English and French troops were now fighting each other as auxiliaries on Scottish soil, and it was obvious that the two countries must soon be involved in open strife. The final impulse was supplied by events in Flanders. In the fourteenth [Sidenote: Flanders.] century Flanders was the most important trading and manufacturing country in western Europe. Ghent was the Manchester, and Bruges the Liverpool, of that day. In Bruges we are told that merchants from seventeen kingdoms had settled homes, while strangers journeyed thither from all parts of the known world. It was the great centre-point of mediæval commerce, where the products of north, south, and east were brought together and exchanged against each other. Still more important to the Flemings themselves and to their relations with England was the manufacture of wool. England produced the longest and finest wool, which was woven into cloth and worsted on the looms of Ghent and Ypres. With France, on the other hand, the relations of the Flemings were purely political. The Count of Flanders, who found his subjects very difficult to govern, was the vassal of the French king, and his authority could hardly be maintained without the aid of his suzerain. To the material interests of the Flemings France was almost wholly alien. France, as contrasted with the other states of Europe, was little affected by the commercial spirit of the age. While Edward III. and the Black Prince, who appear in the pages of Froissart as mirrors of chivalry, were yet sufficiently practical to encourage the industrial interests of their subjects, the Valois kings pursued a totally different policy. They crushed industry by excessive and ill-judged imposts. They maintained no police to give safety to the foreign merchant, and foreign wares were kept out of France by the insecurity of the roads and the heavy duties upon imports. This difference is paralleled by the difference in the military system of the two countries. The English king, supported by the growing wealth of his subjects, was able to leave the majority of his people at home, and to make war with a well-paid and equipped mercenary army. The King of France, after extorting all he could wring from the pockets of his subjects, compelled them to serve in the old feudal array, and led them to be butchered by opponents who were numerically inferior, but had been trained to war, and were not distracted from the work before them by the sense that they were neglecting their material interests at home.