The Vows of the Heron (Voeux du héron) c.1346 is a satirical Flemish poem, which purported to explain the causes of the Hundred Years' War in terms of the goading into action by a Low Country exile of Edward III of England.
[2] The poem satirizes Robert as the cunning instigator of the war;[3] and presents Edward as his naïve, blustering victim.
[4] While almost certainly a fictional account, modern historians consider that the poem nonetheless reveals a kind of truth about the relations of the two men, and the approach to war.
[5] Johan Huizinga emphasised as typically late medieval in the poem, what he called “the spirit of barbarian crudeness that it reveals”, as well as the self-mockery found within its grimness.
[6] One knight, Jean de Beaumont, is presented as claiming that: “When we are in the tavern, drinking strong wine,/When the ladies pass and look at us….Nature urges us to have desiring hearts/...[But when] our enemies are approaching us,/Then we should wish to be in a cellar so large”.