The Perfect King

by Ian Mortimer

  In August 1349 Philip decided to break the truce which had prevailed throughout the plague. Perhaps it was thought that English plague losses had been so heavy that Edward could not possibly afford to send an army abroad to protect his French possessions. Perhaps the Gascons, who had carried on their small-scale raids on French property, had committed too many robberies to remain unpunished. Either way, by the end of the month Guy de Nesle was raising an army to attack the English in Gascony.

  England was just beginning to emerge from the disease stages of the plague, and to begin to rebuild economically. It was thus with a shock that Edward learnt of the French plans. His reaction was to defend, and for this there was no better leader than Lancaster, whose very name struck fear into his adversaries. But the armies he would lead were another matter. There were no soldiers available. Lancaster took with him about three hundred men and went on a destructive rampage, hoping that through fire, speed and terror he could force the French to renew the truce. But it was not the destruction in the south-west that forced them to the negotiating table: it was Edward himself.

  Calais. The town had festered in the minds of the French ever since it had fallen. It was as great a loss to them as Crecy. To regain it, they could try to besiege it, but then they would have to fight a naval engagement with the English, who would break the siege from die sea. So treachery was practically their only option. Aimeric de Pavia was the man they hit upon. He was a Genoese soldier of fortune who had previously fought for France. Indeed, he had been within Calais when Edward had been besieging it. As an experienced and talented sea captain, he had been offered a new position by Edward, anxious to secure his services. Aimeric had accepted, and had been made captain of the king's galleys at Calais. Now Geoffrey de Charny, the famous French commander, approached him with a bribe. The plan was for Aimeric to allow access by night through the postern gate to the town.

  Aimeric was a loyal man. He had remained at Calais and starved for the French king's benefit, only to see the French army march away and leave the townspeople of Calais to their fate. That was no way to repay loyalty. So now, at the point of considering betraying the town, Aimeric sent one of his galleys across the Channel with a message for Edward, who was then at Hereford. He told him what de Charny was offering: forty thousand florins (£6,000). Immediately Edward saw the chance of grabbing the money, saving Calais and having an adventure all at the same time. With the prince of Wales, Sir John Beauchamp, Lord Stafford and the young Lord Mortimer - all Knights of the Garter - and Sir John Montagu, Lord Manny, Lord Berkeley, Lord de la Warre and the earl of Suffolk, he rode to Westminster. In order to ensure that no one heard that he was gathering a few hundred archers, he ordered that no one was to leave England, covering his reason by saying it was because of the plague. Then he went down to the coast, and crossed with his knights' retainers and his archers to Calais.

  In Calais Edward and the prince went anonymously through the streets, dressed in the clothes of merchants. Few of the townsmen knew they were there. This gave Edward a few days to prepare - the date set for the betrayal of the town was the night of 31 December - and in that time he ordered a false stone wall to be built inside the postern gate. He partially weakened the drawbridge, and stationed a large stone on the battlements of the gatehouse above. Then he and his men settled down to await the betrayal in a room in the castle of the town.

  Towards midnight a French advance party under Oudart de Renti rode up to the postern gate. They found the drawbridge down, and the gate open. There was Aimeric de Pavia, waiting for the first instalment of the money. Having received it, Aimeric declared he had no time to count it, but would lead them into the castle to allow them to signal to their fellows that all was well. The room to which he led them was, of course, that in which Edward and his knights were hiding. As the door swung inwards they found themselves confronted with a grim knight in full armour. That first moment of shock was followed by another, for the grim knight then bellowed his war cry: 'Manny! Manny to the rescue!' Sir Walter rushed forward into the group, only to stop short after a moment and declare: 'What! Do they hope to conquer the castle of Calais with so few men?'54 When the French had surrendered, they were locked in the same castle room. Edward, Manny and the rest of his men then took up their positions behind the false wall which had been built carefully without mortar, resting stones upon each other.

  The advance guard had instructions to raise the French flags over the castle if all was safe for the main party to enter the town through the main gate. Edward's men raised the French banners, to lure them forward. When a sufficient number had entered, trumpets sounded, and down went the stone on the drawbridge with a crash, cutting the troops in the town off from their fellow men. And down went the false wall too, to the alternate cries of 'Treachery!' and 'Manny to the rescue!' There the trapped French found themselves facing the banners of Manny, Stafford, Mortimer and the prince. Once more Sir Walter charged forward. This time, unlike any previous encounter, the king of England was beside him, fighting as an unmarked knight beneath the Manny standard. The king tackled Sir Eustace de Ribbemont, one of die principal commanders of the French army, and beat him to his knees. Then, with about thirty knights and a few archers, he ran out of the town to attack the rest of the French.

  It was a rash move. Edward and those who had charged with him found themselves facing a large number - perhaps eight hundred - men-at-arms. Edward ordered the few archers who had followed him to take positions on the ridges above the marshes, so that they were free to shoot at any men who approached. And then, pushing back his visor and showing his face to all, he lifted his sword and yelled his war cry 'St Edward and St George!' Any Englishmen there who did not know King Edward personally was with them had no doubt now. The bewildered French men-at-arms suddenly found themselves facing the extraordinary situation of the English king standing before them, outnumbered more than twenty-to-one, and yet preparing to do battle. It would probably have been calamitous had not the prince of Wales heard his father's war cry, and hurried ahead with all the available men, catching up as Edward plunged into the French ranks. The French had not been expecting this - they had thought they would walk into Calais unopposed - and before long the king and his son had fought through their adversaries to seize Geoffrey de Charny and hurl him to the ground while the remainder of the French fled. All the French captains of the attack were captured: de Charny, de Renti and de Ribbemont. Calais had been saved, the money seized, and Edward had gained more valuable prisoners.

  Edward was so pleased with himself that he entertained the French leaders to dinner the following evening. A picturesque irony was given to the proceedings by the prince and the other Knights of the Garter waiting on the captured men. Edward wore a chaplet of pearls, and, after the dinner, went among his prisoners talking to them. To Geoffrey de Charny he was stern, saying that he had little reason to love him, since he had sought to obtain cheaply what Edward had earned at a much greater price. But when he came to Eustace de Ribbemont, whom he had beaten in hand-to-hand combat, he took off his chaplet of pearls. 'Sir Eustace', he said,

  I present you with this chaplet, as being the best fighter today, either within or without doors; and I beg of you to wear it this year for love of me. I know that you are lively and amorous, and love the company of ladies and damsels; therefore, say wherever you go, that I gave it to you. I also give you your liberty, free of ransom; and you may set out tomorrow, and go wherever you please.

  Edward knew the value of publicity: to give a man he had beaten a permanent reminder of their fight and an incentive to tell people about it was worth far more than mere pearls and a ransom.

  *

  On 12 January 1350 Edward, now back in England, ordered prayers to be said in thanks for his safe delivery at Calais. The plague was clearly on the wane, and his reputation was higher than ever. The French had once more been forced to the negotiating table, and hard talks had followed. It took until 13 June for an agreement to be reached, du
ring which time both sides remained uneasy. Neither Philip nor Edward was confident that the outcome would be peace; both anticipated renewed conflict, and spent the first half of the year re-arming as best they could.

  Edward had one propaganda advantage in his re-armament campaign: the Castilians. After Joan's death on her way to marry Pedro of Castile, King Alfonso had thought better of his alliance with England, perhaps suspecting it would draw him into a conflict with his immediate neighbour, France, and decided instead to further his friendship with Philip. As Philip proceeded to rebuild his maritime forces, he offered a large sum to Alfonso for the use of a Castilian navy. The Castilian ships were huge, famous as towering castles of the sea, and because they were so large they were the ideal means to defeat the English, for lines of crossbowmen could shoot down on the smaller English vessels and clear the decks of long-bowmen. So, as far as the English were concerned, a Castilian navy in the area was a potent invasion threat. Acts of piracy in the North Sea by the Castilians played into Edward's hands. When on 27 March 1350, Alfonso died of plague at the siege of Gibraltar (the only crowned European monarch to die in the Black Death), the threat of piracy worsened. The word on the shipping lanes was that the Castilians aimed to capture the English wine fleet from Gascony.

  Even before Alfonso's death Edward had been making plans. On 26 March die orders went out for men to assemble at Sandwich on 6 June. The captains of Edward's flagship, the Thomas, were directed to find a hundred sailors in Kent and Sussex. Edward ordered rigging to be purchased Tor the king's ships'. One preparation now considered essential - the secrecy of the mission - was ordered on 23 June, when Edward issued the directive for no one to leave the country. On 10 August he wrote to the archbishop of Canterbury desiring prayers for the forthcoming battle to put an end to the threat of the Spanish invasion. Shortly afterwards he set sail.

  The Castilian fleet probably numbered forty or forty-four large ships; Edward had about fifty smaller ones. With the prince of Wales was Edward's third son, the ten-year-old John of Gaunt, whom we might suspect had asked to follow his brother (in whose household he was serving as an esquire). The other vessels were commanded by an array of Knights of the Garter and assorted military heroes: the earls of Lancaster, Northampton, Warwick, Arundel, Salisbury and Huntingdon, Sir Reginald Cobham, Sir John Chandos and the inevitable Lord Manny. Crowds gathered in the harbour at Winchelsea, and the Sussex cliffs were crested with people hoping to see another English victory. Among them were men and women from the queen's household; Philippa remained where she was, six miles from Winchelsea, worried for Edward and her sons.

  In order to engage the Castilians, it was necessary either to collide with them or to sail ahead of them and furl the sails, slowing down to meet them. Various captains manoeuvred their ships into position. English archers in the raised wooden forecastles and rearcastles waited until the great Castilian ships were in range, and then loosed their arrows. The new rigging Edward had specially ordered may well have been specifically with the Castilians in mind, allowing archers to be placed high above die English boats and able to attack the Castilians at deck-level. But to fire a longbow is not easy at the best of times, and it would have been far more difficult to shoot accurately from the rigging or crow's nest of the lurching English vessels. Some crossbowmen were picked off by the English, but the choppy waters of the Channel were less conducive to archery than the calm waters of Sluys which had allowed Edward's archers to massacre the French ten years earlier. The only way any Castilian ship was going to be overwhelmed was the old-fashioned way: by catching it, throwing grappling irons on board, climbing up and over the side and attacking those on deck with swords.

  Edward led by example. Picking out one of the larger galleys, he ordered his captain to sail straight for it. He presumed that the Thomas was sufficiently large to withstand a collision. But when the two vessels crashed into each other, timbers shook, the hull cracked, and immediately the Thomas was in danger of sinking. But the forecastle of the Thomas tore away that of the Castilian vessel, and left its front mast dangling. Edward was all for drawing alongside and boarding it, but the knights with him urged him to engage another ship, for the one he had rammed was already sufficiently damaged. So Edward disengaged from the first vessel and targeted another, his knights reduced to bailing out water with the sailors. They did not have to bail for long. Another large galley, seeing the royal standard, sailed directly for the Thomas, and its captain had every intention of boarding it. As the two ships came alongside and grappled each other, the Castilian crossbows rained bolts down on to the English decks and their experienced archers picked off the longbowmen in the rigging. Rocks piled on the decks of the galleys were hurled down on to the English men-at-arms as they tried to scale the sides of the vessel. The resulting fight was bitterly fierce, with many dead on both sides. But Edward's men once more prevailed. Having gained this new vessel, he hoisted the flag from the Thomas, announcing to the other captains that the king had been victorious.

  The battle continued until dark. For a while the prince's ship was in danger of sinking, which would have instantly meant the loss of two of Edward's sons, but the earl of Lancaster saw the danger and sailed to his aid, helping him overcome the galley he had grappled. Even after dark one ship carried on fighting against the Castilians. This was the Salle du Roi, commanded for Edward by Robert of Namur. The Castilians had grappled the ship, and decided to drag it away from the battle to ransack it, with their sails fully unfurled. In the darkness many men on both sides were killed as they fought across the decks, unable to see, and lost their footing, or were shot by unseen bowmen. Eventually one of Namur's men cut the sails of the ship, deadening their flight, and Namur's men fought off the Castilians.

  Contemporaries suggest that, over the course of the battle, between fourteen and twenty-four Castilian ships were captured, and the remainder of the Castilian fleet fled. No English vessels were seized. Some were sunk on both sides, but it was a great victory for the English, hailed in some quarters as a success as bold and as great as Crecy. On landing, a little after dark, Edward went to Philippa and returned to her both Edward and John. It had been a day of courage, destruction and near-disaster, but ultimately it was one more victory for Edward.

  When news of the battle of Winchelsea reached France, few would have taken much interest. It was not that the French did not care that their Castilian allies had been defeated in their first engagement with the English, it was because, seven days earlier, King Philip had died. In his career he had chosen to make an enemy of his cousin, Edward, and for that he had been repeatedly outwitted, out-negotiated, betrayed, defeated and humiliated. His insecurity and impatience, leading to his bitter reproaches towards his own people, had only made matters worse. After Crecy he was a broken man. After Calais, his was a broken reign. When his queen had died of plague, he had waited only a month before marrying his seventeen-year-old cousin, Blanche d'Evreux. Philip himself was fifty-six, which raised eyebrows, but what was shocking was that she had been betrothed to his son, John, causing many recriminations from members of the French nobility and the alienation of the heir to the throne. When the truce was announced in June 1350, France was doubly joyful, for it saved them from their own king's ineptitude as well as Edward's ruthless destruction. Philip's death brought an end to a twenty-two-year-long reign which had been as disastrous for France as that of Edward II had been for England. Together they stand as a reminder that, in the middle ages, kings did not have to be good men but they did have to be good kings.

  TWELVE

  At the Court of the Sun King

  In 1350 Edward's confidence could not have been higher. He had been victorious in every battle he had fought. He had survived the plague, had restored the prestige of the royal family, had solved his financial problems, was respected and applauded by his people and held in awe by his knightly contemporaries. He had constantly tried new ideas and techniques, and personally he had inspired and demanded innovations which
had resulted in new ways of fighting, governing, raising money and trading. The loyalty and courage of his men had been repeatedly tested to the limit and never found lacking. With such support he had done what no English king - not even his renowned grandfather, Edward I - had done before. He had utterly humiliated the French king, captured the Scottish king, and swept aside the political machinations of the pope, plunging the schemes of all those who opposed him into disarray.

  But despite these successes and such high confidence, Edward himself was changing. Even though he had survived the plague, the experience had deeply affected him. It had shown him the limits of his power, and was a horrific reminder to all kings of their weakness against natural disasters. It had affected him as a man too, through the tragic loss of his daughter and the deaths of friends brave enough to join him at Windsor in April 1349, at the height of the epidemic. Above all else it had shown him how transitory his achievements might prove. Had he died in the plague, that would have been the enduring image of him, covered in black pustules and reeking of decay. He had risked his life at the battle of Winchelsea and almost lost his boat and drowned; and all for what? Seventeen galleys? In his own high opinion of himself, it would have been a tragedy if he had died for so little gain. It may have been the plague, or it may have been his age - he was now thirty-seven - or perhaps both, but it is at this point that Edward began to draw back from martial activities and to create more lasting structures. Winchelsea was to be the last time he drew his sword and personally risked his life in the front line of a battle.