A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [57]
So fruitful proved Normandy that the English needed to make no further provision for their host, and so unwarlike that the inhabitants fled, leaving their houses “well-stuffed and granges full of corn for they wist not how to save and keep it.… Before that time they had never seen men of war nor they wist not what war or battle meant.” At prosperous Caen, which was unwalled, the townspeople and a force of knights sent to the defense under the Constable, Comte d’Eu, offered a vigorous defense, but the English, drawing on prepared reinforcements, prevailed. The Constable was captured and, along with many other prisoners and wagons full of booty, was sent back to England to be held for a great ransom that was to have tragic consequences. “Burning, plundering and laying waste,” the English advanced from town to town, gathering up rich draperies, jewels, plate, merchandise, livestock, and men and women as captives.
The sack of Normandy by an army led by the King of England himself was the prototype of all that was to follow. Organized in three corps or “battles,” the invaders “overran, spoiled and robbed without mercy,” finding so much booty that they “rode but small journeys and every day took their lodgings between noon and three of the clock.” The soldiers “made no count to the King or his officers of what they did get; they kept that to themselves.” While they moved along one side of the Seine toward Paris, King Philip, who had been at Rouen without taking action, followed them along the other side and reentered Paris as Edward reached Poissy, twenty miles west of the city. Here, while the King of England kept the Feast of Our Lady in mid-August in robes of scarlet furred in ermine, his army burned and plundered surrounding villages. The flames at their gates struck the citizens of Paris with “stupefied amazement,” wrote Jean de Venette, “and I who have written this saw all these deeds, for they could be seen from Paris by anyone who would ascend a turret.”
Philip VI had meanwhile issued the arrière-ban or general summons to all capable of bearing arms in the war area. Based on the principle that all subjects owed their lives to “defense of country and crown,” the general summons was supposed to be used only when the call to nobles had not or would not suffice to repel the enemy. It was issued, like all public announcements, by “public cry”—that is, by heralds riding forth to proclaim the order aloud in market place and village square. Individual letters also went to towns and abbeys, requisitioning the customary subsidies. Some towns still paid their service in bodies of foot soldiers, hastily assembled, untrained, and virtually useless; others paid in money, which permitted the hiring of more effective mercenaries.
Non-noble military contingents were furnished by towns and districts according to number of hearths and the relative prosperity or poverty of the community. In some regions every 100 hearths were obligated to pay for one soldier for one year. In poorer districts the obligation might be one soldier for every 200 or 300 hearths. The number of effectives raised at this rate was not large: in 1337, for example, Rouen supplied 200 men, Narbonne 150 crossbowmen, Nîmes 95 men-at-arms. In the light of these figures, the chroniclers’ buxom references to tens of thousands shrivel to a more modest reality. Each levy from town, district, fief, or area of