A Great and Glorious Adventure

by Gordon Corrigan

  At Calais, going over or through the walls was not an option as the moats and ditches protected the approaches; mining was ruled out because the soil was waterlogged and siege engines were too heavy to be moved over the marshy ground. Starvation was the only answer and the English were quite prepared to wait. At long last the requested reinforcements arrived from England and the fleet under Sir John de Montgomery, Admiral of the South, hove to off Calais at around the same time as the army got there on land. The soldiers began to block off all roads and tracks running to and from the town, and a vast camp was set up on the dry ground around the church of St Peter where the roads from Boulogne and Ardres crossed. The camp was intended to be in position for the long term, and soon shops, armourers’ tents, quarters for the nobility, butts for the archers, paddocks for the horses, and all the facilities of a large town were in place or being constructed. While the army was on the move, it could feed itself from the French countryside, but, now that it was static, the available food in the immediate area would soon be exhausted and provisions would have to be brought in.

  It is sad but perhaps inevitable that interest in military history is centred on the battles and those who fought them, and that most soldiers would rather be out killing people than in barracks counting blankets. But the fact is that you can have the best soldiers in the world, superbly trained, highly motivated, brilliantly led and equipped with the best weapons that money can buy, but, if you cannot feed them, house them, resupply them, move them and tend them when they are sick or wounded, then you can do nothing. Administering an army is far more difficult than commanding it in battle. The real heroes of most of England’s and Britain’s successful wars are the logisticians, and they get precious little recognition for it. For the siege of Calais, government agents went out all over southern England to purchase foodstuffs and other supplies for the army. They had to be found, collected, paid for, moved to the ports, loaded on ships – which themselves had to be impressed – and delivered to the army. The French scored a minor success when a fleet of galleys from the Seine intercepted one of the first supply convoys and sank or burned most of the ships, killing the crews and dumping the cargoes. Future convoys would have men-at-arms or archers on board and the supply line was never broken again, but the need to put soldiers on the ships did increase the expense of the logistic effort.

  While arrangements for the siege of Calais were being put in place, and the king’s agents were scouring the southern and eastern counties for supplies, the Scots decided to take a hand. After Crécy, frantic messages had gone from the French to the twenty-two-year-old Scottish king David II, son of Robert Bruce, who had been married to Edward III’s sister Joanna at the age of four and had returned from exile in France in 1341, pleading with him to do something to distract the English. Assuming that all the English soldiers were safely out of the way in France, David invaded England in early October 1346, a move generally popular with the Scottish magnates, who assumed that the north of England was ripe for the plucking. Storming down the Roman road and pillaging as they went, they took the castle of Liddel Strength, eight miles north of Carlisle, and beheaded its captain, Sir Walter de Selby. At this point, David’s chief military adviser, Sir William Douglas, the thirty-six-year-old Lord of Liddesdale, advised that enough was enough, they had done what they promised the French they would do, and it was now time to return over the border before retribution arrived. David rejected this sound advice, claiming that there was no one to oppose them but ‘wretched monks, lewd priests, swineherds, cobblers and skinners’.22 The raid continued and included the despoiling of the priory of Lanercost, which presumably accounts for the Lanercost chronicler’s obvious hatred of the Scots, claiming as he does that King David and his men made a habit of defecating in the fonts of churches that they passed. Given that the Scots were almost as terrified of the wrath of God – as opposed to that of his earthly representatives – as everyone else, this charge seems unlikely.44

  But David’s assumption that England had nothing with which to reply to a Scottish incursion was very wrong. Edward had not arrayed any troops north of the River Trent, and the defence of the Scottish marches had been entrusted to the very capable hands of William de la Zouche, the fifty-two-year-old archbishop of York, Warden of the Marches and principal commissioner of array in the north, who mustered an army at Barnard Castle on 15 October before moving north to Bishop Auckland, south of Durham, the following day. The army numbered around 1,000 men-at-arms, 2,000 archers and 5,000 spearmen, against probably a similar or smaller number of Scots. The usual three divisions were commanded by the archbishop himself, Ralph, Lord Neville, and Henry, Lord Percy. The Scots army was encamped in the priory grounds of Beaurepaire (which still exists but is now Bearpark), a few miles north of Durham, when on the morning of 17 October 1346 a foraging party of around 400 men under Douglas ran into the archbishop’s vanguard in a thick mist and got very much the worst of the encounter, with only Douglas and half his men getting back to raise the alarm.

  The Battle of Neville’s Cross which followed went on for most of the day.45 The Scots came on in the same old way, and the English archers on the wings slaughtered them in the same old way. When the lines of infantry met, it was rapidly evident that the Scots could not hold and the officers and men on the Scots flanks began to flee the field, leaving the king and his immediate household to fight on. Lanercost probably exaggerates the speed of desertion, though he does say that Earl Patrick should have been named Earl ‘Non Hic’.46 In any event, the Scots king and Sir William Douglas were taken prisoner and carted off to the Tower, while the remnants of their army fled back to Scotland, not even stopping to defecate in fonts on the way. The captor of David received an annuity of £500 a year and promotion to banneret. Brave but foolhardy, David was said to have sustained two head wounds from arrows. The surgeons removed one, but the arrowhead of the second remained lodged in his head for many years, until it apparently popped out one day while he was at prayer.

  Back at Calais, a brief attempt to bring down the walls by hurling rocks at them failed when the ground was too soft to allow a firm foundation for the trebuchets and petraries; an ingenious plan to assail the walls from boats fitted with scaling ladders was finally abandoned despite considerable expenditure in preparing the boats. And so the blockade went on. Although the town was well provisioned, its stores would not last forever, so the commander of the garrison, Jean de Vienne, an experienced and competent officer, decided to evict his useless mouths, expelling around 2,000 civilians – women, children, the old, the sick and the weak – into no-man’s-land between the walls and the investing army. At first Edward would not allow them to pass through his lines and, as there was nothing for them to eat save what little they had managed to carry away with them, they soon began to die. Edward relented and the dispossessed were allowed passage through the siege lines. While no food could reach the garrison overland and attempts to run supplies in by sea were usually prevented by the English navy, the occasional blockade-runner did manage to reach the harbour, but the quantities that could be delivered by this means were small.

  During the latter part of summer and autumn, life within the English camp was reasonably comfortable, but with the onset of winter conditions began to deteriorate. An army on the move could keep reasonably healthy, but, once it became static, disease inevitably followed. Edward’s army of 1346 was no exception. Little attention was paid to the cleanliness of water sources, latrine arrangements were primitive, flies and rats abounded, and soon dysentery – ‘the bloody flux’ – began to take its toll. Dysentery is an infection of the gut and is passed on by contact with an infected person or by touching or eating something that has been handled by an infected person. Symptoms include watery diarrhoea, often with blood in the faeces, nausea and vomiting, stomach pains and fever. While medieval man was probably more resistant to it than we are today, it could still be fatal, and, even if it was not, a man’s ability to do his duty was severely affected.
Many of the spearmen and archers would have been infested with worms, and colds and influenza would have been common. Malaria was then endemic throughout Europe but was more of a summer affliction, there being a lot fewer mosquitoes around in the winter.

  On top of the health hazards, manning siege lines was boring and gave few opportunities for acquiring glory or loot. Hence there was a steady trickle of desertion by archers and spearmen, while many of the knights found excuses to return to England to sort out a land dispute or see to a son’s marriage. There was also a problem with the horses, which started to die off from the cold. Or so the chroniclers tell us, but, as horses grow a substantial winter coat and are very capable of surviving all but the most severe weather, it may have been an epidemic of strangles,47 or perhaps starvation: hay would have been running out and barley and rye intended for the horses may have been eaten by the men.

  In February 1347, commissions of array were issued for another 3,600 archers and the commissioners in Wales were instructed to provide more spearmen. These reinforcements were needed not only to make up the shortfall brought about by sickness, desertion and leave, but also to replace a contingent that had been sent off to Brittany with Sir Thomas Dagworth. This knight had served in Brittany in the previous year with a small mobile force which had not only managed to distract the French from their sieges of the English garrisons of Brest, Lesneven and La Roche-Derrien, but, in a series of battles where his tiny band of men-at-arms and archers had seen off far more numerous French soldiers, had also forced Charles of Blois to lift the sieges. Dagworth then joined the chevauchée to Crécy before being sent back to Brittany in January 1347.

  Sir Thomas was typical of the professional soldiers who would make their reputations and fortunes out of this war. A younger son, born around 1306 of good but impoverished stock, he tarted life as estate manager for the earl of Hereford and obviously impressed, for he married, far above his station, a grand-daughter of Edward I. He was knighted, possibly in recognition of service in the Scottish wars of the 1330s or perhaps as a result of the connections he made by his marriage. In 1345, he commanded a sub-unit under the earl of Northampton in Brittany, where he did well and was appointed commander of English forces there when the earl returned to England in January 1346. In the next four years, Dagworth would receive a large cash grant from Edward III, be ennobled, be called to Parliament and die fighting. A natural leader whose loyalty was unquestioned, he cared about his men, looked after them and made sure that any credit went to them – a hitherto unusual attitude to find in a commander but one that would become the norm as professionalism continued to permeate the English army.

  The French had still not faced up to the implications of what they termed la déconfiture de Crécy (the collapse of Crécy), but Philip could not ignore the English army camped around Calais, where determined attempts to lift the siege by sea had proved futile. In early 1347, the French vassals were ordered to muster their troops at Amiens by Whitsuntide (28 May in 1347). The troops did arrive, eventually, but it was not until July that the army was ready to move, and, when they did, Edward was understandably concerned. Although the summer weather had improved the health of his army, there was still a large number on the sick list; long months in the siege lines had induced boredom and low morale; many soldiers had lost their physical fitness and fighting edge; and in June a reinforcement of the healthiest 100 men-at-arms and 400 archers had been sent off to Dagworth in Brittany. Although this detachment weakened the Calais army, it was a highly cost-effective investment. Charles of Blois had reinstituted the siege of La Roche-Derrien, hoping that by so doing he could lure the English army into trying to lift the siege, which might allow him to fight and win a battle on his own terms. Instead, it was the French who suffered a crushing defeat, for on 20 June 1347 Sir Thomas Dagworth led a night attack on the French army dispersed around its siege lines and defeated it piecemeal. Sir Thomas himself was wounded and captured, escaped, then captured and escaped again. When dawn broke on 21 June, nearly half the French men-at-arms had been killed, and those nobles not killed had been captured, including Charles of Blois himself, whom Sir Thomas sold to the king for £3,500. At a stroke the whole balance of power in Brittany had been reversed and the foundations laid for the eventual success of the Montfort faction in the Breton war of succession.

  Meanwhile, within Calais the siege was biting ever more sharply. The garrison had eaten all the horses and was starting on the cats and dogs, so Jean de Vienne expelled another 400 citizens who were not contributing to the defence. This time Edward did not permit them to pass through his lines; he refused them food and water, and let them die. Not everyone in the English camp agreed with this, but most did. By allowing the previous expellees to pass without hindrance, the English had given de Vienne a pain-free way of extending the siege by reducing his ration strength, and there was also the question of spies and messengers being sent out in the guise of refugees. It was a harsh decision, but the right one in the circumstances.

  With the approach of the French army from Amiens, summonses were sent to England to recall knights on furlough and those who had gone back to buy horses to replace those that had died during the winter. In any siege the investing army had not only to worry about sallies from the defenders, but also to guard against the risk of being attacked from behind by a relieving force. The French army got as far as Sangatte, saw that the English were apparently soundly entrenched and well able to withstand an attack (which they probably were, but not as well able as it appeared), issued a half-hearted challenge to come out and fight, and then withdrew. The news of La Roche-Derrien had reached the army, the men were not enthusiastic after Crécy the previous year, and many saw no point in continuing the war. As they scuttled back to Amiens, they were followed up by a mounted party led by the earls of Lancaster and Northampton, who gave them no chance to rest or recover their appetite for a fight. Philip now ordered his divisions to disband.

  Inside Calais, Jean de Vienne had hung on in the hope of relief, and with the withdrawal of Philip’s army that last chance was gone. A messenger was sent out offering to negotiate and Edward sent Sir Walter Manny in to parley. De Vienne said that he would surrender the town if the lives of the garrison and the property of the inhabitants were spared. Manny relayed the king’s orders that, in accordance with the customs of war at the time, the lives of a garrison that held out during a siege were forfeit. Only unconditional surrender was acceptable and Edward would do with soldiers and civilians as he wished. This policy was not popular with Edward’s own knights, who pointed out that to kill men for doing their duty could rebound on them in the future. The whole point of adhering to modern laws of armed conflict that protect prisoners of war is to ensure that the other side does the same, and Manny and the others were arguing that very same point. Eventually, the king gave way. It was relayed to de Vienne that the majority of the garrison and the civilians would be spared, but not their property, and six of the leading men of the town were to come to King Edward dressed only in their shirts and with nooses around their necks bearing the keys of the city.

  On the morning of 3 August 1347, Calais surrendered, and what happened next became the stuff of the French legend-makers, desperate to produce some tale of heroism from the disastrous years of 1346 and 1347. The story goes that the six burgesses, led by Eustache de Saint-Pierre, who had supposedly volunteered for the task, came out of the city gates to find the whole English army drawn up on parade, with the king and his queen and senior officers seated on a platform. The emaciated party approached the platform and fell on their knees, and Saint-Pierre asked for mercy. Edward refused and ordered them to be beheaded. At once there began a murmuring among the senior officers – to execute the men at once was bad enough, to execute them unshriven would be disgraceful. Edward was unmoved, and only when the pregnant queen, Philippa of Hainault, pleaded piteously with him was he moved to spare their lives. The truth, though, is surely that this was a carefully prepared and rehearsed char
ade to show the world that Edward was capable of great mercy: a queen might well argue with her husband in private, but not in public; similarly, whatever advice the king’s senior commanders might proffer in the council chamber, they would not cross him in the presence of a beaten enemy. As it was, Saint-Pierre and his companions were indeed spared.48

  Jean de Vienne and the more prominent of the French knights were sent off to join the growing band of notables in the Tower, and all the buildings of Calais and their contents were now to be the property of King Edward. Despite the insignificance of Calais as a trading port, it turned out to be stuffed with riches of all descriptions, largely as a result of many years of piracy, and, once the majority of the inhabitants had been expelled with little more than what they stood up in, the spoils of victory were collected and doled out. It was said that there was not a woman in England who did not wear something taken from Calais. It was Edward’s intention to keep Calais, but rather than rule it as part of English France, it would become a colony, with English merchants and tradesmen encouraged to settle there permanently with the promise of free housing and land. Calais remained English for another 211 years, until it was lost through Tudor neglect and French guile in the reign of Mary Tudor.

  Edward’s initial intention was to follow up the victories of Crécy and Calais by another great chevauchée, which might end the war once and for all. However, the army was tired after over a year of constant campaigning and money was once again in short supply, so, when the inevitable approach for negotiations was made through the offices of the French cardinals, Edward was prepared to listen. For the French, a truce was imperative: they had suffered serious reverses in Normandy, Aquitaine, Flanders and Brittany, and, wealthy though their nation was, they were short of cash to pay the army. Messengers sped between Calais and Amiens to try to get agreement – almost any agreement – that would end the fighting. The English were, of course, in much the stronger position, and, when a nine-month truce was signed at the end of September 1347, it left them in possession of all that they had gained and held.