government, in the improvement and completion of administrative machinery, and in the removal of all obstacles in the way of an efficient despotism. These are achievements which escape the notice of historians who are attracted by the heroes of chivalry, but they produce far more definite and deep-seated results than the most brilliant exploits on the battlefield. It must be admitted that Philip IV. was cruel and cold-blooded; that his regard for the letter of the law was a mere disguise for unscrupulousness; that this unscrupulousness was the more repulsive for the hypocrisy which could always find pretexts to justify it; it may even be admitted that his failures in external politics outweighed his successes,—yet he must be always memorable as the real founder of that administrative centralisation which has ever since been the dominant characteristic of the government of France, and has been a prominent cause of the subsequent greatness, if also of the subsequent disasters, of that country. If this estimate of the reign be correct, it is obvious that we need not linger long over Philip’s foreign relations, and that our attention will be better devoted to his domestic measures. The war with Aragon, which he inherited, never interested him, as the only possible gainers by it were his brother and his cousin. After lasting for nearly twenty years, it ended in the final loss of Sicily by the House of Anjou, and the abandonment by Charles of Valois of his claims on Aragon on condition that his cousin, Charles II. of Naples, should give up to him his appanages of Anjou and Maine. Before this settlement had been arrived at, Philip had turned his attention to a far more exciting enterprise—the attempt to [Sidenote: Wars with England.] wrest Guienne and Gascony from Edward I. of England. These provinces had been united to the English crown since the marriage of Henry II. with Eleanor of Aquitaine, and on the whole they were fairly satisfied to remain subject to their distant ruler, whose island kingdom gave them a convenient market for the produce of their vineyards. But Edward I. had his hands full with the suppression of discontent in his recent conquests in Wales, and with enforcing his lately acknowledged suzerainty over Scotland. This gave Philip IV. an opportunity which he was not slow to seize. Taking advantage of a naval quarrel between some Norman sailors and the mariners of the Cinque Ports, and of the refusal of the Gascons to acknowledge the judicial authority of the French courts, Philip summoned Edward I. to appear before him to answer for the breach of his obligations as a vassal (November, 1293). Edward was aware that a contumacious attitude towards his suzerain would set a dangerous example to John Balliol in Scotland, and did all in his power to avoid a rupture. Unable to go to France in person he sent as a proxy his brother Edmund, who had married Philip’s mother-in-law, Blanche of Artois. On