The Auld Alliance, sort of

On this day in 1295 – or yesterday, according to the online text – the precursor to the 'Auld Alliance' was sealed in Paris. One interpretation is that the treaty was one of mutual aid, intended to deter further English aggression towards both kingdoms.

The English were certainly the aggressors in Scotland, where Edward I had manipulated the Scottish succession crisis from start to finish. In France, however, it was the precise opposite. Philip the Fair provoked a war in Gascony by deliberately breaking his word to Edward's brother, Edmund of Lancaster. His policy was every bit as devious and dishonest, with malice aforethought, as Edward's policy in Scotland. One Edwardian scholar, Maurice Powicke, remarked that the policy of the two kings in these respects was almost like a 'sick parody' of the other.

Very few French historians have attempted to defend Philip's conduct. J Trabut-Cussac, editor of the Gascon register, remarked that he found it impossible to doubt the sincerity of the English desire for peace in Gascony. Charles-Victor Langlois concluded that Philip was guilty of outrageous duplicity. A rare dissenting voice was Edgard Boutaric, writing in 1870, who declared that Philip took 'appropriately energetic' measures against the perfidious English; a view borne of 19th century nationalism, perhaps.

The treaty itself is not a straightforward pact between France and Scotland. It is a treaty of alliance between France and Norway, in which Scotland is included as a third party. The Norwegian envoys made impossible guarantees: in exchange for 50,000 livres tournois for every year of the war, they promised that Erik II would provide the French with 200 helms, 100 warships and 50,000 soldiers.

It seems strange that Philip and his canny advisers would credit such promises. Yet it seems they did, since the Norwegians left Paris with a down-payment of 6000 marks. Predictably, when push came to shove, Norway coughed up not a sausage to help the French war effort.

There is a very nasty sub-plot. The Norwegian envoy who negotiated the above deal was one Audun Hugleiksson. He was later suspected of setting up the 'False Margaret', an impersonator of the Maid of Norway, and using her in a plot against King Erik's successor, Haakon V. Haakon was not a man to be trifled with: he had the woman burnt at the stake, beheaded her husband, and hanged Audun at Nordnes in Bergen.