Philip IV, surnamed the Fair, was but seventeen when he succeeded his father in 1285. He ridded himself, as far as possible by treaties, of futile wars, and occupied himself in place of conquest with increasing his domains by acquisitions within his reach. His marriage with the heiress of Navarre and Champagne had only been worth two great provinces to him. A decree of parliament which despoiled the heirs of Hugh de Lusignan secured him La Marche and Angoumois. Then his second son married the heiress of Franche-Comté; thus through marriage, escheat, or conquest all France came little by little into the royal domain. But powerful vassals still remained--the duke of Brittany, the count of Flanders, and especially the duke of Guienne. Philip began by attacking the last. He was a formidable adversary since he was at the same time king of England. Fortunately Edward I, who had just subdued the Welsh and was now threatening the independence of Scotland, was too much occupied in his own island to come over to the continent, and owing to this the royal army was able to make rapid progress in Guienne. A French fleet went to pillage Dover; and another army led by the king in person made its way into Flanders, where the count had declared for the king of England, and beat the Flemings at Furnes (Veurne) (1297). The intervention of Pope Boniface VIII established a peace between the two kings which was sealed by a marriage. A daughter of Philip the Fair wedded the son of Edward I and gave the English house rights to the throne of France which Edward III in due time asserted (1299). By this peace the two kings gave up their allies, Philip the Scotch, and Edward the count of Flanders. The latter in terror hastened to place himself under the protection of Philip and Flanders was reunited to the domain (1300). [Illustration: PHILIP III] [Sidenote: [1300-1302 A.D.]] The whole French court went to visit the new acquisition. It was received with great pomp; the Flemings, to do honour to their noble visitors, donned their best attire and displayed all their riches. The entrance into Bruges was especially magnificent. The bourgeois wives showed such gold and jewels in their toilets that the queen felt her woman’s vanity wounded. “I thought,” she said, “there was but one queen of France; now I see six hundred.” Flanders was in truth the richest country in Europe because it was there that the people worked hardest. In that fruitful land men had sprung up like crops, towns were numerous, and the population active and industrious, devoted, like the Guienne towns--especially Bordeaux, because the English bought their wines--to England, whence came the wool necessary to their manufactures. Flemish cloth sold throughout the whole of Christendom as far as Constantinople, and the towns of the Low Countries formed the market where the productions of the north from the Baltic were exchanged for those of the south brought from Venice and the east of Italy down the Rhine.