The Perfect King

by Ian Mortimer

  There is no doubt that the Burnt Candlemas campaign was hugely destructive. But how successful was it? It did not bring the war in Scotland to an end, and it seems strange at first to suppose it could have done. But to judge Edward's attempt to conclude the Scottish war as a failure on the basis that hostilities were renewed shortly after his death, twenty years later, is nonsensical. So we must ask whether it is possible that Edward believed that Burnt Candlemas would help to bring about a permanent peace. The Scots could not possibly hope to defeat a large English army in the field under Edward's command, so the devastation cannot be regarded as a means of forcing them into a decisive battle. But Edward could have believed that severe reprisals in themselves would bring the Scots to the negotiating table. Certainly he would have hoped that they would think twice before attacking England again at France's request. No doubt he also meant to send a very strong signal to the French, to let them know that he was still capable of inflicting dire suffering on his adversaries. But the most telling sign is that, soon after Burnt Candlemas, Edward agreed peace with the Scots and resumed negotiations to allow David to return to his kingdom. Even more significantly, the negotiations were successful. The conflict with Scotland effectively ended then, not to be resumed during Edward's lifetime, and David returned to his inheritance. Finally, the day on which David's ransom was to be paid, in yearly instalments, was Candlemas. This would be a powerful reminder to the Scots of what Edward had done in 1356 and could do again. It may seem strange that such destruction should be committed in the name of peace but Burnt Candlemas does seem to have been carried out with the intention of ending hostilities, at least while the king of England was a warrior.

  Historians often stress how expensive Edward's campaigns were, largely because the English records survive in great numbers allowing the figures to be discussed in fine detail. Had the French records survived as well, they would have shown that the defence of France was equally expensive. There was an economic war going on at the same time as the military and diplomatic conflict, and by 1355 England had all but won it. Edward had developed an efficient system of raising enough money to afford the war. Neither John nor his father had ever come close to making ends meet. Frequent attempts had been made to raise money for the French royal treasury by devaluing the currency, but successive devaluations had undermined confidence and could not be continued indefinitely. In 1356 King John was bankrupt. When his government attempted to tackle this matter head-on, raising a sales tax and a salt tax, there were widespread riots.

  John's troubles were not just financial. He had been personally damaged by the campaigns of 1355, having again failed to meet the English king in battle. A plot to have him murdered, in which Charles of Navarre was involved, failed in December 1355. In March 1356 a second plot was hatched by the Navarrese king and his Norman supporters. Again the plot was foiled, but this time John reacted violently. He felt he had tolerated Charles far beyond the point of reason. He secretly donned armour and took a large number of men to arrest him and his key supporters as they ate a feast on 5 April. Four men including the count of Harcourt were summarily beheaded in front of the king, sending Shockwaves through the Norman aristocracy. Charles himself was incarcerated. Back in Normandy his younger brother Philip of Navarre sent word hurriedly to King Edward that he needed protection and was prepared to acknowledge English overlordship in return.

  Important as these setbacks were, John's biggest problem in 1356 was the prince of Wales. Having finally set sail for Gascony on 9 September 1355, the prince had been well-received and successful throughout the duchy. In October he had led a very successful raid through Armagnac, and even reached the walls of Carcassonne before returning to Bordeaux for Christmas, burning everything he could. It was not possible for John to ignore the scale of the devastation: it was even more severe than Burnt Candlemas. Whole towns were destroyed, including Carcassonne itself (although the castle was not attacked) and Limoux, where four thousand houses were burnt. As one newsletter put it, 'since the beginning of the war there has never been such destruction as on this campaign'. The prince's men had looted huge amounts of treasure and added even more to John's financial problems. They even stole financial documents from the towns they burnt in order to calculate how much damage they were doing to the French treasury in lost taxes and unpaid revenue.

  Pleased with the success of his son, and satisfied that he had subdued the Scots, Edward turned his attention once more to the solution of the French war. He needed to persuade the French that they stood to gain more from accepting the Treaty of Guines than from refusing it. A sustained war would force John into this position, for he could not be seen to avoid an English army yet again, and he could barely afford to raise an army of his own. Edward meanwhile could be seen to be building lavish manor houses and castles up and down the Thames, and spending thousands every year on his castles and palaces. Everyone in Europe knew that he was not facing a financial crisis.

  Edward's vision of how to force the French to accept the Treaty of Guines assumed the by-now established form of two simultaneous campaigns: one in the south and one in the north. On 2 May 1356 the pope's formal envoys to Edward requesting a truce were given the same answer as their predecessors. Six weeks later the first small army of eight hundred archers and five hundred men-at-arms arrived in Normandy under the command of the duke of Lancaster, where they met Sir Robert Knolles with five hundred archers from Brittany, and a small army headed by Philip of Navarre and Godfrey de Harcourt. The 2,300 men under Lancaster had specific targets, such as the relief of the king of Navarre's castle at Breteuil, but it is unclear whether this small army was meant to do more than reassure the Navarrese and worry the French. No attempt was made to link up with the prince in the south. Having destroyed the town and castle of Verneuil on 5-6 July, Lancaster put his force in readiness, expecting the French army under John to advance. No attack came. The following day the English retreated, leaving King John to consider whether to take his army south to defend Gascony, to resume the siege of Breteuil, or pursue Lancaster back into Normandy.

  It is probably no coincidence that journals were kept for both Lancaster's attack and the prince's. It seems that Edward urged the leaders on both expeditions to have their administrative staff keep a daily record of their feats of arms, in addition to the usual newsletters which he expected. Edward probably also gave some general instructions as to how the leaders were to proceed. In Gascony he stipulated that the lands of the countess of Pembroke were not to be touched, nor those of Gaston Phoebus, count of Foix, a potential ally. But otherwise he was powerless, unable to affect the outcome in any meaningful way. This made him anxious. A sign of his concern is that now he endowed three chaplains to pray for the safekeeping of the royal family at Durham. Frequently when other men founded chantries and collegiate churches to pray for their families' souls, they included the king, but it was rare for Edward himself to make a grant for prayers for his family. He had been concerned before Crecy, when he had taken his son on a pilgrimage and ensured that he made his will, but now he was doubly concerned, being so distant. His own mistakes of the previous year had reminded him that campaigns could go wrong. And he knew that the prince might be thinking that everything had gone wrong again, for Edward had originally planned that he himself would lead an attack in the north in August to take the pressure off the prince in the south. He had failed to do so. On 1 August he sent a letter giving his son the authority to sue for peace, if it came to the worst.

  As he waited in England for news, a drought which had parched the land since mid-March was followed by torrential rains. The usual stream of routine business was presented to him. Orders were given for Balliol’s pension to be paid, for the bailiffs of Rochester Bridge to allow building materials for the Palace of Westminster to pass freely beneath it, and for one hundred and twenty archers to be selected for the royal bodyguard. Amid the hundreds of writs, open and sealed letters, and charters, we may read that Sir Thomas Rokeby was appoin
ted Justiciar of Ireland, and that Charles de Blois' ransom was finally settled. Discussions with Philip de Navarre and Geoffrey de Harcourt were concluded. As Edward looked out at the summer downpour, he could only wonder what was happening in Gascony.

  It was on or about 10 October that he finally heard the news. It had reached Brittany first, and Lancaster had immediately sent John le Cok of Cherbourg to Edward. There had been a great battle, at Poitiers, on 19 September. The English had been victorious. The prince was safe and well. And, incredibly - astoundingly - King John had been captured.

  The king of France had been captured. It was extraordinary. It had never happened before. Edward was exultant, absolutely triumphant! He rewarded the messenger with twenty-five marks, and gave orders for the news to be cried around the country. Archbishops and bishops throughout the realm were asked to offer up thanksgivings for the prince's success. Equally amazed and pleased, they did so, as may be seen in their registers. The whole country was astounded; surely this meant the end - a most glorious end — to the war? Froissart noted that 'great solemnities were made in all churches and great fires and celebrations were held throughout the land'. Two thousand three hundred French knights and men-at-arms had been killed, not including infantry, and two thousand five hundred men of quality had been captured. The figures were so impressive that most writers saw fit to include them in their chronicles.

  It was probably Geoffrey Hamelyn - the squire who brought King John's helmet and surcoat to Westminster - who told Edward the detailed outline of the battle. The prince had set out from Bergerac on 4 August and headed north through Pengueux on a long march to Bourges, believing that he would soon hear that King Edward had landed in the north of France. No word came of a second English attack, and the prince had had to reassess his situation on the basis that he would not receive reinforcements. King John was at Orleans with a large army, having destroyed all the bridges over the Loire, and the count of Poitiers' army was at Tours, to the west. The bridge at Tours still stood. To cross there would give the prince a chance of marching north to meet Lancaster, whom the prince wrongly believed was nearby. On 7 September he reached the outskirts of Tours, and looked across the Loire, hoping to see Lancaster's camp fires. There were none. The count of Poitiers refused to be drawn out of Tours. Soon the prince heard that the French royal army was marching south from Orleans. He had no choice but to retreat. The inevitable cardinals, watching like vultures, saw an opportunity, and swooped to offer the prince a chance to sue for peace on terms favourable to the French. He refused, and sent scouts out to search for King John. They found him, at Poitiers, on 18 September. As the prince began to arrange his men on the edge of a wooded hillside, in case of attack, Cardinal Talleyrand returned. He urged the prince to agree with the peace offer he bore. If the prince were to give up his prisoners, and all the land he had captured, and agreed not to make war in France for seven years, he and his men would be spared and allowed to go free. After all, King John had more than fourteen thousand men with him and Prince Edward only six thousand, and only about a thousand archers. The prince acknowledged these facts and told the cardinal that he would agree to the terms suggested on one condition: that they were ratified by his father. That it would take at least a month for Edward to hear the terms, let alone agree to them - which he was very unlikely to do - shows that the prince was not serious, he was just playing for time.

  On 19 September the French advanced their crossbowmen and shield-bearers. King John had unfurled the Oriflarnme and issued the order to put all the English and Gascons to death. All prisoners taken were to be killed. The sole exception was to be the prince himself. There was nothing further to be done now in the English camp but to prepare for battle after a night trying to sleep on a hillside in armour. Mass was heard. Prayers were said. Some men took the wagons and carts with their booty down to the river behind their position. The prince went among his men, encouraging them, and dubbing knights.

  Two groups of French cavalry had been selected, each five hundred strong, to ride ahead to break up the ranks of archers which, it was suspected, would be arranged on either side of the English position. Their horses had been specially armoured to enable them to do this. But the marshals in charge were unable to see how they could charge into the archers. At first they could not see the English position at all, and so were unsure where it was they were aiming for. They hesitated, and then pride, misinformation and nerves got the better of them, and they charged. As the French crossbowmen came forward, letting fly their deadly bolts at the prince's men in front of them, the English vanguard under the command of the earl of Warwick charged up the hill on the prince's right to attack them on their left flank, driving them back towards the main French army. Warwick's men then found themselves under attack from the first of the two groups of French cavalry. Caught in the open between archers and the charge, they took shelter behind a thick hedge. In the middle of this hedge was a wide gap, through which the French riders now tried to force their way; but the earl of Salisbury anticipated the attack and forced his own men into the breach, fending off both cavalry charges. As the French fell back they impeded the advance of the troops under the dauphin, who nevertheless engaged with the English until his standard-bearer was killed. Then they faltered, and gradually fell back to rejoin the main army.

  King John now staked everything on one huge onslaught. His plan was to concentrate his forces on the English position in front of the prince, hoping to overwhelm and crush them through sheer force of numbers. He ordered the entire French army to advance as one massive battalion. When the size of the French army became obvious to the English, and the word went around that the English archers had run out of arrows, they began to panic. Some shouted that they should flee while they had time, for they were beaten. The prince himself rallied the men, responding that the man who said they were beaten was a liar, for how could they be beaten while he was still alive? In the terrifying minutes before the great wave of the French army came upon them, the English ran forward to yank the arrows out of the corpses and the poor wounded and dying, running back to give them to any archer they could find. Across the wide battlefield men realised that they had to stand together now, or they were lost. The prince knew he needed an element of surprise to swing things his way, and ordered a small contingent under the Garter knight, Sir Jean de Grailly - better known as the lord or 'Captal de Buch - to leave the battlefield and rush to attack the French from behind. But seeing this famous warrior's banners leaving the battlefield, the English thought that he was fleeing, and they began to shout in dismay. At the critical moment, just when the army was about to break up and run, the prince made one of the bravest, most important and unexpected decisions of the entire war. He controlled the urge to flee by ordering his panic-stricken army to advance. The English and Gascons had to steady their nerves or break ranks. Terrified though they were, uncertain as they were, they did not fail. This was true courage. In spite of their fear they marched as ordered, straight towards the Oriflamme, the symbol which meant their deaths. As they advanced, the Captal de Buch was running unseen around the woods towards the French rear. On marched the prince, his trumpeters beside him, his army around him, gathering in resolution. Then at the critical moment the prince signalled to his trumpeters to sound the charge. Men started running. The mounted contingent charged. Archers loosed their last arrows into the faces of the approaching men, then threw away their bows and drew their knives. Infantry, knights and men-at-arms all rushed forwards, waving swords, maces, spears and axes, shouting the war cry 'Guienne, St George!' They crashed into the French infantry, each side furiously intent on one single strategy: to kill every man between them and the enemy leader. In the ensuing struggle, as men wrestled, hit each other with stones, stabbed, slashed and shot each other, it was the English who gradually prevailed. Those who stood by King John were pressed back, without any chance of escape as the Captal de Buch caused confusion in the rear, unfurling the banner of St George in the way of
a French retreat. The great men of France fell there, around the billowing Oriflamme, slaughtered as the English and Gascons rushed forward to seize the king. One of the last to die was Geoffrey de Charny, the great knight who had survived Morlaix and Crecy, survived Edward's battle to protect Calais, and had led the attack on Guines. He was cut down as he stood beside his king, holding up the Oriflamme to the last.

  It had been a battle totally unlike all the other English victories of the last twenty-three years. It had not been won by archers arranged on the flanks of the army, although the archers had played their part. It had not been won by men-at-arms holding their ground for hours. It had been won by courage, determination and a clear chain of command, keeping the army under control and using its force efficiently in the face of terrifying danger and near-disaster. It was, to use the duke of Wellington's expression, a 'damned near-run thing'. But like that other damned near-run thing, the result was a crushing victory. The news would rock the French pope at Avignon. It would astound all of Europe. And the credit would come to King Edward as well as his son. For he had been the king who had met the challenge of the French and begun the war, he had inspired England to pull together to become a fighting nation, and he had ordered and equipped this campaign and all those which went before against the combined might of France and Scotland. And now he had overcome them both. The kings of both France and Scotland were his prisoners. For the first time in its history, England was more than just the southern part of an island off the northern coast of Europe. It was the dominant military nation in Christendom.