A Great and Glorious Adventure

by Gordon Corrigan

  King Edward now moved off to Chartres and began to lay waste the area round about. It was the realization that the English could continue to wander all over France dealing out death and destruction at their leisure for as long as they liked, provided they avoided fortified cities, that brought the dauphin and his advisers to their senses. Negotiations began at Brétigny, near Chartres, in May, and in a week agreement was reached. The terms were very much the same as those in the December 1357 document, except that the ransom for Jean was reduced to £600,000. The agreement was signed at Calais in October 1360, by the dauphin for his father and – King Edward having returned to England – by the Black Prince for his. King Edward was to have Aquitaine, Ponthieu and Calais in full sovereignty and would drop his claim to the French throne. Once two-thirds of the ransom had been paid, raised by swingeing taxes on salt, wine, cloth and most movable goods and by the betrothal of Jean’s eleven-year-old daughter to the son of the duke of Milan, Jean was allowed to return to France, leaving his three younger sons behind. When John, duke of Anjou, broke his parole, returned to France and refused to come back, Jean went back to England in his son’s stead and was so well looked after that he died, still only in his mid-forties, in the Savoy Palace in April 1364. Meanwhile, the territory had been exchanged and the Black Prince, now duke of Aquitaine, had been installed as the ruler of English France. It seemed a very satisfactory outcome.

  Sir John Hawkwood. Painting by artist Paolo Uccello created in 1436, currently displayed at the Duomo in Florence, Italy. A highly competent military commander made redundant by Edward III after the Treaty of Brétigny in 1360, he took mercenary service in Europe and died in service of Florence in 1394 aged about 75. The stirrup leathers are so long as to be no more than an aid for mounting.

  7

  THE FRENCH REVIVAL

  The Treaty of Brétigny marked the culmination of Edward III’s twenty-four years of campaigning in France and the end of the first phase of the Hundred Years War. The king had stated his claim to the French crown aged twenty-four and he was now forty-seven. Poitiers was a great victory and told the world, if the world needed telling, that the English had moved from being backward amateurs in the waging of war to being the foremost practitioners of it. The combination of professional soldiers fighting on foot with archers on the flanks was unbeatable, and the mobility of English armies meant that the French could neither trap them, nor fight them other than on ground which favoured the English, nor starve them out – although sometimes the latter was a close-run thing. Certainly, the Black Prince had been unable to take Rheims or Paris in 1356, but he had accepted that fact rather than become bogged down in a lengthy siege which would have forced him to remain in one place long enough for the French to concentrate against him. Given their inability to defeat the English militarily, the French had little option but to sue for what terms they could get: the economy was in ruins, the government had broken down, the fields could not be tilled, the population yearned for peace at any price, and Jean would promise virtually anything to gain his freedom. From the English point of view, the gains were enormous: it was true that the claim to the French throne had been abandoned, but a third of the kingdom definitely assured was better than the whole of the kingdom as a possibility. No one, French or English, could have predicted that in a mere fifteen years almost all the English gains would be lost.

  The Treaty of Brétigny did not stop war by surrogacy from continuing. In Brittany, the struggle between the Blois and Montfort factions was finally settled with the death of Charles of Blois at the Battle of Auray in September 1364, when the English army was commanded by Sir John Chandos with Sir Hugh Calveley as his second-in-command. One of the prisoners taken at Auray was to make a habit of being captured by the English and subsequently ransomed, in this case the sum agreed being paid by the French king. He was Bertrand du Guesclin, a Breton born of impoverished gentlefolk who was the exception to the rule of French social immobility. He had come to the attention of the dauphin during the earlier fighting in the Breton wars, and eventually – although with no great ability as a general – he would become a great French hero in a land badly needing heroes, be made constable of France and prove a constant thorn in the side of the English. On the English side, Calveley was yet another who had risen to prominence on the strength of his ability as a soldier. A native of Cheshire, he first fought under Sir Thomas Dagworth in Brittany, and in the guerrilla war that followed he was twice captured and ransomed, once at the Battle of the Thirty in 1351 and again as the captain of the garrison of Bécherel. He was a captain of archers at Poitiers and subsequently commanded a mixed force of men-at-arms and archers which became in effect a free company after the Treaty of Brétigny. Calveley and his company served in Spain as mercenaries in the army of the king of Castile, who was an ally of Edward III’s, before returning to Brittany. At some stage, Calveley was knighted and success at Auray brought him the grateful thanks of John de Montfort, now duke of Brittany, and a large annual pension.

  In 1361, the Black Prince, now thirty, married his childhood friend Joan, countess of Kent and widow of Sir Thomas Holland, described by the Chandos Herald as a ‘lady of great worth’ despite the fact that until recently she had been stony broke. This was in many ways an extraordinary match. No heir to the throne had taken an English bride since the Norman Conquest. Dynastic marriages with members of foreign royal families were major diplomatic instruments in the hands of English kings, and not only did Joan have a racy past, as we have seen, but she was also the same age as the prince and already had four living children, two sons and two daughters (a fifth, a daughter, had died in infancy). It seems, nonetheless, to have been a genuine love match, and, surprisingly perhaps, to have been approved of by King Edward, for he instigated a petition to the pope for a dispensation to allow the marriage (the couple were cousins).

  That same year, the plague returned, and, while (as in its first visitation) it had a less destructive effect in England than in France, it nevertheless slowed down the complex and inevitably bureaucratic process of transferring lands to English rule. In England, the first outbreak of the pestilence had hit the aristocracy less severely than the common people, probably because of the cleaner living conditions and better food of the former. This time, the mortality rate was reversed. Overall, the death rate was lower: in Bishop’s Waltham, fifty-three tenants died this time compared to 264 in 1348/9, although there were, of course, fewer tenants to start with in 1361. In Yorkshire, ‘only’ 14 per cent of priests died this time, whereas 22 per cent of tenants-in-chief and 24 per cent of the lords of Parliament were taken.33 It has been suggested that the class disparity in the mortality rate points to the 1361 outbreak being of a different disease to the previous epidemic, but the contemporary chronicles all say that the symptoms in 1361 were identical to those of the earlier plague. Rather, it may be that the lower orders had acquired some immunity, which could have been passed on to their children but was denied to their betters, who had not been in contact with the disease on its first appearance.

  In July 1362, the Black Prince was confirmed as the ruler of Aquitaine, in return for an annual payment to the king of one ounce of gold. Prince Edward, Joan and Joan’s four Holland children all moved to Bordeaux. While English officials and garrison commanders were appointed to the more senior posts, there was little interference with the local administration at the grass roots. It was hoped that the duchy could be entirely self-supporting, and, given that a long period of peace was now expected and that the wine trade, already lucrative, would presumably become more so, this was a reasonable assumption to make. It had not taken into account the intentions of the dauphin.

  The cause of the death of Jean II in London in 1364 is unknown. It may have been a last flicker of the plague, although rich food and an abundance of alcohol may have had something to do with it. In any event, Jean was only in his forties and his reign could not in any sense have been described as successful. The dauphin now ascended the French
throne as Charles V. Known to the French chroniclers as Carolus Sapiens (Charles the Wise) in tribute to his library of over 1,000 books in the Louvre, he was sickly, of insignificant appearance and no soldier, but he was no fool either. He had no intention of accepting the new status of the English in France, but was too much of a lawyer to attempt to oppose it openly. Rather, he would whittle away at English possessions and try to undermine their government rather than attempt to confront them militarily, which he was experienced enough to know he could not do – at least not yet. He was a far greater threat to the English than either of his Valois predecessors. The problems facing Charles were reduced when Duke John of Brittany, now put in place by the English, accepted that he held that duchy as a fief of the king of France (as in law he did) and paid homage to Charles for it. In Brittany, at least, there would be relative stability. That left the problems of Charles of Navarre (who had by now acquired the soubriquet ‘the Bad’), the routiers (free companies) and the shortage of funds in the national treasury.

  Charles of Navarre was a constant threat because he held lands near Paris and could block the routes into and out of that city. He had vacillated between opposing Charles when he was dauphin and making alliances with him, and was very much a man who looked to the main chance, whatever the rights or wrongs might be. Infuriated by Charles V’s bestowal of the duchy of Burgundy on his son Philip and insisting that his claim was much stronger than that of the Valois, Charles of Navarre raised a largely mercenary army, consisting of routiers, Navarrese, renegade Frenchmen and the Captal de Buch and his Gascons, and marched on Paris, only to be roundly defeated by the king’s forces and forced to retreat back into Normandy. He had no option but to sue for peace in 1365 and had to surrender all his lands near Paris to get it.

  The routiers were a far greater problem. Owing loyalty only to themselves, they were well organized, well led and well equipped, and preyed on vast tracts of the French hinterland. To the French, they were all ‘English – the scourge of God’, whereas their companies were in fact made up of Spaniards and Germans and occasional Bretons and Normans as well as Englishmen, and the majority in their ranks were Gascons. Nonetheless, most companies were commanded by officers who had held commands in the English army and were now demobilized – men like Sir Hugh Calveley, Sir Robert Knollys, who was of Cheshire yeoman stock and had started his military career as an archer under Calveley, and Sir John Hawkwood, the son of a London tanner and another ex-archer. The routiers had strict rules on the division of spoils, a proper chain of command and in most cases a uniform. They had become accustomed to life as soldiers and to being able to burn and plunder as they liked, and saw no reason to stop doing so just because there was now peace between England and France.

  As far as Edward of England was concerned, provided the routiers did not profess to act in his name, he was perfectly happy that they should exist – and, given that they did exist, it was better that they should ply their unpleasant trade in France than in England. Although each of the many routiers was nominally independent, they did occasionally combine into ‘great companies’, sometimes numbering several thousand, which allowed them to indulge in undertakings even more ambitious than mere large-scale brigandage. At one time, a great company under Sir Robert Knollys advanced on Avignon and menaced the pope, while another carried out a chevauchée around Lyons. Charles V’s France was in no state to put them down by force and more often than not local dignitaries and city authorities simply bought them off. Then a recurrence of the war by proxy gave Charles V his chance to rid France of the routiers.

  The Iberian peninsula in the 1360s was divided into the kingdom of Portugal, with borders more or less where they are today, Castile and Leon covering central and northern Spain, Aragon south of the Pyrenees and east to the Mediterranean, Navarre bordering on Aquitaine to the north and sandwiched between Castile and Aragon, and the last Moorish kingdom, Granada, in the south. The king of Castile, Pedro the Cruel, was in dispute with his half-brother, Enrique of Trastamara, who claimed the throne, a dispute that escalated into civil war. Enrique appealed to Charles V for help, and Charles, seeing a chance of striking a blow at the pro-English Pedro and getting rid of his own troublesome routiers at the same time, ordered Bertrand du Guesclin to gather together the greatest company he could and take them into Spain to fight for Enrique. Bertrand did just that. He assembled perhaps 10,000 men, a mixture of English, Gascon and Navarrese free companies, French men-at-arms and mercenary crossbowmen, and crossed into Castile, where he collected Castilian supporters of Enrique, deposed Pedro and placed Enrique on the throne. Up to this point, the Black Prince was not overly concerned: Pedro was generally regarded as a nasty piece of work and the prince did nothing to stop the free companies and his own Gascons from marching off to join du Guesclin. In England, King Edward took a different view. However unpleasant a character Pedro might be, it was not in England’s interest to have a French client state controlling the north of Spain: Castilian galleys had menaced the English coast and the routes for the Bordeaux wine trade in the past and might well do so again. When Pedro invoked the treaty of alliance with the English, signed in 1362, King Edward ordered his son to put Pedro back on his throne. The Black Prince began to collect an army which would consist of his own retinue of professional English soldiers, Gascons lately in the pay of du Guesclin and Enrique, and a contingent from England, mainly archers, commanded by the Black Prince’s younger brother, the twenty-seven-year-old John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster since 1362.58

  If the English were to support Pedro with an army from Aquitaine, then they would need to cross the Pyrenees, and that meant getting Charles of Navarre, who controlled the mountain passes and could easily close them, on their side. This was achieved by Pedro promising him Castilian territory that would allow Navarre an outlet to the sea and a cash grant of £20,000. As Pedro had no money and little of value save the crown jewels that he brought with him when he fled from Castile to Bayonne and threw himself on the Black Prince’s mercy, the money was lent to him from the coffers of Aquitaine. In Castile, Enrique, now that he was on the throne, saw no need to retain the huge and expensive army that had put him there, so he paid off the free companies except for du Guesclin’s Bretons and a force of around 400 English archers commanded by Sir Hugh Calveley. With their severance pay in their knapsacks, the companies either returned to Aquitaine, where they promptly took service with the Black Prince’s army – they had been well paid to put Enrique on the throne and were quite happy to be well paid to knock him off it – or headed east into Aragon, where there was employment in guarding the frontier area against Castilian incursions.

  When Enrique heard from French spies that the Black Prince was marshalling an army to come against him, he realized that neither Calveley nor his archers would fight against the Black Prince. But if he could prevent the English from getting into Spain, he would be safe, so, at some time around Christmas 1366, he approached Charles of Navarre, who was persuaded to turn his coat by Enrique’s promise to match everything that Pedro would give him, with the added bonus of the fortress town of Logrono and £11,000 in cash. Satisfied that the invasion would not now take place, Enrique paid off Calveley, which was sensible, but also du Guesclin’s Bretons, which was not. Once the Black Prince heard the news that Navarre was now in Enrique’s pocket, his immediate reaction was to send messengers to Sir Hugh Calveley, who was in northern Castile on his way back to Aquitaine, ordering him to invade Navarre from the south. This put the wind up Charles of Navarre to the extent that he personally hastened to meet the Black Prince to explain that it had all been a most unfortunate misunderstanding and that he would of course support the cause of Pedro and supply a contingent of 400 men-at-arms.59 Once Enrique realized that the passes would not, after all, be closed to the English, he hastily recalled du Guesclin and any mercenary troops that he could contact.

  In mid-February 1367, the prince’s army of around 8,000 men started its march up the traditional invasion rout
e from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port through the pass of Roncesvalles. Roncesvalles can be treacherous even in summer, and now it was the middle of winter, with thick snow, temperatures well below freezing, and not a blade of grass for the horses nor an ear of corn for the men to be found. It says a very great deal for the logistic arrangements of the army that they traversed the pass and reached the plains north of Pamplona in good order. We do not know the names of the quartermasters who worked out how much fodder and rations needed to be carried, and who hired the mules and the carts to transport it, but, with experienced men like Sir John Chandos, Sir Robert Knollys and Sir William Felton,60 it was an army well accustomed to campaigning in difficult terrain and in foul weather. From Pamplona, the Black Prince’s objective was Burgos, the capital of Castile which sat on the main communication routes north and south. Enrique did his best to block the river crossings, but by March the English had reached the plains before Vitoria.