage was primarily viewed among nobles as a means of alliance politics during this period, he seems to have really loved his wife. Despite this happy marriage, he was likely surrounded by mistresses and courtesans. The historian Ian Morton advocates a thesis that is contrary to the usual doctrine: According to him, there is no evidence of a love affair other than the relationship with Alice Perrers when Philippa was already sick. It was also unusual for a king of his time that none of his five adult sons ever tried to act against his will or to depose him, which suggests a good father-son relationship.

Pedigree

 
 
 
 
 
 Henry III. Kg. Of England (1207-1272)
 
 
 
 
 Edward I , King of England (1239–1307)
 
 
 
 
 
 Eleanor of Provence (around 1223–1291)
 
 
 
 Edward II , King of England (1284-1327),
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Ferdinand III. of Castile (1199–1252)
 
 
 
 Eleanor of Castile (1241-1290)
 
 
 
 
 
 Johanna von Dammartin (died 1279)
 
 
 
 Edward III. King of England
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Philip III Kg. Of France (1245–1285)
 
 
 
 Philip IV , King of France (1268-1314)
 
 
 
 
 
 Isabella of Aragón (around 1243–1271)
 
 
 
 Isabelle de France (around 1295–1358)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Henry I of Navarre (around 1244–1274)
 
 
 
 Joan I of Navarre (1273–1305)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Blanche d'Artois (1248–1302)
 
 

The children of Edward III. and the Wars of the Roses

In the Wars of the Roses , the descendants of Edward III fought. for the English throne. Each branch of the family claimed to have a greater claim to the throne than the others. The opponents justified their claims, among other things, with the fact that their ancestors were older, that they descended from Eduard in the male line or that they came from a legitimate marriage. Edward's children were specifically:

  1. ∞ Blanche of Lancaster
  2. ∞ Constance of Castile
  3. ∞ Catherine Swynford
His legitimate heirs were the Lancasters : Henry IV , who succeeded his cousin Richard II , Henry V and Henry VI. who lost the throne to Edward IV , the first king of the house of York. Henry VI's only child, Edward of Westminster , fell at the Battle of Tewkesbury , so the Lancaster Line after the assassination of Henry VI. died out. John's heirs from his third marriage, legitimized but excluded from the line of succession, were the Beauforts . The Tudor family goes back to his great-granddaughter Margaret Beaufort.

reception

literature

Lexicons

Biographies

  • Ian Mortimer: The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III, Father of the English Nation. Jonathan Cape, London 2006, ISBN 0-224-07301-X .
  • W. Mark Ormrod: Edward III. Yale University Press, New Haven / London 2011. [standard work]
  • Jonathan Sumption : Edward III. A Heroic Failure (Penguin Monarchs). Allen Lane, London 2016.

Representations and specialist articles

  • May McKisack: Edward III and the historians. In: History 45, 1960, pp. 1-15.
  • W. Mark Ormrod: The Reign of Edward III. Yale University Press, New Haven / London 1990, ISBN 0-300-04876-9 .

Web links

Commons : Edward III. (England)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Royal Richmond timeline ( Memento of the original from July 6, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (There spelling Shene ; Sheen Palace is e.g. in Anthony Emery: Greater Medieval Houses of England and Wales, 1300-1500: East Anglia, Central England, and Wales . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2000, ISBN 978-0-521 -58131-8 , p. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.richmond.gov.uk 350 ( in Google Books ). )
  2. ↑ Ormrod, Reign of Edward III , p. 1.
  3. ^ William Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England , cited in McKisack, Edward III and the historians , p. 3.
  4. ↑ McKisack, Edward III and the historians , p. 4
  5. ↑ See Norman Cantor: In the Wake of the Plague , New York 2001, p. 37 f.
predecessor government office successor
Edward II King of England
1327–1377 		Richard II
Edward II Lord of Ireland
1327-1377 		Richard II
Edward II Duke of Guyenne
1325-1362 		Edward of Woodstock
Edward of Woodstock Duke of Guyenne
1376-1377 		Richard II
personal data
SURNAME Edward III.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Edward III
BRIEF DESCRIPTION King of England
BIRTH DATE November 13, 1312
PLACE OF BIRTH Windsor Castle
DATE OF DEATH June 21, 1377
PLACE OF DEATH Sheen Palace , Richmond , London