A Great and Glorious Adventure

by Gordon Corrigan

  The trumpets sounded and the drums pounded as the crossbowmen began to move towards the English line. Crossing the floor of the valley and beginning to climb the gentle slope, they would have halted as soon as they were within range, perhaps 200 or 250 yards away. The English probably allowed them to discharge their first one or two volleys, but, shooting uphill and with the setting sun in their eyes, they cannot have hit very much. Then the English archers replied. The captains and the vintenars would have bellowed ‘Nock – draw – loose!’ and the deadly arrow storm began. Within thirty seconds, the astonishing number of 15,000 arrows would have come raining down from the sky. The archers did not have to hit a specific target; they simply had to ensure that their arrows landed within what a later age would describe as a beaten zone – an area that encompassed the lines of crossbowmen. Relatively densely packed as the Genoese would have been, it is not unreasonable to posit that one in three arrows hit something; and that being so, it would not have taken very long before the crossbowmen were thrown into confusion – some dead, many wounded, and with no cover and no escape except backwards.

  The crossbowmen would not have been helped by the arrival of one of those sudden and violent summer thunderstorms common in this part of France, which would have wet their bowstrings and caused them to stretch, thus reducing considerably the propulsive power of their weapons.39 For them to stand where they were and shoot back would plainly have been suicide, but even those at the rear who were more able to move would have found their retreat blocked by the packed lines of mounted knights. As it was, the obvious chaos and, to French eyes, cowardice of these despised foreign and low-born mercenaries encouraged the commander of the leading French battle, the count of Alençon, to order a charge. Whether he actually ordered his men to ride over the crossbowmen, as some of the chronicles allege, or whether what happened was simply collateral, is irrelevant: the wretched crossbowmen could not get out of the way of big heavy men on heavy horses, and many were trampled underfoot or knocked flying.

  A horse will go to almost any lengths to avoid stepping on anything alive,40 but, packed closely as they were and with head and face armour restricting their vision, the animals had little option. Allowing three feet of frontage per horse, that first French charge may have begun with 300 or 400 riders. After they had negotiated their way past the fleeing crossbowmen or galloped through them, their cohesion was lost and, instead of coming on in a controlled line at the canter, they were now a mob of individuals, all anxious to strike the first blow. And then the arrow storm began again. Clouds of arrows coming down at an angle out of the sky might not have killed many riders, but it would have unnerved them and it would certainly have panicked their horses. Again, an arrow whacking into a horse’s unprotected quarters would not kill it, but it would very likely make it rear and dump its rider, or whip round, bolt and take him into the next county, and that is exactly what happened. Those riders who managed to stay aboard and keep their horses pointing in the right direction then had to face archers shooting directly at them. At 100 yards or less, a bodkin point – the needle-like arrowhead designed for just this purpose – would go through armour or, with just a bit of luck, could penetrate through the slit in a visor and kill its wearer.

  The French launched charge after charge, and the archers shot volley after volley, with runners replenishing their arrows from the baggage train. As more and more Frenchmen fell and more and more terrified loose horses galloped screaming hither and thither, what had originally been a smooth and open approach to the English line became an obstacle course of dead and wounded men and horses. Welsh spearmen, meanwhile, laid down their lances to come out and kill the wounded. Some French men-at-arms did get as far as the English lines, and occasionally fighting was fierce, but the defensive line held, and the pole arms – halberds and short lances – wrought great slaughter among those unlucky enough to be hooked by them. Edward had specifically said that the dead were not to be looted and that no prisoners were to be taken: he did not want to risk men leaving the line tempted by fat ransoms.

  We can probably dismiss the tale of a knight of the Prince of Wales’s retinue coming to the king and asking for help, as his son was hard pressed, to be met by a refusal and the admonition: ‘Let the boy win his spurs.’ It is surely inconceivable that the king would refuse to support the sixteen-year-old heir to the throne when he had an uncommitted reserve to hand. On the French side, we can probably also dismiss the blindness of the king of Bohemia, whose badge of three feathers and motto Ich dien was adopted by the Prince of Wales and has been the crest of Princes of Wales ever since. John, count of Luxembourg, king of Bohemia, claimant to the thrones of Poland and Hungary and elector of the Holy Roman Empire, lost one eye from disease in 1336, but it is almost certain that he could see perfectly well with the other. He was killed at Crécy, aged fifty, supposedly having demanded that his household knights take him into the thick of the battle so that he could strike a blow with his sword. His son was also present but survived, having wisely scarpered when it was evident that all was lost, to become the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV.

  The furious battle went on through the evening, but, by the time darkness fell, there were precious few French knights or men-at-arms left. Those who had not been killed were slipping away, and even Philip had to accept the hopelessness of the cause when his advisers insisted that he too should quit the field. He went, leaving the oriflamme of Saint-Denis – the royal banner of the kings of France, only taken out of the Abbey of Saint-Denis in time of war – abandoned on the ground.41 He paused first at the château of La Broye, where he is said to have hammered on the gate shouting (according to Froissart): ‘Ouvrez, ouvrez, chastelain – ç’est l’infortuné roi de France’ (‘Open, open, it is the unfortunate king of France’). Now, in the gloaming of that August night, the heralds and the priests moved down into the valley to identify the dead – hence the name later bestowed on it: the Vallée des Clercs.

  It was a great and glorious victory. The flower of French chivalry lay dead on the field, and, while numbers are imprecise, it is clear that at least 1,500 and perhaps as many as 2,000 of the nobility were killed, and many thousands of the infantry levies and crossbowmen. Among the dead were at least eight members of the extended royal family, including the count of Alençon, whose impetuosity was a major contribution to the disaster, the counts of Blois, Harcourt (whose brother was one of the senior commanders in the English army) and Flanders, and the duke of Lorraine. Only the figures for the dead English men-at-arms have survived – forty – and we might extrapolate that to perhaps 150 archers and spearmen as well. It was certainly a remarkably cost-effective battle.

  It is easy to say that, rather than the English winning the battle, the French lost it. Certainly, their lack of cohesion, the confused command arrangements, the failure to allow the whole army to assemble out of sight of the English lines, the misuse of the crossbowmen, and the impetuosity of individual commanders and knights were major factors in the result of the battle. Having said that, the English had deliberately selected a position which allowed them to fight the battle in the way they did best: protected flanks, a narrow frontage, the use of missile weapons to break up the enemy assault, and a dismounted infantry defence (and commanders who could not depart the field because they had dismounted could only boost the morale of the soldiers under their command). These principles were vital, and significant, for they formed the basis of English tactical doctrine for the whole of the war. English armies moved on horseback but fought on foot; provided they could do so on ground of their choosing, they were unbeatable until, very late in the day, the French were able to develop field artillery that could counteract the hitherto overwhelming firepower of the longbow. Above all, perhaps, it was the discipline and teamwork of a professional or quasi-professional army under a respected and charismatic leader that won the day – and would have won the day even if the French had had a coherent plan and had been commanded as they should have been. Crécy was
a seminal battle. It proved that an English army properly deployed and well led could defeat a far larger host that clung to the now-outmoded feudal system. The lessons were there for the French to see; that they failed to do so would cost them dear in the years ahead.

  The tomb of ‘blind’ King John of Bohemia in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Luxembourg. Erected in the mid-seventeenth century over the original grave, the inscription points out that John was the son of the [Holy Roman] Emperor Henry VII, the father of Emperor Charles IV and the grandfather of Emperors Wenceslas and Sigismund. He was, of course, killed at Crécy in 1346, not in 1340 as shown.

  5

  TRIUMPH AND DISASTER – CALAIS AND THE BLACK DEATH

  The English army did not attempt to pursue the remnants of Philip’s host as it straggled away towards Amiens on the night of 26 August. They were exhausted and needed time to rest and recuperate, and it was not until the following day, a Sunday, when the heralds had completed their grisly task of identifying the dead nobles, that they realized the extent of their victory. At least two French contingents arriving to join their army and with no inkling that the battle was over were quickly seen off with more slaughter. However, true to the code of behaviour between gentlemen, the body of John of Bohemia was washed and wrapped and sent back to Germany, while those of the princes and the more important nobles were transported to the monastery of Maintenay, ten miles to the north. A truce of three days was announced to allow the locals to find the bodies of the common soldiery, which were stripped and buried in grave pits in the valley. Spin is not only a twenty-first-century political ploy and a report of the battle was sent back to England by fast cutter. Embellished somewhat, the account, combined with a report of the capture of Caen, was to be read out in every church, and in a very short space of time all over England there was genuine delight and pride in the great victory over a hated and feared enemy. Now Parliament and the people might grumble at the prospects of more taxes to keep the war going, but they would pay up for what they could see was a continuing success.

  Meanwhile, in Amiens the hunt for the guilty was on. The fault lay with evil counsellors, corrupt officials, the weather or even the displeasure of the Almighty, and it was always easy to blame the foreigners. The Genoese crossbowmen were all traitors and were to be hunted down and killed, and many of them were massacred before it was pointed out that they were valuable assets who might be needed elsewhere, whereupon Philip rescinded his order. In any age, a military commander who cannot identify his mistakes is doomed to repeat them, and the French refusal to face facts and recognize that their way of waging war was obsolete in the face of rapidly discharged missile weapons and professional dismounted infantry was to cost them dear in the future. It was inconceivable that well-born French nobles could be defeated by low-born archers – ‘gens de nulle valeur’, people of no worth, as one French chronicler put it. And in any case, by refusing to take prisoners for ransom the English were not playing fair, while the behaviour of the Welsh in despatching the wounded was very bad form indeed.

  On 29 or 30 August, the English army set off again, burning and pillaging as it went. The areas around Hesdin, Saint-Josse and Étaples were all reduced to smouldering heaps of rubble, while anything that looked like being properly defended was bypassed. The question was what to do next. Despite the capture of Caen and the great victory of Crécy, underneath the propaganda and the jubilation there was not a great deal to show so far, at least nothing of any permanence. Despite Edward’s insistence that he had come to France to claim his own, French troops relatively quickly reoccupied the areas that the chevauchée passed through, and stern punishment was meted out to those Normans who had thrown in their lot with Edward, including the garrison of Caen, who were rounded up and executed. What was needed was a concrete and obvious advantage, something that could be held and shown to be a lasting gain from the war, and that meant a city that was not part of the English lands in France. Edward would capture Calais and annex it to the English crown in perpetuity.

  Calais, with a population of about 8,000, was not then a town of any great commercial significance. Its harbour was small and liable to silt up, and most travel between England and Europe was through Wissant or Boulogne, both of which had much better and more easily navigable approaches. For all that, it was the nearest French port to England and might be developed, and it had for years been a scourge of English trade as a nest of piracy. From the French point of view, although it was only a minor trading post, the town was close to the border with Flanders and important as a military base to guard against Flemish incursions, and it had been well garrisoned and stocked with enough provisions to withstand a long siege. Moving through Neufchâtel and Wissant, the English army reached the heights of Sangatte on 3 September, from where they could see their objective.

  It is unlikely that Edward ever thought that he could take Calais by a coup de main, for it was well sited for defence. To the north was the harbour and the open sea, to the west was a river with only one bridge, the Neuillet bridge, and to the east and south was marshland criss-crossed by streams and rivulets that constantly changed their course. Within those natural defences was a series of well-constructed walls, themselves protected by moats, and at the western end was the castle, with its own separate system of walls, towers and ditches. The English did not even attempt to assault the walls, but instead prepared for a long siege. This was standard practice since, before the development of effective cannon, it was very unusual for a medieval castle or fortified town to be taken by assault. Far more often it was starvation, disease or treachery that forced capitulation, and it was common for a besieged commander to agree with the besieger that, if not relieved by a certain date, he would surrender the fortress. If, however, a castle or fortress had to be assaulted, there were three ways in: over the walls, through the walls or under the walls.

  Assault over the walls could be achieved by the use of belfries or scaling ladders, or both. The belfry was a three- or four-storey wooden tower on wheels or runners. Packed with archers and men-at-arms, it would be pushed up close to the wall until the attackers could leap from the top storey onto the wall. It was a very old stratagem – the Romans had made frequent use of belfries – and it took much time and labour to place them in position. Once packed with men, a belfry was very heavy and the ground had to be levelled and a road built to allow it to be pushed along. All this preparation would be obvious to the defenders, who would try to set the belfry on fire with fire arrows or by throwing burning balls of straw soaked in pitch at it, and mass their own men on the walls as it approached. While the belfry was still theoretically on the equipment tables of a medieval siege train, it was hardly ever actually built or used.42 Scaling ladders were easier to make and to conceal until the last minute, but, unless there were sufficient archers or crossbowmen to keep the defenders away from the walls, this too was a dubious way of earning a living, particularly for the first man up the ladder.

  Attacking through the walls meant creating a breach, and this could only be done with a battering ram or a bore, both of which were very slow and vulnerable to boulders and, once again, fireballs hurled onto them from above. Going under the walls involved the use of miners. Rather than attempt to tunnel beneath the walls and then emerge inside the castle, like the demon king popping up through a trapdoor in a pantomime, miners would try to collapse the walls. The mining team would tunnel under the wall, supporting the roof of the tunnel by wooden pit props.43 The tunnel would then be packed with combustible materials (dead pigs, having lots of body fat, were a favourite) and ignited. Once the pit props had burned through, the tunnel would collapse and the walls above with it.

  There was a variety of machinery which could be used to hurl projectiles at the walls or into the besieged town. The mangonel relied on the energy of twisted ropes – human hair was regarded as the best material for mangonel ropes – to hurl a stone or fireball from the end of a beam. The springal, little different from the Roman ballista,
was a giant crossbow, but, like its hand-held baby brother, it was slow to load and only effective if used in massed batteries. The trebuchet relied on a counterweight on a beam with a huge sling on its end and could deliver seriously large stones against or over a wall, while the petrary was an enormous catapult. It was claimed that the mangonel could be used to propel dead horses into towns in an early version of biological warfare, and the chronicler Froissart avers that, when the French were besieging Auberoche in Aquitaine in 1345, they captured an English messenger sent out to contact relieving forces, killed him and returned his body over the walls with a petrary – a somewhat unlikely tale. Edward may have had some early cannon in his siege train, and there is some evidence that three may have been on the field at Crécy. Descriptions are vague: they may have fired stone balls or large darts, but, as the secret of casting gun barrels was as yet unknown and the manufacture of gunpowder imprecise, they will have done little but frighten the horses and were probably more dangerous to the gunners who served them than to the enemy. If they did exist, they seem to have played little part in the siege of Calais.