Surveying Philip’s France in the year 1314, the chronicler Jean Froissart described it as “gorged, contented and strong.” Foreigners might complain of “prating Frenchmen always sneering at nations other than their own,” but when left alone those foreigners would exclaim to one another, “Oh, to be God in France!” In the early fourteenth century, few would have challenged the assertion of Jean de Jardun that “the government of the earth rightfully belongs to the august and sovereign house of France.”
