Chapter 10
The English victories over the Scots seem to have made no impression whatsoever upon those responsible for military affairs in France. As though to give the French a last chance of assessing the new English tactics by parading before them in victory the archers, the backbone of the successful methods, the opening notes of the long Anglo-French conflict rang out first over water. Philip of France was well aware of Edward’s designs on his throne and, as part of his preparations, he gathered together a large fleet of Norman and Genoese ships-of-war. These he assembled in Sluys harbour, from where they could emerge to cut communications with the English fleet when they made for Antwerp or ports of Flanders.
Hearing of this, Edward collected from ports both in the north and south of his kingdom a fleet to face the French; numbers on both sides are greatly at variance in the different chronicles, some going so far as to state that the French had 400 vessels to the English 260 sail – at least the proportionate sizes are probably correct! Edward in person commanded the English fleet, which was fought by 4,000 men-at-arms and 12,000 archers – large numbers of men for the time. The English appeared off Sluys on the 24th of June 1340; they entered the harbour at about noon when the tide was high, to see the French ships in four lines, bound and clamped together with ropes and chains to form four gigantic floating platforms. Sea battles, being contested by land armies, had to have battlefields.
Edward displayed that genius for the art of war which always characterised him, giving the necessary orders and forming his lines as if he had been bred to the sea. The English ships formed into two lines, the first consisting of the largest and stoutest ships to bear the brunt of the encounter, each alternate ship being filled with archers, supported by men-at-arms. The second line was almost a reserve, to be drawn upon if necessary. The English line-up was literally a ‘Crécy-formation’ on the high seas.
Each English vessel clamped itself by grappling-irons to its opposite French number, until the harbour resembled a vast floating raft of fighting ships. At such close range the archers had ‘sitting targets’ and their arrows whirred in a deadly sleet among the massed ranks on the French decks. The bowmen were shooting at a range which was so short as to enable a clothyard shaft to pierce through mail coats or transfix a shield, even if it were an inch thick. When they closed at first, the English could see the French ships’ decks crowded with massed figures, waving arms, exultant faces; in a few minutes it had been replaced with a blood-soaked shambles, with bodies piled three-deep upon each other, the living cowering behind the dead to shelter themselves from the sudden storm-blast of death. With the enemy dead piled high, the English men-at-arms warily clambered across the gap between the vessels and on to the French decks, to mingle with the enemy so closely that it was impossible for the archers to draw string to help them. It was a wild chaos where axe and sword rose and fell, dagger and pike lunged and pierced home; Englishman and Frenchman staggered and slipped on decks cumbered with bodies and slippery with blood. The clang of blows, the cries of the stricken, the short deep shouts of the men-at-arms and the archers, who had dropped their bows and entered the mêlée with swords and mauls, rose together in a deafening tumult. Remorselessly, the English men-at-arms carried on the slaughter begun by the archers, slowly but decidedly they pushed their opponents across the treacherous decks, step by step, until they plummeted into the sea below – to sink like stones in their armour. Others rushed with wild screams and curses, diving under the sails, crouching behind booms, huddling into corners like rabbits when the ferrets are upon them, as helpless and as hopeless. They were stern days, and the ordinary soldier, too poor for a ransom, had no prospect of mercy upon the battlefield, even when it was at sea.
Only the rear squadron of twenty-four French ships escaped, the remainder being captured or destroyed. Edward personally claimed that 30,000 French had been killed, but a more reasonable estimate would be something like 10,000 or 12,000; the English lost about 4,000 and one great ship, a galley from Hull, was sunk with all hands by a shower of stones, a somewhat singular broadside but common in those days.
Edward kept at sea for three days with all his banners flying, to put his victory beyond all dispute. It is recorded that only one man in France dared tell King Philip the terrible story of the loss of his fleet – the court buffoon, who exercised the traditional licence given to the fool. Coming into the King’s presence in an apparent passion, he exclaimed: ‘Cowardly Englishmen! Dastardly, faint-hearted Englishmen!’ Philip enquired why he so called them. ‘Because,’ replied the jester, ‘they durst not leap out of their ships into the sea, as the brave Frenchmen did!’
‘The name of Edward III,’ says Sir Harry Nicolas, ‘is more identified with the naval glory of England than of any other of her sovereigns; for though the sagacious Alfred and the chivalrous Richard commanded fleets and defeated the enemy at sea, Edward gained in his own person two signal victories, fighting on one occasion until his ship actually sank under him, and was rewarded by his subjects with the proudest title ever conferred on a British monarch – ”King of the Sea”.’
The victory at Sluys seems to have so raised the ardour of the English parliament that they were eager for the prosecution of the war and gave Edward every possible aid.
Another foretaste of what was to come occurred when Edward sent Sir Walter Manny with a small force to raid the Flemish island of Cadzand; this was a reprisal for a French raid on Portsmouth and the South Coast. There is quite a modern flavour about this small action in which the archers were used as ‘artillery’ to cover an infantry landing. Froissart writes: ‘The archers were ordered to draw their bows stiff and strong go and set up their shouts; upon which those who guarded the haven were forced to retire, whether they would or not, for the first discharge did great mischief, and many were maimed or hurt.’ Landing under cover of the arrow-barrage, the infantry then formed up in line with the archers massed in two bastions at the ends of the line. This later-to-become-familiar formation achieved a signal success and the archers had ushered in the long, long war.