years and then died, leaving only daughters, and the question arose
whether the inheritance should go to females. When Louis X. died, in
1316, his brother Philip, after waiting for the birth of a posthumous
child who only lived a few days, took the crown, and the Parliament then
declared that the law of the old Salian Franks had been against the
inheritance of women. By this newly discovered Salic law, Charles IV.,
the third brother, reigned on Philip's death; but the kingdom of Navarre
having accrued to the family through their grandmother, and not being
subject to the Salic law, went to the eldest daughter of Louis X., Jane,
wife of the Count of Evreux.




CHAPTER II.

THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR.


1. Wars of Edward III.--By the Salic law, as the lawyers called it,
the crown was given, on the death of Charles IV., to _Philip, Count of
Valois_, son to a brother of Philip IV., but it was claimed by Edward
III. of England as son of the daughter of Philip IV. Edward contented
himself, however, with the mere assertion of his pretensions, until
Philip exasperated him by attacks on the borders of Guienne, which the
French kings had long been coveting to complete their possession of the
south, and by demanding the surrender of Robert of Artois, who, being
disappointed in his claim to the county of Artois by the judgment of the
Parliament of Paris, was practising by sorcery on the life of the King
of France. Edward then declared war, and his supposed right caused a