The Plantagenets: History of a Dynasty

by J. S. Hamilton

  In 1354, a draft peace settlement between Edward III and Philip VI’s successor John II was negotiated, the treaty of Guînes, by whose terms the English stood to receive Aquitaine, Poitou, Ponthieu and Calais in full sovereignty in return for Edward’s renunciation of his claim to the French crown. These were the terms that Philip VI had never been willing to grant and, as it turned out, neither was John. In the end, neither side ratified the treaty and the war soon recommenced.

  Edward planned to launch a two-pronged attack in 1355, with one army under the Black Prince going to Aquitaine, while he himself led another, larger, force to Normandy in cooperation with Charles of Navarre. Unfortunately, Charles of Navarre was playing a complicated diplomatic game and he reached an understanding with John II: he withdrew from the English cause altogether, even trying to set a trap for Edward in Normandy. Although the king finally sailed to Calais in late October, the ensuing campaign was brief and unmemorable. Moreover, the king returned to England to discover that the Scots had seized Berwick in a daring dawn raid on 6 November 1355, forcing him to redirect his attention to the north. Meanwhile, the Black Prince sailed on to Bordeaux and down in the south he undertook a chevauchée of unprecedented scale.

  If the Black Prince ‘won his spurs’ at Crécy, then he cemented his reputation with the stunning success of his campaigns in 1355 and 1356, which culminated in the victory at Poitiers. His army of 6,000–8,000 men left Bordeaux on 5 October 1355 and marched south and east right to the Mediterranean coast. Along the way, they burned Carcassonne and pillaged Narbonne before retracing their steps, very nearly, to Bordeaux. This was the grande chevauchée, perhaps the most destructive military operation of the entire Hundred Years War, and one that might seem difficult to square with the image of the Black Prince as the paragon of chivalry that was indelibly sketched by Froissart and Chandos Herald.

  More than 500 villages were burned – the lands of the French commander in Gascony, the count of Armagnac, being particularly targeted. Despite this, Armagnac refused to offer battle to the prince’s numerically inferior force, instead defending the principal towns and fortifications of the region. Whether or not the prince himself was seeking battle during the chevauchée remains a controversial topic. Contemporary letters written to the archbishop of Canterbury by Sir John Wingfield on 23 December, and by the prince himself to the king on Christmas Day, certainly indicate that this had been the prince’s intention. When, in late November, Armagnac had finally marched out from Toulouse to oppose the prince, the latter had marched his army toward an engagement only to have the French withdraw before him. Ultimately, with winter coming on and a long march still ahead, the prince was forced to return to Bordeaux, albeit with carts heavily laden with booty.

  In early 1356, a second English army under the duke of Lancaster landed in Normandy, while the prince maintained his position in Aquitaine. The king had returned to England and now turned his attention to the Scots. Edward led a brutal winter campaign that recovered Berwick and devastated Lothian so thoroughly that the campaign was long remembered by the Scots as the ‘Burnt Candlemas’. With the north once again secure, the English could resume their French offensive. In early August 1356, the prince left Bergerac with a force estimated at between 6,000 and 7,000 men, planning to link up with the northern army under Lancaster, which had been operating in Normandy. Marching north through Périgord, the Limousin, and Poitou, this march does not seem to have been marked by the same sort of destructive violence as that of the previous year, perhaps suggesting a different intent – conquest and occupation rather than destruction and intimidation. It proved impossible to combine the two English armies as planned, as John II had broken the bridge over the Loire at Angers, leading Lancaster to use his forces to garrison Maine and Anjou rather than continue south.

  The Anglo–Gascon army of the Black Prince, which was encamped near Tours by mid-September, had marched some 320 miles in 32 days. Moreover, the French army under the command of John II was certainly numerically superior to that of the Black Prince. When the efforts to arrange a truce undertaken by Cardinal Talleyrand of Périgord proved fruitless, the prince seems to have favoured discretion as the better part of valour. Despite recent arguments suggesting that the prince was deliberately trying to provoke an attack at Poitiers, his own letters suggest ambivalence at best: ‘Because we were short of supplies and for other reasons, it was agreed that we should retreat in a flanking movement, so that if they wanted to attack or to approach us in a position which was not in any way greatly to our disadvantage we would give battle. ’23 He ordered the earl of Warwick to lead the baggage train away towards the river Miosson, and it was this withdrawal that triggered the French attack, suggesting that the initiative for the battle did indeed lie with the French.

  Once begun, the battle of Poitiers on 19 September 1356 followed a pattern that was remarkably similar to that of Crécy. An initial pair of charges led by Arnaud d’Audrehem (accompanied by Sir William Douglas and some 200 Scottish men-at-arms) and Robert de Clermont, both marshals of France, was repulsed by the English archers. A subsequent attack on foot by the dauphin Charles with the French first division was driven back by the dismounted Anglo–Gascon men-at-arms after 2 hours of hand-to-hand combat. The English, with the exception of the earl of Warwick, held their positions and did not pursue the retreating French, as a large part of the enemy army had yet to engage. The dauphin was now led from the field, perhaps on King John’s orders, but the young duke of Orléans followed the dauphin with the entire second division of the French army, leaving the remaining French forces in an untenable position. King John was left alone on the field with a single division: nevertheless, he resolutely ordered an advance on foot.

  The Black Prince, in turn, ordered a counter-attack. The captal de Buch drove into the left rear of the French army with a small force of men-at-arms and mounted archers, while the English knights and men-at-arms now remounted and were hurled forward under Sir James Audley. Between the impact of this charge and the continuing hail of arrows from English longbows, the French formation was broken. In the ensuing chaos, King John was surrounded and overwhelmed. The oriflamme fell to the ground and the French king was taken prisoner and led from the field by the earl of Warwick and Reginald Cobham. The French casualties were horrific: the duke of Bourbon, the Constable, Marshal Clermont, the bishop of Châlons, and Sir Geoffrey de Charny (the king’s standard-bearer), were all killed, along with some 2,500 noble men-at arms. Along with the king, the archbishop of Sens, 17 counts and viscounts, 22 bannerets (including d’Audrehem), and the seneschals of Saintonge, Tours and Poitou, along with some 1,900 men-at arms, were taken prisoner. The victory at Poitiers was complete.

  In the aftermath of Poitiers, a settlement with the Scots was arrived at fairly quickly. Edward’s devastating winter campaign had broken Scottish resolve, while the capture of the French king had deprived them of their main foreign ally. Edward Balliol having surrendered his claim to the Scottish throne to Edward III at Roxburgh on 20 January 1356, a treaty was sealed at Berwick on 3 October recognizing David II and the Bruce dynasty in Scotland in return for a ransom of 100,000 marks to be paid in instalments prior to David’s release from captivity. Negotiations with France proved more difficult. The first draft of a proposed treaty of London in 1358 called for Edward III’s renunciation of his claims to the French throne in return for sovereignty over Calais, Ponthieu and an enlarged Aquitaine (Edward’s traditional demands), along with a massive ransom of 4 million gold écus (£666,666) for the release of John II, which was ten times the sum demanded of the Scots for the release of David II. The refusal of the French regency government to agree to these terms may have reflected their inability to raise even the first instalment of such a staggering sum, rather than any matter of political principle. The ensuing stalemate led Edward, anxious to capitalize on his son’s victory at Poitiers, to raise a fresh army while increasing his demands. In 1359, a second draft of the treaty of London added Normandy,
Maine, Touraine and Anjou to the sovereign territories of the English king, with Brittany to recognize his suzerainty: Edward was demanding nothing less than the restoration of the Angevin Empire of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine.

  On 28 September 1359, the king sailed from Sandwich to Calais with a well-equipped army of 10,000 men. His aim was to capture Rheims, the coronation city of French kings, and Edward had in fact brought a crown with him in his baggage. He invested the city on 4 December 1359, but Gauchier de Châtillon refused to surrender. After just 5 weeks, on 11 January 1360, Edward III withdrew. He was short on supplies, suffering from atrocious weather and ultimately reluctant to storm the city. He did go on to lead a successful raid through Burgundy, forcing the duke of Burgundy to pay a ransom of 700,000 gold écus in return for the withdrawal of the English army. The duke also promised to support Edward’s claim to the French throne. The English king then marched past Paris, but was unable to lure the dauphin out of the city and into battle. Moving off west down the Loire, on 13 April the English army was caught in a violent storm outside Chartres, in which large numbers of both men and horses were killed.

  In an age attuned to signs and prophecy, both the failure before Rheims and the catastrophic storm spoke volumes. Edward was not destined to ascend the throne of his Capetian ancestors.

  Negotiations recommenced at Brétigny within weeks, and by 8 May a draft treaty had been completed. The ransom for John II was cut down to 3 million gold écus from the original 4 million, and Edward’s traditional territorial demands (Calais, Ponthieu and Aquitaine) were set out as the price of his renunciation of his claim to the French crown. The treaty was ratified at Calais on 24 October 1360, but with one profoundly consequential change. The renunciations (of sovereignty over Aquitaine, Ponthieu and Calais by John II, and of his claim to the French throne by Edward III) were made contingent upon the completion of the transfer of territories between the two sides to take place not later than 12 November 1361. Edward was committed to Brétigny, even if the dauphin/Charles V was not. He did not use the title or arms of France between 1360 and 1368. But in the end, the details of the settlement were never finalized, and the French successfully chipped away at the edges of the English-controlled territories. Slowly, but surely, the lustre of the magnificent victories of Edward III and the Black Prince began to tarnish and fade from view.

  The plague returned to England in 1361–1362, perhaps portending other coming difficulties that would soon face the king and his kingdom. Edward III turned 50 years of age on 12 November 1362, and to commemorate the occasion he issued a general pardon. In the same parliament, he addressed the perennial problem of abuses in the system of royal purveyance. The same year had seen the creation of the principality of Aquitaine for the Black Prince, which was meant to be a central feature of Edward’s dynastic legacy. Unfortunately, neither the principality nor the prince himself as its ruler was destined to live up to its promise. By now, the prince was in his 30s, and none of the various diplomatic marriages that had been considered for him had come to fruition. Now, rather unexpectedly, he married his cousin Joan of Kent in a public ceremony performed by the archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth on 6 October 1361. Four days later, the wedding was celebrated in the presence of the king and queen, John of Gaunt and Edmund of Langley, and a wide array of lords and ladies at Windsor. The marriage would have to be described as a surprise. Joan was, by all accounts, a great beauty, although like the Black Prince himself she also had a reputation for extravagance. Moreover, marriage to a woman satirized as the ‘Virgin of Kent’, on account of her earlier, scandalous, marital history, was of doubtful utility.

  After the execution of her father Edmund, earl of Kent, in 1330, Joan had been raised in the royal household by Queen Philippa. At 12 years of age, in 1340, she entered into a clandestine marriage with Sir Thomas Holand. In the following year, while Holand was absent in Prussia, she was pressed by her mother to marry William Montagu, son of the king’s trusted friend, the earl of Salisbury. Holand appears to have acquiesced in this, as he served as Montagu’s steward upon his return from abroad. But, having made a fortune for himself through the capture of the count of Eu at the battle of Crécy, he began proceedings in the papal court at Avignon in 1347 to recover his wife. He was eventually successful, and a papal bull on 13 November 1349 declared Joan’s marriage to Montagu null and void.

  She and Holand went on to have five children prior to his death in 1360, two of whom, Thomas and John, would play significant roles in the reign of their half-brother Richard II. Her third marriage to the Black Prince produced two sons, both born in Aquitaine. Edward of Angoulême was born in 1365 but died in 1371, just 5 years old, while the future king, Richard II, was born at Bordeaux on 6 January 1367.

  The principality of Aquitaine to which Edward and Joan moved in 1363 was an artificial creation at best, extending well beyond the traditional borders of English Gascony. Several times larger than the territory inherited by Edward III in 1327, it included two dozen bishoprics and more than a dozen senechausées. Political divisions aside, this enlarged Aquitaine also lacked linguistic and cultural unity.

  As such, it was never likely to succeed. Perennial disputes, such as the status of Béarn, were reopened, and new controversies arose as formerly French territories and their leaders disputed the legitimacy of the Brétigny settlement. The counts of Périgord, Armagnac and Comminges all refused to recognize the Black Prince’s authority from the outset.

  The prince was to establish himself in the castle of the Ombrière in Bordeaux, a city of between 20,000 and 30,000 people. The fact that Aquitaine was located in a frontier zone – facing challenges not only from France, but from Navarre and Castile as well – is reflected in the strong military presence at the prince’s court.

  He sailed to Bordeaux in April 1363 with 3 bannerets, 60 knights, 250 men-at-arms and 320 archers. As Chandos Herald recounts: ‘Every day there were more than eighty knights at his table and four times as many squires. They jousted and held revels at Angoulême and Bordeaux.’24 These revels lead us to another aspect of the prince’s court that has often occasioned comment – its lavishness. It has been noted that the prince moved with greater alacrity in making provision for his goldsmith and embroiderers in Bordeaux, than for his administrative officials.

  A convincing case can be made, however, that such extravagance was necessary. Although the prince has traditionally been seen, following Froissart, as the very embodiment of chivalric virtue, the chivalric ideal to which he subscribed was one rooted in loyalty and duty to one’s lord, and indeed one’s sovereign. This model was not nearly so universal in southern France, a region with considerable allodial land and fierce independence. The paramount ‘chivalric’ virtue in the south seems to have been largesse, even if the importance of this particular virtue was exaggerated by self-interested troubabours. The Black Prince’s nearby rivals, Charles of Navarre and Gaston Fébus of Béarn, patronized musicians such as the renowned master, Guillaume de Machaut, while Gaston Fébus himself wrote the Livre de Chasse, a famous treatise on another chivalric interest – hunting. The prince could do no less, and he hosted lavish feasts at which musicians entertained his guests, while he and Joan presided dressed in fashionable clothing and opulent jewels. The problem was not the extravagance of the prince’s court, but rather how to pay for it.

  Although the court of the Black Prince at Bordeaux was a centre of courtly culture and suggests a comfortable transition to English rule over the new enlarged Aquitaine, such was not the case. There was resentment against the imposition of English, or for that matter Gascon, taxes and legal restrictions that were considered to be ‘foreign’ in previously French-ruled areas. Moreover, the cessation of formal hostilities between England and France had not brought peace to much of France, as the many professional soldiers engendered by the long years of conflict formed themselves into the Free Companies, under commanders such as Hugh Calveley, Robert Knolles and Nicholas Dagworth. The victory of thes
e Free Companies against a French royal army commanded by the count of Tancarville at Brignais in April 1362 seems to have brought about a new determination on the part of the French to eliminate this threat to order. The solution, which served multiple purposes, was to redirect the Free Companies into Spain under the guise of a crusade in 1365, while ultimately seeking to overthrow the English-supported Pedro ‘the Cruel’ of Castile, whose kingship was opposed by his half-brother, Enrique ‘the Bastard’ of Trastamára.

  The primarily French force under Bertrand du Guesclin, which managed to overthrow Pedro, also contained a considerable number of English soldiers, some of them closely associated with the Black Prince. English diplomatic commitments, along with the threat posed to English shipping should the Castilian fleet now in Enrique’s hands make common cause with the French, was enough to call for intervention. Nevertheless, the treaty of Libourne of September 1366 can only be characterized as a mistake. The prince agreed to advance the considerable sum of 56,000 florins (£9,333) toward Pedro’s war effort, a debt that Pedro was never likely to repay. The cost of his own army was initially assessed at ten times this amount and would ultimately spiral to more than £250,000 before he ever left Gascony.