Shakespeare's Kings (120 page)

This
book
has
covered,
very
sketchily,
a
century
and
a
half
of
English history,
forming
the
framework
of
Shakespeare's
nine
greatest
historical plays.
The
story
is
one
of
almost
incessant
fighting:
first
comes
the Hundred
Years
War
with
France,
and
then
those
three
further
decades
of the
Wars
of
the
Roses
during
which
Englishmen
confronted
not
the French
but
their
own
compatriots.
Both
conflicts
are
misleadingly named.
The
former
lasted
a
good
deal
longer
even
than
its
epithet implies,
while
the
second
possessed
neither
beauty
nor
romance
-
and, to
those
involved,
smelt
anything
but
sweet.
On
the
other
hand,
they did
the
country
comparatively
little
material
harm.
These
were
still medieval
wars.
The
armies
were
tiny
by
modern
standards.
For
the individual
soldiers
there
was,
as
there
has
always
been,
the
risk
of
being killed
or
wounded;
but
the
survivors
of the
fighting
in
France
quite often
returned
with
their
pockets
stuffed
with
ransom
money,
dragging behind
them
whole
cartloads
of
plunder.
Civil
war
admittedly
exacted a
heavier
price
on
the
domestic
population,
especially
in
the
regions through
which
the
armies
marched;
but
the
fighting,
nightmarish
as much
of
it
must
have
been,
continued
for
a
total
of
only
thirteen weeks.
To
the
vast
majority
of the
King's
subjects
the
rival
claims
and counter-claims,
the
conflicts
and
ambitions
of
the
nobility
must
have seemed
remote
indeed.
They
too
had
their
struggles,
as
they
had
always had
-
against
the
elements,
against
economic
depression,
against
the in
i
quity
of
a
landlord
or
the
injustice
of
a
magistrate;
but
life
for
them continued
largely
unchanged,
and
would
continue
to
do
so
for
many years
to
come.

The
true
cost
of the
wars
was
not
material
but
moral.
Under
the
old feudal
system
the
vassal
had
given
his
service
to
his
lord,
for
a
fixed number
of
days
per
year,
in
return
for
the
land
which
the
lord
allowed him
to
farm;
but
the
old
feudal
system
was
slowly
breaking
down,
and
as it
did
so
there
was
an
increasing
need
for
professional
or
semi-professional

armies,
who
would
stay
in
the
field
over
a
protracted
campaign,
and who
sold
their
services
for
money
-
and
the
hope
of
plunder
-
not necessarily
to
their
lord
but
to
the
highest
bidder.
Thus
there
grew
up private
militias
who
owed
their
allegiance
to
whoever
was
prepared
to pay
them
and
who,
when
the
fighting
was
over
and
they
could
no longer
find
legitimate
occupation
for
their
swords,
turned
into
armed bands
of
marauders
who
would
devastate
one
village
after
another, helping
themselves
to
its
food
and
its
women
and
then
moving
on
to the
next.

A
strong
ruler
could
have
done
much
to
limit
the
damage;
it
was England's
misfortune,
in
the
fourteenth
and
fifteenth
centuries,
to
suffer some
of
the
worst
kings
who
have
ever
disgraced
a
throne.
Edward
III was
quite
obviously
not
one
of
them:
he
had
at
least
succeeded
in re-establishing
the
prestige
of
the
monarchy
after
the
deposition
and murder
of
his
contemptible
father.
But
his
decision
(taken
largely
for the
sake
of
providing
employment
and
occupation
for
the
turbulent magnates
who
threatened
to
make
trouble
at
home)
to
mount
an aggressive
war
for
the
French
throne
was
to
cause
untold
suffering
to the
people
of
France
and
to
cost,
over
the
next
120
years,
countl
ess thousands
of
English
lives.
Moreover
-
and
this,
in
the
long
run,
was to
prove
almost
as
catastrophic
-
he
had
far
too
many
children.
For
a king
to
have
seven
sons,
in
an
age
when
the
laws
of
succession
were vague
and
unwritten,
was
a
virtual
recipe
for
disaster;
and
it
was
the slow,
relentless
unfolding
of
that
disaster
that
gave
Shakespeare
his theme.

The
premature
death
of
the
Black
Prince
was
another
tragedy.
Had the
Prince
kept
his
health
and
outlived
his
father,
his
son
Richard
II might
still
have
succeeded
him;
but
it
would
have
been
an
older
Richard, perhaps
even
a
wiser
one
-
a
Richard
who
might,
with
any
luck,
have outgrown
that
mercifully
rare
combination
of
fecklessness
and
arrogance that
caused
his
downfall.
He
might
even,
one
would
have
thought, have
learnt
a
lesson
from
the
fall
of
his
great-grandfather
Edward
II; instead,
with
his
worthless,
self-seeking
favourites
and
his
ill-concealed contempt
for
the
barons
on
whom
his
crown
depended,
he
seemed almost
wilfully
to
copy
him
-
thereby
precipitating
another
revolution and
forfeiting,
as
Edward
had
forfeited,
both
his
throne
and,
ultimately, his
life.
Henry
IV,
who
deposed
him,
was
by
no
means
incapable;
but he
never
managed
to
live
down
his
usurpation
of
the
throne,
and
he