This defeat was a severe blow to the hopes of Louis, but he still held firm at London, watching for his reinforcements. The Dauphiness had collected several hundred knights and large supplies, which were to be conveyed to England by Eustace the Monk, a renegade ecclesiastic, now a noted pirate chief, with a fleet of 100 sail. On August 23 it sailed from Calais, but as all the south-eastern ports were hostile, and were held in force by the Marshal, who had his headquarters at Sandwich, it turned up Dover Straits to round the North Foreland and put into the Thames. As it passed Dover, the Cinque Ports squadron, some forty vessels under Hubert de Burgh himself, put out to the attack. The ships were well manned with bowmen (or crossbowmen) under Philip d’Albini, and quicklime was provided for use against boarders. The heavily laden French ships were at a hopeless disadvantage. The English seamen manœuvred for the wind, and, having gained it, bore down on their encumbered foes. The result was an overwhelming victory. Robert de Courtenay, the leader of the reinforcements, was taken prisoner. So, too, was the Monk, who, having been in the English service, was immediately beheaded. Many knights were slain, others drowned themselves in despair, and only fifteen ships escaped. The victory had decisive results. Louis at once made peace, submitting to the Pope’s legate, and abandoning all hopes of the English crown. Hubert de Burgh became the darling of England. Years later, when he had fallen into disgrace with Henry III., a smith who was ordered to fetter him threw down hammer and chains and swore that he would never put iron upon the man who had saved England from a foreign yoke.
For more than three centuries there was little that can be described as a serious invasion of England from the sea. The constant raids and counter-raids of the more than half-piratical seamen of the Channel ports, indeed, went on unchecked. The State Papers afford ample evidence that piracy was rife among the seamen of the English ports. During the ‘Hundred Years’ War’ with France these raids became of national significance. At first the English held the command of the sea by their famous victories of Sluys in 1340 and ‘L’Espagnols sur Mer’ in 1350, but after 1372 it passed to the allied French and Castilians. As early as 1360 Winchelsea was sacked—a fate it again suffered in 1361. In 1369 Portsmouth was burned. In 1372 the French and Spaniards gained a complete victory over the English off La Rochelle. France had now a capable admiral in Jean de Vienne, and in 1377 he carried devastation along the English coast. The Isle of Wight was wasted, and Dartmouth, Plymouth, Yarmouth, Rye, Hastings, and Portsmouth, sacked one after another. The English were helpless, and the French sailed up the Thames to Gravesend, which shared the fate of the other ports. The Patent Rolls of this period are full of records of the prevailing panic and disaster.
A VERY EARLY CAST-IRON BREECH-LOADING GUN FOUND NEAR DOVER.
(In the Artillery Museum, Woolwich.)
Something was done to retaliate by raids on France, but with little success. In 1380 the main Franco-Spanish fleet endeavoured to raid Ireland, but was severely defeated by the ships of Devon and Bristol at Kinsale. Yet in the same year Winchelsea was again destroyed. It never recovered, and its once splendid church was reduced to the fragment which still survives. In 1385 De Vienne sailed to the Forth, and helped the Scots to invade England. A great effort, however, in 1386, to equip a vast fleet for the invasion of England failed utterly, and the English port squadrons made lucrative raids upon the French ships as they lay rotting on the coasts. This failure practically put an end to active French operations, but they still retained to a great extent the command of the sea. In 1403 a French squadron sacked Plymouth, and landed a few men to assist the great Welsh rebel, Owen Glendower. Another squadron raided the Isle of Wight, but was repulsed by the men of Hampshire.
In August, 1405, a large French fleet appeared in Milford Haven, and landed 800 horsemen and 1,800 infantry, under the Maréchal Jean de Rieux and Jean de Hangest, Master of the Crossbows. Glendower joined them with 10,000 men. The allies took Tenby, Haverfordwest, and Caermarthen, and brought Henry IV. westward with a large army. Glendower starved him into a retreat, and captured much of the royal baggage, including Henry’s crown and robes. But the French fleet was defeated by Lord Berkeley, and the French soldiers worked as ill with the Welsh as with the Scots (see Chapter XI.). They drifted home in detachments during 1405 and 1406, and Glendower was left to maintain alone his gallant but hopeless contest with England.
For over a hundred years France made no further attempt. She interfered at different times in the English dynastic broils, but not until 1545 was there any attempt at a great invasion. During this period, despite civil and foreign war, the idea of a true royal navy had never been really lost sight of. Henry VII. had given the question serious attention, and his vigorous son took a strong personal interest in naval matters. The consequence was that by 1543, when war threatened with France, he had a really formidable naval force.
When war broke out England was in alliance with the Emperor Charles V., while France’s only supporter was gallant but feeble Scotland. The result was that the English Navy wasted the Scottish and French coasts, and swept French commerce off the sea. But in 1545 François I. succeeded in detaching Charles from the alliance. He then slowly collected a huge fleet. There finally assembled nearly 150 great-ships (gros vaisseaux ronds), 60 oared vessels of 40 or 50 tons (flouins), and 25 galleys from the Mediterranean. Besides the crews, there were 10,000 troops on board under the Maréchal Biez. The Commander-in-Chief was Admiral d’Annibault. Paulin, Baron de la Garde, and Leone Strozzi, Admiral of the Galleys of Rhodes, commanded the galleys.
Henry had ample intelligence of the intended invasion. The whole of the available naval strength of England was concentrated at Spithead under the command of John, Lord Lisle, High Admiral of England, afterwards Duke of Northumberland. It consisted of ‘great-ships’ built in England or purchased abroad, ‘galleasses’—really galleons, or ships built on finer lines than the ordinary great-ship (see Chapter XIII.), and small craft. To deal with the free-moving galleys Henry had himself designed thirteen row-barges, fast, handy little vessels of about 20 tons, armed with several small guns, and propelled by sweeps as well as sails. The flagship was an unwieldy giant of 1,000 tons, the Harry Grâce-à-Dieu. The total number of vessels was over 100. The majority of the crews were soldiers; the supreme importance of the seaman was not yet realized. In view of the apparent superiority of the enemy Lisle was ordered to remain on the defensive. No less than 120,000 men were levied for land defence, organized in four armies.