Иностранный язык. Мартемьянова Н.В. - 26 стр.

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    The problem was that England could not grow grapes to produce the wine that
many of the English now favored and had to import it. A triangular trade arose in
which English fleece was exchanged for Flemish cloth, which was then taken to
southern France and exchanged for wine, which was then shipped into England and
Ireland, primarily through the ports of Dublin, Bristol, and London.
    But the counts of Flanders had been vassals of the king of France, and the
French tried to regain control its wealth. The English could not permit this, since it
would mean that the French monarch would control their main of foreign exchange.
A civil war soon broke out in Flanders, with the English supporting the
manufacturing middle class and the French supporting the land-owning nobility.
The Struggle for Control France
    The English king controlled much of France, particularly in the fertile South.
These lands had come under control of the English when Eleanor of Aquitaine,
heiress to the region, had married Henry II of England in the mid-12th century. There
was constant bickering along the French-English frontier, and the French kings
always had to fear an English invasion from the South. Between Flanders in the
North and the English in the South, they were caught in a “nutcracker”.
The “Auld Alliance”
     The French responded by creating their own “nutcracker». They allied with the
Scots in an arrangement that persisted well into the 18th century. Thus the English
faced the French from the south and the Scots from the north. The Battle for the
channel and North Sea, the French nutcracker would only work in the French could
invade England across the English Channel.(The French call it ‘La Manche’, ‘The
Sleeve’.) Besides, England could support their Flemish allies only if they could send
aid across the North Sea, and, moreover, English trade was dependent upon the free
flow of naval traffic through the Channel. Consequently, the French continually
tried to gain the upper hand at sea, and the English constantly resisted them. Both
sides commissioned what would have been pirates if they had not been operating
with royal permission to prey upon each other’s shipping, and there were frequent
naval clashes in those constricted waters.
The Dynastic Conflict
    The last son of King Philip IV(The Fair) died in 1328, and the direct male line of
the Capetians finally ended after almost 350 years. Philip had had a daughter,
however. This daughter, Isabelle, had married King Edward II of England, and King
Edward III was their son. He was therefore Philip’s grandson and successor in a
direct line through Philip’s daughter. The French could not tolerate the idea that
Edward might become King of France, and French lawyers brought up some old
Frankish laws, the so-called Salic Law, which stated that property (including the
throne) could not descend through a female. The French then gave the crown to
Philip of Valois, a nephew of Philip IV. Nevertheless, Edward III had a valid claim
to the throne of France if he wished to pursue it.