Sir John, who had become accustomed to the bad generalship of the French, was astonished to discover at once that this young Du Guesclin knew what war was about. The French lines were vigorously directed, but in the end Chandos prevailed. Charles of Blois, absurdly conspicuous in a white ermine cloak, was killed and his men fell into a panic. Bertrand du Guesclin, armed with a huge iron hammer, continued the fight almost singlehanded until Chandos, finding his way through the melee, cried to him: “Messire Bertrand, the day is against you. Yield to me.”
Later Du Guesclin was asked to set the amount of his own ransom. To the astonishment of everyone, he named the enormous sum of one hundred thousand crowns. It was not pride which caused him to agree on this figure. “I know a hundred knights in my native land who would mortgage their last acre rather than Du Guesclin should languish in captivity or be rated below his value.” This may have been true, but it is said that Queen Philippa, when informed of what had happened, cut the figure in half; and he was brought out of captivity for fifty thousand crowns. Another lady had figured in the story of the battle of Auray, Du Guesclin’s beautiful but fay wife, Typhaine, who tried to prevent the clash because her tablets of the stars said it would be a bad day for him. Chandos had no wife to play any part in this, his greatest military achievement. He remained single all his life because he had no time for matrimony and perhaps also because of an admiration for the fair sex so general that he could not find one to exclude all others from his mind.
It was three years after the victory at Auray that the Black Prince involved himself in the dynastic struggles in Castile. Pedro the Cruel, a beast in human guise, had so alienated his subjects that they rose in rebellion, as already told, under Henry of Trastamara. Thrown off the throne, Pedro appealed to the Black Prince. Edward was not in the best of health and his life might have been prolonged had he remained peacefully at Bordeaux, the home he loved above all others. But it was not hard to convince him that it was his duty to support a rightful king against his rebellious subjects. This was the first occasion when the fervent arguments of Chandos were disregarded. He had good company in opposition, for the one-time Fair Maid of Kent, now the Princess of Wales, was also against any interference; even though Pedro, to win her over, presented her with a table of gold so large that it had to be carried on the shoulders of four men.
Chandos was Edward’s man, however, so he went along in command of one division of the army which the Black Prince led across the Pyrenees and he had his part in the defeat of the army of Henry of Trastamara at the battle of Navarrete.
The second occasion for disagreement between them arose soon after. Chandos realized how unpopular the hearth tax would be and begged the prince to change his mind. Sick and disappointed, the latter would not relinquish his plan and asserted his intention so sharply that Chandos left the palace at Bordeaux and returned to his estates in Normandy.
Chandos had been right. The nobility of Aquitaine took such umbrage over the tax that they carried the case to the King of France. War broke out again, and the Black Prince thought immediately of his faithful friend. Appointed seneschal of Poitou, Chandos encased his aching limbs in armor once more and came back into service. He was badly outnumbered in a skirmish at the bridge of Lussac. Tripping on the hem of a long white traveling cloak he was wearing, not expecting to meet the French, he fell on the planking of the bridge and one of the French soldiers stabbed him through the eye. The true knight passed away the next morning. He was the first to die of that remarkable galaxy of Englishmen.
If the prince had listened to his wise and honest lieutenant, they would both have been allowed a longer span of life.
3
The Complete Knight-Errant
The young Hainauter known as Sir Wantelot de Mauny but later as Sir Walter de Manny was of the class of chivalrous knights who excited Don Quixote to his frenzies of admiration. He abided most rigorously by all the rules of the code. Before a campaign he would wear a red patch over one eye and not remove it until he had performed a suitably brave deed. He was always ready to take the most desperate chances. A lost cause drew him like iron filings to a magnet. A resourceful leader as well as a rash participant, he could be described best, perhaps, as a combination of Launcelot and Galahad.
He came to England as a squire in the train of Queen Philippa in 1326 and was knighted soon thereafter, having served with distinction in the current Scottish campaign. As soon as the wars with France began he was completely in his element, as has already been made clear. In 1338 he went to Flanders after taking the Oath of the Heron, swearing to capture a town or castle. This vow he fulfilled in quick order. Taking only forty lances with him, he rode through Brabant and Hainaut and right on into French territory. Coming to a strong castle called Thun l’Evêque, he captured it with a surprise attack. It was one of those bold and strategically useless feats in which the good knights of the day delighted. Tearing off his red patch, the well-pleased Sir Walter rode back to the English lines.
He was with King Edward at the great naval victory at Sluys and was among the first to follow the grappling irons over the side and board the chained French ships.
The bold Sir Walter is seen at his best in his entry into the wars in Brittany. It will be recalled that there were two contestants for the title of duke and that England was backing Jean de Montfort while France espoused the cause of Charles of Blois. Jean de Montfort was taken prisoner, but his wife, who came of the ruling family in Flanders and was known in Brittany as Jannedik Flamm, was courageous enough to assume his place. She threw herself into Hennebonne and withstood a siege by a large French force. She hung on grimly but was compelled finally to promise the garrison she would give in if the help promised from England did not arrive in three days. The third day was nearly over, and the besieging force had come up to the gates in expectation of a surrender. The courageous Jannedik had gone up to the highest turret of the castle and was keeping a still hopeful eye on the waters of the Channel. Suddenly she sprang to her feet, uttering cries of joy. The harbor below had filled with ships carrying English pennons.
Sir Walter Manny was in charge of the English troops. He came ashore without a red patch but with a burning desire to accomplish something spectacular. The happy countess had a splendid meal ready for him and his officers, but they had barely taken their places at the table when a loud noise was heard. A large rock had come sailing over the top of the wall and had landed in the town. A mangonel clearly was at work in the enemy lines.
Manny’s face lighted up. “I think, madame,” he said, “that we must take some action about this at once.”
Leaving the meat to grow cold on the table, he collected a few of his knights and some archers, all volunteers, and made a sudden sally from the nearest gate. The French troops operating the siege machine were scattered easily and the huge mangonel was destroyed, as well as several smaller ones which were not in use. Before the party could get back behind the town walls, a large force of French knights came clattering up, breathing fire.
“My vows compel me,” cried Manny, “to unhorse at least one of these good fellows before I return to the hospitality of our kind lady.”
Laying his lance in rest, he rode headlong into the ranks of the oncoming French. It is possible that Don Quixote had this episode in mind when he charged, lance down, at the windmill; but the outcome was more useful for the records of chivalry. The tip of Manny’s lance caught one French knight squarely on the shield and sent him down under the hoofs of the galloping horses. Swinging about, he realized that some of his own men had followed his example and that a brisk encounter was under way. The English were badly outnumbered, but the sheer audacity of their attack so startled the French that they turned about and rode away even faster than they had approached.
This incident is perhaps more typical of Sir Walter Manny than anything else that happened in all the years of the French wars. There was, of course, his determination to reach Edward’s army in time for the battle of C
récy, which led him to ride through the heart of hostile France and to fall into the hands of the French king. His most successful display of leadership was evident in 1345 when he shared the command of an army with the Earl of Derby and captured nearly sixty castles and towns on the outer edges of Gascony in rapid succession.
The great regret of his life was that he missed both Crécy and Poictiers. He was engaged in the relief of Berwick when the Black Prince marched to the Loire and came face to face with the huge French army of King John. Having accomplished the relief of the city on the Scottish border, Manny reached Westminster just in time to hear of the amazing victory of the prince. However, he accompanied the army of Edward to France after the repudiation by the French dauphin of the treaty arranged with John in his English captivity. He led the scouting party which came closest to the gates of Paris. Never before had mad desire tugged so insistently at his heart strings as on this occasion. Rising in his stirrups, he gazed under a cupped hand at the high walls of the great city. If he had been free to act, he undoubtedly would have tried some rash enterprise, such, perhaps, as scaling the outer wall and hoisting the leopards of England over the gate, if only for an hour. But he was there on strict orders from the king which precluded any foolhardiness of this kind. Regretfully he turned back and rejoined the royal army.
It was on this expedition that he was given the honor he desired above all others. Lord Grey of Rothersfield had died and his place in the Order of the Garter was given to Manny, who had not been included among the original members.
Manny married into the royal family, becoming the husband of Margaret, daughter and heiress of Thomas of Brotherton, the oldest son of Edward I by his second wife, Marguerite of France. It must have been a love match, for Margaret had succeeded to the honors of her father (she would later be created Duchess of Norfolk) and was one of the great catches of the kingdom. Manny himself had been given much property, but he was relatively a poor man.
The picture of him that emerges from the brief references in the chronicles of the day is that of a soldier of unusual qualities, friendly and likable, and of much lighter spirits than most of his countrymen. He was a generous man and spent a fortune in the formation of the Charterhouse in London, beginning with the donation of land for a cemetery during the Black Death.
It was characteristic of him that in his will he stipulated that a penny was to be paid to every poor person who had attended his funeral.
4
The Knight with the Iron Fist
When things were blackest for the French and the freebooters were ravaging the countryside, the English soldiers had a saying, “Sir Robert Knollys all France controls.” Sir Robert seems to have had a good opinion of himself, as well, for he carried on his device of a ram’s horn the words:
Qui Robert Canolle prendera
Cent Mille moutons gagnera.
Which can be translated as follows:
Who captures Robert Knollys most surely gains
A hundred thousand muttons for his pains.
This stocky soldier of low degree, with his lowering brow and split upper lip, became to the French what the Black Douglas had been to the English, a figure of dread. And yet he was in no sense bloodthirsty as some of the freebooters seem to have been. He did not kill for the sake of killing, although he burned and ravaged the country when it suited his purpose. But inside his steel glove there was a fist of iron.
Stout John Hawkwood with his White Company had departed from France and was on his way to the Lombardy plains before Knollys and his close friend, Sir Hugh Calveley, started what they called the Great Company. It was made up of all the best Englishmen left and a fair sprinkling of Gascons. They established themselves in the valley of the Loire, calling that province their “chambre,” and in a very short time they had forty castles in their hands, and the personal share of Knollys in this colossal accumulation of booty was said to be a hundred thousand crowns, a constable’s ransom. It was at this time that the two daring leaders threw Avignon into a panic by announcing their intention to burn the papal city. Calveley, who was a man of mad impulses, would perhaps have undertaken this feat, but Knollys saw no profit in it; so they did not go nearer than thirty miles and contented themselves later with burning the suburbs of the great city of Orleans. These depredations were so thorough that soon the naked gables of burned houses became known as the “mitres of Knollys.”
He had married early and his wife, Constantia, was reported to have been “a woman of a dissolute living before marriage.” She was of good birth, however, and had a crest of her own, a fess dancette between three pards’ faces sable. From this, heraldic authorities concluded she belonged to the family of Beverly in Yorkshire. She was, at any rate, a woman of spirit and was a perfect mate for a soldier of fortune. At one stage, when he needed recruits, she got together three shiploads of men of an adventurous turn and took them over to Brittany personally.
Knollys and Calveley, who run through the freebooting saga like twin brothers, were at the battle of Auray and were given credit in some accounts for the capture of Bertrand du Guesclin. Early in 1364 Calveley was holding the castle of Le Pont d’Onne against a besieging force led by the great Bertrand. Several assaults had been repulsed and then the marshal decided to try a mining operation. His purpose was discovered by the defenders when a flagon of water, left on a parapet, was upset. Every member of the garrison swore not to have touched it and so it was filled a second time. Soon after it was found on the ground again. This made it clear that tremors in the masonry had been the cause. Calveley put his ear to the ground and heard sounds deep in the earth which he identified as digging.
A bold defense was decided upon. The defense ran out a mine of then own and destroyed the shaft of the attacking force. Du Guesclin found it advisable then to raise the siege.
Knollys had his great chance in 1370 when he was summoned to Windsor and given command of one of two armies which were being sent across the Channel to forestall a French attempt at landing a force in Wales. With an army of fifty-five hundred men, mostly archers but with a certain number of knights among them, Knollys proceeded to cut quite a swath. Landing at Calais, he marched so close to Paris that the watch over the city gates could see the smoke of burning villages. The French king was in Paris at the time but he would not allow any attempt to offer battle. Knollys waited long enough to become convinced that Fabian tactics were prevailing in the councils of the king and then marched westward. The booty secured on this bold foray was almost incalculable. Sir Robert was not having an easy time in his command, however. The knights serving under him disliked taking orders from a man who had risen from the ranks. They called him “the old brigand.” Finally a party of them took things into their own hands and set off with a considerable part of the force. Meeting with a French troop, they took a good shaking up and were glad to get on board their transports for home. Here the ringleader laid charges against Knollys, but at the court-martial which resulted the leader was exonerated. The accuser was arrested later and executed as a traitor.
It is on record, nonetheless, that the king had to be placated by a personal gift of a very large sum of money.
For ten more years Knollys was in the middle of things, sometimes in an official capacity, sometimes on personal ventures, and always doing well. Once the Duke of Anjou, a brother of the French king, was trying to capture Knollys’ own castle of Derval and executed some English hostages. The old brigand retaliated by chopping off the heads of an equal number of Frenchmen and throwing them out over the walls.
He retired in 1383, after more than thirty years of continuous fighting and a consistent record of success. Settling down at his manor house at Sculthorpe in Norfolk, he devoted himself to charitable work. He had wide estates and so much wealth that he built a chantry at Rochester and a hospital at Pontefract, large enough for a master, six priests, and thirteen people of the poor. This became known as Knollys’ Almshouse and it continued in existence until the Reformation.
In 1389 he went to Rome on a pilgrimage and met Hawkwood there. Between them they established an English hospital at Rome. What a meeting that must have been between the two most successful freebooters produced by a country with a remarkable record in that direction: the once black-a-vised but now grizzled Knollys, who was still called in France le vêritable demon de guerre, and old John Hawkwood, who had just retired after leading the armies of Florence to a conclusive victory over Milan! Brigands they were, but they were more than that: they both had been supremely able leaders. Abstemious in their habits (for no drunkard could keep control of a freebooting company) and not much given to talk, their tongues must have wagged nevertheless with tales of this and that, of the new cannon and the deadly longbow, of comrades dead and gone, and in general of the futility of war, a lesson which must have been very plain to them.
Hawkwood was to have no more than four years of peaceful retirement, but the burly Knollys outlived him by thirteen years, dying finally in his bed at Sculthorpe at an age in the proximity of ninety years. His wife died a few days later and they were buried side by side, the once dissolute lady and the always realistic gleaner of the spoils of war. He had not received the supreme honor of membership in the Order of the Garter.
5
The Finest General of Them All
Sir John de Hawkwood differed in two respects from all the other great military leaders on the English side. First, there was not a chivalrous bone in his body. He did not fight for the sheer love of conflict, for the admiration of fellow knights, for the love of a beautiful lady; he fought for wealth and power, and he became the greatest condottiere of his time, perhaps of all time. Second, he did not treat common people with scorn or unnecessary cruelty. In fact, he preferred when possible to levy on the nobility and the clergy.
The Three Edwards Page 46