Europe in the Middle Ages

by Ierne L. Plunket

The first of the great English victories was fittingly a naval battle, destined to avenge long years during which French raiders had harried the south coast, penetrated up the Solent, and even set fire to large towns like Southampton. In June 1340, near the entrance to the port of Sluys, some two hundred English vessels of all makes and sizes came upon the French fleet, drawn up in four lines closely chained together so as to form a kind of bulwark to the harbour. On the decks of the tall ships, the turrets of which were piled with stones and other missiles, were hundreds of Genoese archers; but the English bowmen at this time had no match in Europe for long-distance accuracy and steadiness, and the whistling fire of their arrows soon drove their hired rivals into hiding and enabled the English men-at-arms to board the vessels opposite them almost unopposed.

From this moment panic set in along the French lines, and the greater number of ships, unable to escape because of the chains that bound them together, were sunk at anchor, with, according to the chroniclers, twenty-five thousand of their crews and fighting-material.

The English were now masters of the Channel, and Edward III was enabled to transplant an army to Flanders, but no triumph in any way corresponding to the victory of Sluys rewarded his efforts in this field of warfare. The campaign became a tedious affair of sieges; and the Flemings, cooling from their first sympathies, came to dislike the English and to accuse Jacob van Artevelde of supplying Edward III with money, merely in order to forward his personal ambitions. This charge the Flemish leader stoutly denied, but when, hearing the people of Ghent hooting him in the street outside his house, he stepped out on to the balcony and tried to clear himself, the mob surged forward, and, refusing to listen to a word, broke in through the barred doors and murdered him. This was ill news for Edward III, but angry though he was at the fate of his ally, he had neither sufficient men nor money to exact vengeance. Instead he himself determined to try a new theatre of war, for, as well as his army in Flanders, he had other forces fighting the French in Normandy and Guienne.

Battle of Creci

Edward landed in Normandy; and at Creci, to the north of the Somme, as he marched towards Calais, he was overtaken by Philip of Valois in command of a very large but undisciplined force.

‘You must know’, says Froissart, the famous chronicler of this first period of the Hundred Years’ War, ‘that the French troops did not advance in any particular order, and that as soon as their King came in sight of the English his blood began to boil, and he cried out to his Marshals, “Order the Genoese forward and begin the battle in the name of God and St. Denys!”’

These Genoese were archers, who had already marched on foot so far and at such a pace that they were exhausted; and when, against their will, they sullenly advanced, their bows that were wet from a thunderstorm proved slack and untrue. The sun also, that had just emerged from behind a cloud, shone in their eyes and dazzled them. Silently the English bowmen waited as they drew near, shouting hoarsely, and then of a sudden poured into the weary ranks such a multitude of arrows that ‘it seemed as though it snowed’.

The Genoese, utterly disheartened, broke and fled; at which the French king, choking with rage, cried, ‘Kill me this rabble that cumbers our road without any reason’; but the English fire never ceased; and the French knights and men-at-arms that came to take the place of the Genoese and rode them underfoot fell in their turn with the shafts piercing through the joints of their heavy armour.

Again, at Creci it was made evident to Europe that the old feudal order of battle was passing away. Victory fell not to the knight armoured with his horse like a slowly-moving turret, but to the clear-eyed, leather-clad bowman, or the foot-soldier quick with his knife or spear. The French fought gallantly at Creci, and none more fiercely than Philip of Valois, whose horse was killed beneath him; but courage cannot wipe out bad generalship, and when at last he consented to retreat he left eleven princes of the blood-royal and over a thousand of his knights stretched on the battle-field.

The defeat of Creci took from Calais any hope of French succour, and in the following year after a prolonged siege it surrendered to the English and became the most cherished of all their possessions across the seas. ‘The Commons of England’, wrote Froissart, ‘love Calais more than any town in the world, for they say that as long as they are masters of Calais they hold the keys of France at their girdle.’