In the first half of the fourteenth century it was a danger of exactly the kind alluded to above that menaced the kingdom of France: a foreign prince claimed the throne as his heritage through his mother. In order to understand the absolute futility of the claim made by Edward III. of England, based on the alleged rights of his mother, Isabelle de France, daughter of Philippe le Bel, it is necessary only to recall that both Isabelle's brothers, Louis le Hutin and Charles le Bel, had left daughters who would have had prior rights if any woman could have inherited. The potent reasons of public polity which would also have absolutely excluded Isabelle and Edward III. have been mentioned above, and are stated in a different way by Froissart. He says that after the death of Charles IV., "the twelve peers and all the barons of France would not give the realm to Isabel the sister (of Charles IV., Louis X., and Philippe V.), who was queen of England, because they said and maintained, and yet do, that the realm of France is so noble that it ought not to go to a woman, and so consequently not to Isabel, nor to the king of England her eldest son: for they determined the son of the woman to have no right nor succession by his mother, since they declared the mother to have no right: so that by these reasons the twelve peers and barons of France by their common accord did give the realm of France to the lord Philip of Valois, nephew sometime to Philip le Beau king of France." Then, as all the world knows, ensued the great wars between France and England of which Froissart tells with such evident enjoyment of deeds of valor and splendid martial pageants; for, he says, "sith the time of the good Charlemagne, king of France, there never fell so great adventures." The history of the Hundred Years' War is quite beyond the scope of this volume; but let us be humble camp followers of the great armies that march across Froissart's pages, where perchance we may find some women as amazons, as heroines, or as pitiful victims in this sanguinary and ruinous conflict.