3

CRÉCY AND CALAIS

Battle was not always to be expected. In 1300 Philip IV had been advised that ‘Nowadays your Majesty’s enemies no longer dare follow the old methods of warfare: they neither dare nor can risk a straightforward battle, fought out with sword, shield, and lance.’¹ Yet the story was very different in 1346 when the might of the French army was brought down by Edward III’s troops at Crécy. The English victory was extraordinary. It was followed up by the siege of Calais, the fall of which provided the English with a base in France a short sea journey from Dover. These events changed the course of the war dramatically.

THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1345

Edward III’s plans when the war restarted in 1345 were highly ambitious. The Earl of Northampton was to take one force to Brittany. Another, led by Henry of Lancaster, was to be sent to Gascony. The destination of the main army, to be led by the king himself, was not disclosed, but it was to sail from Sandwich, and was probably intended for Flanders.

Northampton achieved little in Brittany. The English position was weakened by the death of John de Montfort, and all that was achieved by the end of the year was the capture of La Roche-Derrien on the northern coast of the duchy. The troops were delighted at the seizure of 1,600 tuns of Spanish wine there, but in military terms the place was of limited value. The king’s own expedition, intended to number some 20,000 men, achieved nothing. It was delayed in July by a crisis threatening the alliance with the Flemish towns of Ypres, Bruges and Ghent. Edward’s ally Jacob van Artevelde was murdered. Despite this, agreement was reached with the towns, and all seemed set for the major expedition to sail. The weather intervened. A violent storm scattered the fleet, and the plans were abandoned.

In contrast, Lancaster was astonishingly successful in Gascony. His expedition arrived at Bordeaux in August, where it was reinforced with locally recruited troops. Bergerac was swiftly taken by storm, and from there Lancaster led his force to Périgeux. He did not capture the town, but took a number of nearby places, including Auberoche. When the French attempted to recapture Auberoche by siege, Lancaster moved swiftly to attack. The English caught the besiegers by surprise. Their archers did a great deal of damage, and the French commander, Louis of Poitiers, was taken prisoner in the course of the hand-to-hand fighting. Louis died of his wounds, but many other nobles and knights were captured. There were rich prizes for the English in ransom payments, which were estimated at £50,000. The triumph at Auberoche was followed by the capture of the town of La Réole on the Garonne. The citadel held out for a time, but terms were agreed with the garrison; if no French army came to relieve the place within five weeks, it would surrender. It duly did. Success engendered further success in Gascony, as families and communities abandoned the French cause. In December 1345 Aiguillon in the Agenais was swiftly taken, and within a few months most of the region was under English control. Lancaster’s campaign had been a remarkable triumph.

THE 1346 PLANS

In 1346, Edward’s army assembled for embarkation not at Sandwich, as in the previous year, but at Portsmouth. It was far larger than any force the English had deployed earlier in the war. Numbers can only be approximate, but in all, there were probably about 2,500–3,000 knights and men-at-arms and 10,000 or more archers

The huge fleet of about 750 ships made a landing at Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue in Normandy on 12 July. Why Edward took this course has been much debated. Bartholomew Burghersh, one of the English commanders, writing five days after the landing, explained that the original destination was Gascony, but that unfavourable winds led the fleet to sail for Normandy. Recent historians have given this account of an accidental invasion of Normandy short shrift. Yet it is not easy to be sure what the king’s intentions were. One problem is that, as with another landing in Normandy, D-Day in 1944, there was complete secrecy. Edward took every precaution to ensure that the destination of his expedition was not revealed.

An expedition to Gascony, as suggested in Burghersh’s letter, would have made sense. After a number of successes, John, duke of Normandy, Philip VI’s son, laid siege to Aiguillon in April 1346. This was a major operation, and although the French siege engines had little success, Lancaster was under considerable pressure; his achievements of the previous year were now threatened by a large French army. His terms of service had provided that in the event of his being besieged or threatened by a larger force than he could deal with, the king was obliged to come to his assistance. There were therefore strong reasons why Edward should make Gascony the destination for his expedition. There was, however, an alternative way to bring the siege of Aiguillon to an end. An attack on Normandy would draw the besieging forces away, and this is indeed what happened. When Duke John had news of the English landing in his own duchy, he requested a truce. On 20 August the siege was hastily abandoned.

According to the chronicler Jean le Bel, it was a minor Norman noble, Godfrey of Harcourt, who persuaded the English king of the advantages of an invasion of Normandy: the duchy was rich and undefended. Godfrey had rebelled in 1343, for entirely personal reasons. He fled initially to Brabant, and then to England in 1345. No doubt he provided some useful intelligence, and very probably also misinformation about the support Edward was likely to receive in Normandy. Yet it is hard to credit that such a man as Godfrey was responsible for the new English strategy.

The traditional view is that Edward intended a destructive raid in Normandy, a chevauchée, which would put pressure on the French. He was not seeking battle, but had no option other than to fight at Crécy when the English, retreating northwards, could no longer outrun the French. Jonathan Sumption argued that Edward’s initial intention was to win Norman support for his cause, and establish an English occupation of the duchy. When it was clear that this was impracticable, destruction and devastation followed. Clifford Rogers presented a persuasive alternative scenario, arguing that Edward’s strategy was battle-seeking from the first. His march northwards was not an attempt to escape the French, but was rather intended to put him at a clear advantage when he came to confront Philip VI.² It is tempting to assume that the outcome of a successful expedition was planned from the outset, but it is more likely that as the campaign developed, so did its aims. It is likely that the initial plan was both to divert French attention from the siege of Aiguillon and to conquer Norman territory, but that as the campaign developed, battle became a clear objective. The campaign was punctuated by challenges from either side to battle; Edward expressed his readiness to fight, but ‘we do not consider it advisable to be cut off by you, or to let you choose the place and day of battle’.³ These challenges can be dismissed as little more than exercises in propaganda, a conventional ritual which never led to agreement on the time and place for the fight. It is, however, likely that Edward was genuinely keen to face Philip in battle. Before the campaign, as part of his propaganda effort, he explained that the French were threatening his lands, ‘wherefore the king judges it better to make a speedy passage and place himself in the hands of God’.⁴ Battle could be seen as a form of trial, in which God would ensure that right would triumph. Edward’s readiness to face the French in battle no doubt reflected this.

Events showed that any hopes the English may have had of taking control of Normandy were little more than fantasy. Bartholomew Burghersh optimistically wrote that ‘the commons of the land come in numbers to the obedience of the lord king’, but there was no move on the part of local lords to accept Edward’s lordship.⁵ Nor did the English behave in a way calculated to win support. A royal proclamation protecting the old, women and children, and forbidding the robbing of churches and the burning of buildings, did little to restrain the English troops. Destruction marched alongside the English army as it advanced toward Caen. Ports were ravaged by the fleet. Caen was taken with surprising ease, and an orgy of rape and plunder followed. A plan for the invasion of England was found there, which provided excellent propaganda.

Fig. 1: The capture of Caen by the English, 1346

Edward planned to march north from Normandy: a royal letter sent from Caen ordered ships and reinforcements from England to come to Le Crotoy, on the Somme estuary. He probably intended to move from there on to Calais. However, when the army reached Rouen, the bridge over the Seine was broken. The English were forced to continue their advance upriver, and finally halted at Poissy, close to Paris, to wait to see if the French were prepared to do battle, and to repair the bridge. ‘When the king of England saw that his enemy did not wish to come to do battle with him, he had the countryside around burned and pillaged.’ Edward himself explained that after crossing the Seine, ‘in order to better draw our enemy to battle, we headed for Picardy’.⁶ The army marched north, managing up to 15 miles a day, a good deal faster than in the early stages of the campaign, even though there was a substantial baggage train of carts and sumpter horses. On reaching the Somme, a local revealed the existence of a ford at Blanquetaque. Though the crossing was guarded, the English forced their way over with surprising ease. On 26 August they halted at Crécy, and prepared for battle.

THE BATTLE OF CRÉCY

The Battle of Crécy is not easy to interpret, for the various sources cannot be reconciled. The accounts by English and French chroniclers have their problems, and for the most part differ radically from Italian versions of what took place. The contradictions are manifest, and reflect the difficulties that contemporaries had in understanding what happened.

The site of battle cannot be easily identified from the contemporary sources, but local tradition places a gentle hillside close to the village of Crécy as the position where Edward drew up his forces. On the opposite side of the valley the slope was interrupted by a long escarpment or bank, six feet or more in height. This would have prevented the French from advancing directly on the English position; instead, they would have had to come along the valley before turning to face their enemy.⁷

Interpretations of the way the English were drawn up vary. There is no doubt that their knights and men-at-arms were dismounted, rather than being ready to make a cavalry charge. Many battles in the half-century prior to Crécy had demonstrated the vulnerability of cavalry to well-armed men on foot; among them were the Scottish victories at Stirling Bridge in 1297 and Bannockburn in 1314. The English response had been to dismount the cavalry. They planned to fight on foot against the Scots in 1327, had their foes been willing to engage. In 1332 a small English force, fighting on foot in a defensive position, with archers on the flanks, was victorious at Dupplin Moor. Many of the Scots were crushed to death as huge piles of dead and wounded men built up on the front line. In the following year a much larger army commanded by Edward III himself triumphed at Halidon Hill. There were three English divisions of dismounted knights and men-at-arms, with archers in support. Similarly, at Crécy there were three such divisions. How they were drawn up, however, is not clear; they may have been abreast, or one behind the other. The way in which the English archers were positioned on the battlefield at Crécy has proved more controversial than the way the knights and men-at-arms were organized. It seems likely that most of the archers were in formations on the flanks, some hidden in a wheatfield. Froissart described them as being en herse, a term which has given rise to much debate. It may refer to a harrow, to a hedgehog or to a triangular candelabrum used in churches. It is likely that it refers to a wedge-shaped formation.

Most problematical is the way in which the English used a defensive circle of carts. The Italian chronicler Villani, and an anonymous Roman account, made much of this, stating that the entire English army was surrounded by carts, with a single opening in the circle. Guns as well as archers defended this formation. In contrast, the chronicle written at St Omer described a ‘great hedge’ of carts which protected the king’s division from any surprise attack from behind. The Chronique Normande interestingly suggests that Edward had camped at Crécy, with his army enclosed by the carts, thinking that battle was unlikely. This account suggests that it was in the initial phase of the battle that the English came out from behind the defensive formation of carts.⁸ Alternatively, just one of the English divisions may have been protected by carts, while a circle of carts to the rear guarded the baggage and horses.

It is possible that a few guns added to the strength of this defence provided by the carts. The earliest evidence for the use of guns is from 1326; by the late 1330s, English-held castles in Gascony were equipped with gunpowder weapons. In 1338 a French shipmaster was issued with a gun, two dozen bolts for it to fire, and a small amount of sulphur and saltpetre for gunpowder.⁹ Guns at this time were largely for defensive purposes; their use on a battlefield was highly unusual, and given the very slow rate of reloading, probably largely ineffective. It used to be thought that the 100 ‘ribalds’ referred to in English accounts were multi-barrelled guns, but Thom Richardson has shown that they were in fact small carriages, each fitted with ten spears.¹⁰

There are no accurate figures for the size of the French army, but it undoubtedly far exceeded Edward’s force. In addition to the French troops, there were foreign allies such as John of Luxembourg, king of Bohemia, and the Duke of Lorraine, bound by treaty to provide Philip VI with soldiers in return for subsidies. A further source of troops was Italy; a large troop of Genoese crossbowmen added a different dimension to the army. Like the English, the French army was divided into three main divisions of knights and men-at-arms, drawn up one behind the other.

Fig. 2: A fifteenth-century interpretation of the Battle of Crécy. The English, with their archers, are on the right

The French deployed the Genoese crossbowmen first of all; they had no time to gather their large defensive shields, and they were unable to shoot effectively; their feet slipped on the muddy ground which made reloading difficult. Wet bowstrings added to their problems. Impatiently, the French cavalry charged through the Genoese ranks. English arrows rained down on them, maddening the horses. As the battle proceeded, successive waves of French cavalry drove towards the English formations. They almost achieved a great success, when they broke through the Black Prince’s lines. It is very possible that the prince was briefly captured. The battle was hard-fought, but went the way of the English. King Philip fought bravely; two horses were killed under him, and he was wounded by an arrow in the face. It seems likely that a quarter of the French knights and men-at-arms were killed. A tragic sight was that of the blind King of Bohemia, found slain, his knights around him. One report had it that just one of the English knights and two of the squires lost their lives.

Most explanations of the English success at Crécy give pride of place to the English longbowmen. They played a vital role in halting the initial French cavalry charges. Yet once the mêlée began, archery was of little use, as friend might be hit as well as foe. At least as important as the archery was the success of English men-at-arms fighting on foot. In the hand-to-hand fighting, sheer courage played its part, and Edward III’s men had no lack of that. There was courage too among the French, but also panic as cavalry charges were broken by the hail of arrows, and individual bravery was overtaken by general fear.

Normally, success in battle would result in the capture of prisoners, who could then be ransomed at a high price. Crécy was different. The French deployed their sacred banner, the Oriflamme, indicating that this was a battle to be fought to the bitter end, with no quarter given. Edward’s dragon standard sent out a similar message. This was a brutal fight. The list of French casualties was headed by the King of Bohemia, the Duke of Lorraine, the Count of Alençon and the Count of Flanders. English propaganda made much of the losses. It was astonishing that so many great men should have been killed, not captured. The flower of French chivalry had wilted.

CALAIS, BRITTANY AND SCOTLAND

Following the triumph at Crécy, Edward moved on to besiege Calais. Any hope that this might be a swift action like the capture of Caen was in vain. The siege was a waiting game of 11 months. The English were unable to blockade the town by sea until the spring of 1347. Assaults on the walls came to nothing: stone-throwing trebuchets, with their high trajectories, could not batter down the fortifications. Dysentery reduced troop numbers and morale. It was not until July 1347 that Philip VI advanced with his army to relieve the town. The terrain, however, was unsuitable for battle. Negotiations achieved nothing, and the French army withdrew. The garrison, exhausted and starving, offered to surrender. Edward demanded total unconditional submission. Walter Mauny argued ‘If you put these people to death, as you say, the same may be done to us in similar circumstances.’¹¹ In the event, in a stage-managed performance, the six leading townsmen were allowed to go free. The town was cleared of its people, and pillaged. Edward set about turning the place into an English town. In October some 180 properties, mostly inns, were granted to English tenants.¹² Calais was to be extremely important, providing as it did an easy cross-Channel route, and a highly convenient entry into France. At the same time, it was difficult and expensive to maintain.

Elsewhere, the war continued. In the south-west, in the autumn of 1346, Henry of Lancaster led a raid to Poitiers. His troops killed, burned and pillaged at will. In Brittany in 1347 La-Roche-Derrien was besieged by Charles of Blois. The English, led by Thomas Dagworth, attacked by night. In a confused engagement, Dagworth was first captured, then freed when the besieged troops sortied. Charles was taken prisoner, and many nobles slain. The battle was won by vicious hand-to-hand fighting, rather than by English archery. English successes were not limited to France. In the autumn of 1346 David II of Scotland, encouraged by the French, invaded England. At Neville’s Cross, just outside Durham, on 17 October a scratch English army led by the Archbishop of York defeated the Scots in a hard-fought battle. The English archers were once again highly effective in the early stages; as the battle proceeded, the fighting at close quarters was hard and exhausting. In the aftermath of the battle, King David was taken. His capture transformed relations between England and Scotland. Negotiations were complex. A huge ransom was eventually set at £66,666, and terms negotiated for David’s release. English support for the claim of Edward Balliol to the Scottish throne was a complicating factor. It would not be until 1357 that David would be freed from a far from unpleasant captivity.

THE AFTERMATH

There had been little that was chivalrous about Edward’s campaigning in 1346–7. Quarter had rarely been given, reducing the opportunity to take men for ransom. The tedium of the months encamped outside Calais was not lightened by knightly encounters. If, however, the war was not fought in a chivalric spirit, the same could not be said of the aftermath. After his return from Calais in the autumn of 1347, the king held a series of tournaments and festivities, appearing on one occasion in blue armour, with a crest of a pheasant with flapping wings. The culmination came with the creation of a chivalric order, the Garter. Earlier, in 1344, Edward had planned to establish an order of 300 knights, and the construction in the upper bailey of Windsor Castle of a great round house to house their Round Table had begun. Perhaps because it was too elaborate and too expensive, the scheme was abandoned. Revived in a different form, 1349 saw the first formal meeting of his new Order of the Garter. This consisted of a close-knit group of just 24 knights, selected for their distinction in the war. Though there were Castilian and Hungarian precedents for a knightly order, it was the Garter above all which set a fashion followed throughout much of Europe.

In its early stages the war had proved extremely expensive for the English because of the cost of the foreign alliances. This was no longer the case in 1345–7. Nevertheless, the burden of the war on England was heavy; in 1347 Edward was again forced to pawn his great crown. However, new arrangements to farm out the customs duties for £50,000 a year to English merchants proved highly effective. Direct taxes were granted for two years in 1344 and in 1346. There were none of the vicious political arguments of earlier years; in 1343, parliament had acquiesced in the repeal of the statutes that Edward had conceded two years earlier. Even so, had Edward not won such a resounding victory at Crécy, the demands he placed on the nation might have led to a new political crisis.

The situation was different in France. Complex negotiations for taxes and troops from local assemblies were long-drawn-out, and grants proved hard to collect. Ministers were dismissed, but their successors were unable to rescue the government from its plight. Loans from the papacy helped the crown, but the situation was desperate. The abbey of Saint-Denis lent silver plate worth over 1,200 livres parisis. By early 1347, Phillip VI had to resort to an arrest of Italian bankers, and a confiscation of the debts owed to them. There was further debasement of the coinage. The war was hard on the French nobility, and by the late 1340s many had incurred substantial losses and were heavily in debt to Italian moneylenders. The military defeats ensured that the regime was thoroughly discredited.

The English triumphs of 1346–7 were astonishing. Under Lancaster, the English were dominant in Gascony. Philip VI’s army had been defeated in battle at Crécy. The king of Scots had been taken prisoner, and the French commander in Brittany captured. A major port, Calais, lay in English hands, providing them with a new and highly convenient gateway into France. What no one could have expected was the disaster about to strike all of Europe.