The Hundred Years War - Desmond Seward [12]
Edward then sent yet another insulting letter to Philip, challenging him to trial by battle as ‘we do purpose to recover the right we have to the inheritance which you so violently withhold from us’. The combat was to be either between the two kings—chivalrous but hardly fair as Philip was forty-seven and Edward only twenty-eight—or else between a hundred of Philip’s best knights and a hundred of Edward’s.
The challenge was never withdrawn, and henceforward Valois and Plantagenet were locked in an unrelenting struggle. Edward III had shown extraordinary determination and opportunism, even if he had failed to bring the French King to battle. In contrast Philip VI, now approaching old age by medieval standards, had remained entirely on the defensive. Despite his much advertised taste for the tournament, Philip successfully used a strategy of tempting Edward to invade and then refusing battle until the enemy’s money ran out.
2
Crécy 1340-1350
Therefore Valois say, wilt thou yet resign, Before the sickle’s thrust into the corn?
The Raigne of King Edward III
From battle and murder, and from sudden death, Good Lord, deliver us.
The Litany
The next stage of the Hundred Years War is the story of Edward III’s relentless perseverance despite setbacks both at home and abroad, and of how he was eventually rewarded. Blocked in Flanders, this dogged and rather terrifying man attacked in Brittany, in Guyenne, in Normandy and even in the Ile de Paris. First, however, he won a great victory at sea.
When the King arrived back in England from Ghent in the spring of 1340, he summoned Parliament and told it that unless new taxes were raised he would have to return to the Low Countries and be imprisoned for debt. Parliament made plain that it was very unhappy about Edward’s extravagance, but reluctantly granted him a ‘ninth’ for two years—the ninth sheaf, fleece and lamb from every farm, and the ninth part of every townsman’s goods. In return the King had to promise to abolish certain taxes and make a number of reforms in government. However he could now return to Ghent to redeem his wife and children and recommence operations against Philip. He collected reinforcements, assembling a fleet on the Suffolk coast for their transport. En route he intended to deal with the French armada at Sluys.
Contrary to what the chronicler Geoffrey le Baker seems to have heard, the King had been planning this move for some time. The enemy invasion fleet was now dauntingly large ; it included not only French but also Castilian and Genoese vessels, Castile being an ally of France while the Genoese were mercenaries under the veteran sea-captain Barbanera (or ‘Barbenoire’ as the French called him). Edward had requisitioned all the ships he could find, literally pressganging men to sail and to fight on them. Even so, his sailing masters, Robert Morley and the Fleming Jehan Crabbe, warned him that the odds were too high. The King accused them of trying to frighten him, ‘but I shall cross the sea and those who are afraid may stay at home’. On 22 June 1340 he finally set sail from the little port of Orwell in Suffolk, he himself on board his great cog Thomas. En route he was joined by Lord Morley, Admiral of the Northern Fleet, with fifty vessels—together their combined force amounted to 147 ships.
Probably these vessels were nearly all cogs. The English government had commissioned a number of converted cogs, the ‘King’s Ships’, which for all their shortcomings were intended for war. The cog was basically a merchant ship, designed for carrying cargoes which ranged from wool to wine and from livestock to passengers. Shallow-draughted and small-sized—usually 30 to 40 tons, though sometimes as big as 200—it could use creeks and inlets inaccessible to bigger ships. Clinker-built, broad-beamed and with a rounded bow and poop, it was a boat for all weathers and for the North Sea. But while the cog made an excellent troop transport, it was hardly a warship—even though special fighting tops