The Hundred Years War - Desmond Seward [45]
King Charles’s reconquest had continued. Although the Mayor of Poitiers supported the English, its people opened the gates to du Guesclin in 1372 and the rest of Poitou soon followed its capital. In June the same year, off La Rochelle, a Castilian fleet defeated an English fleet under the Earl of Pembroke—the new Governor of Aquitaine—sending the ship carrying his troops’ pay to the bottom and taking the Earl back to Spain as a prisoner. In consequence the Mayor of La Rochelle overpowered the English garrison and admitted du Guesclin. The Constable also took Usson in the Auvergne, while the whole of the Angoumois and the Saintonge went over to the French. There were not enough English troops to provide adequate garrisons and the enemy seemed to be everywhere. The English strongholds in Normandy and Brittany were falling and even Guernsey was invaded by a French force under Evan of Wales (a member of the former ruling family of Gwynedd).
King Edward, old, wifeless, in the hands of a greedy mistress—Alice Perrers—and possibly drinking too much, made a final effort. At the end of August 1372 a fleet of 400 ships carrying 4,000 men-at-arms, 10,000 archers and the ailing Black Prince left Sandwich, the King on board the Grace-Dieu. For six weeks the English armada sailed into contrary winds, beaten and buffeted and blown off course time and again, until the sailors despaired and put back to port. The abortive expedition cost the enormous sum of £900,000. ‘God and St George help us !’ cried old Edward. ‘There was never so evil a King in France as there is now, nor ever one who gave me such trouble.’
The following year the Archbishop of Canterbury asked for prayers for another chevauchée, which was the only answer the English had to the new French tactics. In midsummer 1373 John of Gaunt led 3,000 men-at-arms and 8,000 archers out of Calais on one of the most daring raids of this sort, going through Picardy, Champagne, Burgundy, the Bourbonnais, the Auvergne and the Limousin, cutting a hideous swath of fire and destruction down central France. After a terrible passage through the mountains of the Auvergne in the depths of winter, Gaunt reached Bordeaux and safety with 6,000 starving troops, having lost most of the rest and all his horses from cold and hunger. It was a brilliant feat—he had covered over 600 miles in five months-but he had not succeeded in capturing a single town or found anyone to fight him.
By the end of 1373 Aquitaine no longer existed. Even Guyenne was diminished ; during the year the Duke of Anjou had taken Bazas on the English side of the Garonne, and even La Réole, the key to Bordeaux. The d’Albret, ancient vassals of the Plantagenets, had gone over to the Valois, driving a salient into the duchy which was now smaller than when Edward III had begun the war in 1337. Furthermore, most of Brittany had been occupied by the French, including every English stronghold, and its Duke had had to take refuge in England. In the north only Calais and a garrison in Normandy held out.
But by 1374 both sides were growing weary, especially in Aquitaine. Edward III was drink-sodden and used up, an old man with a long white beard. For these last years of the reign John of Gaunt stood behind the throne, but his ministers were unpopular and he himself seems to have been incapable of organizing a concerted war effort—there was no overall strategy as in the 1340s or 1350s. The treasury was empty ; even before the War had recommenced in 1369 the vast sums paid for King John’s ransom had been spent, while the English economy—and therefore royal revenues-had not