Three

Fire and Water

‘Whiles that his mountain sire, on mountain standing,

Up in the air, crown’d with the golden sun,

Saw his heroical seed, and smiled to see him,

Mangle the work of nature and deface

The patterns that by God and by French fathers

Had twenty years been made. This is a stem

Of that victorious stock; and let us fear

The native mightiness and fate of him’.

William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act II, Scene IV

John of Gaunt and Geoffrey Chaucer almost certainly first met in 1358 at Christmas. At eighteen, John of Gaunt was invited to share in the festivities at Hatfield House by his sister-in-law, Elizabeth de Burgh, the Countess of Ulster. Elizabeth was a rich heiress. Her father was the greatest landowner in Ireland, she was the niece of Henry, Duke of Lancaster, and had recently married Gaunt’s older brother, Lionel. The fashionable young couple lived in luxury and their household – filled with young hopeful courtiers – was a hedonistic, vibrant and convivial environment. Chaucer, around the same age as John of Gaunt, was employed by Elizabeth as a page. He first appears in records as the fashion model for a paltok. Worn by men, paltoks were a type of tunic, and were to cause quite the scandal. They were criticised as ‘extremely short garments . . . which failed to conceal their arses or their private parts’.¹ The paltok became so popular that in 1361 Edward III ordered one custom-made to wear at Christmas. It is possible that the trend began amongst the young members of the royal household who congregated at Hatfield that Christmas, including John of Gaunt. From this point on, Chaucer and Gaunt continued to connect and collaborate, living in tandem, moving on and off the pages of each other’s life stories.

It is possible that Elizabeth de Burgh had invited John of Gaunt for Christmas following the announcement of his forthcoming marriage to her cousin, Blanche of Lancaster. Marriages amongst the elite in the fourteenth century were rarely love matches. Politics, territory and wealth determined the course of matrimony for young noblemen and women. The marriage between Gaunt and Blanche was another link in the political union between two powerful houses – Plantagenet and Lancaster.

Shortly before his marriage to Blanche, John of Gaunt had an affair with a young Flemish woman called Marie de Saint-Hilaire, one of the Queen’s ladies. Marie fell pregnant, and before her baby was born she was removed from court and granted a yearly allowance, for her ‘sustenance’.² The same year that Gaunt and Blanche married at Reading Abbey, Marie gave birth to a baby girl, whom she called Blanche, probably in reference to John of Gaunt’s wife. The baby was acknowledged by Gaunt throughout his life and, when Blanche was around twenty-one, he arranged a good marriage for her, one that promised security and prosperity. Her chosen husband was Thomas Morieux, Constable of the Tower of London, who loyally served John of Gaunt for the rest of his life.

As Gaunt and Blanche were distant cousins, their marriage required a Papal dispensation, as interfamilial marriage was in breach of Canon law. In the New Year of 1359, at the Papal court at Avignon, Pope Innocent VI was duly presented with a request from the King of England: that he ‘enable his son John, the Earl of Richmond and the Lady Blanche, daughter of Henry, Duke of Lancaster, to intermarry, they being related in the third and fourth degrees of kindred’. The Pope sanctioned the marriage and, soon after the dispensation reached England, the date for the wedding was set for May.³ The ceremony would be held at Reading Abbey, one of the largest royal monasteries in Europe.

The abbey was founded by the youngest son of William the Conqueror, Henry I, who invested heavily in it, supporting learning as well as prayer by funding an extensive library. Support of the abbey remained in royal consciousness following Henry’s death, for Empress Matilda – his daughter – donated a sacred relic: the hand of Saint James of Santiago. Over the next three centuries Reading Abbey grew to become a popular place of worship and burial for the elite, as well as a suitable location for Parliament to convene outside of London.

In May 1359, members of the nobility gathered to witness the marriage of John of Gaunt to Blanche of Lancaster. It was a union of cousins as well as great allies, heavy with the promise of peace between historic rivals, Lancaster and the Crown. The union made sense. Blanche’s elder sister, Maude, was married to William III, Count of Holland, Zeeland and Hainault, and the match between John and Blanche would strengthen domestic relations. On a personal level, it was also a nod to the friendship between Edward and Henry, and the loyalty the Duke had shown throughout the highs and lows of the war in France. Seventeen-year-old Blanche was an attractive choice of bride for the nineteen-year-old John of Gaunt. She was beautiful, pious, young and, shared with her sister Maude, she stood to inherit her father’s enormous fortune, which through marriage would be controlled by Gaunt. As medieval tradition dictated, when a woman married a man, she relinquished to him her ‘chattels’ – land, property and money.

‘In the presence of a priest and of three or four respectable persons summoned for the purpose’, John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster exchanged rings and were married in the eyes of God and witnesses, overseen by the clerk of the Queen’s chapel.⁴ Blanche was showered with generous gifts: silver buckles from the King and two rings of ruby and pearl and diamond from John of Gaunt. The wedding was an elaborate celebration and the subsequent banquet was particularly extravagant: guests were served richly spiced food and wine on tables covered in linen, silk and cloth of gold, and minstrels played for the duration of the feasting.⁵ The celebrations continued for days, with jousts held locally to mark the occasion. The wedding party then cheerfully made its way to London, where preparations were underway for an even larger and more spectacular event.

On the periphery of the City of London lay Smithfield, a flat, open, grassy area highly suitable for tournaments. One week after the wedding, Smithfield was transformed into a colourful scene. Wooden viewing platforms, hastily knocked together, were draped with heavy canopies, bright flags and all the insignia of heraldry. On the day of the tournament, colourful tents peppered the field, the stands were filled to bursting and chargers dressed in full expensive regalia prepared for the tilt.⁶

The tournament at Smithfield became known as the Merchants Fair, alluding to the wealthy merchants who occupied the City of London. The City was controlled by these various merchant oligarchs, who made their money through an international trade network that saw the import and export of various luxury items. Spices (particularly pepper), cloth, wine and wool were all consumed in such quantities that mercantile wealth in London flourished. The tournament included the organised fight known as a mêlée; the London mercantile elite were represented by the mayor, Simon Dolseley – a grocer from Cornhill – and twenty-four aldermen. They were expected, as a team, to defend the City in the tilt against all challengers. The fight was rough and chaotic and such combat – supposedly regulated as it was – nevertheless frequently left men bruised and bloodied. It was also an incredibly popular sport. In the end, the merchants went unbeaten, but being armoured throughout it had been impossible to distinguish their true identities. Eventually, the jubilant winners were stripped of their armour and they revealed themselves: not as merchants, but the King and his sons, the Black Prince, Lionel, the young Edmund and the newly-wed John of Gaunt. King and crowd both adored spectacle and surprise, and disguise was a popular part of court culture, drawing on the tropes of romantic literature and ballads. By circumventing social barriers, the incognito Edward III was able to demonstrate both his cunning and his superior military ability in the fight. By drawing on Arthurian medieval romance – through disguise and revelation – the appearance of the King and his sons at the Merchants Fair was another demonstration of chivalry and war as a national identity.

The bourgeois merchant class in London was an important source of funding for the King during the first part of the Hundred Years War, loaning the gold needed for the war in France.⁷ In 1359, Edward launched a new campaign, which he characterised as a defence of the realm against French attack. He was eager not to resort to a heavy tax on the people and managed to fund the entire venture through customs charges on the wool trade – charges paid by merchants.

In the summer of 1359, muster rolls – official lists of fighting men – were prepared in order to assemble a vast army. Edward proposed raising a force of 12,000 men, including his sons the Black Prince, Lionel of Antwerp, John of Gaunt and Edmund of Langley as military leaders, all aged between twenty-nine and eighteen. Other preparations were made. The hostage French King, John II, was moved inside the Tower of London in order to hinder any possible rescue mission whilst the English army were occupied in France, and Queen Philippa and her youngest son, Thomas of Woodstock, were to rule the country in the absence of the King and his other sons. John of Gaunt left Blanche in the household of the Queen; she was now pregnant with their first child.

This was Edward’s most ambitious campaign yet, marking twenty years since he had formally declared himself the King of France. His first objective, though, was not a wholly military one. Edward intended to force his way straight to Reims, the sacred city where French kings had been officially anointed in a tradition going back to Louis the Pious in 816 CE.

 

The garrison at Calais was bustling with mercenary soldiers; paid warriors in the employment of Edward III, waiting for the campaign to begin. The mercenaries – mostly from Germany – were bored, hungry and impatient for the arrival of the English army. After weeks of no pay, they began to cause anarchy at Calais, using up precious supplies and fighting amongst themselves, as well as attacking English soldiers reluctantly sharing the garrison with their German counterparts.⁸ Henry, Duke of Lancaster, was the first of the invasion force to land, and he was appalled to find Calais in complete disorder. The mercenary force could not be controlled directly, and was best utilised raiding, which would at least distract the men from their late payments. Henry quickly led the force outside the confines of Calais and into the countryside, where they could relieve their frustrations by looting, burning and pillaging. The force tore through Picardy, destroying Cambrai and St Quentin, but despite ongoing attempts at plunder, the area provided little loot. This land, where people would ordinarily be seen farming, selling goods or travelling, now lay empty and eerily still. The raiding party marched through ghost towns, getting a regular drenching as heavy black clouds loomed over it with dreary persistence. For soldiers, the attraction of war came in the promise of plunder; for mercenaries even more so. When they set about pillaging the French towns and villages, the soldiers were invariably disappointed to find that the local people had nothing left to be stolen. Towns as far as Arras – around one full day’s march from Calais – had been emptied: raiding turned out to be a fruitless exercise.

Whilst Henry, Duke of Lancaster, was occupied trying to corral the fractious mercenary element, Edward and his sons prepared to depart from England. The sheer scale of the operation had unsurprisingly delayed plans to set sail in the summer. Finally, in October 1359 – after the King had wrapped up his remaining affairs at home – the royal party boarded the ship Philip of Dartmouth in Sandwich and set sail for Calais.⁹

When the King arrived with his sons, they met with the Duke of Lancaster outside Calais. The delay had been far from ideal. Edward’s tardiness set the tone for what would be a long, cold and exhausting campaign, tramping through the French countryside in the middle of winter. But now the grand eastern march inland to Reims could begin, and it was agreed to split the army into three formations in order to preserve supplies, led by the Duke of Lancaster, the Black Prince and the King.¹⁰ John of Gaunt accompanied his brother and they planned to rejoin Lancaster and Edward outside Reims. As part of Lionel of Antwerp’s household, Geoffrey Chaucer went on this campaign too. It is likely that Lionel also marched with the Black Prince, putting Chaucer in the same division as Gaunt.¹¹

According to Jean le Bel, the King left Calais almost immediately, ‘with the finest supply train ever seen’. Around 6,000 wagons, stretching four miles, were dragged 200 miles through the mud towards Reims, carrying everything from grain for bread to the ovens to bake it. Edward was doggedly determined not to be forced back by the French due to lack of nourishment for his army. Even so, it was now a winter campaign, which instantly placed more pressure on the supplies brought over from England. Hungry troops searched the area for food, but, as they moved through the country, they faced the same situation as the German mercenaries at Calais: little sustenance and few people. The French had anticipated attack and those who could sought shelter in garrisoned castles and churches. Others fled.

The Black Prince and John of Gaunt – en route to Reims – searched for opportunities for easy plunder among the poorly protected small castles that littered France. Plunder of civilian property was ever a consequence of war: unfortunate and utterly predictable. To hungry soldiers, everything was fair game. All forms of property were stolen: plate (household objects made of gold or silver), food, wine, cloth, weapons and livestock. The impact of the English invasion can be seen in the petitions to the King of France from his desperate subjects: they escalated, begging for better protection against the armed raids. It was the local people – labourers, clerics, peasants, women and children – forced to live in occupied territory, who suffered the worst consequences of the war.

After a slow and cumbersome march, the English finally reached the holy city of Reims in early December. Exhausted by the journey, the Black Prince established a base for his men at the monastery of Saint-Thierry, where they rested, anticipating that the gates of Reims would soon be flung open. The King himself was camped at the Abbey of St Basle, in nearby Verzy, a wine-making village, which in the summer was rich with thick vines and red grapes.

12,000 soldiers stood beneath the high walls of Reims as the King dispatched envoys to the French Archbishop within, Jean de Craon. Edward was determined not to take Reims by force, but rather be welcomed by its citizens. To avoid destroying his chances of such a welcome, he gave an unpopular order: no looting or violence was to take place in the city. Edward waited and hoped that the Archbishop would permit him entry. The tactic did not work, so Edward resorted to bribery and coercion. The Archbishop – prepared for an English siege – remained loyal to the French Crown, and employed the same tactical patience used by the heir to the French throne, the Dauphin, in the wider campaign.

Reims was prepared to ride out any siege. Food supplies, grain, livestock and personal property had been brought within the walls, and the citizens armed themselves in preparation for an English attack. By the time the English army arrived at its gates, nothing in the environs was available for plunder; and nor, so it seemed, was Reims itself.

A siege would traditionally begin when the first shot was fired against a town or city. It would be won through outright assault, or stealth, or capitulation, and common tactics were bombardment, mining, blockade of supplies, and of course the storming the walls with siege engines and ladders. When the defenders surrendered, it was either by waving a white flag or symbolically handing over the keys. During a chevauchée civilians were victims of war; during a siege, civilians were targets of war, forced to suffer starvation, thirst, sickness and the destruction of the local economy without the ability to work or manage land and livestock. Fortunately for the people of Reims, Edward III remained adamant that he would not lay siege to the holy city – doing so would threaten his legitimacy as its King. Edward could only hope the city would capitulate under pressure from his army, and open its gates.

By Christmas, the English were still waiting outside the walls, increasingly bored, hungry and agitated. Around Christmas Day, a French freebooter called Eustace d’Auberchicourt arrived at the English camp bringing a generous gift for the army to boost its morale: 3,000 barrels of wine. Eustace d’Auberchicourt was a lawless plunderer, who filled his pockets on the back of war by leading bands of mercenaries across France, seizing towns, taking prisoners. He was on the side of nobody and, like many freebooters, he was an opportunist who turned outlaw, fighting only for himself when disappointed with the fortunes of war.

As the English army was made up of fighting men on short-term contracts, the King was anxious to distract them from seeking plunder against his orders, and to dissuade them from joining vagrant freebooter armies like that of Eustace d’Auberchicourt. To keep his men occupied, Edward ordered a series of raiding parties around the locality. Henry Knighton describes one particular raid, on a cold night at the end of December. John of Gaunt and his father-in-law the Duke of Lancaster led a mission under cover of darkness to attack the fortified town of Cernay. The town was well defended: a double ditch, walls and turrets. With such strong defensive infrastructure, the English would not be able to overcome the town before daylight and the men were forced to wait. As dawn broke and light crept over the walls of Cernay, the English were spotted by the town’s watch as they crept over the ditches, led by Lancaster. As the watch raised the alarm, the Duke ordered the attack. He, Gaunt, and their raiding party scaled the walls of Cernay and slaughtered the town’s defenders. Survivors were forced to surrender to the English and watch as their town was ‘destroyed . . . with fire and flame’. As some defenders fled, many were sucked down into the marshland surrounding their town and drowned. Eventually Henry and John of Gaunt ‘returned with their army to King Edward, safe and with all their men unharmed, praise be to God’.¹²

English raiding was notorious in France. Fear, murder and rape were weapons of war, and although the King issued orders against violence towards non-combatants, atrocities still occurred. A scorched-earth policy had benefits for the English far beyond loot: the French nobility were exposed to the anger of the people for failing in their feudal duty to protect people and property. The devastation inflicted by the King, the Black Prince, John of Gaunt and Henry of Lancaster was calculated. When it came to individual human lives, they generally adhered to the code of chivalry; unless people were armed and combatants, they would not be harmed. Following the attack on Cernay, Lancaster and Gaunt rode around the area for a few more days, seeking towns and villages with ample supplies, yet due to the smoke and embers left at Cernay, their presence and intent were well known. In a panic, towns and villages were hastily abandoned and as much food and property possible was gathered up and taken before the English descended. Hoping for the same plunder as at Cernay, Gaunt and Lancaster were disappointed to find most towns and communes in the area now empty. Finally, they moved on to Manre in Champagne but, seemingly like everywhere else around, it lay desolate. Frustrated with their lot, they burnt the town anyway before returning to the encampment outside Reims.

After a bleak and boring six weeks of waiting and hunting, Edward had still not set foot inside Reims: the town was better prepared to endure a blockade than the English were to wait it out under the elements. The people inside Reims had ample provisions, were warm and relatively comfortable, whereas the English army was hungry, cold and suffering under the icy rain. Rations were exhausted and the raiding parties the King dispatched to collect supplies consistently returned empty-handed. It became plain that it was time to move on, and so the King was forced to give up on his dream of Reims. In the middle of the night, on 11 January 1360, the English army vacated the camp and by morning were nowhere to be seen.

Fatigued and hungry and roaming around in the middle of winter, by January 1360 the English army was highly frustrated. Edward III’s chief priority was to feed his men. New supplies were arranged: some shipped over from England, with the rest coming from raiding and foraging around Honfleur. A new baggage train was to be prepared and dispatched from Normandy. With the army expecting new provisions to catch them up, they now turned their sights on Paris; if the Dauphin would not come out to fight, the English army would go to him. The King won a few small victories on the march, including extracting a lucrative ransom from the county of Bar in exchange for an undertaking to leave the region in peace.¹³

As the army marched they did not encounter any organised resistance from the French. Straggling English soldiers were harassed or picked off by French locals, and small guerrilla attacks took place, often under cover of darkness. The Scalacronica, written in Anglo-Norman French by Sir Thomas Gray of Heaton of Northumberland, gives an example of one such ambush as the army moved on from Reims. As the English marched towards Paris, the Black Prince and Gaunt’s division separated and headed towards Auxerre, taking a detour to find ‘forage for the horses’. They stopped to rest for the night at Ligny-le-Chatel outside Auxerre. In the dead of night, as the men lay sleeping, they were attacked by a force of freebooters, who unlike Eustace d’Auberchicourt were not on their side. The freebooters stabbed some of the Prince’s men, nobles and squires whilst they slept. Others they took as prisoners. The Black Prince was left demoralised; used to claiming grand victories, he was not accustomed to being beaten by thieves and outlaws. While men were slaughtered in their sleep on this occasion, Gray did have a more rousing tale to tell. Near Les Régniers, an English-held fortress near Auxerre, five of the Prince’s men were grinding corn in a mill when they were ambushed by French soldiers. They fought back and, despite being outnumbered, the English defeated their attackers and took eleven prisoners.

The constant ambushes, raids and small skirmishes that occurred throughout the war resulted in the taking of prisoners from both sides. Around the time the Prince’s men were attacked at Auxerre, Geoffrey Chaucer was taken captive. In The Knight’s Tale, Chaucer wrote about captivity and war, drawing on his own experiences, some of which were shared with John of Gaunt. Chaucer describes a world turned on its head – where there should be safety, there is danger. It is a world in which war affects everybody, including the innocent. Chaucer describes Mars, the God of War, standing proud and gallant beside a wolf; a wolf that is hungry for blood, devouring a man. Through this vision, Chaucer opposes Edward III’s romanticised notion of chivalry and glory in war, portraying it as bloody and ignoble.

Like many prisoners of war, Chaucer was ransomed. Ransom culture was one of the most lucrative aspects of war and, coupled with the promise of booty, incentivised men in battle. According to the conduct of war, a prisoner should surrender by delivering a sign – a hand up, or a word – and then give his captor a material item, such as his gauntlet.¹⁴ Commonly, the prisoner was freed only after the ransom was paid. In Chaucer’s case, after around two months in captivity, a ransom of sixteen pounds was paid by the King and he was free to return home.¹⁵

The King’s army moved through the barren countryside, from Troyes to Burgundy. Soon after the English had passed through the region, the Italian poet Petrarch travelled the same route. He wrote of the appalling state of the landscape: ‘everywhere was grief destruction and desolation, uncultivated fields filled with weeds, ruined and abandoned houses’. All property surrounding Paris was abandoned and people fled inside local fortifications, though the poor were often left at the mercy of the raiding army. As the campaign dragged on through winter, discipline slipped, soldiers were not so easily controlled and showed less clemency and patience to the local people. However, the most dangerous consequence of war for the local population came from deserting troops, and desertion was an inevitability on these campaigns. Those who abandoned service would usually form small armies that answered to no one, roaming the country looking for plunder.

Some people tried to live quietly, away from the main raiding areas and roads. The chronicler Jean de Venette was a Carmelite prior based in Paris during the war. He recounts the traumatic experience of Hugh de Montgeron, a prior from Breuillet – a commune in northern France between Orléans and Paris. In 1358, Hugh de Montgeron lived deep in the woods, but was forced to flee when English soldiers came upon his home. Taken by surprise, he ran for his life, wearing only his monk’s habit. From a safe hiding place in the thicket he watched his property devastated by lawless soldiers. The prior wrote an account of his trauma in the inside cover of his prayer book – ‘do you, who live in cities and castle ever see equal to my trouble?’ The prior of Breuillet experienced the harsh reality of war, as inflicted on local people throughout France. The most devastating raids were enacted by the same freebooter parties that the Black Prince encountered at Auxerre: outlaws who roamed the countryside in pursuit of shelter, food and women. These freebooter armies were so effective that, in 1362, they annihilated a French army near Lyons. They continued to cause major problems in France, even at times of ostensible peace.

War was cruel on both sides of the Channel. As the English army tore their way through France, the French responded by launching a guerilla raid-cum-rescue-mission. They intended to attack the English coastline and liberate John II from captivity. Led by the Constable of France, Jean de Neuville, the French mustered a fleet at Crotoy, a harbour at the mouth of the Somme river, and set sail for England. It was a small-scale invasion, but with the English army occupied in France they anticipated a smooth operation. However, news of the plot had already reached Westminster. Before Edward III left for France, he first and foremost saw to the protection of all English, Welsh and Irish coastlines and borders. He organised a force of fighting men to guard the coastline, anticipating possible French counter-attack. Archers were employed to protect the beaches and even members of the clergy were armed; the King requested the Archbishop of Canterbury ‘array his men and send them to the coast’. The French force inflicted some damage as they landed at Winchelsea, killing those defenders who resisted, plundering and raping local women, but they gave up when they learnt that John II had been moved to Wales. As the French army withdrew, the defensive English force arrived in Winchelsea, closing in on the French on the beach as they tried to make it back to their ships. In a moment of decisive combat, the French gathered into a defensive formation as the English cavalry charged the invaders. French soldiers were cut down and others drowned as they tried to swim towards their ships. Most escaped across the Channel, but two ships were beached, unable to catch the tide, and were promptly captured by the English. The invasion was repulsed, and three hundred French soldiers killed.¹⁶¹⁷ The national effort to protect the coastline against French invasion had paid off.

As the driving rain and sleet subsided at the end of March, the English army reunited south of the walls of Paris and pitched their camp across the Seine. The army lines stretched out for miles as they occupied communes all along the left side of the river, taking over churches and looting any building they could find. Edward III intended to wait outside Paris, in the hope or expectation that the Dauphin would ride out and meet him in pitched battle. Jean de Venette states that, by early Spring 1360, ‘not a man nor woman was left in any of the villages near Paris, from the Seine to Etampes’. Whilst some local people fled their homes outside the city and travelled deep into the countryside, others sought sanctuary behind the high walls of Paris. The English army was arrayed in three battalions, with the Black Prince commanding the vanguard – the front line and usually the first to advance into combat – possibly with John of Gaunt at his side.

The English were prepared for pitched battle, but the French had no intention of offering it. The English army had won two major victories in the previous fifteen years of campaigning; another such could lose the French the entire war. One of those victories, Poitiers, had resulted in the capture of the French King. For his son the Dauphin, pitched battle against Edward III’s eager army represented too much of a risk. Throughout the campaigns in this phase of the Hundred Years War, the French relied heavily on evasion rather than attack. Their methods worked: the English army was left bored and demoralised, with waning enthusiasm for the task.

March gave way to April, and the English had not moved from their camp. On Wednesday 8 April, from sunrise to midday, the Black Prince’s division waited on the plains outside Paris, before setting the land on fire. Despite the thick black smoke snaking up the walls of the city, the Dauphin still did not respond. Watching the land smoulder, the Prince’s division moved off, leaving some soldiers in hiding, waiting for a possible response. A few French soldiers rode out of the city, possibly to assess the English position, having seen the Prince move out. Spotting the lingering soldiers, the French ‘spurred forth and charged at them’ before returning inside.¹⁸ But with no sign of the full French army, Edward took his army to ‘make a very long march toward Beauce, by reason of want of fodder for the horses’. Furiously, the King ordered that the landscape be set alight as they rode for three days, ‘burning, slaying and laying waste’, leaving a trail of ashes 150 miles long.¹⁹

On Monday 13 April, as the army marched north to Beauce, the heavens opened and released ‘a terrible tempest’ as rain poured over the scorched land. The discouraged army now learnt the full measure of suffering at the hands of the elements. Trudging through mud and sleet, the English encountered a storm so intense it was memorialised in the chronicles as ‘Black Monday’. According to Froissart, ‘thunder and hail . . . fell on the English army, that it seemed as if the world was come to an end. The hailstones were so large as to kill men and beasts, and the boldest were frightened’.²⁰

Thick mud clung to the hooves of war horses – equine juggernauts, chosen for their strength, size and stamina. They were able to bear the weight of an armoured knight, as well as carrying their own heavy plated armour, and were trained for battle . . . but they were not able navigate a mud bath. They collapsed in the same quagmire that would later claim the French horses at Agincourt. Mud clogged the heavy wooden wheels of the baggage train and miserable soldiers desperately clamoured to salvage the supplies as the carts were swallowed by the boggy earth. Those huge hailstones hammered the English, compelling the King to steer his horse towards the church of Our Lady at Chartres where, on his knees, he beseeched the heavens for mercy. Edward III’s dream of French kingship floundered in the sodden earth outside Paris.

King Edward was forced to consider peace, and there were other powers involved in the conflict also pressing for an end to hostilities. In the final weeks of April, as Edward marched away from Paris with a dispirited army, Pope Innocent IV pleaded with both Kings to give up the war and sign a peace treaty. Anticipating Edward’s reluctance, Innocent IV also wrote to the Black Prince, ‘desiring him to use his influence with the King in fostering peace’.²¹ From his comfortable captivity, King John II also wrote to Edward III, expressing a wish to end the war and its constant ‘anguishes and sorrows’.²²

On 1 May ‘in a small village, near Chartres, called Brétigny’ a peace conference took place attended by sixteen French delegates, twenty-two English and three papal legates. It was agreed that in exchange for renouncing his claim to the French throne, Edward III would be granted territories in France that included Poitou, Saintonge, Montreuil, Guînes, Gascony, Agenais and Limousin.²³ It was also agreed that the French King would not stoke an old alliance with the Scots against the English, in return for Edward not supporting the Flemish in any alliance against the French.²⁴ A ransom was finally accepted for the safe return of John II: 3,000,000 gold écus to be paid over six years. After Edward III happily accepted the extortionate ransom, John II was released from his captivity and told that he would return to France in the summer; he then dined lavishly with Queen Philippa at Westminster.

In late spring, Edward III embarked on his ship at Honfleur and prepared to cross the Channel to Rye, after seven long months of arduous marching, raiding and waiting. By Autumn 1360, peace in France had been formalised in a further treaty signed at Calais and ratified by the 1361 Parliament. Despite the sodden end to the campaign, Edward III had regained more land from the old Angevin Empire – lost by King John – than any of his predecessors.²⁵

In celebration of the peace agreement, and of John II’s imminent return to France, both Kings dined together in a lavish banquet held at the Tower of London. In a display of peace and friendship, they gave each other gifts: ornate drinking cups. Edward also gifted the French King a sword belt and a live eagle. John II had enjoyed his period of captivity; in accordance with chivalric custom he had been showered with all the comforts England could provide. He returned home to find his kingdom destroyed by war and financially crippled by his enormous ransom. Four years later, demoralised by the bleak state of his country, and determined to honour the terms of his – still largely unfulfilled – ransom agreement, John II voluntarily returned to England, where he would eventually die. On his ascension in 1364, Charles V inherited a nation that was burnt and broken while England revelled in the power, glory and wealth accrued by the Plantagenet King and his sons. John of Gaunt had loyally supported his father throughout this campaign, from Calais to Brétigny. Grateful for his son’s steadfast obedience, Edward III granted him Hertford Castle as soon as they returned to England.²⁶ Gaunt returned home to a new baby as well as new lands. On 31 March, whilst her husband marched on Paris, Blanche gave birth to their first daughter, named Philippa after the Queen.

The campaign in France was sandwiched between two royal marriages: the first, John of Gaunt’s and the second, the Black Prince’s. As a future King and esteemed warrior, Prince Edward was one of the most eligible bachelors in Europe, and the King spent perhaps too long carefully considering the choice of bride. The right wife would bring with her a formidable international alliance, expansion of trade networks and territories, and the strengthening of the Plantagenet dynasty at a continental level. However, all such hopes were thwarted when the Black Prince fell in love with the twice-married Joan of Kent.

Joan of Kent, sarcastically nicknamed ‘the virgin of Kent’, or more generously ‘the fair maid’, was a famous beauty within the inner court circle. She had grown up in the royal nursery, alongside the Black Prince and his siblings as a ward of the King and Queen. By the time of her marriage to the Black Prince, Joan was nearing thirty with at least five children. Joan’s clandestine union with the Prince of Wales was not the first time her romantic liaisons attracted attention. In 1340 – when she was only twelve – Joan of Kent had embarked on a secret marriage to Thomas Holland, later titled the first Earl of Kent, shortly before he left on campaign to France. Joan kept silent – probably out of fear and naivety – as she was subsequently wed to William Montagu, the future Earl of Salisbury. On his return from France, Thomas Holland was aghast to find his wife married, and appealed to the King for her return. Pope Clement VI was involved in the scandal and finally sanctioned as lawful the first marriage between Joan and Thomas, to the distress of the now jilted William Montagu. Joan of Kent’s marriages were already notorious. To embark on another secret affair shortly after Holland’s death in 1360 was a brazen move, let alone with the heir to the throne.

Joan of Kent attracted gossip. In the sixteenth century, the Italian scholar and historian Polydore Vergil attributes to Joan the motto of the Order of the Garter. As Joan was dancing with the King, her garter slipped down her leg. To save her from embarrassment, he slipped it onto his own leg declaring, ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense’ (‘Shame on him who thinks badly of it’). This is most likely a myth, but has nonetheless projected Joan as a flirtatious court beauty who eventually captured the heart of the Black Prince. After their marriage was revealed, the couple were forced to appeal to the Pope for a dispensation; if the Papacy refused to accept the match, they were in danger of being branded ‘fornicators’ and made to do penance with all future offspring considered illegitimate. Their marriage was approved and eventually formalised in a ceremony at Windsor in October 1361. The following year, the Black Prince and Joan of Kent left England to govern Aquitaine in southwest France.

Lionel of Antwerp moved to Ireland in the summer of 1361, where he was to become lieutenant, representing the King. Through his marriage to Elizabeth de Burgh he was due to inherit the Earldom of Ulster. With his elder brothers absent, John of Gaunt seized the opportunity to demonstrate his political acumen, prompting the King to send him on a series of diplomatic missions to secure a crucial marital alliance between his younger brother, Edmund of Langley, and Margaret of Flanders.

With the Black Prince in Aquitaine and Lionel in Ireland, John of Gaunt took on a large part of the crown’s administration, rapidly gaining approval from his father, to whom Gaunt displayed unbending loyalty and respect. Gaunt sought to establish himself as a prince, politician and nobleman, as well as a soldier. In early 1361, tragedy provided the opportunity to advance into the highest echelons of nobility, a position of almost incomparable wealth and power. A second plague swept the country and took with it the most formidable knight, diplomat and nobleman in the county: John of Gaunt’s own father-in-law, Henry, Duke of Lancaster.