Why the long-bow should have remained, as in fact it did, the exclusive property of the English, is a mystery. It is true that archers could not stand alone: they required the assistance of troops differently armed, to protect them against determined attack by mailed horsemen in adequate numbers. It is true also that the long-bow needed considerable muscular strength for using it; and the average Englishman had probably the advantage in this respect over the average Frenchman, then as now. But Lowland Scots are to all intents and purposes of the same race, yet they went on generation after generation losing their fights large and small against the English, chiefly through the archers, yet never learning to shoot. The explanation may perhaps be that among all who came to feel the power of the clothyard shaft, feudal pride was too stubborn to be taught quickly, so that gunpowder was coming into use before they had digested the lesson. Whatever the cause, the fact is certain that the English kept their monopoly of the long-bow, and consequently were, for a century at least, supreme on the field of battle. CHAPTER V CRECY AND POITIERS A few months after the accession of Edward III., his uncle the king of France died. Edward had a claim in right of his mother, which, if the crown of France had been a bit of land, to be inherited according to the subtleties of English real property law, would have been plausible, if not sound. The conclusive answer to his claim however lay in the fact that France had a right to settle the matter in her own way. If there was a law of succession, which from the jurist's point of view is more than doubtful,[20] it was against Edward: if there was not, the peers of France, who must be taken to constitute France for this purpose, chose Philip of Valois. Edward's pretensions were not seriously urged, and he acknowledged the new king as his suzerain for the duchy of Guienne; but disputed questions were left open both as to the amount of territory belonging to Edward, and as to the nature of his homage for it to the king of France. Peace was not broken for ten years, but Philip VI. showed himself steadily hostile, assisting Edward's enemies in Scotland, interfering with English commerce, encroaching in Guienne. Philip was entirely unscrupulous, and naturally desirous of carrying on the work of his predecessors, by obtaining effective possession of another of the great feudal domains over which the king of France had titular suzerainty. The south-west had never acknowledged more than the most nominal inferiority: it is no paradox to say that the Plantagenets defended the ancient independence of Aquitaine against French aggression.[21] Nevertheless the people of Aquitaine had closer affinities of race and language with France than with England: the ultimate and natural result of the war was to make them French subjects.