CHAPTER IX
When Edward III was proclaimed King of France on 26 January 1340 the event came as a surprise to the rest of Europe. At Avignon Pope Benedict XII declared himself to be ‘astounded, stupefied’ by the news, although his representatives had been about the English court for more than two years. The Florentine community in Bruges, which had followed Edward’s doings with close concern ever since he had become the major debtor of the Florentine banks, were quite as much taken aback. ‘Imagine’, they wrote back to the Republic, ‘what news we have to tell you.’ It was a remarkable coup de théâtre whose consequences were felt for another 120 years of French and English history. Yet Edward III’s most spectacular political act had its origins in political calculation at once cynical and mundane, and when the decision was made it was made with hesitation and misgiving. The mere fact that it was made so late, after three years of war, is some indication of this.1
In 1329 the English Parliament, in spite of the strong views of Edward’s mother, had advised that Edward’s claim was a nonsense and ought to be forgotten. And so it was, for almost a decade. Nothing at all was heard of a Plantagenet claim to the French crown between 1329 and 1337. Moreover, a number of things happened in that period which made the claim even more far-fetched than it had been at the outset. Edward III had done homage to Philip VI in Amiens cathedral in 1329. Two years later in 1331 he had agreed that he should be treated as having done liege homage, the closest bond of feudal dependence known to the middle ages. It was true that he had been a minor in 1329, but the agreements of 1331 were his own, made several months after he had seized power in England. There could not have been a more complete acknowledgement of Philip VI’s kingship or a more perfect renunciation of his own claims, such as they were. There was, moreover, another difficulty. In May 1332 Joan of Navarre gave birth to a son Charles, who, as ‘Charles the Bad’, was to play such a destructive role in the French civil wars of the 1350s. Joan was the daughter of Philip the Fair’s eldest son, Louis X. It followed that if (as Edward’s lawyers asserted) a woman could transmit a claim to the French crown then it was neither Edward III nor Philip VI but the infant Charles who had the better claim. This point was not lost on contemporaries who thought about the matter. But the truth was that very few of them did think about it. The possibility that anyone other than Philip VI might be rightful king of France was not taken seriously even in England until 1337 and it was not considered elsewhere until 1339.
At a very early stage the credit for reviving the claim was given to that king of intriguers Robert of Artois. Robert’s activities in England between 1336 and his death in 1342 received scarcely any attention from the English chroniclers. On the continent, however, his hand was discerned in almost everything that Edward III did, an obsession which almost certainly had its origins in French official propaganda. Within a very few months of Edward III’s formal assumption of the French crown somebody wrote a celebrated verse legend, The Vow of the Heron, which in one form or another circulated widely in northern France and the Low Countries. According to the poet, Robert had shamed the English King into asserting his claim at a banquet in London. Entering Edward’s ‘marble hall’ in the midst of the revelry he had presented Edward with a platter bearing a roast heron, ‘the most timid of birds for the most cowardly of kings, deprived of his inheritance in noble France which is rightfully his, but for his cowardice, destined to be deprived of it until he dies’. It was true, Edward was supposed to have replied, that he had done homage to Philip VI. ‘I was young of years so it is not worth two ears of corn.’ But now he will swear to carry fire and death into France and make no truce or peace until the crown is in his possession. The others present, a gathering of almost all the military heroes of the next twenty years, swore similar oaths. ‘Now I have my way,’ Robert said, ‘since through this heron I caught today a great war will begin.’ From versifiers and pamphleteers, the deeds of Robert of Artois passed into historical orthodoxy. Writing in the early 1350s the great Liège chronicler Jean le Bel, who was by no means anti-English, gave it as a fact that Robert insinuated himself into Edward’s favour in the winter of 1336–7, and inflamed the English King’s ambitions by persuading him that he had a better claim by inheritance than Philip did and that the judgement of the princes of the blood in 1328 (to which Robert had been a party) was vitiated by their failure to give a proper hearing to Edward III’s proctors. Half a century later the final version of Froissart’s chronicle has Robert of Artois seated in the Parliament of March 1337 while an unnamed prelate delivers a learned and passionate address in support of Edward’s hereditary rights which Robert had written for him beforehand.2
The true reasons for asserting a claim to the crown of France were less colourful. There was, in the first place, a serious legal difficulty about waging open war on Philip VI in France if Philip were to be regarded as the king of France. For if Philip were king of France then Edward was undoubtedly his vassal for the duchy of Aquitaine and the county of Ponthieu. These properties had been declared forfeit, and if Edward wished to challenge the forfeiture it seemed that he would have to do so in Philip’s courts. A subject could not wage aggressive war. Even the right of a subject to defend himself against his sovereign by force was very doubtful and certainly did not extend to invading France from the north with an army of Englishmen and Germans.3 Moreover, if Edward were to wage war on Philip, feudal practice absolutely required that he should first renounce the personal bond of homage and ‘defy’ his former lord. But in doing so Edward would be renouncing the sole legal basis on which he could continue to hold his French dominions. There was no escape from this legal conundrum unless it was that Philip was not truly king of France at all, and therefore never Edward’s sovereign. One should not underestimate the attachment of medieval men to legal forms, and particularly the attachment of such a man as Edward III. He presided over a bureaucratic government filled with lawyers, and was served by diplomats who always saw international relations in legal terms. Edward III shared their outlook even if he did not have their learning.
The same considerations applied to those of Edward’s allies (the majority) who were Frenchmen or held fiefs in France for which they were as much vassals of the French Crown as Edward was. Edward did not need Robert of Artois to tell him how valuable a weapon of war propaganda were the doubts which might be raised against Philip’s right to rule France. The threat was sufficiently obvious to have become a talking point in both kingdoms as early as the autumn of 1337.4 Edward III had a genius for turning other men’s quarrels to his own account and recruiting traitors and malcontents to his cause. Like the invaders of any age he probably entertained exaggerated notions about the support which they could bring him. Robert of Artois was only the first of them. At the opposite end of the country, a Burgundian lord like Jean de Faucogney, who had married a cousin of Philip VI and was engaged in a bitter property dispute with other members of the royal family, found it natural to correspond through trusted servants with the King of England. Edward’s support in Flanders was certainly not confined to the revolutionary governments of the three great towns but included some influential noblemen. Henry of Flanders, the Count’s uncle, did homage to Edward III in February 1339. Guy of Flanders, his illegitimate half-brother who was captured at Cadzand in 1337, reappeared as a supporter of Edward III in 1340. Edward had bought him from his captor for £8,000, some indication of the value which he attached to such support. It would be interesting to know how many others were included among the ‘various magnates of France’ to whom Edward III was writing three weeks before his assumption of the crown. The only occasions (and they were rare) when Edward III called himself King of France before January 1340 were occasions on which he was negotiating with such men as these. For them, the assertion that Edward III was really king of France made the difference, important to their followers as well as to themselves, between rebellion and civil war, between politics and treason.5
Within the English government opinion fluctuated. It is quite possible that the usefulness of a claim to the crown of France was discussed in the Parliament of March 1337 which sanctioned the first campaign of the war. One English chronicler in addition to the inventive Froissart says so.6 But if it was, the outcome cannot have been encouraging, for the embassy which Edward sent to the continent on Parliament’s advice took with it powers to negotiate with ‘the most excellent prince, the lord Philip, illustrious King of France’. Indeed, in the propaganda broadsheet which Edward issued at the end of August 1337 to justify the war to his subjects not only was there no reference to a possible claim to the French crown but Philip VI was referred to throughout by his correct title. The habit of calling him ‘self-styled King of France’ originated not in Edward III’s Chancery but in that of the German Emperor, Louis of Bavaria. Louis perceived the propaganda advantages of publicly doubting his adversary’s kingship before Edward did. Pope Benedict XII noted this affectation with displeasure and declined to answer Louis’s letters when they referred to Philip in that way.7
The disparaging phrase was at first adopted by Edward only when corresponding with the German Emperor. But a noticeable change occurred in October 1337 during the sessions of the second Parliament of that year. It was probably the result of the King’s deliberations with the Lords. At this stage Edward was still expecting to invade France within a matter of weeks. Troops were asembling in the east-coast ports. Bishop Burghersh and other important members of the royal Council were about to depart for Holland with the advance guard of the army. It was now necessary to send a formal defiance to Philip VI and to resolve the difficult legal problem of renouncing a homage without renouncing the territory for which the homage was due. A view had therefore to be taken on whether Philip VI was or was not king of France, and the only view consistent with Edward III’s continued possession of Gascony was that he was not. So the territory which Edward still held he kept, and the territory which he had lost to ‘Philip de Valois’ he renounced ‘not to you but to the safe-keeping of God’. The letter of defiance was dated 19 October 1337 and was carried by Burghersh to the continent in the following month. At the same time Burghersh was furnished with a variety of diplomatic procurations, not always consistent with each other, for use as the occasion might arise. One of these was a power issued in Edward’s name as King of England and Duke of Aquitaine to ‘negotiate with the most excellent prince, the lord Philip illustrious King of France or his designated representatives upon the question of the right to the kingdom of France and whether it ought to belong to him or to us’. Diplomatic tact could hardly be carried further. Bishop Burghersh, however, was also supplied with some less coyly phrased documents. These boldly announced Edward III as ‘Edward by the Grace of God King of England and France’. They declared that the crown of France had by hereditary descent devolved upon him and that now, after years in which he had remained ignorant of his royal rights, he intended to take up the duties of his office. Several royal lieutenants, including the Duke of Brabant, the Count of Hainault and the Margrave of Juliers, were appointed to act for him within France, explaining the King’s just rights to prelates and noblemen there and inviting their support. These documents were obviously intended for use in confidential negotiations with the enemies of Philip VI within his own realm, and in particular with the Flemings. But as it happened they were overtaken by events. Within six weeks of their being drawn up the invasion of France was postponed and Edward was made by the cardinals to declare a temporary cessation of hostilities. The letter of defiance was therefore placed in abeyance. It was not presented until well into the following year. As for the documents authorizing royal lieutenants to explain Edward’s rights in France, the probability is that they never left the satchels of Burghersh’s clerks. The decisions made in October 1337, however, were not a dead letter. After that date the line consistently followed by the English government in its public documents was that Philip was ‘self-styled’ or ‘de facto’ king of France. The question who ought to be king of France if Philip was not was discreetly ignored. Evidently the policy was to preserve the right to make a claim in case of need and to do nothing meanwhile which might be thought to acknowledge Philip’s title. For the time being, Edward was willing to wound but afraid to strike.8
The English government maintained this equivocal position throughout 1338 and for much of 1339. During the long and unproductive diplomatic conferences at Arras, which lasted from late August 1338 until July 1339, the English Chancery engaged in elaborate documentary contortions designed to avoid calling Philip king of France without driving him from the conference table by overtly denying his title. The English ambassadors’ powers were prepared while the King was waiting at Walton for his passage to the continent. They were all drawn up in duplicate, one set referring to the King of France by his proper title and the other by the ambiguous phrase ‘our cousin of France’. When Edward arrived at Antwerp nearly a month later, one of his first acts was to cancel the one which addressed Philip as king. It is difficult not to see in this change the hand of Henry Burghersh, who was present on the second occasion but probably not on the first. When the procurations were renewed in November 1338 the alternatives were ‘our cousin of France’ and ‘self-styled King of France’. On each occasion the ambassadors were enjoined to do nothing which might prejudice a future claim by Edward III to Philip’s crown. The interesting question is: which set of procurations was in fact used? It seems that it was always the more respectful version. The Pope, whose agents presided over the conference and fed him with a constant stream of news, was quite unaware of any challenge to Philip’s kingship during the winter of 1338–9. As he saw it Edward was not disputing that he ought to be Philip’s vassal; the problem lay in defining the terms of his dependence. Benedict was right. At this stage Edward was not interested in his claim to France except as a legal device and a weapon to be kept polished in the background in case another occasion required its use, as it shortly did. Only at the very end of the Arras conferences, when negotiations were about to collapse amid the clash of arms, did the English representatives formally place their master’s claim to France on the agenda. It was, they explained, the only course left to them in view of the obstinate refusal of the French negotiators to concede anything. Even now they might think again if a reasonable offer were forthcoming. This must have happened in about June 1339. In July the English suggested that the quarrel should be submitted to the mediation of the Pope in person. They prepared for this purpose submissions of great length and learning in which Edward III’s claim to the throne of France was justified by reference to scripture, custom and law. But the French declined to take any part in this exercise, and all the ingenuity and persuasive skill lavished on the document was wasted.9
*
There is little doubt that Edward III was finally persuaded to declare himself king of France by the Flemings who insisted on it as a condition of their making a military alliance with him. The Flemings, whose neutrality had been recognized by both sides, had at first watched the events on their southern and eastern borders with the detachment of men only marginally involved. The main harbour of Flanders, at Sluys, was used as a base by French and Italian warships in spite of the treaties of neutrality, and had been the scene of a minor battle (already described) in May 1339. Otherwise, reminders of the war were few and undramatic: a constant run of messengers, spies waiting by the foreshore on the Hondt, escorted convoys of pack animals carrying money from the Peruzzi bank in Bruges to Antwerp, Brussels and Valenciennes. Edward III did his best to insulate the Flemings from the war, paying generous and surprisingly prompt compensation to the victims of drunken soldiers and undisciplined shipmasters.10 He never abandoned his earlier hopes, frustrated in 1338, of making the Flemings his allies instead of neutral spectators. His interest in the shifts of public opinion in the county was remarkable. He corresponded regularly with the leaders of the three towns and flattered them with pensions and gracious answers to their petitions. He paid an itinerant Dominican to preach his cause in the county and sent a chaplain on horseback ‘nearly all the length and breadth of Flanders’ to discover what its people thought about him.11
Sentiment in Flanders was moving in Edward’s favour throughout 1339 and continued to do so even after his enterprise was checked at La Capelle in October. The war brought ancient resentments to the surface. Philip VI endeavoured to appease the anti-French feeling which he knew existed in Flanders, but his concessions were not enough for Jacob van Artevelde. Van Artevelde conceived in the course of 1339 the ambition of recovering for Flanders the three castleries of Lille, Douai and Orchies, which had been severed by Philip the Fair and annexed to the royal domain. It was a remarkable ambition. The three castleries were separated from the rest of Flanders not only by the River Lys, an important natural frontier, but by their language, which was French, and by their commercial interests, which were entirely inimical to those of Ghent, Bruges and Ypres.12
Van Artevelde’s personal motives can only be guessed. The security of his own position must have been one of them. He belonged to a government of usurpers exercising power by their own decision but in the Count’s name. The Count himself, who was ineffective and unpopular but had the aura of legitimacy, struggled to conserve his freedom of action, veering, like Louis XVI during the French Revolution, from impotent assent to all that was required of him to overt, impetuous defiance. In September 1338 he was to be seen in the uniform of the magistracy of Ghent walking in the procession of Our Lady of Tournai. Three months later he attempted to lead a rebellion in western Flanders and failed. He fled, half-dressed, in the middle of the night to Artois and for most of the rest of the year was resident at the court of Philip VI, leaving the county to be governed on no very clear constitutional basis by the committees of the towns. To the Flemings van Artevelde was the man who had restored the flow of English wool to Flanders, ‘like God descended from Heaven to save them’ as a chronicler put it. His power in Ghent was for the time being unassailable. His friends, relatives and allies filled the magistracy. His standing among the crowds was extraordinarily high. Bruges and Ypres, the other two great towns of Flanders, were allies weaker than Ghent and falling steadily into dependence. Outside the three great industrial towns, however, van Artevelde and his shadowy friends in Bruges and Ypres depended on an uneasy mixture of persuasion and force. The lesser towns had captains and special commissioners attached to their governments, generally appointed by Ghent. Their function was to enforce compliance with the treaties of neutrality with France and England. But they used their powers in the political and commercial interests of Ghent. The regulations which suppressed competition against the industries of the three towns were enforced with unwelcome vigour and in a few places resistance was put down with considerable violence. Among the rural nobility, particularly in western Flanders, the burghers of Ghent, Bruges and Ypres had few friends. Over the border at Saint-Omer in neighbouring Artois, there was a growing band of exiled and embittered Flemish noblemen waiting for the opportunity to return. Hostility to France had great political value in the hands of a skilful Flemish politician like van Artevelde.13
Edward III sedulously encouraged the territorial ambitions of the Flemings and inflamed their grievances against France. In the winter 1338–9 he was offering a variety of benefits to tempt them into a military alliance. They included everything that the Flemings had vainly sought from the kings of France for many years: the complete revocation of the penal clauses of the treaties that they had made with Philip the Fair, the recovery of the ‘lost’ castleries of Walloon Flanders and the restoration of all the ancient privileges of the Flemish towns. Plainly, only a King of France could give them all this. Edward’s offers were therefore made as King of France and expressed to be contingent on God according him possession of the throne. ‘The Count and his subjects’, Edward said, ‘have been despoiled by the Crown of France of what was once theirs … The King is now ready to make amends for the wrongs that have been done to Flanders in depriving it of so much of its territory. Its inhabitants will be guaranteed their privileges and showered with benefits which they and their descendants will remember for ever.’14
For the time being these proposals failed to draw the Flemings into the English King’s camp. They fell into abeyance in the constitutional confusion and internal disorder which followed Louis of Nevers’ flight from Flanders in January 1339. The rulers of the towns continued to negotiate with both sides, diffidently with the Count and the King of France, who hated them, and conspiratorially with Edward III. As the English design against France’s northern frontier grew more menacing they began to make their own plans to exploit Philip VI’s difficulties. During the summer of 1339, Flemish forces began to collect in the Lys valley ready to seize Lille, the northernmost of the three castleries. At the end of July unpleasant reports of these movements were circulating in Paris. French troops were diverted to Lille from Tournai and elsewhere. The Flemings assured Philip VI that they had no aggressive plans. But there is no doubt that they had, and very little doubt that their plans were made in collusion with the English King. In early September 1339, during Edward III’s march to Mons, he had a series of secret meetings with Jacob van Artevelde’s brother John. At the end of September, Edward was outside Cambrai and planning to march south; Philip was at Compiègne and the bulk of his army at Péronne; the Flemish troops on the north bank of the Lys were still being reinforced. Philip was seriously alarmed. He decided to send Louis of Nevers back to Flanders to restore some semblance of control. But Philip had misjudged the Flemings and their leaders. Although Louis loyally returned and was splendidly received in Ghent, he became at once a prisoner of van Artevelde and exercised no influence at all on his plans. Edward III entered France on the evening of 9 October 1339. On the 21st, a deputation left Ghent with the unhappy Count Louis to present an ultimatum to Philip VI. Unless the French King agreed at once to return the three castleries they would cross the Lys, they said, and attack Lille.
They were too late. By the time they reached the French court, Edward’s army had withdrawn from La Capelle. The pressure on Philip had suddenly eased. He rejected the Flemish demands. The Flemings were now in an impossible position. They had broken with Philip VI but were unable to carry out their threat. Indeed unless they joined the Anglo-German alliance they would be helpless in the face of Philip VI’s revenge.15
All this had befallen the Flemings at a most opportune time for Edward III, who had been obliged to reconstruct his plans for defeating France in the aftermath of the failure of his autumn campaign. More than ever Edward needed the support of Flanders with its great resources of manpower. On 28 October 1339, the day on which he returned to Brussels, he invited representatives of the three great towns to a conference of his allies. The conference took place at Antwerp on 12 November 1339. What transpired is extremely obscure, although the results are plain enough. On the day after the Antwerp conference had ended the Duke of Brabant and six English royal councillors were instructed to negotiate the terms of a treaty of alliance with the Flemings. They were to promise the Flemings ‘all the ancient privileges, liberties and immunities which they have enjoyed in our time and in that of our ancestors the kings of France and England’. They were also to offer to restore Flanders to its ancient frontiers, making whatever territorial concessions were necessary. Louis of Nevers had not been bidden to the conference, but there was no reason to suppose that he would make trouble. Louis was alone in Flanders, without his friends and retainers, and his movements were carefully controlled by the city government of Ghent. His public acts were dictated by a body called the Council of Flanders, whose membership was entirely drawn from the friends and allies of Jacob van Artevelde. He was a cypher.16
The negotiations were conducted on Edward’s behalf by the Duke of Brabant. On 3 December 1339 he attended a crowded congress of representatives of the towns of Flanders and Brabant and of those Flemish noblemen who were known to support the new regime. An offensive and defensive alliance between Flanders and Brabant was concluded. It was generally perceived to be the preliminary to a more radical accommodation with the King of England. The traditional exception of their sovereign the King of France from those whom the Flemings were prepared to fight was pointedly omitted. The negotiations which followed were mainly concerned with the practical consequences of an English connection.17
These were very significant. The documents by which the communities of Flanders had ratified the treaty of Athis-sur-Orge had provided that in the event that they were ever to act in breach of it the Flemings would submit to a papal interdict. 1309 Pope Clement V had with some reluctance become party to an arrangement by which the King of France was enabled to procure the interdict to be laid on Flanders and lifted again at will. There were, moreover, large sums of money deposited by the towns of Flanders in the papal treasury which were liable to be forfeited in the event of their rebellion. These were the reasons, in addition to the need for some legal authority to redraw the boundaries of Flanders and the terms of the treaties, why the Flemings insisted that Edward III should proclaim himself king of France. There would then, as they reasoned, be no legal basis for an interdict or for forfeiting their funds at Avignon. The Flemings formulated their terms by the end of December 1339 and Edward accepted them early in the New Year. The English King’s acceptance was certainly not a foregone conclusion. He was under no illusions about the radical nature of the step that was being suggested to him and the difficulties which it would place in the way of a satisfactory accommodation with France. He ‘took good counsel and advice’ said Jean le Bel,
knowing what a serious thing it was to take the arms and title of a kingdom which he had not yet conquered and might never conquer; yet on the other hand he could not do without the assistance of the Flemings who were in a better position to further his enterprise than any men living. And so, having thought carefully and weighed every consideration, the advantages against the disadvantages, he took the arms of France quartered with those of England, called himself King of France and England and did what the Flemings asked of him.
Jean le Bel’s account substantially accords with every other well-informed contemporary assessment of the circumstances in which Edward decided to assume the crown of France. It was, as he correctly anticipated, an act whose consequences were to be much more persistent than its causes.18
The Count of Flanders foresaw the way that the negotiations would go. He feigned unctuous acquiescence in all that was being done in his name. He put his seal to the treaty with Brabant. He even concurred with apparent enthusiasm in the plan to recognize Edward III as king of France. But he was determined not to be party to any treaty with the English King. So he secretly arranged for his wife, who was staying in France, to write to him saying that she was dying and needed him by her side. Louis read out the letter before the Council of Flanders and obtained their leave of absence for a short period. Then he left quickly and rode hard until he reached Paris. He did not return.19
The King of England remained in Antwerp for the first three weeks of the New Year while the details of the new treaty were worked out. They were comprehensive in their concessions to the Flemings. Edward ceded to them not only the three castleries but Artois (which had been severed from Flanders for more than a century) and the Tournaisis (which had never belonged to Flanders). The right of the King of France to procure an interdict on the county he solemnly renounced, together with all the penal provisions of the treaties and accrued debts in perpetuity. In his capacity as king of England, Edward promised the Flemings that he would declare Bruges to be a compulsory staple town for the export of all English wool for a period of at least fifteen years and that Flemish merchants would have perfect liberty to ply their trade in England free of duties and free of such irksome restrictions as, for example, those which the Londoners inflicted on foreign merchants for their own protection. The military clauses were elaborate. The sea-lanes between the Low Countries and England were to be defended against the French by a combined fleet furnished in equal proportions by England, Brabant and Flanders but paid for entirely by England. On land, the nature of the operations to be undertaken was not spelled out in the treaty. But it was informally agreed that the armies of the alliance would gather at the end of June 1340 and would begin with an attack on Tournai. The Flemings agreed to contribute 80,000 troops for this adventure, for which they would be paid a subsidy of £140,000. On no account, Edward promised, would he make a peace or truce without them or even enter into negotiations with Philip VI unless they consented.20
On 22 January 1340 Edward III took delivery at Antwerp of new banners displaying the arms of France quartered with those of England. Then he set out for Ghent with his queen who was in the last stages of pregnancy, accompanied by his entire household and the dukes of Brabant and Guelders. The ceremony took place on the day of his arrival, 26 January 1340, in the Friday Market of Ghent, the largest open space within the walls. Edward stood on a platform decked with the new banners. Around him were the principal dignitaries of his court and the magistrates of the three great towns of Flanders, including Jacob van Artevelde. Much of the population of Ghent had crowded into the square. Edward asked them in a loud voice whether they acknowledged him as king of England and France and whether they would swear to obey him as they had obeyed previous kings of France. The magistrates of the towns swore that they would. Those who held fiefs of the French Crown did homage to him, beginning with Guy of Flanders, the Count’s half-brother. Edward swore on the Gospels that he would respect the liberties of his people, and the main articles of the treaties with their valuable commercial concessions were read out to the crowd. The rest of the day was given over to celebration and jousting. A Florentine merchant who was present asked some Flemings what they thought. The better sort among them, he reported, thought that it was ‘puerile’.21
To the French not only in Flanders but throughout the kingdom Edward announced the event in a series of proclamations issued from Ghent in the early days of February 1340. He told them that he would restore the good laws and customs of ‘our predecessor Saint Louis’. There would be an end of the devaluations of the coinage by which successive French kings since Philip the Fair had exploited their subjects. His own government would be bound by the advice and consent of the nobility and the leaders of the Church.22 Edward knew his adversary’s weaknesses. So, perhaps, did Philip himself. He had gone to great lengths to prevent the defection of Flanders. He had procured menacing letters from the Pope. He had threatened to embargo their supplies of grain. He had made generous offers including, according to one report, two of the three castleries of Walloon Flanders.23 When Edward’s proclamations were published, the loyal magistrates of Saint-Omer received copies and sent them to the King at Vincennes. There was much curiosity at Philip’s court about the seal, which showed Edward enthroned with a sceptre in one hand and the lily of France in the other, and the arms of both kingdoms on the obverse side. On 24 February 1340 Philip ordered his officials to have it proclaimed that anyone found carrying a copy of Edward’s proclamations would be arrested and punished as a traitor. They were to check every church door and public square to ensure that copies had not been posted there. Any that they found should be torn down and burned. The French government spread alarm among its officers in the frontier provinces. Emergency measures were taken for the defence of the march of Flanders. Troops were drafted into Calais from neighbouring towns. At Aire-sur-la-Lys, a border town with a large number of Flemings among the population, the local bailli took hostages for their loyalty. Philip VI felt suspicious, mistrustful and insecure.24
The Flemings themselves were beyond forgiveness. Stringent economic sanctions were imposed on them within a few days of the ceremony at Ghent. All movement of goods across the border in either direction had been stopped by the end of January. Debts owed to the merchants of Flanders and Brabant were frozen and Frenchmen ordered not to pay them. On 5 April 1340, as the Flemish leaders had feared, the whole of the errant county was laid under an interdict on the instructions of Pope Benedict XII and most of the churches were closed. Ghent remained impressive in its solidarity. But elsewhere there was anxiety and unrest and occasionally disorder. Not all the lesser towns who had been required to swear oaths of loyalty to the English connection did so willingly. The French King appealed directly to the loyalty or conservatism of individuals and to their desire for self-preservation. Handsome indemnities were offered to those who were prepared to leave their property behind them and rally to his cause. Among the gentry and nobility of Flanders many did so, and served in Philip’s army against their fellow countrymen throughout 1340.25
*
The news that Edward III had made himself king of France was received rather coolly in England. It revived memories of John, Henry III and Edward I and other kings who were suspected of looking to the continent for their own fortunes and not England’s. Edward knew this and he was defensive about it. It was no part of his intention, he said, to prejudice the traditions and liberties of England and Englishmen; he had had to assume the crown of France for ‘various pressing reasons’ which he would explain to Parliament in due course. His claim hardly ever featured in the propaganda which he addressed to his own countrymen.26
During Edward’s long absence on the continent he had lost touch with public opinion in England, which he had once been so adept at managing. His petulant and demanding letters home had only added to the resentment created by the burden of taxation and purveyance. When Parliament had met on 19 January 1340 the King was still in Antwerp preparing himself for fresh dignities, and it was Archbishop Stratford who opened the proceedings. Money, the business left unfinished in October 1339, was the foremost item on the agenda. But the Commons were in no mood for generosity. They said that they would need time to think about the government’s demands, and deferred their answer to 19 February. On that day there was an acrimonious session of the Lords and Commons. Edward was still absent. The Lords granted a tax for their own estates of a tenth of their corn, wool and lambs. But the Commons produced instead a comprehensive list of grievances. They said that they were willing in principle to grant a tax in kind of 30,000 sacks of wool, but only if certain conditions were satisfied. These were very radical. Not only did the Commons want an inquiry into the embezzlement of past taxes, but in order to prevent the recurrence of such scandals in future they wanted a committee to be appointed from among the peers to supervise the expenditure of tax revenues. ‘And if the conditions are not observed then the taxes shall not be paid.’ There was consternation among the ministers present. They had no authority to agree to such a thing. All that they could do was to send the unwelcome document to Edward III on the continent. At the insistence of the Lords, who pointed out that without an immediate infusion of money it would be impossible to raise a fleet to defend the coasts, the Commons grudgingly voted 2,500 sacks of wool. That was all. The session then broke up in indecision and confusion.27
Edward’s need of money at this point was more acute than it had ever been. He had counted on the Parliament of October 1339 to vote him the money which he had promised to his allies in August. They had not done so and the instalments were falling due. On 22 November 1339 a review of his finances had suggested an immediate need of £40,000. Commissioners were appointed to borrow this sum from wherever they could find it. But the King’s credit was not good. It was impossible to come by more than part of what was needed. The financial crisis was reaching its height as Edward proclaimed himself king of France. The archers who escorted him to Ghent had no wages or food. After his arrival, splendid celebrations alternated with humiliating pleas for cash addressed to creditors old and new.28
The bonds which the English King had issued to his more important creditors in the previous year promised that he would not return to England until he had seen them paid. Yet without returning to England it now seemed unlikely that he would receive the Parliamentary subsidies from which alone they could be satisfied. Edward did in the end succeed in extricating himself from the Low Countries, but only on the most humiliating terms. He was obliged to leave behind him as hostages his wife and younger son and the earls of Salisbury and Suffolk. The strictest promises were required by his allies that he would return with money as well as an army not later than 1 July 1340. The English King took ship at Sluys on 21 February 1340 and landed at Harwich on the same day. For the next four months Edward bent the whole policy of his government to performing his promises.29
On the day he landed in England a new Parliament was summoned to meet at Westminster on 29 March 1340. Twelve commissioners, all influential councillors, were appointed to raise loans on his behalf and lists of rich men were supplied to them for the purpose. Edward browbeat the principal lenders in person. There is a graphic account of one of these occasions, involving the corporation of London, whose members were summoned before the council to be told that their offer of 5,000 marks was inadequate and ordered to supply a list of rich Londoners on whom a forced loan of £20,000 could be assessed. The parties compromised at £5,000. Part of this sum was ordered to be delivered forthwith to van Artevelde’s agent. Parliament, when it met at the end of March 1340, required a more compliant approach. Edward painted a black picture of what would happen to him if no grant were made. He would be forever dishonoured; his duchy and his kingdom would be threatened with extinction; his allies would be lost; and he himself would have to return to Brussels to submit to imprisonment by his creditors until all his debts should be paid. ‘But if a tax should be granted, all of these terrible perils will vanish and the enterprise on which he has embarked will be brought with God’s help to a fitting conclusion, to peace and contentment for all.’ Edward certainly believed in this vision. When the Commons delivered their conditions again he was uninterested in their constitutional implications. He wanted the money, and he submitted without arguing the principle. On 3 April 1340 they voted a subsidy of a ninth of all grain, wool and lambs and a ninth of every townsman’s moveable property.30
Edward had achieved some improvement in the public relations of his government since the nadir of the previous autumn, and his hearers may have been persuaded that one more push would achieve the objects of the war. Until the time of the great English victories, still far into the future, 1340 was the year in which England seemed most united and energetic in the pursuit of a common goal. Yet there remained uncertainty and equivocation about what that goal was and some disagreement about what it ought to be. Edward III solemnly acceded to the petition of the Lords and Commons that they should never be called upon to obey him in his capacity of king of France and that England should never be absorbed into Edward’s other kingdom. There were those who thought this to be the most notable event of an eventful Parliament.31
*
The French war effort called for expenditure on a scale vastly greater than Edward III’s in a country not as used to heavy taxation. In the northern provinces, where alone the threat to France’s security was taken seriously by tax-payers, the subsidies voted in the previous year began to come in in February 1340. Fresh grants were made by the nobility and no less than thirty-two towns imposed sales taxes for the support of the war. Paris offered a subsidy of more than 20,000 l.t. Substantial funds were being collected from the clergy with the consent of the Pope to fight a coalition whose leader was the Vicar of an excommunicated heretic. Philip abandoned the reticence of earlier years about raiding the treasure accumulated for the crusade. The French clergy, intimately involved in the business of government, abetted him as those of England had abetted Edward III. The steady devaluation of the French coinage, a hidden tax, continued. In the provinces of France rich bourgeois and monastic houses received personal visits from insistent commissioners deploying much the same mixture of threats and promises as Edward III’s agents were using in England at the same moment.32
The year 1340 proved, like 1339, to be a good one for Philip’s finances. Even so the war treasurers lived from hand to mouth. The French government lacked its rival’s ingenious way with financial improvisation and its skill in manipulating credit. Revenue arrived in unpredictable spurts from taxation decreed long before, vitiating financial planning and therefore much military planning as well. In January 1340 the important garrison of Tournai was threatening ‘from day to day’ to desert for want of pay in spite of Philip’s personal assurances that he would shortly be in funds. French troops received a reasonable wage and knights a generous one, which began to accrue as soon as they left home and continued until they returned. They too were by tradition entitled to an advance of two months’ wages at the beginning of their service, and while there was some elasticity about the settlement of final accounts the men expected and normally obtained punctilious payment of the advance. In May 1340 the men of Douai were refusing to fight because their pay was overdue and the field treasurers had run out of money. In July the bailli of Macon, who had brought his men from Burgundy to Paris, announced that he would go no further until he was paid. The war treasurers, poor men, expressedamazement at how fast their resources were being consumed.33
Philip VI had two strategic ends in view. In the first place he wanted to be revenged on the Count of Hainault for what he conceived to be the treachery of the previous year. The Count had not earned Philip’s gratitude by changing sides at the crucial moment of the autumn campaign but only his greater contempt. Hainault was a useful lesson for other members of Edward III’s coalition, vulnerable because bordering on France and politically divided. Moreover it was the gateway to Brabant, Philip’s second objective. Brabant was the most powerful state of the coalition after England herself, and politically the key to its coherence, as Philip knew. He did not intend to repeat the demoralizing strategy of the previous year by waiting until Edward’s return before taking the offensive. The object, at least initially, was to knock Brabant out of the war before Edward III could land.
The key to Philip’s offensive plans in the north was the city of Cambrai on the Scheldt, less than an hour’s ride from Count William’s territory and still almost encircled by the chain of castles which William’s soldiers had occupied in 1338 and 1339: Bouchain, Thun-l’Évêque, Relenghes, Escaudœuvres and Haspres. The city was maintained on a war footing throughout the winter of 1339–40. In November the French government formalized an old understanding with its citizens, nominally subjects of the German Empire. A French force of 600 men was stationed there. Philip VI assumed responsibility for the maintenance of the city’s fortifications and provided a large quantity of field artillery including ten cannon. Volunteers were recruited from among the inhabitants and in the outlying districts, men who turned naturally to soldiering after the destruction of their homes and livelihoods by the scorched-earth campaign of Edward III. They needed no encouragement to visit a ferocious revenge upon the enemy. On 11 November 1339 Walter Mauny’s brother, who had been taken in an ambush near the city, was lynched by a mob as he was being brought through the northern gate. This was to be the regular pattern of a war in which few men distinguished between soldiers and civilians.34
Needling raids on William of Hainault’s possessions began early. In December 1339 the Cambrai garrison, reinforced by some citizens and armed with siege equipment, carried out a succession of raids in strength against the ring of castles about them. Early in the month they attacked Escaudœuvres and, although the old marshland fortress could not be taken, they entirely destroyed the town. Relenghes, a fortified manor house on the opposite side of the Scheldt, was attacked immediately afterwards. The garrison of this place, eighteen archers commanded by an illegitimate son of John of Hainault, resisted until they were exhausted. Then they set fire to it in the middle of the night and slipped away across the marsh. In the week before Christmas there was a particularly savage raid on Cimay, some 50 miles away, which was where the principal lands of John of Hainault were. Although Cimay itself was not taken the French destroyed five smaller towns around it. Count William failed to read the signs. He professed to regard the raids as spontaneous banditry and asked Philip VI to restrain his troops. He suggested a meeting at Senlis where the two men could discuss any differences they had. But Philip did not restrain his men. He commended them, and although he was willing to attend a meeting his acts made serious peacemaking impossible. In March 1340 there was another foray by the men of Cambrai, this time to the south-east of the city. On the 26th the French completely destroyed the town of Haspres, where Edward III had established his headquarters for a few days in the previous September. Adding insult to injury they brought out criminals from Cambrai and executed them before the walls of Escaudœuvres, a symbol of possession and authority and a calculated offence to the Count of Hainault.35
These acts had a purpose beyond mere offence and destruction. The object was to clear hostile forces from the Scheldt valley between Cambrai and Valenciennes, and to open the route of the French army of invasion. The French had been planning this stroke for most of the winter. In the second half of March the chivalry of the northern and eastern provinces was summoned to be at Amiens and Compiègne (later changed to Saint-Quentin) by 18 May 1340, six weeks before Edward III was due to return to the continent.36
The discovery of these plans terrified the leaders of the coalition. England’s interests in the Low Countries in the spring of 1340 were represented by the Earl of Salisbury, William Montagu, serving many roles as ambassador, military commander and hostage for his master’s debts. He was accompanied by the Earl of Suffolk. It was already clear to them within a fortnight of Edward’s departure that the crisis would break before the English army could return. Their own forces, which were stationed in southern Flanders close to the large French garrison of Tournai, were very meagre. They comprised some retained knights and cavalry from Brabant and other parts of Germany, a handful of renegade French knights from Flanders and Artois and militiamen provided by the town of Ypres, not more than 200 men in all. In England plans were hurriedly made to meet Salisbury’s urgent call for reinforcements. A fleet of fifteen ships was ordered into being to carry some 200 soldiers to the continent under the command of the earls of Oxford and Warwick. In spite of the urgent tone of these orders the earls did not arrive until April and then brought barely two dozen men. Salisbury had to make do with what he had.37
There was an anxious conference in the royal lodgings at Ghent. The Queen of England was recovering from childbirth. The leaders of her husband’s coalition gathered about her to debate their plans: the earls of Salisbury and Suffolk, Jacob van Artevelde, the Duke of Brabant, the Margrave of Juliers and a very frightened Count of Hainault. The Count came as a suppliant, the deserter of the previous autumn but for whom, as van Artevelde roughly declared, the present menace would not have arisen. The decision made was that the assault on Tournai, which had been planned as the principal military operation of the summer, would be brought forward in the hope of drawing the French army away from Hainault. It was proposed that the allies should converge on Tournai from three directions. Jacob van Artevelde would approach the city from the north with the men of Ghent and the Flemish towns. The princes, including the Count of Hainault, were assembling their forces in Hainault. They were to cross the Scheldt and invest Tournai from the south. Meanwhile the English earls were to launch a noisy diversion. Their plan was to approach Tournai from the west through Walloon Flanders making a feint against Lille on their way. It was not a bad plan. But it called for the careful co-ordination of three independently commanded armies, which proved to be its undoing.38
8 Fighting in the Low Countries, December 1339–May 1340
On 2 April 1340 William of Hainault issued his formal defiance of the French Crown from Mons. However, instead of marching at once on Tournai, as he had been expected to do, he allowed himself to be persuaded by his uncle John to proceed in the opposite direction and invade the Thiérache, the scene of the stalemate of the previous year. The reason for this remarkable decision was that a large number of French troops was believed to be assembling in the Thiérache which John of Hainault conceived to be a threat to his own extensive lands in eastern Hainault, as well, he suggested, as a vulnerable force whose defeat in the field would have a great impact on French plans. But the truth was that there was no benefit in this sideshow nor, as it turned out, any victory in the field. It was true that there was a force of French garrison troops in the Thiérache but it was not particularly large and Walter of Brienne (titular Duke of Athens) who was the commander of this sector of the frontier was away conferring with the French King at Vincennes. William and John of Hainault arrived with their troops in the border area on about 20 April 1340. The other princes followed in their path. The French, however, seeing that they were greatly outnumbered, simply retreated into the walled town of Vervins a few miles south of the border and waited for reinforcements. The Duke of Athens was ordered on 24 April 1340 to return urgently to his command and must have arrived a few days later. Baulked of their prey the Hainaulters turned to revenge and destruction, and then retreated back into Hainault. Some forty villages were reduced to ashes.
The main victims were the unfortunate citizens of Aubenton, a prosperous walled town a little too far to the east to have been sacked by Edward III in the previous autumn. This place was almost undefended. Most of its garrison was in Vervins with the rest of the French border force and the others had fled. There was only a group of about thirty men-at-arms who happened to be passing through the town on their way to somewhere else. They put up a gallant resistance assisted by the citizens. But they were overwhelmed and those of them who were not killed were taken for ransom. The town was pillaged and then destroyed with ruthless deliberation. A large part of the population, which had taken refuge in one of the parish churches, was burned alive in it. It was the most savage incident of its kind in the early years of the war. The survivors were found living indigently among the ruins of their homes when the papal almoners visited Aubenton later in the year. No less then 370 heads of households had been reduced to beggary. John of Hainault was said to have been satisfied with the result of this sortie, but it is unlikely that anyone else was.39
In the meantime disaster struck the English-led force in Walloon Flanders. The earls of Salisbury and Suffolk crossed the Lys punctually at the beginning of April 1340 at the head of a few hundred men-at-arms and perhaps 2,000 archers and infantry, most of whom were raw levies from Ypres. Armentières on the Lys, weakly defended by a contingent of hired Genoese crossbowmen, was captured on 6 April 1340 and sacked. The earls then led their men eastward. These movements had the desired effect on the French. Their commander in this part of the march was Godemar du Fay, an experienced civil servant who had always felt more comfortable on horseback than in the office: a ‘good soldier but no judge’, said the order which dismissed him from his baillagesome years before. He was in his element now. Godemar assumed, reasonably enough, that Lille was the main target. Van Artevelde’s desire to annex it was well known. One of its citizens had only recently been executed after being detected corresponding with him. The town was placed at once on a siege footing. The suburbs were demolished and the population brought within the walls. All inward and outward movement through the gates was forbidden. Some hundreds of men were summoned from other places, including Tournai.
In fact the earls’ line of march would have taken them well north of Lille. On 11 April 1340, however, in a moment of ‘audacious folly’ (the chronicler Adam Murimuth’s phrase) they decided to reconnoitre the defences of the place and to engage in a little plundering. Leaving their army encamped on the banks of the River Deule they rode towards the town accompanied by Guy of Flanders, a renegade French knight from Artois called Perceval d’Aubrequin, some thirty cavalry and a small number of mounted archers. After they had passed through the suburban village of Marquette their movements were observed and reported to Godemar’s lieutenant in command of the Lille garrison. He organized a sortie from the northern side of the town. The earls and their party were cut off and were eventually trapped between their assailants and the town moat. They dismounted and fought a valiant but hopeless pitched battle against vastly superior numbers until by nightfall they were overwhelmed. The two earls and five of their companions were captured. Guy of Flanders managed to escape on horseback. All the others were killed. The leaderless army of Ypres townsmen broke up and returned home. As for the prisoners, they were bundled into a cart and sent under armed guard to Paris where Philip VI received them with extreme satisfaction. The traitor Perceval d’Aubrequin was summarily executed. According to reliable sources, Philip threatened the earls with the same fate. He was only dissuaded by John of Bohemia, who knew the conventions of war and pointed out that they might be needed for exchange with prisoners of the English. So they were locked up in the Châtelet. The news, which was brought to Edward III in the middle of a tournament at Windsor, was a severe blow. Salisbury had been one of Edward’s closest confidants among the English nobility and for three years had been the loyal and efficient instrument of a war policy in which he had little confidence.40
Of the three armies which had agreed to meet under the walls of Tournai only van Artevelde’s arrived. His troops, some 2,000 men of Ghent and an unknown number of soldiers contributed by the other towns of Flanders, reached the flat plain north of Tournai between 7 and 11 April 1340 and camped on the banks of the Scheldt. Within the city the cathedral bells rang out the alarm and the citizens manned the walls according to a practised drill. Men were sent out into the suburbs to burn the buildings on both sides of the river. For the Flemings the prospect of a siege was unattractive. It was bitterly, unseasonably cold. The princes of the coalition with much the largest of the contingents were more than 60 miles away, uselessly engaged in plundering the Thiérache. Then on 12 April 1340 a servant of the Earl of Salisbury brought the news of the disaster which had overtaken his master. Van Artevelde summoned Tournai to surrender. He received in reply a robust declaration of loyalty to Philip VI. Then he marched his army away.41
The French seized their strategic advantage as soon as van Artevelde and his men had gone. Four miles downstream from Tournai lay the village of Antoing, an important river crossing dominated by the imposing twelfth-century castle which still exists behind the romantic encrustations of the nineteenth century. It was the only gap in the string of French strongholds which held the line of the Scheldt and the Scarpe at Tournai, Mortagne, Saint-Amand and Marchiennes, barring every main route from Hainault. It was held against the French by an old and blind half-uncle of the Count of Hainault. On about 30 April 1340 the garrisons of Tournai and Lille led by the Duke of Burgundy, the Constable and the Marshals of France rushed the place, captured it and marched into the lands of Hainault on both sides of the river, destroying everything within reach, thirty-two towns according to official report.
The rulers of Hainault had paid dearly for their diversion into the other extremity of the theatre. They tried to restore the position. A large force of men, mostly Hainaulters but with some Brabanters and Germans, came up the valley from Valenciennes and attacked the most important of the French fortified river crossings at Mortagne. Under cover of the assault another force tried to seize an unfortified ford some 3 miles downstream. Both endeavours failed. At Mortagne the small French garrison was commanded by a Burgundian knight, Jean de Vienne, who was later to win fame for his courageous defence of Calais against the English. The assault continued for four hours under Count William’s personal direction until the Hainaulters flagged and fell back. At the ford an even more remarkable feat of arms occurred. Ten French soldiers obstructed the river with obstacles improvised from old building timbers and fought off the enemy for two hours until they were reinforced. This was a shock for Count William. He had counted on finding the ford in friendly hands if he had to withdraw from Mortagne. Instead he found the triumphant ten, now supported by hundreds of well-entrenched French troops from Saint-Amand and the surrounding region. There was a sharp battle quickly broken off after the Hainaulters and their allies had begun to suffer heavy casualties. In the evening they returned empty-handed towards Valenciennes.42
The long-awaited French spring offensive43 against Hainault and Brabant began punctually on 18 May 1340. The commander was Philip VI’s eldest son John, Duke of Normandy, an unconfident and unhealthy young man of twenty-one, the apple of his father’s eye, who was exercising his first military command. With him went the King’s most influential councillor, Mile de Noyers, and a large body of experienced soldiers, including the counts of Alençon and Foix. They started from St Quentin. On 20 May 1340 they had reached Cateau-Cambrésis where they were joined by the Duke of Burgundy and the Constable and Marshals leading the border forces from Tournai. Except for a disagreeable episode near Cateau-Cambrésis, in which a group of Hainaulters attacked a French billet and killed some dozens of soldiers as they slept off their drink, the French army encountered no resistance at all as they passed north. The Count of Hainault behaved as if he had not expected the French offensive. His army was in the field but did nothing to oppose the invaders. He himself fled to the Duke of Brabant in Brussels to plead for help. An anxious meeting of the leaders of the coalition gathered there on 20 May 1340 to consider what was to be done in this calamity.44 On the 22nd, four days after leaving Saint-Quentin, the advance guard of the French army crossed into Hainault and arrived outside Valenciennes.
Here, however, their difficulties began. Such had been the speed of John’s advance that he had outrun his supplies. His lines of communication ran by road and river along the Scheldt valley, a long and vulnerable route which was interrupted between Cambrai and Valenciennes by three strong castles still in enemy hands: Escaudœuvres, Thun-l’Évêque and Bouchain. John’s army was about 10,000 strong, large enough to make heavy demands on limited local supplies and on the available carts and barges. Few of these supplies were getting through, and French troops had already begun to feel the pinch of hunger when they arrived outside Valenciennes. Unfortunately Valenciennes was not an easy place to take quickly. It was a compact, well-walled town on the east bank of the Scheldt with access by two fortified bridges to the west bank and by river to an extensive hinterland. The Hainaulters had learned from prisoners of war that Valenciennes was to be attacked45 and had had time to prepare their defence. The place was commanded by the Count’s lieutenant, Henri d’Antoing, an able and determined francophobe. He was assisted by Edward III’s representatives in the Low Countries, the earls of Warwick and Northampton.
9 The Scheldt Valley offensive, May–June 1340
The French army began the routine of waste and destruction in the deserted suburbs and outlying villages on the day of their arrival. Everything within 2 miles of the walls was reduced to ashes, including most of the convent buildings of Fontenelles, of which John of Normandy’s aunt was the abbess. John probably intended an assault on the following morning, 23 May 1340, for new knights were made in the French host that evening.46 If so, he was pre-empted by the enemy. Early on the 23rd, to the sound of clattering bells within the town, the garrison issued forth from the gates with a horde of armed citizens and, catching the French unprepared, drove them in disordered flight down the Cambrai road. John’s army lost a great quantity of equipment and many casualties killed and captured. John himself learned his first lesson in the art of war: a large army cannot be kept in the field unless its lines of communication are secure or it remains constantly on the move. He withdrew to the northern Cambrésis and set about reducing the castles from which the Hainaulters were blocking the upper Scheldt. On 24 May 134047 he laid siege to Escaudœuvres.
Both sides strained their resources to the limit to raise an armed force which would tip the balance quickly. The Count of Hainault clucked and flapped between Brussels, Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, Dendermonde and Mons pleading with his allies and vassals, as an army of relief came into being with appalling slowness. In Germany Louis of Bavaria fidgeted on the eastern frontier of France talking of an invasion through Burgundy in the hope of drawing off French troops. Philip VI sought to meet both threats, stripping his frontier garrisons and summoning more men-at-arms from the northern provinces.48
Escaudœuvres was quickly taken. With a garrison of only 23 men and an army of 10,000 spread out across the marshes outside, the commander Gérard de Sassigny can be forgiven for his nervousness. Godemar du Fay, an old comrade in arms, persuaded him on the third day of the siege to surrender the castle if help had not come from the Count of Hainault within a week. The French agreed to let Gérard go in person to the Count at Mons to appeal for relief but the time allowed was absurdly short and William’s preparations were not complete. On 3 June 1340 he returned to Escaudœuvres and surrendered it. For this service the French paid him 10,000 florins and the value of the great hoard of provisions had been accumulated for a long siege. But Gérard never enjoyed his fortune. He was seized by his own soldiers as soon as they were clear of the French encampment and delivered up to the Count of Hainault. William had him broken on the wheel.
The French demolished Escaudœuvres and marched 4 miles down the Scheldt to their next objective at Thun-l’Évêque. The morale of the defenders was higher there. They were a larger garrison defending a stronger fortress and relief was known to be on the way. On 6 June 1340 the French began to batter the walls day and night with heavy siege machinery. They made several breaches. Both sides were bringing up reinforcements. French troops withdrawn from the garrisons of the Meuse provinces, the Thiérache and the Laonnais arrived on 7 June 1340. The King of France himself came into the French camp on about 15 June with a large cavalry force and placed himself under his son’s command. There were now some 18,000 French troops in the field. The relief force of the Anglo-German coalition approached Thun-l’Évêque from two directions. The princes, who had assembled their forces, predominantly Brabanters, around Valenciennes, were making their way up the east bank of the Scheldt. A very large force of Flemings49commanded by Jacob van Artevelde was marching through the Tournaisis to approach from the west.
The castle of Thun-l’Évêque was situated on the west side of the Scheldt a short distance from the river. The French were encamped around it. Close by, and firmly guarded, was a number of pontoon bridges which the French had built to bring in supplies. The plans of the allies depended, unfortunately, on their two forces meeting the French army from opposite sides, the Flemings attacking from the west, the Germans forcing a crossing of the Scheldt and coming on them from the east. But that did not happen. The princes arrived opposite Thun-l’Évêque on about 20 June. They tried to rush the pontoon bridges but were repelled in vigorous hand-to-hand fighting. They challenged the French to an arranged battle, but the French held the river and refused. They were therefore compelled to stand impotently on the river bank watching the enemy on the other side. Everything depended on the Flemings. But the Flemish troops, although numerous, were inexperienced and undisciplined. They were unable to reach Thun-l’Évêque. The crossings of the River Scarpe were held against them by a detachment of 500 men from the garrison of Tournai. The Flemings tried to take the long way round by Condé and Valenciennes. But they were still far away when William of Hainault decided to give up the fight. The garrison of Thun-l’Évêque, which was now defending improvised barricades amid the rubble of the castle walls, concluded that further resistance was useless. On the night of 23 June 1340 flames were seen rising from the castle buildings. The French rushed to arms and stormed the outer circuit of walls in order to prevent the defenders from escaping. They found the place empty. The garrison had left by an unguarded opening and made their way across the river to join the allied army. An hour before dawn the princes of the coalition withdrew northward, leaving the enemy in possession of the ruins of Thun-l’Évêque and the whole Scheldt valley south of the border of Hainault. The next objective of the French army would have been Bouchain, the last importantfortification south of Valenciennes.
Bouchain was saved by events elsewhere. As Philip VI and his son were leaving Thun-l’Évêque the news arrived that Edward III and his army had sailed from the port of Orwell on 22 June and that the English fleet was lying off the Flemish coast.
NOTES
1 RF, ii, 1117; Bock, Quellen, no. 596.
2 Wright, Political Poems, i, 1–25; Chronographia, ii, 35–8; Bel, Chron, i, 119–20, 124; Froissart, Chron., i, 359–60.
3 F. H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (1975), 131–47; Honoret Bonet, The Tree of Battles, tr. G. W. Coopland (1949), 128–9, 139, 171; E. Chaplais, ‘Some Documents Regarding … the Treaty of Brétigny’, Camden Miscellany, xix (1952), 51–78, esp. 70–8.
4 BN Fr. 2598, fol. 49V0 (France); Oxford, MS Bodley 462 (England).
5 Faucogney: WBN, 282; U. Plancher, Hist. de Bourgogne, ii(1741), 192–3; E. Petit (1), vii, 225–6, 228–9. Henry: CPR 1338–40, 454. Guy: RF, ii, 1123. ‘Various’: WBN, 298.
6 Gray, Scalacronica, 167.
7 RF, ii, 966, 994; Urkudenbuch für die Geschicte des Niederrheins, ed. T. Lacomblet, iii (1855), 247.
8 TR, ii, 1–2, 33,40–3,118; CPR 1334–8, 551, 557, 561; CPR 1338–40, 5, 7, 13, 29, 30; CCR 1337–9, 327, 360, Defiance: Froissart, Chron., i, 404.
9 TR, ii, 145–8; RF, ii, 1051, 1065–6; Benedict XII, Reg. (France), no. 560. Arras debate: ibid., no. 644; RF, ii, 1107; Murimuth, Chron., 91–100.
10 E.g. WEN, 214, 247, 261, 272–3, 274, 416, 444, 446; CPR 1338–40, 280, 372–3, 387; CCR 1339–41, 105.
11 WBN, 268, 275, 278, 279, 280; CPR 1338–40, 189, 196; CCR 1339–41, 105; PRO E101/311/35 (chaplain).
12 Chronographia, ii, 85–6.
13 Lucas, 309–14, 316, 319–22, 325–6, 339–45.
14 *KOF, 11, 549–51.
15 Hocsem, Chron., 290–2; Arch. S. Quentin, ii, 122; RSG, i, 306, 403, 471–5; WBN, 260, 286; Chron. Norm., 42. Louis: Chronographia, ii, 85–6; RSG, i, 402, cf. 383, 396, 402, 428.
16 WBN, 288; Avesbury, G. Edwardi, 306; RSG, i, 403–4; RF, ii, 1097. Louis: Lucas, 346.
17 *KOF, iii, 492–4.
18 Bel, Chron., i, 166–8; WBN, 268; RF, ii, 1106; Benedict XII, Reg. (France), nos 677–82. Cf. Bock, Quellen, no. 597; RF, ii, 1117; Murimuth, Chron., 103.
19 Chronographia, ii, 88–9; RSG, i, 431; Guesnon, ‘Documents’, 218–20.
20 *KOF, xviii, 110–29, ratifying earlier agreement, see RF, ii, 1107. Land operations: Bock, Quellen, nos 596–7; Récits d’un bourgeois, 170.
21 WBN, 455; Bock, Quellen, no. 596.
22 RF, ii, 1108–9,1111; Chronographia, ii, 91–3.
23 Benedict XII, Reg. (France), nos 677–82; Budt, Chron., 326.
24 Guesnon, ‘Documents’, 218–20, 221–2, 225–6; Inventaire AD P.-de-Calais, ii, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32.
25 Economic sanctions: Bock, Quellen, no. 596; *E. Petit (1), 282; AN JJ73/110; Guesnon. ‘Documents’, 220–1. Interdict: Lucas, 367–70, 372–3. Appeal: AN JJ72/285; Muisit, Chron., 122; *KOF, xxi, 211–47.
26 RF, ii, 1115.
27 RP, ii, 107–8; *Harriss, 518–20.
28 CPR 1338–40, 398, 408–9; PRO C76/14, mm. 3, 2; *Déprez (1), 419–20; RF, ii, 1109; Gedenkwaardigheden Gesch. Gelderland, i, 413–16.
29 RF, ii, 1100,1115; French Chron. London, 73; Chron. mon. Melsa, iii, 43.
30 Loans: RF, ii, 1116; Cal. Letter Books F, 43–50; Cal. Plea Mem. R, 120. Parlt.: RP, ii, 112–16; CCR 1339–41, 468.
31 Chron. Lanercost, 333.
32 Grants: AN P2291, pp. 549–52, 809–12; Doc. Parisiens, ii, 81–3; Henneman, 141–53. Crusade: Benedict XII, Reg. (France), 708, 713. Devaluation: Ordonnances, vi, p.* vii; Rec. doc. monnaies, i, 15, 37, 236.
33 Henneman, 153. War wages: Contamine (2), 95–6. Non-payment: BN Fr.n.a. 9239, fols 271vo–272, 273.
34 Ordonnances, vi, 356–7; BN Fr.n.a. 9238, fols 89vo–117vo (garrison); *Chron.Norm., 214–6; Chronographia, ii, 95.
35 Récits d’un bourgeois, 168, 171–2, 173; Chronographia, ii, 86–7, 95, Bel, Chron., i, 170–1; *KOF, xviii, 138–9; *Chron. Norm, 216.
36 Benedict XII, Reg. (France), nos 708, 713 (cols 434, 439); LC, nos 122–3; Actes Normands, 265.
37 WBN, 266, 316–7, 328, 362, 440; PRO C76/15, m. 32, E101/22/39.
38 Chronographia, ii, 96–7.
39 *KOF, xviii, 136–40; Chronographia, ii, 104–6; Récits d’un bourgeois, 173–5; Bel, Chron., i, 171–2; Grandes Chron., ix, 174; BN Fr. n.a. 9239, fol. 210; Carolus-Barré, ‘Mission charitable’, 185–6.
40 WBN, 328; Chronographia, ii, 98–104; BN Fr. 2598, fol. 51; Bel, Chron., i, 168–9; Baker, Chron., 67–8; Murimuth, Chron., 104–5; French Chron. London, 73–4; Knighton, Chron., ii, 17. Armentières: *E. Petit (1), vii, 244. Godemar: Dupont-Ferrier, ii, no. 6821. Fate of prisoners: BN Fr.n.a. 9239, fol. 269; *KOF, iii, 485.
41 Muisit, Chron., 121–2; Chronographia, ii, 97–8, 102–3; RSG, i, 482–9.
42 Chronographia, ii, 107–8; BN Fr. 2598, fol. 51; BN Fr.n.a. 9239, fol. 273.
43 Chronographia, ii, 108–20; Récits d’un bourgeois, 175–80; Muisit, Chron., 123–5; Bel, Chron., i, 172–7; Grandes Chron., ix, 178–80; Hocsem, Chron., 294–5; BN Fr. 2598, fol. 51; BN Fr. 9239, fols 272vo–274 (abstract of correspondence of Ch. des Comptes); ibid., fols 127–129vo, 172, 210vo–235 (numbers and chronology of advance); and other references below.
44 RSG, 1, 419.
45 Froissart, Chron, ii, 197.
46 BN Fr.n.a. 9239, fol. 211.
47 E. Petit (1), vii, 277.
48 Count: RSG, i, 419–20; Récits d’un bourgeois, 175; PRO E372/194, m. 45 (Stury). Louis: Bock, Quellen, no. 601.
49 RSG, i, 495–501.