The ballad agrees in the main with the account of the invasion as given by Froissart and Holinshed. The adventures in the second part probably relate to some other of the numerous descents on the island during the reign of Edward III., perhaps to that by Bahuchet, a French naval commander, about the year 1338. This Bahuchet landed in England, and committed great atrocities at Portsmouth and Southampton, for which, when he was taken prisoner in the great engagement off Sluys, in 1340, Edward ordered him to be hanged at the main-yard.
From Froissart’s Chronicles we learn that Ivon, or as he calls him, Yvain de Galles, was the son of a Prince of Wales whom Edward III. had put to death, and whose possessions he had seized upon. Ivon, thus disinherited, took refuge in France, where he entered into the service of the King, Charles V., and was by him entrusted with the command of ships and three thousand men. It appears from another part of the Chronicle, that Henry of Trastamara, King of Castille and Aragon, had supplied his ally, Charles, with a large fleet, well armed and manned, and it is probable that the galleys which Ivon commanded formed part of this fleet. If so, the name of “Aragousais,” or men of Aragon, given in the ballad to the invading force, is accounted for. With these troops he sailed from Harfleur and reached Guernsey.
Aymon, or Edmund, Rose, esquire of honour to the King of England, and Governor of the island, advanced to meet him with all the force he could muster,—about eight hundred men. The battle was long and hotly contested, but ended in the discomfiture of the insular force, with the loss of four hundred of their men, and in the retreat of Aymon Rose into Castle Cornet, to which Ivon laid siege. Several assaults were made on the Castle, but, as it was strongly fortified and well provisioned, they were not attended with success. How long the siege lasted we are not informed, but the French King, requiring the services of Ivon elsewhere, and believing Castle Cornet to be impregnable, sent orders for the siege to be raised. A few years afterwards, Ivon lost his life by the dagger of an assassin of his own nation, a Welshman of the name of Lambe, apparently at the instigation of Richard II.
According to the ballad, Ivon landed his troops early on a Tuesday morning in Vazon Bay. A countryman, who had risen early to look after his sheep, perceived the invaders and gave the alarm, upon which all the inhabitants assembled and endeavoured to repel them, but without success. A stand was at last made on the hill above the town of St. Peter Port, and a sanguinary engagement took place, in which five hundred and one of both sides were killed.
Tradition points to a spot near Elizabeth College as the scene of this encounter, and the locality to this day bears the name of “La Bataille.”
A deep lane, which formerly passed to the eastward of the strangers’ burial ground, but which has been long filled up and enclosed within the walls of the cemetery, was said to owe its name of “La Ruette Meurtrière” to the same event.
Towards the evening, eighty English merchants,—probably the crews of some trading vessels—arrived, and lent their assistance to the islanders. By means of this reinforcement the enemy was prevented from penetrating into the town, but they reached the shore, and, the tide being low, crossed over to Castle Cornet, and attacked it.
Most of the copies of the ballad say that they took the Castle, “par force prindrent le Chasteau,” but one, which has been preserved in the registers of the parish of St. Saviour, where it is inserted about the year 1638, has these words—“Il vouloient prendre le Chasteau,”—which seem to agree better with the other statements in the ballad that Ivon’s ships came round the island by the southward, that they received some damage from the peasantry at La Corbière, and that they re-embarked their troops at Bec de la Chèvre, now known by the name of the Terres point, after which Ivon ordered them to make sail for St. Sampson’s Harbour.