The Hundred Years War - Desmond Seward [14]
Froissart, who had met men who were there, writes: ‘This battle was right fierce and terrible [moult felenesse et moult orible] ; for the battles on the sea are more dangerous and fiercer than the battles by land; for on the sea there is no reculing nor fleeing ; there is no remedy but to fight and to abide fortune, and every man to shew his prowess.’ The King was in the thick of the mêlée and was wounded in the leg—his white leather boots were covered in blood. There was an especially murderous struggle to regain the great cog Christopher which was defended by Genoese crossbowmen, but at last it was ‘won by the Englishmen, and all that were within it were taken or slain’. The English found considerable difficulty in capturing the Castilian ships because their sides were so tall. The battle ‘endured from the morning till it was noon, and the Englishmen endured much pain’.
Eventually archers gave the advantage to Edward’s men —they could shoot two or even three arrows for every one crossbow quarrel—and the first French squadron was overwhelmed. Many of the enemy jumped overboard, their wounded being thrown after them. The sea was so full of corpses that those who did not drown could not tell whether they were swimming in water or blood, though the knights must have gone straight to the bottom in their heavy armour. Hue Quiéret, after being badly wounded, surrendered—to be beheaded immediately. Béhuchet was also captured, to be strung up by English knights within a matter of minutes.
The sight of their Admiral’s corpse swinging from the yardarm of the Thomas (the King’s flagship) caused panic among the French second squadron, many of whose crews leapt overboard without resisting. The onset of dusk went unnoticed, so bright was the light of the burning ships. When darkness fell the King remained before Sluys, ‘and all that night abode in his ship ... with great noise of trumpets and other instruments’.
During the night thirty enemy vessels slipped anchor and fled, while the Saint-Jacques of Dieppe continued to fight on in the dark—when she was finally taken by the Earl of Huntingdon, 400 corpses were found on board. Those French ships who stayed were attacked from the rear by Flemish fishermen in barges. When morning came Edward sent Jehan Crabbe and a well-armed flotilla in pursuit, but he had no reason to be dismayed that a few enemy vessels escaped. The entire French fleet, with the exception of those who had fled during the night, had been captured or sent to the bottom, while thousands of its men had died—‘there was not one that escaped but all were slain’, Froissart boasts with pardonable exaggeration.
Edward made a pilgrimage of thanksgiving to the shrine of Our Lady of Ardembourg. Later he commemorated the battle of Sluys on a new gold coin, the noble of six shillings and eight pence ; he is shown on board a ship floating on the waves, crowned and bearing a sword and a shield which quarters the royal arms of France and England. These coins so impressed contemporaries that some people said they had been made by alchemists in the Tower of London. They gave rise to a jingle:
Foure things our Noble showeth unto me,
King, ship, and sword, and power of the sea.
But Sluys had not won Edward command of the Channel, let alone of the seas—only two years later the French sacked Plymouth for a second time. None the less, he had rid England of a very real threat of invasion. With hindsight one can see that Sluys marked the passing of the initiative to the English—indeed, to the men of 1340 God had shown he was on their side.
However, King Edward still seemed no nearer to achieving the conquest of France. Towards the end of July, accompanied by seven earls and an army which included 9,000 archers, several thousand Flemish pikemen, and a multitude of mercenaries, he laid siege to Tournai. But though he may have had as many as