For a very long and very anxious period of time the rulers of England and France were like a pair of knights on horseback at opposite ends of a tilting course, lances in rest, waiting tensely for the signal to set their steeds into motion, one against the other.
There were two men who were very important to Edward at this stage. The first, Jacob van Artevelde of Ghent, was honestly convinced that the conflict was inevitable and believed there would be no lasting peace in Europe until after the clash. The second, Robert of Artois, had a grievance against the French king. A suave, soft-spoken, wily knight, he had set himself the task of convincing Edward he could win the French throne for himself.
Jacob van Artevelde belonged to the poorter class of Ghent, the burghers who had acquired wealth over several generations and frequently lived in retirement. Over the door of his tall stone house in the Calanderberg, near the Paddenhoeck or Toad’s-Corner, there was the family escutcheon, and he was allowed to sign documents with a seal carried on a gold chain. What is more, he had a coat of arms, three hoods d’or on a sable shield. He had inherited a cloth-weaving business from his father (Ghent had thousands of looms operating in busy times) and the name derived from the village of Arteveldt and certain polder lands reclaimed from the sea. It has been assumed that his wife brought him a flourishing plant where metheglin was brewed, a beer sweetened with honey; and on this account he was sometimes inaccurately called the Brewer of Ghent.
An upstanding man of ample girth, with the strong features and broad brow so often encountered in Flemish portraits, he had done nothing to distinguish himself until he reached his fiftieth year. Then the sorry plight of the Flemish cities, caught between the feudal might of France and the need to cultivate the friendship of England, brought him to the fore. Bands of unemployed weavers were parading the streets of Ghent while their families starved in the houses packed so tightly in the crooked alleys of the town, when the word circulated among them that a citizen of some note saw a way to solve their difficulties and that he would explain the next day at the monastery of Biloke. It was Jacob van Artevelde who rose to address them the following day; and almost from the first moment they listened to him without clamor or dissent, recognizing him at once as the leader they had been waiting for so long.
His plan was simple and logical. None of their great cities was capable of standing alone against the French or the English, but if they could clear up the petty jealousies and factional differences which kept the Low Countries broken into small states, their strength would be multiplied many times over. What was needed was an alliance between the cities of Flanders and those of Holland, Brabant, and Hainaut. United, they would be strong enough to defy the French, who wanted to raze their massive walls and smash their drawbridges and fill up their moats, and at the same time demand of the English, as the price of their neutrality, a commercial treaty which would keep them supplied with wool at all times. Only by a policy of neutrality and the power to enforce it could the Flemish people continue to exist between the grindstones of France and England.
The defensive strength of the city was based on the maintenance of trained bands in each section under the command of a hooftman and over all a captain-general who was called the beleeder von der Stad. The good burghers, convinced that Jacob van Artevelde was the leader they needed, appointed him at once to the post of beleeder. He was to have a bodyguard of twenty-one men wearing distinctive white hoods. His detractors later declared this body to be a gang of hired thugs he had organized himself. The answer was that four assistants were appointed at the same time and each had a white-hooded escort, ranging down in number from eighteen to fifteen.
The power of France, represented by Count Louis, took steps immediately to break up this dangerous movement launched in Ghent. Soon thereafter the sentries placed in the high steeple of St. Matilda’s Church saw bands of horsemen reconnoitering on the plains outside the walls and wearing the livery of the count. Immediately a bell called Roelandt tolled from the belfry of the church. A couplet, raised on the rim of this huge bell, explained its function:
Rolad am I hight [named]; when I call out, there is fire;
When I bellow, there is trouble in the Flanders-land.
Old Roelandt bellowed in real earnest on this occasion and the citizens hurriedly assembled on the Couter, an open space called the Place of Arms, in the heart of the city. Van Artevelde, the cloth merchant turned civic leader, took hold of the situation as though he had been born a commander of troops. He set the trained bands in motion and led them out through the gate in the massive walls. He not only sent the horsemen of Count Louis to the rightabout, but he marched straight to Biervliet, from which town the hostile cavalry had come, and drove out all the troops of the count.
Great leaders have a way of emerging from obscurity when they are badly needed. Flanders was in need of a Jacob van Artevelde. He had heard the call and he stepped out from the looms where the family fortunes had been made and laid aside the ledgers in his countinghouse. No one disputed his right, not even the nobility of Ghent, most of whom kept a finger in the commercial pie and were classed as buyten-poorters. He became so powerful that a plot to assassinate him was hatched on orders direct from Philip of France. That worthy successor to Philip the Fair wrote to Count Louis, “not on any account to let this Jacquemon Darteville act the part of a king or even live.” The plot was nipped in the bud and the only effect it had on the stout burghers of Ghent was to increase the white-hooded bodyguard of the new heleeder to twenty-eight men.
Conscious of the solidarity of the communes behind him, van Artevelde called a meeting of representatives from the cities of Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres in the monastery of Eeckbout. He had no difficulty in convincing them of the wisdom of armed neutrality. A board, made up of three representatives from each city, was appointed to proceed with the organization of all the Low Countries according to his plan.
Armed neutrality was not what Edward had wanted, but it was the second-best thing. It left him free, at any rate, to deal with France.
The other man, Robert of Artois, might with good reason be called the villain of the piece. He was either that or a victim of the malice of Philip of France. While he was a boy his grandfather was killed at the battle of Courtrai in 1302 and, as Robert’s father was already dead, the title and lands were given to his aunt, Mahaut of Burgundy. The decision was the work of Philip the Tall of France, who was married to Jeanne, Mahaut’s daughter. Mahaut had produced papers from the Bishop of Arras in which it was asserted that the grandfather had wanted her to succeed in lieu of his grandson. When Mahaut died, leaving the title to her only child, the afore-mentioned Jeanne, Robert protested bitterly and brought in evidence from a woman named La Divion to the effect that a charter from the old count, granting the title to him in the first place, had been stolen by the bishop. There were fifty witnesses to swear that the old man had favored his grandson.
But Philip of Valois, who had succeeded to the throne in the meantime, had a way of dealing with cases of this kind. The woman La Divion was put to the torture until she confessed that the charter was a forgery and then she was burned at the stake. With the key witness thus disposed of, evidence was produced that she had poisoned Mahaut on instructions from Robert. The latter had to fly for his life and crossed the Channel in disguise. He had been a companion of Edward’s when they were boys and he went straight to Windsor. The king received him as an old friend.
In the meantime, piling one charge on another, the French king was claiming that Robert and his wife, who was Philip’s own sister, had tried to take his life by the oldest trick in the bag of witchcraft, by naming a doll after him and then inserting pins in the frame.
Artois had made many enemies, being proud and quick of tongue, but few people believed the charges brought against him. Certainly Edward did not put any credence in them. He was in a frame of mind to accept anything against the occupant of the French throne, which he was now firmly convinced was his by right. Artois, we
ll entrenched at the English court, took advantage of the opportunity to preach action. “The French throne is yours, take it!” was the advice he poured into the ears of the king. He told Edward of a prediction made by King Robert of Naples, who believed in astrology, that Philip of France would always be defeated in battle if he, Edward of Windsor, led his troops in person against him. “He knows it is true and he trembles!” declared Artois.
This kind of talk served to bolster the resolution of the English king.
2
There does not seem to have been a formal declaration of war. The two countries drifted into hostilities after many starts and stops. In 1335 Philip of France openly declared his intention of helping the Scots, and about the same time he expelled the English seneschals from Agenois. Edward wrote letters to his allies in which he styled himself King of France. The influence of Jacob van Artevelde had resulted in the expulsion of Count Louis from Flanders. The latter had, however, established his troops at Cadzant under the command of his illegitimate brother Guy. Cadzant was situated between the Zwyn and the mouth of the Scheldt, in a good position to pirate English shipping.
“We will soon settle this,” declared Edward, and sent a fleet under the command of Henry of Lancaster (the son of blind Henry Wryneck), with Sir Walter Manny as his chief lieutenant and adviser. Manny will be remembered as the young Hainauter who had come to England in the train of the royal bride and who was known at that time as Sir Wantelet de Mauny. He was a brave and loyal knight and had climbed so high in the service of the English crown that he was now guardian of the Scottish frontier and admiral of the fleet north of the Thames. Edward, who was always generous with those about him, had given the valiant Sir Walter the governorship of Merioneth County and the custody of Harlech Castle. He was still a bachelor knight but later would be permitted to ally himself matrimonially with the royal family, as will be told in due course.
The English ships sailed boldly into the nest of dikes and sandbanks around Cadzant and, after a sharp encounter, succeeded in capturing most of the men of Count Louis, including his brother. This was the first blood drawn in the great war which would last, with many interruptions and truces, for one hundred years.
A truce of two years was then arranged while the two monarchs eyed each other and professed a desire for peace. They were preparing feverishly for war behind their backs. During this breathing spell Edward proceeded to build up his fences in the Low Countries. Jacob van Artevelde had completed his federation and brought all this strength over to the English side. Before doing so, however, he made it clear to Edward that the time for straddling the issue was over. If he intended to fight for the crown of France he must state his purpose unequivocally, and to this Edward agreed during a conference held in Brussels on January 26, 1340. He quartered the lilies of France on his banner with the leopards of England.
It should be made clear at this point that Edward’s diplomacy, although cleverly conceived, was involving him in continuous difficulty. He believed in playing one country against another and in trying to take advantage of them all. He pitted the German emperor against the Pope at Avignon because of a feud which had developed between them. He slyly countered Flanders with Brabant. There was civil war in Brittany and he played a crafty game of chess with the rival claimants. No one could ever be entirely sure where Edward stood, and the result was a lack of unanimity and zeal on the part of the allies he was bringing into the field against France.
This was unfortunate, because van Artevelde had done his work well. The great cities of the Netherlands, including Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, Louvain, and many more, had come into the English camp. Their suspicions resulted in a determination to control the initial point of allied strategy.
Philip commanded the Scheldt River with the fortress of Cambrai on the upper branch and Tournai on the lower, thus breaking communications between Flanders and Brabant. The allies, on that account, made it a condition that the war must begin with the capture of Tournai, thus compelling Edward to open the campaign with an attack by water. Anticipating this move, the French king gathered a huge fleet at Sluys. There were one hundred and forty ships of war in the fleet and an enormous number of smaller craft. In command were two Breton buccaneers, Hugues Kiriet and Nicholas Babuchet, and the most noted of sea fighters of the day, the celebrated admiral Barbenoire from Genoa.
The English preparations were made with great care. The Cinque Ports promised twenty-one of their own best ships and the Thames fleet offered twenty-six, to be ready by mid-Lent. The western ports were to furnish seventy ships of one hundred tons and upward. A proclamation was made that any man who had been pardoned for a crime must proceed to the nearest port and volunteer for service, on pain of facing the original charge again. This brought them down in droves, with their packs on their backs and clothed in the rough shirts and drawers which constituted the garb of the sailor. There was equal activity in getting equipment, “espringals, arblasts, actines, blasouns and purkernels.” The espringal was a catapult, the arblast the same, the actine something in the way of a clumsy nautical instrument; for the rest, the spelling is suspect.
The fleet was ready by June 10 when the king arrived at Ipswich, accompanied by the queen and a party of ladies who were going to Ghent and would have the escort of the fleet. There was much shaking of heads among the naval authorities over the prospect of meeting the great French armada with such a rag-tag-and-bobtail collection as the English fleet. Sir Robert Morley, who had been made admiral, and John Crabbe, a Scot who shared the responsibility, said they would take the ships out if the king so ordered but that it would mean death for all of them. The king paid no heed to such lugubrious advice. He boarded the cog Thomas, a strongly built vessel with rounded bows, capable of taking much punishment, though not comfortable to sail in. Between two hundred and two hundred fifty vessels followed the Thomas out to sea, a strange conglomeration indeed. But make no mistake, this was to be one of the memorable moments in English naval history.
About noon on June 22 the English saw behind a projecting ridge the sails of the French fleet. The rigging of the enemy seemed to tower into the sky and the masts were like a deep forest. The English commanders—except the king, who seems to have been an incurable optimist—conceded with glum nods that the odds would be nothing short of desperate. They were still more convinced of this when a reconnoitering party returned from a hasty survey. The French, it was reported, had many ships of gigantic size, and on board they had at least thirty thousand men, mostly Normans, Bretons, Picards, and Genoese bowmen.
The winds were against them, the tide was out; there was nothing the English could do that day. At dawn the next morning they got under way, the Thomas well in the van. There would have been more confidence in the attacking ships if they had known of the grievous, the terrible, error the French had made. Brushing aside the advice of the three experienced naval commanders that they break out into the open where they could smother the English with an excess of power, the French had elected to fight the battle as though they had dry land under their feet. With sandbanks on each side of the bay, the fatuous Gauls were convinced their flanks could not be turned, which seemed to them the most important consideration. Accordingly they had drawn up their fleet in four lines of battle across the mouth of the harbor, linking the ships together with metal chains! They had filled the watchout turrets with Genoese crossbowmen, believing them the greatest archers in the world.
Most of the English captains were old salts of long experience and they slapped their thighs in delight when they saw the mighty French ships manacled together like galley slaves. “If one takes fire, they will all go up in flames!” was the general opinion. On the decks of the English vessels, and all the way up into the rigging, were Saxon archers equipped with the first longbows the French had seen. Their bronzed faces were covered with confident grins, particularly when they saw from a distance the Genoese attaching their intricate crossbows to the planking under their feet as an
aid in winding them up for use. Three gifts from the feather of the gray goose of England would be hurled into the French ships for every arrow that came back.
The English ships sailed in on the starboard tack with the wind behind them. They dropped grappling irons over the sides as soon as contact was made with the enemy; and now the poor Frenchmen found themselves in double bondage, chained to each other and also to the English vessels from which emerged madly shouting islanders with long knives in their teeth. The sound of horn and drum which had greeted the boarders from the Gallic decks died down; nothing now to deaden the vicious zing of the English arrows as they swept up and across the crowded French decks. The fighting which ensued was bitter and sanguinary but quite one-sided.
The English admiral, Morley, had singled out the greatest of the enemy craft, the Christopher, as his opponent, and soon the English colors, flaunting the lilies as well as the leopards, fluttered from the tall masthead. There were three English ships which the French had captured in their coastal forays—the Edward, the Rose, and the Katherine—and these had been put vaingloriously in the first line of battle. The French must have regretted the gesture, for they were recaptured in rapid sequence, the whole English navy lifting a mighty roar each time the colors dipped.
A large part of the English success was due to the inability of the cross-bowmen to compete with the green-jacketed archers from across the Channel. The hail of steel-tipped arrows cleared the decks ahead of the boarders. The first line of French battle crumbled. The crews jumped over the sides or stood in meek clumps with their arms raised in surrender. Babuchet, who had committed atrocities along the English coast, was captured and strung up to a yardarm, which did nothing to repair the sinking French morale. The second and third lines of battle offered little resistance after the destruction of the first.
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