A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [231]
Delayed until winter by lack of wind and then by threat of a French raid, Arundel took part of his force to Southampton to guard against an enemy landing and, while there, to conduct himself indistinguishably from the enemy. Besides robbing the countryside, he quartered his men-at-arms and archers in a convent, allowing them to violate at will the nuns and a number of poor widows who lived there, and to carry them off to the ships when ready to sail. Arundel was the man who had demanded money in hand before he would defend the south-coast towns against earlier French raids. If Walsingham may be believed, he used it for ostentation as extreme as his brutality. He is said to have embarked with a wardrobe of 52 suits embroidered in gold, and horses and equipment to the value of £7,000.
Sailing in December, his convoy was caught by a violent storm during which he ordered the kidnapped women thrown overboard to lighten the ships, maltreated the crew, and having struck down the pilot, was fittingly wrecked on the rocks of the Irish coast. Twenty-five ships with all equipment and all but seven survivors were lost. Arundel’s body, rolling in the waves, was washed up three days later. Driven back by the storm, the remainder of the fleet never made the crossing and the tax money was accordingly wasted.
Already in 1378 the Commons had complained of the drain of money in a war in which they no longer perceived a national interest. Although war provided business and a living to many besides the nobles, the Commons protested that it was the King’s affair and that he had spent £46,000 for the maintenance of Calais, Cherbourg, Brest, and other places “for which the Commons ought in no way to be charged.” The government replied that the good-keeping of these “barbicans” overseas was the safeguard of the realm, “otherwise we should never find rest nor peace with our enemies for then they would push hot war to the thresholds of our houses which God forbid.” The argument was not likely to persuade the south-coast towns, which continued to suffer hot war pushed to their thresholds by savage French and Castilian raids. In August 1380 even London was to tremble when an audacious Castilian force sailed fifteen miles up the Thames to sack Gravesend and leave it in flames.
In answer to the Commons, the Royal Council claimed that the footholds in France gave the King “convenient gates and entrances toward his enemies to grieve them when he is ready to act.” It was a revealing statement of the intentions of the war party headed by the new King’s youngest uncle, the Earl of Buckingham. A proud, fierce, intolerant young man of 25, he was a late version of the 12th century Bertrand de Born, who had once so feelingly exhorted his fellow knights, “Never give up war!”
In March 1380 the English renewed promises of aid to Montfort, but realization was postponed while the alternatives of peace were tested at Boulogne. At this parley Coucy and his fellow envoys offered new cessions and adjustments and the entire county of Angoulême as dowry for Catherine, but the English remained suspicious. They believed that the French offer was a ruse to prevent their coming to Montfort’s aid. But basically, English reluctance to make peace was simply a desire to go on fighting, now strongly reinforced by the fact of the schism.
Pope Urban, not yet in his mad stage, was exercising every pressure to prevent Richard’s marriage to a French princess and encourage a marriage to Wenceslas’ sister, Anne of Bohemia, which would weld England and the Empire in an Urbanist axis. When there was only one Pope, England was anti-papal, but the existence of two made it necessary to take sides. Richard’s advisers rejected the French marriage, negotiations were ruptured, and two years later the King of England married Anne of Bohemia. In the final irony for Charles, it was the schism, for which he was responsible, that frustrated his goal of peace. “All