Was a long war inevitable in 1337? The hostilities which had followed upon the previous confiscations of 1294 and 1324 had not been longlasting. Now, however, matters were more complicated. For giving moral support to Robert of Artois, who had been condemned by the French as a traitor and a declared enemy of the king of France, Edward III could be regarded as having acted against his oath of fealty through such a serious act of defiance. But the French were capable of playing a similar game. In July 1333 the Scots had been defeated at Halidon Hill, near Berwick, and Edward Balliol had done homage to Edward III for Scotland, while King David II retired to France, there to seek the support of Philip VI against England. Almost immediately Philip, realising what an opportunity such an appeal for help gave him, declared that he would make no lasting settlement with England unless the Scots were included in it. Edward had met this challenge by invading Scotland, but he was unable to bring the enemy to battle. Nor could he get the Scots and their French allies to the negotiating table; the French publicly declared for the Scots, and promised them military help if they needed it. As ‘man-in-the-middle’ Edward III was in a delicate and unenviable position.
His opportunity to counter the French threat came in the Low Countries, an area which had witnessed English intervention against France almost half a century earlier. None the less, Edward’s task was difficult. Louis, count of Flanders, was pro-French; his subjects, however, dominated by the great cloth-weaving towns of Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres were more likely to turn to England, the source of the wool upon which their industry and wealth depended. In Hainault the count, William, was father-in-law to Edward III and brother-in-law to Philip VI; he might support either in his quarrel with the other. It was upon such insecure foundations that the king had to build. In May 1337 a splendid embassy left for the Low Countries; by a mixture of economic bribery (in the form of direct subsidies, the promise of wool, or important trading concessions) it won Edward some allies. In September 1338, the emperor, Lewis IV, was prevailed upon – at a price – to appoint Edward imperial vicar in Germany and France, giving him rights to demand military service against France from subjects of the empire. Could Edward make proper use of such advantages? Even more important, could he afford the debts which he had contracted?
The fact was that Edward could not. Nor did the Flemings feel that he was really supporting them; he had appeared to be using them for his own ends. Thus the military activity which began in Flanders in 1339 had little effect. In January 1340 Edward formally assumed the title of king of France (to which he had already laid claim in 1337), perhaps to make his Flemish allies feel that they were legally entitled to help him oppose their traditional lord, the king of France. On 24 June Edward won the first notable victory of the war in the naval battle fought off Sluys (Fr. L’Ecluse) at the mouth of the river Zwyn, at which a larger French fleet was decimated by superior English tactics and the better use of prevailing conditions. Yet, although it broke the threat of a possible French invasion of England, the victory in itself brought little immediate advantage to the English. Nor did the war on land make any progress, while those who earlier had been promised English largesse demanded what was due to them. When Edward failed to pay, they abandoned him, forcing him to seal a truce with the French at Espléchin, near Tournai, on 25 September 1340.
Although the victor of a battle at sea, Edward returned home a bitterly disappointed man. In 1338 he had issued the so-called ‘Walton Ordinances’ to help make the raising of supplies more efficient. Once home, he sought scapegoats for his evident failure by dismissing his treasurer and chancellor, who had not, he argued, provided the backing he needed and deserved, and by turning on John Stafford, archbishop of Canterbury, whom he suspected of having been responsible for the lack of success. At an early stage Edward III had come to realise that war was expensive and that his policy of subsidising princes to act in his interest against the French was not the way forward. Other methods had to be found.
This process of discovery did not take long. The dependence on allies was soon dropped. In 1341 England and France found both a cause and a theatre of war in which they might meddle further. In April, John III, duke of Brittany, died, leaving two possible heirs, his half-brother, John de Montfort, and Charles de Blois, whose claim was through Jeanne, a niece of the last duke. Each party sought assistance of one of the rival kings. Montfort was promised the earldom of Richmond and sought active English intervention in Brittany on his behalf, while Blois obtained the support of Philip VI. The war between them was to drag on until 1364, a period of some twenty years. If its details are largely peripheral to the main story which we are tracing, its significance was considerable. Here, less than a year after the ending of the ‘phoney war’ in the north-east, was a propercasus belli which was important to each side in the wider conflict. For the French king, the opportunity of exercising a greater measure of control over Brittany, with its maritime outlets, was not to be missed. For Edward III, the possibility of establishing a ‘client’ ruler in a strategically placed duchy (off whose shores all English military and commercial traffic bound to and from Aquitaine and western France had to pass) was also a highly desirable political end. Furthermore, it gave the English a door into France: soldiers might land on the Breton peninsula on their way into the interior of France, and the possibility of a more co-ordinated attack from different directions came a step nearer. Both France and England had positive reasons for intervening in Brittany. In the autumn of 1342 Edward III himself did so, winning over parts of the duchy and leaving Englishmen in many of the castles and garrisons, including Brest, the port destined to remain in friendly hands for much of the next half century or so.
The war was slowly escalating. To counter this development, Pope Clement VI called the main parties to a conference at Avignon in October 1344. But it soon became apparent that the divisions between the French and English ran very deep. To the English, no settlement could be envisaged without consideration of their king’s claim to the crown of France, a claim which might be compensated for by the grant of other territories in France, to be held in full sovereignty. The French, on the other hand, would only see developments which took account of the most recent feudal settlement of 1327.4 If they gave up territories in exchange for the surrender of Aquitaine, these would have to be held feudally in dependence of the crown of France. Not surprisingly, the talks broke down. No wonder that the winning of the French crown became so important a part of Edward III’s war policy.
Before long the king was back again in France. In July 1346 he landed in Normandy with an army of perhaps some 15,000 men. In this enterprise he had the support of one of the leading Norman ‘dissidents’, Geoffroi d’Harcourt, who represented the dissatisfaction of the duchy at the way it was being ruled by the Valois king. On this expedition Edward met little opposition. The most notable capture was that of Caen which fell at the end of July, and which, according to the chronicler Froissart, was the source of much material gain which was taken down the river Orne to the coast for shipment back to England. Continuing his march eastwards, Edward came to within not many miles of Paris before swinging northwards in the direction of the Channel. It was while he was on his way that he was overtaken by the French army at Crécy-en-Ponthieu where, on 26 August 1346, the first of the major land battles of the war was fought.
Had Edward in fact planned to meet the French army? It is possible, although we cannot be sure of it. There can be little doubt that his tactics constituted an invitation to the French to catch and challenge him. Yet in 1340 Philip VI was already showing himself to be master of the tactic which the French were to employ in the years to come, that of avoiding direct contact with the enemy. The question was, for how long could such a policy of inactivity be allowed to continue? The English manner of waging war, that of thechevauchée, the raid carried out largely by mounted soldiers (who were thus fully mobile) through the enemy’s countryside, with the intention of pillaging enemy property, destroying crops, and thereby creating an air of insecurity, could not be allowed to continue too long unchallenged, since such an exercise undermined (as it was intended to do) the authority of the king of France, who was responsible for the defence of his people. How long could the French king continue to ignore the thief in his back garden? Thus it was that Philip VI, who was not without military skill and experience, felt obliged to seek out and, if possible, defeat the English king and his Norman supporters. The attempt was to prove disastrous. Although tired and running out of provisions, the English had several advantages: a good defensive position; a united command; and the use of an army which had already proved highly successful against the Scots, a combination of archers and dismounted men-at-arms for which, in the conditions prevailing on the day, the French cavalry and the crossbowmen of their Genoese allies proved no match.
In the event, Philip VI fled the battlefield, with both his personal and his royal reputation tarnished. The same day, however, was to make the reputation of another man, Edward, eldest son of the king of England, known since Tudor times as the Black Prince, whose courage and chivalric conduct won him general admiration. Nor was Crécy the end of the campaign. The English, fresh from their victory, went on to Calais, at that time still French. The place was besieged, and over a period of months, including a winter, the English grip tightened. French attempts to relieve the pressure failed, and on 4 August 1347, after almost a year of blockade by both land and sea, Calais fell to Edward III. This was the first of many long sieges which were to be characteristic of the war. As a result, England now had its own foothold upon France’s northern coast through which trade and armies might enter; or, as the emperor-elect, Sigismund, was to express it in the next century, a second eye to match the other, Dover, in guarding the straits.
While the siege of Calais was in progress, in answer to a call from the French, the Scots attacked the north of England. In October 1346, at Neville’s Cross, near Durham, they were met and defeated by the defensive forces of the region, the king of the Scots, David II, being taken prisoner. Further, in June 1347 Charles de Blois, the French candidate to the duchy of Brittany, was taken in battle by Sir Thomas Dagworth; like David II he, too, was sent to the Tower of London as a prisoner. The fighting season 1346–7 was one for the English to remember. It proved a fitting finale to what had been the first period of sustained fighting in the war.
A factor which could be regarded as an act of God now intervened. In 1348 the bubonic plague, known as the Black Death, struck Europe for the first time and, in conditions of poor sanitation, famine and undernourishment, made rapid progress. Spreading through France, it made a dramatic impact upon England and Wales in the following year, and reached Scotland in 1350. Then, for a decade or so, its effects diminished considerably. None the less these had been sufficient to bring the war almost to a stop. When it is recognised that England may have lost about one-third of her population in these critical years, the lull in military activity becomes understandable. Nor was there much inclination in France to pursue an active military policy. In the midst of this, in August 1350, Philip VI died. If, at first, his rule had appeared to be to the benefit of France, in the last years it had suffered considerable setbacks. Could his son, John, who had so far had no success against the English in the south-west of France, do any better?
It seemed not. When, in 1353 and 1354, the negotiators got down to their work again, this time in Guines, near Calais, the English made demands which the French at first seemed willing to concede: Aquitaine, Maine, Anjou, Touraine, as well as other lands would be ruled by the English in full sovereignty. At the last minute, however, when the terms were being finalised at the papal court, the French withdrew: the making of such concessions, which involved so much principle as well as territory, could not be countenanced. The French, however, were on the defensive. In Normandy opposition to the crown (already seen in the help given by Geoffroi d’Harcourt to Edward III in 1346) was increasing. The trouble was being fanned by Charles, king of Navarre, count of Evreux, son-in-law of King John II, who, like Edward III, had a claim to the crown of France through being a descendant of the house of Capet through the female line. King John was now faced by two rivals who, for the next few years, acted together with the possibility of partitioning the French kingdom between them. In the autumn of 1355 the Black Prince led an expedition from Bordeaux towards France’s Mediterranean coast. This chevauchée was an outstanding success: the loot taken was considerable, and the king of France was again challenged on his own ground.
In the following April John II, fearing that the dauphin, Charles, who was duke of Normandy, was plotting against him with members of the Navarrese party and others, went secretly to Rouen and, as the dauphin was entertaining his guests to dinner, arrested some and had them led away to immediate execution. The political tension, both between the king and heir and between the political groupings, rose rapidly. In the summer of the same year (1356) the English planned a threefold attack on France. The Black Prince was to march from Bordeaux into the north-central areas of the country; Henry, duke of Lancaster, planned to attack from Normandy; while Edward III himself was also to come from the north. Such a multiple attack had been a possibility for some time. In the event it failed, leaving the Black Prince alone, at the head of an army heavily laden with booty, in central France.
For the second time the French set out to catch the English. This they did near Poitiers in mid-September, and for two days papal representatives went to and fro between the forces in the hope of securing an arrangement. But their efforts were unsuccessful, and on 19 September the two armies met. By the evening the French, who lacked archers, had been defeated by an army which, although numerically inferior, had once again (as at Crécy) enjoyed a sound defensive position and what seemed like an unbeatable combination of longbowmen and dismounted men-at-arms. To this the French contributed their own mistakes which soon lost them any advantage they may have enjoyed. To crown it all their king, John, was captured in battle. A second king now took up residence in the Tower of London. No wonder the people of the capital cheered.
In France, the authority and prestige of the crown were in crisis. Two major defeats in ten years, followed now by the capture of the king, led to rebellion in Normandy and civil troubles in Paris which were to end in violence. The royal authority was being challenged not only by princes but by a growing menace of another kind, the increasing number of freelance soldiers, or routiers, who were gradually becoming a characteristic force in French society, reflecting the faltering grip of lawfully-established authority. Although the dauphin, Charles, who assumed power in his father’s place, showed himself to be a fine leader and a man of courage, he appeared in the circumstances to have little choice but to negotiate without giving away too much. What terms would the English try to impose, and what could the French hope to get away with?
Negotiations were protracted, lasting, on and off, from 1358 to 1360. In May 1358 the French agreed to cede Aquitaine with other territories amounting to about a third of the kingdom, in full sovereignty, and to pay, in addition, 4,000,000 crowns (£666,666) for the ransom of their king. A year later, having received only part of the sum owed to him, Edward III demanded and got more: all that he had been ceded in 1358, to which were added Normandy, Maine, Anjou, and Touraine, also in full sovereignty. The implementation of these concessions, made by the captive King John in London, was refused by the council in France, and late in 1359 Edward set out with a large army for France to see how persuasive a strong show of force could be. The expedition was a military failure, but it led to the treaty of Brétigny of May 1360, which gave Edward the lands ceded to him in 1358 with a ransom reduced to 3,000,000 gold crowns. Two other clauses were to have a vital significance. Edward agreed to renounce his claim to the French crown, while John was to abandon his demand for sovereignty over the lands ceded to the English. Later, at a meeting held at Calais in October, the two clauses were removed to form a separate treaty whose implementation was to depend upon the clauses concerning the cession of land having been properly carried out. Only then were the Calais clauses to have their full effect.
With justice the treaty of Brétigny is often regarded as the moment at which, for the first time, both sides decided to call a halt and have their willingness to do so formally recognised in a treaty, one of the most important of the whole war. In terms of the concessions made by the French, the treaty can be interpreted as a success for the English, although historians have not always agreed about this. True, Edward’s failure on the expedition of 1359–60 (when he had not been able to capture either Reims, where kings of France were crowned, or Paris, the capital) meant that he had to forego the important territorial concessions made to him in 1359, including Normandy and the Angevin lands in central-western France. On the other hand he would have a much enlarged Aquitaine, to be held in sovereignty, the ‘perpetual liberty’ which he had instructed the Black Prince to demand of his royal prisoner in 1357, and which would remove at a stroke the threat of confiscation.
The fact that he had agreed to surrender his right to the greater claim – that of the crown of France – in return for concession on the sovereignty issue shows where, in 1360, Edward III’s priorities lay. In the event, however, the renunciations removed from the body of the treaty’s main text were never made. As a result it would be possible for the French at some future date to renew their claim to sovereignty over Aquitaine, and for the English to do the same in respect of the crown of France. The significance of this could not be ignored.
What had been some of the main characteristics and development of this, the first period of the war? Not unnaturally, it has always been traditional to see the years to 1360 as constituting a period unfavourable to France: the initiative lay largely with the English, and it was mainly the French who were on the defensive. So it was that Edward III was able to extend the areas directly involved in war and to benefit from this by using landing points on different parts of the French coast. The theatre of war slowly became enlarged, a fact which, paradoxically, was to prove something of an advantage to the kings of France as they tried, if not always with success, to unite their entire population in a common war effort against the English. For as the war spread, so the fiscal demands of the French crown to meet it could be extended with justification. By the second half of the fourteenth century, few in France could claim not to be involved in it in one way or another.
The effects on domestic politics were considerably and predictably different. In England, the needs of war (in terms of money and provisions) provoked a considerable crisis in the years 1338–41. Thereafter Edward III, having learned some valuable political lessons, was able to develop a far greater degree of co-operation with his people, in particular with the fighting nobility, a spirit fostered by the two outstanding victories won at Crécy and Poitiers. In France, by contrast, in spite of what seemed like early successes, the personal fortunes of both Philip VI and John II sank very low. Both met defeat and one suffered capture, thus becoming, in a very real sense, a national liability. The lack of strong leadership served to exacerbate these disasters, and the nobility of France was obliged to endure strong criticism for its failure to protect the kingdom and its people in their hour of need. The crisis in the royal authority was underlined by the activities of Charles of Navarre in Normandy. As much as Edward III, he was a challenge to the civil and military authority of successive French kings, whose power, for the moment, was too weak to do much about him. The existence of the routiers was a further aspect of the same problem. The kingdom of France was becoming the playground of Europe’s footloose soldiers.