The Edwardian War (Part Two)

The Battle of Crecy– The Siege of Calais – The Battle of Neville’s Cross – The Black Death – The Battle of Poitiers – A King in Captivity – The Restoration of the Angevin Empire – The Jacquerie – The Treaty of Bretigny

The Black Prince

Having decided to turn and fight, Edward spread his forces along the top of a ridge between the villages of Crecy and Wadicourt. He set his command post at a windmill on the highest point of the ridge. His forces were greatly outnumbered by the French, whose army may have been as large as 80,000 men all told. Edward had around 4000 knights, 7000 Welsh and English archers, and 5000 Welsh and Irish spearmen, along with scattered mercenary bands from Brittany, Flanders, and the Holy Roman Empire. Edward would rely on his longbowmen, knights, and men-at-arms during the battle; the spearmen were more a disorderly mob than a lethal fighting force, lacking discipline and professionalism, and were ill-suited for the complex maneuvering and determination required on the battlefield. Their main function in the campaign was to ransack the countryside in Edward’s chevauchees, and they were excellent at pillaging and murdering the injured in the wake of battle. Edward positioned the reserve behind the windmill, and the baggage train was parked behind the reserve; he ordered the wagons wheeled into a circle with only one entrance, and in the middle he pastured the knights’ horses, whom he ordered to dismount. Before him the dismounted knights and men-at-arms were stationed behind a ragged line of longbowmen. The longbowmen dug pits in front of them to make French horses stumble, and they drove caltrops (spikes) into the ground to splinter any cavalry charges. Edward’s left wing was commanded by the Earl of Northampton, and the right—situated slightly forward down the slope, and thus in position to be the first attacked by the French—was put under the command of his son, Edward of Woodstock, the Prince of Wales (Edward of Woodstock would be known as “The Black Prince” in the annals of history, possibly because of the tarnished color of his armor, but because he didn’t receive that nickname until after his death, he will not be called that here). The Prince of Wales would be assisted by the earls of Oxford and Warwick, and Sir John Chandos. Having entrenched, King Edward ordered his men to rest before the inevitable attack.

Philip VI led contingents of French, Bohemians, Flemings, Germans, Savoyards, and Luxemburgers. The numbers of his army are unknown, though conservative estimates begin around 20,000 and liberal estimates reach as far as four times that number. His foot soldiers were complemented by a strong cavalry, for the French at this time still relied on the classic feudal tactic of well-armored knights smashing enemy formations to bits before hammering it out in face-to-face combat. Also on his roster were some 6000 mercenary Genoese crossbowmen. As the French approached the English, French scouts surveyed the English position. Because it was late in the day, they recommended that Philip encamp and wait until the next morning to give battle, for then the men would be fresh and rested. Philip agreed, but his top commanders were eager to win glory, and they didn’t want to wait. Philip found it difficult to corral them, and they decided to go ahead with the battle. Philip could do little more than concede and try to keep things together. The Genoese crossbowmen formed the van, commanded by Antonio Doria and Carlo Grimaldi. Behind them was a division of knights and men-at-arms, among them the blind King John of Bohemia; he was accompanied by two of his knights, their horses strapped to either side of the Bohemian king’s mount. A second division of knights and men-at-arms followed behind them, and then was the rearguard commanded by King Philip. Herein lies the order at which the French marched to their deaths.

The French storm the English lines

Late in the day, at around 4PM, the Genoese crossbowmen began marching towards the English entrenched along the ridge. The crossbowmen left their pavises (crossbow shields) behind; because pavises were used to hide behind when reloading crossbows, the crossbowmen would have no protection against the English arrows. Making matters worse for them, a sudden rainstorm blanketed both of the armies. The English archers hastily removed their bowstrings and kept them dry under their jackets and hats, but the Genoese crossbowmen couldn’t take such care of their burdensome crossbows. The rains shifted, and the crossbowmen, exposed yet again to the sun, continued their advance, whooping and shouting. Once the English were within range, the crossbowmen loosed their bolts—but the rain had weakened their strings, and the bolts fell short. The longbowmen didn’t have this problem: they re-stringed their bows and began their customary slaughter. The French chronicler Jean Froissart tells us, “The English archers each stepped forth one pace, drew the bowstring to his ear, and let their arrows fly; so wholly and so thick that it seemed as snow.” The barrage inflicted severe casualties on the unshielded crossbowmen, and it wasn’t long before they panicked and broke, routing en masse towards the French knights preparing for their charge against the English lines. The knights, disgusted with the cowardice—and, as they saw it, treachery—of the retreating crossbowmen, didn’t wait for them to pass before charging the English lines. They charged forward, stampeding the crossbowmen into the muddied earth, and continued on their way towards the dismounted knights and men-at-arms positioned along the ridge.

Thus the cavalry charged into a hell-storm of arrows. Though their plate armor offered some protection, at least until they closed to 20 meters at which point the English arrows could penetrate even plate armor, the arrows peppered their horses and brought their mounts crashing down. As they drew nearer to the slope, the arrows did nasty work, and their charge ran ragged, losing impetus. Making it even more difficult was the fact that the terrain had been made muddy and slippery in the sudden thunderstorm, and as the horses reached the ridge’s slope, they were slowed down, losing traction. Still they plowed forward, the horses whinnying and pierced by arrows. Now the arrows could pierce plate armor, and knights toppled shrieking to the ground, only to be trampled by those behind them. The Prince of Wales, in the right wing, prepared to meet the charge, and the archers stationed before them retreated through their ranks, took up position behind them, and continued their relentless barrage, firing over the heads of the English men-at-arms so that the arrows plunged into the onrushing cavalry. Before they could reach the dismounted English, the French horses had to navigate the pits and caltrops: the spikes made the French formation even more ragged, and horses that failed to avoid the pits crashed down with broken legs. The field behind the French lay scattered with dead and dying men, but those lucky enough to reach the English lines lay into the English with all the ferocity they could muster.

Hand to hand combat at Crecy

The ensuing hand-to-hand combat would last for hours, well past sunset and even beyond midnight. The Prince of Wales stood his ground, and his men returned ferocity with ferocity. Adding to the chaos, Edward ordered his five primitive cannon forward, and they began hurling stone (or iron) shot into the flanks of the French knights and men-at-arms. These ribauldequin (or “ribauld” for short) were late medieval volley guns designed with a series of small-caliber iron barrels running parallel on a platform. When fired in a volley, they created a harrowing rain of shot. Soldiers referred to them as “organ guns” because of the multiple barrels’ resemblance to a pipe organ. Giovanni Villani comments on the use of the cannons at Crecy: “The English guns cast iron balls by means of fire… They made a noise like thunder and caused much loss in men and horses… [by the end of the battle,] the whole plain [leading to the ridge] was covered by men struck down by arrows and cannon balls.” Though some historians have cast doubt on the presence of cannon at Crecy, believing it was too early for the ribaulds to make a presence, the discovery of stone cannon balls on the battlefield in the 1850s lends credence to contemporary reports.

The dead and dying heaped up along the front line, and at one point a messenger hurried to King Edward by the windmill and requested that he sent aid to his son.  Seeing that the French could make little headway against the right division, Edward reputedly asked whether his son was dead or wounded. When the messenger told him that neither was the case, Edward responded, “I am confident he will repel the enemy without my help.” And turning to one of his courtiers, he added, “Let the boy win his spurs!” The Prince of Wales was doing just that, refusing to give an inch to the French knights. At one point the blind King of Bohemia charged right at the Prince of Wales’ position, but he and his helpers were struck down. The Prince of Wales, overawed at the monarch’s bravery despite his blindness, would adopt the deceased king’s emblem—three white feathers—along with his motto, “Ich Dien” (“I Serve”). The melee continued well into the night, until King Philip of France, wounded by an arrow to the jaw and having lost two mounts beneath him, decided it best to turn tail and run. He ordered the retreat just past midnight, and he rode hard for the castle of La Boyes, ashamedly leaving the Oriflamme, France’s sacred royal banner, in the hands of the English (this was one of only five times the Oriflamme was ever captured). At La Boyes, a sentry on the wall demanded to know who was banging on the door, and the King called out, bitterly, “Here is the fortune of France!” The king was let inside to safety, but most of his army suffered a worse fate.

Those French soldiers who could flee did so, but many were too wounded to follow or trapped beneath fallen horses. Though the English soldiers wanted to give chase, Edward wisely held them back; they would remain entrenched on the slope among the dead and dying throughout the night and into the next day. Come sunrise the Welsh and Irish spearmen did what they did best: they pillaged the battlefield and murdered any wounded Frenchmen who looked too poor to fetch a ransom worth any trouble. The English had taken eighty French standards and displayed them in triumph along the ridge; French country folk, seeing the standards flying and believing that the French had been victorious, hurried to Crecy to praise the soldiers and celebrate victory. They learned the truth too late, as Edward’s blood-drunk spearmen robbed and murdered them in droves. The Battle of Crecy, a stunning and crippling defeat for the French, had cost Philip around 30,000 men, including the blind King John of Bohemia, the King of Majorca, the Duke of Lorraine, ten counts, and three archbishops. The English casualties were trifling.

The Siege of Calais

With the remnants of Philip’s army in tatters, Edward marched unopposed to the walled French port city of Calais. Edward had set his eyes on Calais because his army needed supplies and reinforcements, and in order to receive them they needed a defensible port from which they could be supplied across the Channel. Calais fit the bill: it had a moat, massive walls, and the northwest citadel had its own moat and walls for further defense. The siege began on September 4^th, and Philip VI—lacking men and money after Crecy—lacked the ability to relieve the city. In November Edward’s army received much needed cannon, catapults, and ladders that could be used to scale the city’s walls, but this combination of tactics and weaponry wasn’t enough to bring Calais into English hands. The people of Calais refused to give up the city, even after the English navy blockaded her port. By June of 1347 Calais’ food and water had nearly run out, and in order to stretch what provisions they had, the leaders of Calais forced five hundred children and elderly from the city. Some chroniclers tell us that Edward refused to let the refugees pass through the English lines, confining them to misery and starvation in the “dead zone” between the English and the city walls. Perhaps Edward hoped that those remaining in the city would be moved by compassion to capitulate. However, other chroniclers tell us that Edward was gracious towards the refugees, granting them free passage, feeding them, and even giving each and every one of them a small gift of money to help them rebuild their lives. Calais held out for another two months, and in August the city’s leaders lit signal fires informing Edward that they were ready to surrender. Legend has it that Edward, knowing their plight, sent a messenger informing the people of Calais that he would accept their surrender only if six citizens volunteered to give up the keys to the city gates—and their lives. Six volunteers, ready to sacrifice their lives for the survival of their friends and family, strode out of the city gate and presented Edward with the keys—and their necks. But Edward’s counselors advised him to allow the volunteers to live, and he did so. Thus the city fell to the English, and it would serve as a base for which Edward could refit his army and from which he could launch raids and campaigns into France without risking invasions by sea. Calais would remain in English hands for over two centuries until it was retaken by the French in 1558 during one of their many wars with the Italian city-states (the English port was seized in order to prevent the English from launching an army against the weakened French nation).

While Edward and his army were laying down for a long siege against Calais in October 1436, the Scots under King David II decided to capitalize on Edward’s absence (and the absence of his most professional fighting men) by launching an invasion of northern England. They were duty bound by the Auld Alliance to support the French, and an invasion of England fit that responsibility; besides, the 22-year-old David II had a bone to pick with Edward, who had supported Edward Balliol’s usurpation of his throne when he was but a toddler. He invaded northern England on 7 October with 12,000 men. His goal was Durham and Yorkshire, but he was determined to seize English towns and raze the countryside all along his march. He seized Liddesdale but bypassed Carlisle when the city leaders paid him a protection ransom. When his forces reached Hexham they burned the priory, wasting valuable time—and unbeknownst to them, the English were marching to meet them. Upon receiving word of the Scottish incursion, the Archbishop of York threw together a ragtag force of 3000-4000 men from Cumberland, Northumberland, and Lancashire, with another 3000 slated to join them. Because most of England’s able-bodied fighting men were besieging Calais across the Channel, the Archbishop couldn’t raise anymore men. On 14 October, when the Scots were pillaging the Hexham priory, the Archbishop, restless and impatient, decided not to wait for his Yorkshire reinforcements and made a hurried march to confront David II. On 16 October the Scots encamped at the village of Beaurepaire (modern Bearpark). On the morning of the 17^th, William Douglas, leading a contingent of 500 men, went on a raiding expedition into the nearby countryside. The morning was foggy, so he didn’t realize how close the English were until it was too late. His small force, outnumbered eight to one, suffered more than fifty percent casualties, losing 300 men, before Douglas could extricate himself. He made a mad dash to the encampment at Bearpark, rousing the sleeping Scots from their blankets and waking David II. He informed the Scottish king of the English whereabouts, and David ordered his camp to get ready for battle. About this time two black-robed monks arrived from Durham to discuss a ransom, but David, believing them to be spies, ordered them beheaded (they were able to escape in the camp’s chaos). David got his army together and marched them to the high ground at Neville’s cross, the site of an Anglo-Saxon stone cross, and prepared his men to face the English.

The Battle of Neville's Cross

The English, with the walled city of Durham behind them, marched towards the Scottish position. The Archbishop’s force, around 4000, was outnumbered three to one by the Scottish host. Both armies divided themselves into three battalions. The English battalions were led, respectively, by Sir Henry Percy, Sir Thomas Rokeby, and the Archbishop of York. David II took command of the second battalion, the Earl of Moray was placed over the first, and the Earl of March was given command of the third. David had offered March the honorable command of the first division, but March, for reasons known only to him and a few others, declined; thus Moray was given the place of honor, and March was placed over the reserves. With their defeats at Dupplin Moor and Halidon Hill fresh in their minds, the Scots determined to take a defensive stance and wait for the English to come to them; but the Archbishop, knowing that the impetus lie with the Scots, decided not to charge. It was the Scots who wanted Durham; they would have to come and take it. The two armies stared across the field at each other for hours until, in the late afternoon, the irritated Archbishop decided to try and provoke the Scots to attack. He ordered the longbowmen forward, and they unleashed several volleys on the Scottish ranks. The Scots, peppered with arrows and enraged, charged at the English position—and the longbowmen kept up their fire, withering their charge and making it ragged. By the time the Scots reached the English front line, their charge had been so disheveled that the outnumbered men-at-arms were able to stand their ground. For hours the opposing armies were locked in fierce hand-to-hand combat, with the longbowmen showering their arrows into the Scottish morass.

It became clear that the battle favored the English, and Robert Stewart, the nephew of David II and heir-apparent to the throne, decided to cut his losses and run—leaving David alone. He and the Earl of March fled the battle, leaving the Scottish king to fend for himself. March’s refusal to command the first battalion, coupled with his subsequent rout with the heir to the throne, smacked of treachery; it’s no small wonder, then, that the Lanercrost chronicler describes his flight this way: “If one was worthless, the other was nothing… The Steward was overwhelmed by cowardice, broke his promise to God that he would never wait for the first blow in battle, and he fled with [the Earl of March]. Turning their backs, these two fled valiantly with their force and entered Scotland unscathed, and so they led the dance, leaving David to his own tune.” Though abandoned, David kept up a valiant fight for three hours until his army broke and fled, leaving him and his bodyguard surrounded by the English. Knowing his fate was sealed, David ordered his guard to lay down their arms, and he submitted to the English as their prisoner. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London and would spend over a decade in English captivity. He would be transferred to Windsor Castle upon Edward’s return from France, and then he would be shipped to Odiham Castle in Hampshire to serve out the duration of his imprisonment. He would be released in 1357 when the Scottish regency council agreed to pay 100,000 marks (10,000 a year) for his release. By capturing David II at the Battle of Neville’s Cross, the English guaranteed a secure border for the duration of the monarch’s imprisonment; and upon being freed, David spent the rest of his reign trying to make peace with England rather than war. France’s hopes of a solid ally in Scotland were dashed to pieces on the field by the old Anglo-Saxon stone cross.

an artistic portrayal of the Black Death

By the end of summer 1347, England had tasted a string of victories against the French and the Scottish. English pride soared, Edward’s popularity skyrocketed, and it seemed like a Golden Age was on the doorstep. This elation would be broken, however, by an enemy no one had foreseen; indeed, it was an enemy no one could see, for the microscope had yet to be invented. This enemy was a bacterium called Bacillus pestis (though DNA tests on human remains conducted between 2010 and 2011 suggest that the bacterium may have been Yersinia pestis, which could manifest itself in various forms of plague). The so-called Black Plague raised its head in western Europe in 1348, and it would continue to devastate Europe up through the 15^th century. This wasn’t the first time, however, that the Plague made an appearance: it had struck the Mediterranean and western Europe in AD 542, during the reign of Justinian the Great in the Byzantine Empire, and it would make another major landfall in 1665 in the aptly-named Great Plague of London. The effect of the 14^th and 15^th century Black Plague on Europe’s overall population and economy cannot be overstated; almost every region in Europe shows a drastic population decline (Provence in southern France shrank to a third of its former size; England’s population of around 3.7 million people in 1347 bellied out at 2.2 million by 1377, over a mere thirty year period). France by 1328 may have reached fifteen million people, but it wouldn’t reach this population again for another two hundred years. Historians estimate that Europe altogether in 1450 likely had no more than half (or even a third!) of the population it’d enjoyed in 1300; Europe’s population wouldn’t begin to right itself until the tail-end of the 15^th century. And this was all because of a bacterium.

Before reaching western Europe, the Black Plague spread along the caravan routes of central Asia to arrive at ports in the Black Sea. In 1347 a merchant ship from Caffa picked up the plague (which was thriving in fleas on rats) and traveled to Messina in Sicily. The Plague consumed Messina and began leapfrogging throughout Europe. Because medieval doctors didn’t know the cause of the Plague, all they could do was stitch up the bubos (swellings in the lymph nodes) and offer comfort. Priests and physicians who tended to the sick often died themselves. Clueless as to the cause of the sickness that was empting towns, eradicating entire families, and bringing civilization to its knees, grief-stricken Europeans sought scapegoats: many believed the Jews had poisoned their wells, and others—known as Flagelants—believed this was the wrath of God washing over mankind, and they beat themselves with whips to do penance before the Almighty. Eventually people realized that the plague spread city to city, and many cities closed their doors to foot-traffic and merchants. Those secluded in the countryside fared far better than those living cramped and unsanitary lifestyles in the crowded urban centers.

Death and Distress during the Black Plague

The Plague took a variety of forms. The most common was the Bubonic Plague. Though normally a disease of rodents, the Bubonic Plague spread to humans via flea bites: fleas picked up the bacterium on rats, and when the fleas bit humans, the bacterium rooted in a new host. Bubonic Plague has an incubation period of about two to ten days, and its classic symptoms include chills, high fever, a nasty headache, and vomiting. But those are just the first symptoms: next come swellings of the lymph nodes in the groin (bubos) and blood clotting under the skin (from whence came its trademark name, The Black Death). Bubonic Plague, if untreated by modern medicine, has a death rate of about ninety percent. Another form was Pneumonic Plague, which is human-to-human spread of the bacterium passed by droplets in the air. Compared to Bubonic Plague, Pneumonic Plague is quicker and bubos may not form before the bacterium travels through the bloodstream to the lungs, causing pneumonia and death within three to four days. Though Bubonic Plague gets the most fanfare in medieval sources, modern physicians believe Pneumatic Plague was probably the main killer; it could spread through coughing and had close to a one hundred percent mortality rate. A third form of Plague, the Septicaemic Plague, happens when the bacteria enters the bloodstream directly rather than through the lymphatic system. This type of Plague, like Bubonic, is spread by flea bites, and has the same death rate as Pneumonic Plague.

In 1348 the Black Death rampaged through western Europe, devastating France and leaping across the Channel into England. Leaving a garrison in the newly-won port of Calais, Edward returned to the island to try and keep the government intact. More than a third of England’s population would be wiped out over the next several years, but Edward—with the help of trusted and brilliant advisors—was able to keep the government functioning and the people fed. As English farmers died in droves, food shortages became widespread, and food prices soared. The big landowners, having lost much of their workforce, struggled to stay afloat—and since they weren’t putting out as much food as usual, those who survived the Black Plague faced starvation. Edward and parliament worked together to regulate wages, enabling people to take care of themselves, with the Ordinance of Labourers in 1349 and the Statute of Labourers in 1351. Though the Black Plague decimated England, the government stayed afloat, and when the Plague receded, nation-wide recovery was swift. The war against France was, by necessity, put on hold, but there wasn’t much risk in that: Philip faced the Plague in his own country, and France was doing just as bad, if not worse, than their rival across the Channel. During the years of the plague, in 1350, Philip VI died, and the French throne passed to his son John.

The Great Raid of 1355

By the 1350s England was able to go to war again. King Edward wouldn’t lead the next campaign; he entrusted it to his son Edward of Woodstock, the Prince of Wales, who had proved himself at Crecy in 1346. In 1355 the Prince of Wales gathered an army in English-owned Gascony and launched a chevauchee into France. His goal, like his father’s, was to terrorize the French people; discredit the new King of France, John II, by showcasing his inability to protect his people from English raids; and to drain the already-depleted French treasury. An observer of the Prince’s chevauchee tells us that “as he rode to Toulouse there was no town that he did not lay waste.” His chevauchee has gone down in history as “The Great Raid of 1355,” and he laid waste to French towns in the Aquitaine-Languedoc region. His success is seen by the crippling effect it had on the French economy. He raided again in 1356, much to the same effect, but this time the French king, whose army far outnumbered that of the Prince, was determined to beat him. John II, well aware of his father’s decimation at Crecy, vowed to return to France the glory she had lost on that bitter battlefield. The Prince of Wales, knowing that he was outnumbered and that his men were short on provisions and exhausted from the chevauchee, made a dash for the sea, where he could find transport to Calais. But John II, whose army was fresh, caught up with him before he could make good his escape. Cornered, the Prince of Wales tried to negotiate with the French king, offering to abandon all their booty and forge a seven-year-truce. John II would have none of it: he wanted vengeance for all the noble French who had died at the Prince’s hands. With his back against a wall, Edward of Woodstock turned to fight—and the ensuing Battle of Poitiers on 19 September 1356 solidified the Prince of Wales’ place in the annals of history.

Prince Edward—with 2000 longbowmen, 1000 Gascon infantry, and 3000 men-at-arms—arranged his army among the hedges and orchards in front of the forest of Nouallie. He placed the front line of longbowmen behind a thick hedge to protect them from John II’s cavalry. John’s army, composed of mostly French soldiers with a large contingent of Scottish allies and a spattering of German knights, numbered nearly twice that of the Prince of Wales: he had 8000 men-at-arms and 3000 infantry. The main bulk of his army, about 20,000 men, had been left behind; the king had abandoned them so as not to impede his chase after the Prince of Wales. He arranged his army into three divisions: the first division was led by the Dauphin Charles, the second by the Duke of Orleans, and the third (and largest) by King John himself. The Earl of Douglas, leading the Scottish contingents in the French army, advised the king to deliver his attack on foot. Horses, Douglas knew, were particularly exposed to arrows, and who could forget the tragedy of France’s cavalry at the Battle of Crecy? John concurred, leaving his baggage behind and forming his men on foot before the English.

Hand to hand combat at Poitiers

The Prince of Wales removed his baggage train from the field, and the French, believing he was retreating, ordered the charge. 300 German knights stormed towards the English lines, but it was a disaster: most were struck down by the English arrows and men-at-arms. As the German charge fell apart, the longbowmen turned their arrows upon the French infantry following up the forlorn hope of the German knights. The Dauphin’s division, exhausted by a long march under heavy late medieval armor, fought against the English for two hours before retreating. As they retreated they passed through the advance of the Duke of Orleans; Orleans’ men, dispirited by the bloodied retreat of their predecessors, choked on their courage and turned around. The French king, hoping to stem the tide of panic, ordered the third and largest division forward. The two retreating divisions were swallowed up by the king’s division, and inspired by his presence, they turned back around to face the English yet again. As they neared the first line of the Prince’s men-at-arms, they received a rude shock: the front line seemed to break apart as the English cavalry surged through their own lines, bearing down on the weary French infantry.

The French knew that the English liked to fight on foot; knights dismounted before battle, leaving the horses for raids. The French were the ones who were supposed to charge on horseback; they’d dismounted to meet the English mettle-for-mettle, but now the roles seemed completely reversed! Stunned and stalled by the sight of the English cavalry bearing down on them, the men in the front of the French advance couldn’t offer any defense, and the Prince’s cavalry tore through them, raining havoc on the French foot. The Prince had decided on this course of action after seeing the Dauphin and Orleans’ men retreating; he had ordered a small force under Captal de Buch to pursue the refugees, but the Prince’s advisor, Sir John Chandos, had urged him to send that small picked force after the French king instead. Modifying that idea, the Prince ordered all his men-at-arms and knights to mount for a charge into the French lines while de Buch’s men, already mounted, advanced around the French left flank and rear. As the French closed in, the Prince ordered his counter-charge. As the French infantry broke under the English charge, de Buch’s mounted force tore into the French flank and rear. Fearing encirclement, the French army disintegrated, and most tried to flee the field. The longbowmen, out of arrows, drew their side arms and plunged into the thick of the fight. King John II and his son, Philip the Bold, were soon surrounded. The chronicler Jean Froissart reports that an exiled French knight fighting with the English approached the king and requested the king’s surrender. The King replied, “To whom shall I yield? Where is my cousin, the Prince of Wales? If I might see him, I would speak with him.” The exiled knight told him the Prince of Wales wasn’t present but that he could take him to him. The king threw down his sword and surrendered.

John II of France surrenders

The captured (and humiliated) John II was shipped to England, where he signed a truce with Edward III. In the absence of their king, the French government began to implode. John’s ransom was set at two million, but the prideful prisoner insisted he was worth more than that and had the ransom doubled. King Edward didn’t see any problem with that, and the Treaty of London 1358 set the French king’s ransom at four million. The first payment was to be made on the first of November that year, but the French defaulted, as they had their hands tied up with a peasant revolt. The Jacquerie, a commoners’ revolt spawned by the miseries resulting from the Black Plague, the ongoing war, and the criminal activities of routiers, began north of Paris and saw atrocities committed against nobles and their property. The nobles, fixated on preserving their lives and property rather than freeing their king who had gone and gotten himself captured, didn’t have time to make payments to England. The nobles banded together and defeated the rebels by the end of 1358, but discontent remained rampant throughout beleaguered France. Back in England, having not received the first installment of the ransom money, a new treaty—unoriginally dubbed the Second Treaty of London—was signed in 1359, and it allowed high-ranking French hostages to stand in place of John. Some of the hostages included two of John’s sons, a number of princes and nobles, and two citizens from each of France’s nineteen major cities. These hostages weren’t thrown in the Tower; rather, they were held in “honorable captivity,” which under chivalric code allowed them to move around English territory freely at will. Once the hostages arrived, John II returned to France to try and raise the money, but before he could make headway towards his ransom, in 1362 his son, Louis of Anjou, escaped captivity in Calais and refused to return. John, ashamed at his son’s conduct, abandoned Paris and surrendered himself to the Captain of Calais. He was shipped back to England, and he would remain a prisoner there until his death on 8 April 1364. His funeral was a lavish affair, and the English honored him as a king on par with the revered Plantagenets.

The Black Prince capitulating to God on Black Monday

The Second Treaty of London in 1359 had also cemented England’s hard-won possessions in Normandy, Brittany, Anjou, Maine, and all the coastline from Flanders to Spain—effectively resurrecting the Angevin Empire lost by Bad King John at the turn of the 13^th century. Having secured his gains, and with the French king no longer a sizeable threat, Edward III hoped to take advantage of the widespread unhappiness in France with another campaign. In 1359 he gathered his army in Calais and moved on the city of Rheims, France’s classic coronation city; but the city was well garrisoned and defended with stout walls, and Edward abandoned the siege after five weeks. He marched towards the capital of France, but though he sacked Paris’ suburbs, he couldn’t take the city. By that point his army was short on provisions and disheartened: they were suffering harassment from French guerilla fighters, and disease was cutting swathes through his companies. Edward decided to abandon Paris and moved on to another key French city, Chartres. He and his ten thousand men reached the city on Easter Monday, 13 April 1360. Chartres’ outnumbered defenders refused to give battle, bunkering down behind their fortifications. Edward ordered his army to make camp on an exposed plain outside the city, and that night his army suffered its worst defeat in the whole campaign—and this, like the Black Plague, was by an enemy of nature. Come nightfall a nightmarish storm swept over them. Lightning struck and killed numerous soldiers; huge hailstones fell, scattering the horses and terrifying the men; tents were ripped apart by the fierce winds, and the baggage train was overturned. The temperature plummeted, and freezing rain blanketed the troops. An eyewitness reported that it was “a foul day, full of mist and hail, so that men died on horseback.” By the time the storm had moved on, nearly 600 horses and a tenth of the army—1000 men—had been killed by the lightning, the hail, the cold, and the chaos. Edward shared the conviction of many of his men: the freak hailstorm was nothing less than a sign from God against his campaign. Rumor has it that at the tail-end of the hailstorm, he got off his horse, knelt before the gates of Chartres in the freezing rain, and recited a vow of peace and promised God that he would negotiate peace with the French.

Edward kept his promise to God. The heir to the English throne sought counsel with the Dauphin, the heir to the French throne, and representatives of the two monarchs met at the town of Bretigny and, within a mere week, drafted a treaty to cease hostilities. The Treaty of Bretigny would be ratified by King Edward III of England and King John II of France on 24 October 1360. Edward renounced his claim to the French crown and received full sovereign rights over Aquitaine and Calais.

The Edwardian War had come to a close…

But the Hundred Years’ War was far from over. 

The Edwardian War (Part One)

The Battle of Sluys – The Battle of Saint-Omer – Tournai Under Siege – The Truce of Esplechin – The War of Breton Succession – The Battle of Morlaix – Rennes Under Siege – The Truce of Malestroit – The Scourge of the Routiers – “The Land Desireth to Have Me” – The Chevauchee – The Storming of Caen – The Battle of Blanchetaque

On the evening of 21 June 1340, Edward III bid farewell to the Island and boarded his flagship, the Thomas. His ten-year-old eldest son, Prince Edward of Woodstock, would govern England with an entourage of royal councilors. Before departing Edward III warned the prince’s councilors to keep their eyes on the Scottish to the north, who might take the king’s absence as an incentive for invasion. The king placed the Earl of Warwick in charge of the invasion fleet, at least until the grisly business of combat began, when the king would rightfully take over, and on the morning of 22 June the English fleet caught wind into the Channel. The king knew the French navy was at Sluys and decided to sail straight for them. When the French admirals got wind of Edward’s plan, they decided to dig in at Sluys and wait for the inevitable slugfest, despite Barbavera’s insistence that they would be better off putting to sea where their advantages, both in numbers and quality of ships, could be best put to use to decimate the English invasion force.

The English fleet at sea

After two days of sailing, Edward’s fleet approached the Flemish coast. The French fleet came into sight, and Edward dispatched a party of knights to scout the French positions. The knights disembarked the fleet by long boat, with their horses swimming behind them, and they landed twenty miles west of the Sluys harbor. Their mission was to investigate the French forces, counting their ships and estimating the number of their men, and report back to Edward how they were formed up. The Bishop of Lincoln was sent ashore, too, in order to ride hard and fast to Bruges, about ten miles away, to encourage the town’s inhabitants and, most importantly, its English garrison to assist Edward’s sea attack with their own land assault.

King Edward dropped anchor about three quarters of a mile off Blankenberg and waited for news from his reconnaissance. The scouts returned with the dispositions of the French fleet: the French had blocked the mouth of the River Sluys and arranged their fleet in three lines that stretched from the island of Cadzand to the mouth of the harbor. They had put their largest ships, including the Castilian vessels and the captured English cog Christopher (formerly the flagship of the Royal Navy), on the front lines. The sailors had used planks of wood to board up the ships with makeshift walls to prevent boarding, and in each of the three lines the ships had been chained together in the hope of creating an impermeable barrier. The French and Genoese crossbowmen were largely confined to the first line of titanic ships, crowding the fore and stern castles, and the soldiers and marines filled the decks to prevent any attempts at boarding.

It was June 24, and Edward planned on attacking at midday. At that point the direction of the wind would fill their sails and push them towards Sluys, and the sun would be in the eyes of the French crossbowmen. He determined that his fleet would sail in three lines abreast: the first line would be composed of ships with men-at-arms flanked by ships with archers; the second line would have close to forty vessels carrying mostly men-at-arms; and the third line, or reserve, would carry slightly fewer fighting ships than the second line along with the transport ships and their precious cargo of horses, military stores, treasure, and the wives of officers and ladies-in-waiting en route to Queen Philippa.

Edward's flagship, the Thomas

The commanders of Edward’s fleet made an odd bunch. As was proper for a king, Edward’s Thomas would sail with the first line. Thomas’ master was a former pirate and enemy of England. John Crabbe had made a living early on as a pirate raiding English ships, and during the Scottish wars he had commanded the Scottish navy, winning renown for running the English blockade. When the English withdrew from Scotland he became the Constable of Berwick, but he was eventually captured by the English. Parliament wanted him executed for being a pirate and colluding with the Scots against England, but Edward saw Crabbe’s ability and wooed him into changing sides. Over time Crabbe became the captain of Edward’s flagship. Admiral Thomas Beauchamp, the eleventh Earl of Warwick, was only 26 years old but would command the second line of English ships. The third line—the reserve—was under the command of Robert Morley, who was 45 years old and who had served in Scotland as a man-of-arms in the retinue of his uncle in 1314, bearing witnesses to the English disaster (and Scottish triumph) at Bannockburn. One would think Edward III had a distaste for Morley, since the man had supported Edward II against Edward III, but he was an able commander and had been named Admiral of the North. He had advised Edward III against invading France, but now that he was in the muck of it he would do his part.

The English troops, gathered on their ships, waited for the sun to reach its zenith. Midday came and Edward III gave the order: the English fleet raised anchor and began to move. The raising of the anchor was anticlimactic, as the ships, with the wind in their sails, moved only at walking speed towards the first line of French ships stretched across the mouth of the River Sluys. Edward’s flagship flew the Royal Arms of England, which he had changed to incorporate the French fleur de lys quartered with the lions of England—this was an affront to the French, for it was an unmistakable claim to the French throne. The affront came not by the presence of the fleur de lys (since, by way of genealogy, he was entitled to have it) but by its inferior placement in submission to the lions of England.

Sluys: the Order of Battle

Trumpets sounded from the French fleet, calling the soldiers to order, and the English trumpets responded with hunting calls. When the first line of English ships closed to within 400 yards of the French first line, the English officers began shouting their orders. The archers, positioned in the forecastles and crows nests, had strung their bows and were awaiting the orders. The French crossbowmen could only breathe and hope they survived the coming onslaught of English arrows, since their crossbows were nowhere near within range. Aboard the English ships, the officers shouted the orders.

“Nock!” Each archer chose an arrow and notched it to the bowstring. “Draw!” The archers pulled their bowstrings back level with their right arms and with their left arms fully extended. The French aboard the ships, hearing the orders come muffled across the water, swallowed hard, waiting. “Loose!” At this final order the first volley of arrows streaked into the sky, blotting out the sun. As the arrows reached their zenith in the summer sky, preparing to plummet down into the first line of French ships, the English officers were already repeating their orders: “Nock! Draw! Loose!” Even before the first arrows struck home, the archers were drawing for their next volley.

That first volley gave a foretaste of the carnage that was to come. Nearly 15,000 arrows plummeted down in the first thirty seconds. The crossbowmen, soldiers, and marines aboard the French ships were packed tight, jostling for cover, and hoping that chance favored them. The calculating orders of the English officers were met with screams, shouts, and grunts from the soldiers aboard the French ships. Blood seeped into the decks as soldiers were killed and wounded. Those without plate armor suffered the worst, having no protect against the velocity of the arrows. When the English ships came within 350 yards of the beleaguered French, the crossbowmen could fire back—but the sun was in their eyes, making it nearly impossible to aim. To make matters worse, the crossbowmen could only shoot two quarrels a minute against the rapid-fire rate of the English longbows. A contemporary observer from London noted the butchery of the arrows, poetically recounting that the arrows fell on the French crews “like hail in winter,” while “crossbows had to be lowered and steadied at the stirrup while the wire was strenuously levered back between every firing.” The crossbowmen were greatly outnumbered: 500 crossbowmen couldn’t take on 3000 archers, and because of the differing rates of fire, the crossbowmen at full strength and valor could only release 1000 quarrels per minute compared to the archer’s 10,000 arrows per minute; to match the English barrage, the French would’ve needed to field 15,000 crossbowmen alone.

English archers hard at work

Drawing nearer to the French ships, the English archers, unblinded by the sun behind their backs, began aiming in a flat trajectory at the crossbowmen. Numbers of crossbowmen, blinded and targeted by the superior English weaponry, lost their nerve: they hunkered down behind the planked walls of the ships, refusing to get up despite the hoarse orders of the French men-at-arms. Most of the crossbowmen were Genoese mercenaries, and they weren’t willing to go Above and Beyond what they strict contracts (and equivalent pay) demanded. The French crossbowmen were on the lowest rung of military status, so they didn’t feel they had anything to prove. The first lines of ships closed to 100 yards, and with the crossbowmen cowering down, the archers began targeting the sailors and soldiers on deck. The archers used needle-pointed bodkin arrows that could pierce chain mail and, at close range (such as now) plate armor, and broad-headed arrows with barbs fashioned not only pierce flesh but to cause more damage coming out than going in. Now the French soldiers and sailors caught the panic of the crossbowmen and tried to find cover. The French tried to counteract the slaughter with stone-throwers and springalds, but these were inaccurate and most of the heavy stones and bolts splashed harmlessly into the sea.

30,000 arrows a minute had wreaked havoc on the first line of French ships, but then the real bloodletting began: at close to 3:00 PM, the ships of the English line crashed into those of the French first line. Now the brutal work of hand-to-hand fighting would join with the death-dealing arrows. The French, knowing that the English would try to use grappling hooks to bind their ships together before boarding with ladders and grappling irons, had built up extra walls out of planked wood. The hope was to put English boarders at a distinct disadvantage: the English men-at-arms would have to awkwardly scale the walls and then drop down to the decks of the French ships. Upon landing they would be at a momentary disadvantage, and the French soldiers could set upon them with savage butchery. But the French hadn’t taken into account England’s most feared weapon: the longbow. The English crows nests were vaulted higher than the makeshift French walls, and the longbowmen could look down on the French deck. English archers had good aim, and from such close quarters not even plate armor could protect against their arrows. Having collided, the English threw their grappling hooks over the walls, and the longbowmen targeted anyone daring enough to try and dislodged the hooks. Under cover of the archers, the English soldiers boarded the French ships and held off their attacks until reinforcements could come up behind them. Then the decks of the French ships became little more than tight-packed land battles on the water: the English men-at-arms faced off against the French militia led by handfuls of French men-at-arms.

English and French ships locked in combat

This was Slaughter 2.0. Jean Froissart, a medieval chronicler who composed a prose of the Hundred Years War up to 1400, tells us that this phase of the battle was “cruel and horrible. Sea-battles are always more terrible than those on land, for those engaged can neither retreat nor run away; they could only stand and fight to the bitter end, and show their courage and endurance.” The English were professional soldiers hardened not only by training but by experience: they had fought and bled against the Welsh, the Scots, and the French before. The French soldiers and marines were largely inexperienced, and the French militia was mostly composed of farmers who didn’t have the stomach nor skill for what was about to transpire. Crammed onboard the ships, the panicked militia had nowhere to run, and the English gave no quarter (farmers wouldn’t fetch a ransom, and France herself couldn’t afford to pay out ransoms for her more well-to-do soldiers). Thus the English men-at-arms, blood-crazed and glorying in the uneven odds, cut a swathe across the French decks. The decks ran red with blood and the bodies piled up. The only escape was the sea, and militiamen threw down their weapons and made a mad and bunched dash for the fore and aft castles, where they could launch out into the water. The militiamen, largely unarmored, fared the best at sea. Many soldiers decked out in armor were driven senseless by the sight of the carnage and dove absent thought into the ocean, where they promptly drowned under the weight of their armor. Though the militiamen fared better at sea, when they climbed ashore they were met with a second slaughter: Flemish citizens from the nearby countryside, who viewed the French as interlopers, noted that the English were winning and decided to lend a hand. The French who made it off the ships, through the water, and onto the shore were butchered like cattle, their blood staining the beaches red. 

Hand to hand combat amidships

After nearly three hours of vicious hand-to-hand fighting, the French ships in the first line began striking their colors, and the English were through. The English celebrated the recapture of the Christopher along with three other formerly English ships that had been seized by France. Edward, wounded with cuts to his thigh and hand, beckoned an English knight and gave him orders for Beauchamp in the second line: the men under Beauchamp were to take possession of the defeated and blood-drenched French ships of the first line. Beauchamp did as he was told, and the second line of ships poured crews onto the captured French decks, and they began tossing the dead French overboard. Edward’s first line, with their blood up and passions high in their victory in this first phase of the battle, would spearhead the attack into the second line of French ships.

The second French line had witnessed the slaughter of their first line, and when they saw Philip of Valois’ colors on the mainmast of the Christopher replaced with the lions of England, their panic reached a crescendo. The French second line consisted of smaller French vessels than those in the first, and their decks were lower rather than higher than the English decks. This, along with their disintegrating morale, put them at an undeniable disadvantage, and it made the work of the English that much more efficient: the massacre of the arrows and the boarding of the French ships went quicker and smoother. Taking control of the second line of French ships, the English men-at-arms tossed the corpses into the water. The Flemings onshore, who had already bloodied their hands on the French attempting to swim to safety, saw the second French line fall and made for their own ships, intending to attack the third French line from the rear. At the same time the citizens and garrison of Bruges, encouraged by the political preaching of the Bishop of Lincoln, arrived. They took over for the Flemish civilians who were boarding their boats, and the people of Bruges continued the dirty work of the Flemish against survivors scrambling onto the beaches.

The Slaughter of the French

Knowing all hope was lost, the ships in the third line—mostly Norman merchantmen and barges—attempted to make a break into the north sea by sailing east of Cadzand. As the third line disintegrated, the battle turned into a flurry of skirmishes that lasted throughout the evening. Some of the Norman barges made it into the ocean, but most of the ships were overtaken by the English and hooked. Come nightfall things had settled down, but a few skirmishes continued throughout the night. The Battle of Sluys went down as a smashing victory for the English, who captured 190 of the 200-odd French ships deployed. Barbavera, who had been shouted down by the French generals, managed to escape in style: his six galleys made it into the north sea, and to top it off he took two English ships as prizes. Here was a man who knew how to fight at sea, and the cost of ignoring him had become apparent. Thirteen more French ships were able to escape the English vice in the early hours of June 25, but most Frenchmen (and their Genoese mercenaries) weren’t so lucky: for days after the battle, waterlogged bodies, slashed and butchered but washed bloodless by the sea, floated ashore.

Precise numbers of the French slain are impossible to calculate, but because the English massacred everyone onboard—and because the Flemish civilians and people of Bruges added their finishing touches ashore—estimates run as high as sixteen to seventeen thousand. The French admirals, who had rejected Barbavera’s wide sage advice, paid the price for their pride, insolence, and refusal to put French strength to use: Quieret was either killed in the battle or executed afterwards (by beheading, as fitted his rank) and Behuchet was taken prisoner. The English, recognizing his prisoner, hoped for a fat ransom from King Philip, but Edward had different ideas. Behuchet had raided English ships and coastal towns, and he had to pay for his violence: he was hanged from the yardarm of his own ship.

The English weren’t without losses, though they paled in comparison to those suffered by France. The English fleet lost around half a thousand men, most falling during the deck battles against the more formidable French ships of the first line, and nearly three times that number were wounded. The French had been decimated, but Edward’s casualties—including both wounded and killed in action—accounted for only about ten percent of his forces. Thus the celebrations aboard the Thomas and across the fleet were deserved. Men-at-arms who had gone above and beyond were knighted, others were paid handsome dues for their services rendered, and prayers and praises of thanksgiving were given. The next morning Edward warmly received the mayor and aldermen of Bruges, who had done what they could to assist him in his battle. Edward didn’t waste time: two days after reunion with the men of Bruges, Edward marched his forces to Ghent, where he was reunited with Queen Philippa.

The English had won the Battle of Sluys, but it needn’t been so. The French had the bigger and better ships, and had they paid heed to Barbavera’s wisdom and put to sea where they could capitalize on their strengths, they very well could have turned the tide of the burgeoning war. The French excelled on water and the English excelled on land, and by chaining their ships together in static formations, the French admirals provided the English with a land battle on the decks of the French fleet. The Battle of Sluys was the linchpin of the Hundred Years War, and the French had bumbled—and bumbled badly. Edward III’s victory ensured that the war would be fought on French rather than English soil, and thus it would be French peasants who would suffer the ravaging of the countryside. Having not only gained a toehold in France but also having decimated the French fleet, the threat of a French invasion of England was eradicated until the Seven Years War 700 years later.

Had things gone differently for the French, the Hundred Years War may not have lasted long. Speculative history is more an exercise of the imagination than anything else, but historian Gordon Corrigan is willing to engage in such flights of fancy. He wages that if the French had won, the English fleet would’ve suffered decimation, and Edward may have been killed or captured and imprisoned in Paris. Having cleared the English fleet from the Channel, the French invasion would’ve suffered few obstacles and could have landed all but unopposed on the English soil. It would’ve been English peasants rather than French ones suffering the burnings, pillages, and massacres. The English forces at home would’ve been hard-pressed between the French invaders and the Scots to the north. If the French could take London, Corrigan muses, they could have deposed Edward III and put someone else on the throne (such as David of Scotland, son of Robert the Bruce, who was amicable towards the French). Thus France would dominate the Channel and England proper.

But this wasn’t to be. The French fleet had been destroyed, the English armies were entrenched on French soil, and no one wanted to give King Philip the news for fear that he would execute the messenger. Legend has it that the court jester, who could get away with much that others could not, managed to turn the outcome of the battle into a joke. “Why are French knights braver than English knights?” he asked. The king didn’t know. “Because English knights don’t jump into water in full armor.”The joke didn’t go over well, and the king looked this way and that for a scapegoat. Was Behuchet to blame for being greedy and not spending the money needed for men-at-arms? Were the Normans at fault, since they fled at the last hours of the battle? Was Barbavera a treacherous bastard who should be arrested for treason? Philip’s nerves would settle (though it took over a year), and the appearance of Norman survivors, badly mauled, showed him that they weren’t cowards who tucked tail and ran. He stopped trying to find fault and enabled himself to feel pity for those who had lost their lives—and livelihoods—in the battle. Not once, however, did he dare to believe that the crippling defeat was the fault of the French military system; all his life he held that the true fault of defeat was the treachery and incompetence of France’s lower tiers of society.

While Philip’s court jester risked life and limb bearing ill tidings, the news of Edward’s victory swept across England like an inferno. The first ships bearing the official news reached the island on 28 June, and churches held thanksgiving services while the victory dispatch was proclaimed in town squares. Though England’s populace had been upset over the heavy taxes needed to get Edward’s invasion underway, victory at Sluys made it all worth it. Doubts about Edward’s kingship and abilities were expunged, and this was good news for the king: now he could more readily get parliament to raise new taxes to further finance the war effort. Furthermore, money from the sale of captured ships and the few ransoms Philip paid out would serve to offset the current cost of the invasion. Things were looking up for Edward, and he hoped to capitalize on his victory in a set-piece battle with Philip; he hoped by besieging the French city of Tournai he could draw the French king into his clutches.

The Siege of Tournai

Edward decided to split his army. One force was given to Robert Artois, but he lost most of his force at the Battle of Saint-Omer just two days after the victory at Sluys. On the same day that Robert Artois retreated in shame, Edward laid siege to the city of Tournai. Winter would come soon enough, and he needed a place to quarter his men. The siege dragged on, and in the meantime Philip marched towards a showdown with the English—but he refused to meet the Edward in battle. He welcomed a different solution—intervention by the papacy. Pope Benedict XII urged the belligerents to cease hostilities. Edward knew the pope was pro-French, being the third in a line of “Avignon Popes” who served from France rather than Rome and had deep ties with the French aristocracy, so he wouldn’t be fair and just; but he also knew that the pope was powerful. Excommunication was not a thing to be trifled with, as it would ruin your reputation and cripple your authority within your own territory. Edward knew his position at the gates of Tournai was untenable: if he didn’t capture the city before winter, his army would be suffering and exposed. Furthermore, with fractures beginning to show within his alliance, a hard winter and a failed attempt to take the city could lead to mass desertions. Besides all that, starvation looked likely even if they managed to take the city: Tournai was running out of food, too, and would have nothing to offer once the English were inside the walls. And to make it all the more enraging, he couldn’t purchase more food for his army because Parliament was holding up his funds! Limited monarchy was not working in his favor: he was faced with hoing home or watching his army crumble. Despite Pope Benedict XII’s political leanings, he offered Edward an honorable way out. The cost of peace backed by the Avignon pope was, without surprise, steep for the English: they were to lift the siege of Tournai, pack up their things, and get out. The pope was a lot like a dad ripping his squabbling kids apart and sending the instigator to his room for a time-out. This Truce of Esplechin, signed on 25 September 1340, was set to last five years—but it wouldn’t last ten months.

Edward abided by the terms of the truce, abandoning Tournai and crossing the Channel back to England. There he fought with Parliament and kept both eyes on the goings-on in the land he thought should be his. Seven months into the Esplechin truce, in April 1341, the Duke of Brittany died without an heir. From this story alone we know how these things can go. Though the Duke was childless, there were two candidates for his dukedom: his half-brother John, the Count of Montfort, and his niece Jeanne of Penthievre. Because Jeanne was of purer family blood than John of Montfort, the Count’s supporters relied heavily on the principle of Salic law. Jeanne of Penthievre couldn’t inherit Brittany because she was a woman. But Jeanne had an ace up her sleeve: her husband, Charles of Blois, was Philip VI’s nephew. The king’s hold on Brittany would tighten if he had a nephew as its ruler. Feudal law demanded that all duchy inheritances be approved by the king, so Philip VI was a token indeed. Montfort, realizing that Philip VI might have motivations other than Salic law, decided to just go ahead and seize Nantes, the Breton capital on the Loire River, and order Brittany’s knights to hail him as Duke of Montfort. By the tail-end of summer, Montfort had captured most of Brittany, including two more major cities, Rennes and Vannes. By this time Philip VI had come out in favor of Charles of Blois, and Montfort knew he couldn’t stand up to the French army—at least not without help. He fled to England and sought out the king, and Edward was picking up what he was laying down. With Montfort’s help, Edward’s second invasion wouldn’t get them a toehold; it would get them a foothold. And, hopefully in time, a chokehold.

But there was a hitch in the plan: the king would have to get approval from Parliament. Edward promised Montfort that he would get Parliament to approve, and Montfort sailed back to Brittany to keep things together before the English arrived. Philip hadn’t been inactive, and by November the French had trapped Montfort in the riverside town of Nantes. The people of Nantes weren’t particularly loyal to the man who had made himself their overlord just months before, so they shrugged their shoulders and handed him over to the French army. Why should they suffer a long winter siege because of his ambition? He was an impostor, after all. So Nantes was liberated and Montfort marched to Paris in chains. His cause would’ve ended there if it weren’t for his wife, Joanna of Flanders: she set up her headquarters in southern Brittany and spent the whole winter repelling French attacks. She had two goals: keep her husband’s movement alive and keep the road to the sea open for the English. She did both, and when the English landed in the port town of Brest, they joined forces with Joanna’s resistance and drove the French army away, recapturing territory in western Brittany.

This was just the beginning of what would be known as the War of Breton Succession: another English force was en route. The Earl of Northampton landed at Brest and set out to reclaim more territory. He advanced across Brittany and sacked the city of Vannes. With help from a Robert Artois eager to cleanse his name, the Earl defeated the French at the Battle of Morlaix on 30 September 1342. Though Robert Artois was wounded, he had balanced the scales of his reputation. He sailed back to England happy that this last encounter had ended with victory, but that happiness wouldn’t last long—he died from his wounds. Had he survived, his happiness would’ve been blunted when news arrived of the fall of Vannes to a French force commanded by “The Butcher,” a Breton soldier named Olivier de Clisson (in less than a year the Butcher would himself be butchered by the French for suspicion of having made backroom deals with the English). In October Edward arrived at Brest and marched to undo The Butcher’s handiwork. He retook Vannes and then hurriedly marched east to besiege Rennes. He hoped the city would capitulate before winter became deep-set in her ways, but he had no such luck. The siege dragged on into the new year. A French force moved to unseat him, but battle was avoided by the last minute arrival of two Avignon cardinals.

Despite the successes of the three English invasions, Edward found himself on familiar ground: he was now deeply in debt and running out of money. The English people were heavily taxed to pay for the war effort, and the wool trade—upon which English merchants relied—wasn’t doing hot, either. He had matters to attend to back home, and with a string of victories in England’s lap, he wouldn’t be going back empty handed. The Truce of Malestroit would last for two years, but it wouldn’t usher in peace. Though Edward returned to England a victor, those left to rule the English gains were faced with a threat much different—and one would argue deadlier—than the French army. Feudal customs dictated that most of France’s provincial assemblies didn’t have to pay taxes during a truce, and thus Philip had spent most of the last two years surviving off a strangled purse, and things didn’t get any better after the passing of the second truce. He tried to manipulate the coinage to make up for the losses, introducing a number of wildly unpopular taxes (the hearth tax and, later, the salt tax). Though these taxes helped keep him afloat, they were disastrous on his subjects—and their unhappiness (and the frustrations of the English garrisons) was multiplied by the routiers.

The truce meant a lot of soldiers were unemployed, and to make ends meet they banded together in free companies who roved the countryside and lived off robbing and looting. The financial depression caused by the truce and Philip’s crippling taxes moved more and more soldiers towards banditry. The routiers were the scourge of the countryside, raping, torturing, and killing as they made ends meet—or got rich. A favorite tactic of theirs was to seize castles or towns with strategic value and use them as bases for plundering surrounding areas. Like the Vikings centuries earlier, they would use up the place’s resources, gather their winnings, and move on to the next pearl-o’-plenty. Both the English and French figured that if you couldn’t beat them then join them, and the rivals hired out routiers as mercenaries and sent them against one another. Routiers weren’t just unemployed French soldiers, either: though they were mostly from Gascony, a lot came from Brittany and others from different parts of France, England, Spain, and even the German states. The men in charge of England’s continental holdings—first Oliver Ingham and then, in 1343, Nicholas de la Beche—did their best to uphold the Malestroit truce while combating the routiers in an attempt to restore peace in their newly-won territories. That the countryside was saturated with lawlessness is evident in that Nicholas de la Beche traveled the territories with an escort of forty men at arms.

a depiction of routiers ransacking a church

Back in England, Edward bolstered his forces and paid on his debt from his French invasion. Neither he nor the king of France were under any delusions—it wasn’t peace that was purchased but breathing room. That breathing room ended on 5 July 1346 when Edward set sail from Portsmouth with about 750 ships and anywhere between seven and ten thousand men. The recently-created Prince of Wales—Edward’s oldest son and claimant to the throne, Edward of Woodstock—was now 16 years old, and he crossed the Channel with his father to taste war in France for the first time. The invasion fleet landed in the Cotentin peninsula of Normandy, and Edward’s return to France has gone down in legend. The French court reporter Jean Froissart recounted the tale: “When the king of England arrived… the king issued out of his ship, and the first foot that he set on the ground, he fell so rudely, that the blood [burst] out of his nose. The knights that were about him took him up and said: ‘Sir, for God’s sake enter again into your ship, and come not [on land] this day, for this is but an evil sign for us.’ Then the king answered quickly and said… ‘This is a good token for me, for the land desireth to have me.’”

The Chevauchee

A bloody nose wouldn’t stop the English king, and he and his army carved a swathe through Normandy. Philip gathered an army to oppose him, but Edward decided to lead the French on a merry little chase. He began his chevauchee heading northward, towards the Low Countries. Though Tecumseh Sherman often gets credit for inaugurating the “scorched earth” policy of total war, he was just borrowing it from the ancients. Edward’s chevauchee (or, literally, “horse charge”) was designed to weaken France’s economy by disrupting her productivity—basically ravaging her without relying on sieges or toe-to-toe battles. Edward’s first stop was the French city of Caen, where the English stormed the city and engaged in vicious house-to-house street fighting.

Though the English failed to take the city’s castle, the Storming of Caen was nevertheless a success, and its sacking lasted for five days. Edward abandoned the ravaged city and continued cutting his way through French territory. His supplies began running low, and his best bet was to reach the sea where he could get provisions. But by this point he was deep in enemy territory and wedged between the Seine and Somme rivers. The French knew where he was and had stationed heavy guards at all the crossings. Edward had to break through the Somme to reach the Atlantic, but in order to do so he would have to find a way to get across the river without exposing himself to the enemy. River crossings are notoriously dangerous, especially to soldiers who could drown under their heavy armor. With his army wearing thin, he desperately probed for a way across the Somme. His attempts to cross were repelled, but his luck turned when he received information—from either a French captive or a local is unknown—of a lightly guarded ford just miles away. The ford was named Blanchetaque for the white stones lining the riverbed, and on 24 August 1346 Edward’s army battered its way through the French guardsmen in the Battle of Blanchetaque. Now that he was on the right side of the river, Edward tried hurrying his men to reach the sea before the French caught up with them. But Philip was fresh and provisioned, and Edward found himself outmaneuvered. He had no choice but to turn and fight. He positioned his forces for the inevitable battle near the town of Crecy in northern France. The ensuing Battle of Crecy (26 August 1346) would become one of England’s three greatest successes in the Hundred Years War.

The Storming of Caen