Philip VI. had been involved in a Flemish war at the very beginning of his reign. The citizens of West Flanders, headed by Bruges and Ypres, rose in revolt against their Count, Lewis, who appealed for aid to the French king. A feudal army was led to his assistance, and the citizens, weakened by the abstention of Ghent, were crushed at the battle of Cassel (1328). The Flemings had to suffer, not only for their unsuccessful rebellion, but also for their previous victory at Courtrai, which had now been so ruinously reversed. Their leaders were mercilessly hunted to death, the town charters were confiscated, and their fortifications razed to the ground. The authority of the count was restored, but he was more than ever the dependent vassal of the French king. In 1336, at the command of Philip VI., he ordered the imprisonment of all Englishmen in Flanders. Edward III. promptly retaliated by prohibiting the exportation of English wool and the import of foreign cloth. Flemish artisans were induced to emigrate to England, and to lay the foundations of a prosperous woollen manufacture in Norfolk. These events, which may be taken as the actual origin of the hundred years’ war, illustrate the folly and recklessness of [Sidenote: Alliance of England with the Flemings.] Philip VI. So far his quarrel with Edward III. in Aquitaine and in Scotland had been a personal quarrel; and the English people, though reluctant to lose the profitable trade with Bordeaux, were by no means enthusiastic either for the continental dominions of their king, or even for the establishment of his suzerainty over Scotland. But to strike at English trade with Flanders was to inflict a mortal blow at the most sensitive of English interests. From this time the quarrel with France became a national as well as a royal quarrel, and Edward could count upon the unanimous support of his subjects. Still more serious was the effect of Philip’s action in Flanders. In the fourteenth century, as in the Napoleonic wars at the beginning of the nineteenth century, England had the stronger position in a trade dispute with the Continent. The Flemish market was important to England, but English wool was indispensable to Flanders. The reprisals of Edward III., forced upon him by the action of the French king, threatened the Flemings with the ruin of their most important industry. A new rising, more formidable than that of 1328, was at once planned. Ghent, which had then held aloof, was now prepared to play its part; and in Ghent arose a leader, Jacob van [Sidenote: Jacob van Artevelde.] Artevelde, whose eloquence and decision gave him for a time practical omnipotence, while his guidance gave to the movement a unity and consistency which previous rebellions had too often lacked. His avowed object was to restore the supply of wool to the Flemish looms, and for this purpose to establish friendly relations with England. He assembled at Ghent the men of the chief cities, and ‘showed them that