The Crecy War

A Military History of the Hundred Years War from 1337 to the Peace of Bretigny in 1360

Alfred H. Burne

• Publisher: Frontline Books
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781848328877
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Crecy, the Black Princes most famous victory, was the first of two major victories during the first part of the Hundred Years War. This was followed ten years later by his second great success at the Battle of Poitiers. The subsequent Treaty of Bretigny established the rights of the King of England to hold his domains in France without paying homage to the King of France.In this hugely-acclaimed military history Colonel Burne re-establishes the reputation of Edward III as a grand master of strategy, whose personal hand lay behind the success of Crecy. He convincingly demonstrates that much of the credit for Crecy and Poitiers should be given to Edward and less to his son, the Black Prince, than is traditionally the case.With his vigorous and exciting style, Colonel Burne has chronicled for the general reader as well as for the military enthusiast, one of the most exceptional wars in which England has ever been engaged. This book firmly restores the Crecy campaign to its rightful place near the pinnacle of British military history.A most important book a work of original research, written by a master of his subject A model of how history should be written, packed with accurate information and common sense.Sir Arthur Bryant in The Sunday Times

CHAPTER I

PRELIMINARIES

THE seeds of the Hundred Years War were sown as far back as A.D. 1152 when Henry Plantagenet, count of Anjou, married Eleanor, the divorced wife of Louis VII of France and heiress to the duchy of Aquitaine. Two years later Henry succeeded to the throne of England and Normandy and thus found himself in possession of the whole of western France from the English Channel to the Pyrenees. For all this vast area – a good half of France – he was the nominal vassal of the king of France and thus the unnatural position was established of a king in his own right being also the vassal of another king. What made it worse was that the vassal was often more powerful than his suzerain. It is therefore not surprising that for the next 300 years every king of England was at some time or another at war with the king of France.

The situation was aggravated in 1259 by the complicated Treaty of Paris which made various adjustments and new enactments and reaffirmed the vassal status of the English dominions in France. No king of France enjoyed the sight of a rival monarch in occupation of a large portion of the land of France, and no king of England could stomach the thought of having to do homage to another monarch whom he regarded as his equal. It made matters worse when the two were blood relations. The Treaty of Paris produced so much confusion and conflict that some historians have dubbed the ensuing 80 years “The First Hundred Years War”.

Edward III was only 14 years of age when, in 1327, he succeeded to the throne of his luckless father, Edward II. Although he had a French mother, the notorious Isabella, he was born and brought up in an atmosphere and tradition of enmity with France; his ears were filled with stories of French insolence and bad faith and he smarted with humiliation at having to travel to France and do homage to his rival. The seeds of war had been so well sown that it would have been little less than a miracle if the peace had been maintained throughout his reign. In fact we need look no further than the duchy of Aquitaine to explain the outbreak of a conflict that was to last off and on for over 100 years.

But wars are seldom the effect of a single cause. Like most events in life they are the result of several causes or factors. In this case there were at least three minor and predisposing causes: the wool trade with Flanders, the relations between France and Scotland, and the succession to the throne of France.

The county of Flanders, occupying roughly the areas between the sea and the Lower Scheldt, was a fief of the French crown. The count of Flanders had to do homage for his domains in just the same way as the English king had to do homage for his French possessions, but, unlike Edward, he was on friendly terms with his suzerain. But the Flemish merchants and the lower classes were favourably disposed to England for there were close trade links between the two countries. English sheep provided the wool for the cloth mills of Flanders. Without this wool the artisans of Flanders would starve–just as the cotton operatives in Lancashire starved when American cotton was denied them during the American Civil War. The great cloth towns realized that their true interests resided in an English alliance, and they appealed to Edward for help against the exactions and harsh treatment of their count and their suzerain. Thus began the long era of community of interests and friendship between England and the Low Countries.

The relations between England and Scotland had been unhappy for half a century and they were destined to remain unhappy for a further 100 years.

Young Edward, at the outset of his reign, had one overruling ambition – to restore the ascendancy established by his grandfather, Edward I, over Scotland, and to give the island of Great Britain a single government. Yet when he invaded Scotland, and seemed on the verge of complete success, the French king, Philip VI, twice intervened diplomatically, and secretly helped the northern country by all possible means. Thus was induced in the minds of both the English king and his parliament a deep feeling of suspicion and distrust of the French king and the belief steadily grew that war between the two countries was inevitable. This suspicion of Philip was not fully justified, but it became ingrained nevertheless. The damage was done.

The third predisposing cause of the war was the disputed succession to the French throne on the death of Charles IV, the last of the Capetians, in 1328. When in 1314 Philip IV (“the Fair”) died, he left a younger brother, Charles of Valois, three sons and one daughter. Each son wore the crown in succession, none of them having surviving male issue. When the last of them died the French barons selected his first cousin Philip, son of Charles of Valois, thus passing over Isabella, the sister of the late Capetian kings. It was understandable that Isabella should be passed over; there were two precedents for it, and a woman had never been sovereign of France. But Isabella had a son, who was thus nephew of the late kings, and a nephew is nearer in kinship than a cousin.¹ Isabella’s son was in English and in some French eyes the lawful claimant to the throne. Why then was he also passed over? The answer is because he was born and bred in a foreign country, and was moreover the king of that country, for the name of this son was, of course, Edward III of England. Philip was thus a natural choice on the part of the French barons. England was at the time a hated rival, and it will be easy for us to appreciate their motives when we think of Philip II of Spain as king of England when he married Mary Tudor.

The selection of Philip VI did not create much stir at the time, and indeed within a year Edward III crossed to France to do homage for his French possessions, thereby recognizing his rival as sovereign. It is true that he added some qualifying words which became afterward the subject of argument, but there is no evidence that he at the time wished for the French throne. Scotland was much nearer his heart.

Even when he eventually broke with France, he did not officially put forward the claim. The war had been in operation nearly two years before he officially advanced it, and then only at the request of the Flemings whom he was trying to bring into active alliance against France.

The assertion made in so many history books that Edward III went to war for the crown of France is thus incorrect. Confusion has been induced by the intrusion of the “Salic Law” into the controversy. It is alleged that the so-called Salic Law prevented Isabella or her son from sitting on the throne of France. But the truth is that this law was not mentioned or thought of by the French jurists till over 30 years later. The truth of the matter can be summed up in a sentence: the legitimate heir was passed over because he was a foreigner.

In any case, it was a wise decision. The law of female inheritance has been responsible for much misery in European history. We have seen how disastrous in its effects was the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine with Henry Plantagenet; almost equally unfortunate was the marriage of another French princess, Isabella, to Edward II.

* * *

Though the dynastic seeds of discord were powerful, the overriding cause of the war was, as we have seen, the fact that Aquitaine was a fief of the French crown and this fact alone would have been sufficient cause for war to break out, or rather for the “First Hundred Years War” to be resumed. When we add the further predisposing causes which we have listed, it becomes clear that the war was not only natural, but practically inevitable.

* * *

We pass now from the fundamental causes of the conflict to the events that brought matters to the breaking point. The first move that led to the final breach came from the French side. In the spring of 1336, when Edward was on the point, as it seemed, of clinching his Scottish war, Philip sent his fleet round from the Mediterranean and settled it threateningly in the ports of Normandy. Both Edward and his parliament interpreted this as a threat to invade England, and it is difficult to see what other interpretation they could have placed on it. They seem to have decided from that hour that war was unavoidable and they started to make methodical preparations for it. Subsidies were voted, funds and military stores were sent to Gascony, and troops both naval and military were moved to the south coast.

War now looked imminent, in spite of the efforts of the pope, Benedict XII, to avert it. The fact that Benedict was a Frenchman told against him in English eyes, though he seems to have been sincere in his efforts.

Both sides now looked round for allies in the coming struggle. On the English side one soon came to hand unbidden. Robert of Artois, the dispossessed lord of that county, a thoroughly disgruntled man, took refuge at the English court late in 1336, pressed the king to lay formal claim to the throne of France, and promised his personal support in a war with his hated suzerain.

Before we follow Edward in his search for allies we must glance at the composition of the Low Countries at that epoch. For it was to the Low Countries that Edward’s eyes naturally turned. What is now modern Belgium was then occupied by the three provinces of Flanders, Brabant, and Hainault. Flanders, as we have seen, was a fief of France, and occupied the seaboard from the estuary of the Scheldt to Dunkirk, its southern boundary running along the river Scheldt almost as far as Cambrai. Brabant stretched in a rather narrow belt from Antwerp to Mons and Namur, while Hainault formed a sort of buffer State between Brabant and France. Both Brabant and Hainault were provinces of the German Emperor. The boundary of France proper ran much as it does today as far as Tournai and along the upper Scheldt (spelt Escaut in modern French). The county of Artois lay, as it still does, round Arras, which was its capital.

It was, as we have said, natural for the English king to look to the Low Countries for allies. They were the nearest communities to our shores; there was a tradition of friendship and commerce between them and us, and through his wife, Philippa of Hainault, Edward had many connections by marriage with these parts. Above all, the Low Countries formed the best jumping-off point for an attack on France. Gascony, an English possession, was threatened, but Gascony was a long way off. In the days of sailing ships it might take weeks before troops or military stores could be landed there, whereas the prevailing westerly wind ensured that the Low Countries could be reached in a few days at the most. Moreover the Low Countries were nearer Paris, the French capital, than was Gascony. Edward saw, as clearly as did the duke of Marlborough four centuries later, that a threat to the capital from the Low Countries was the most effective way of conducting a war with France. Edward would save Gascony on the plains of Flanders, just as Pitt four centuries later “conquered Canada on the plains of Germany”.

Of the three communities comprising the Low Countries, Flanders was the most eligible as an ally. She was the nearest, direct access could be obtained to her by sea; she was a traditional friend and she had commercial and trade interests in common with England. If it had been left to her burgesses, she would gladly have joined in a war against France. But unfortunately her count was a Frenchman, Louis of Nevers, and although he probably had little love for Philip VI he retained considerable fear of him and he dared not risk open revolt against his suzerain. Flanders therefore was not responsive to Edward’s wooing, and in retaliation for this cold attitude, Edward took the drastic step of cutting off all imports of wool to the Flemish towns. Where Flanders lost, her neighbours stood to gain – in particular, Brabant and the Dutch principalities. Where Ypres and Ghent lost, Brussels and Amsterdam gained. Partly by this means, and partly by lavish expenditure, Edward built up an imposing alliance comprising Brabant, Hainault, and a number of towns and counties. Against this, the king of France – apart from his Scottish alliance – had few allies outside his own vassals, some of whom displayed little zeal in the cause of their suzerain.

Furthermore, the duchy of Brittany inclined to the English cause, and best of all, the Emperor, Louis of Bavaria, who was married to the king’s sister-in-law, signed an offensive and defensive alliance with Edward in the summer of 1337.

On May 24, 1337, Philip took the decisive step; he solemnly confiscated all the territories of his English vassal. This, in the view of a modern French historian,² was tantamount to a declaration of war, and we may conveniently accept this date as the official beginning of the war. As if to clinch matters, French troops, who were already stationed on the border, invaded Gascony and the French fleet raided Jersey, f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Sketch-Maps
• Preface
• Chapter I: Preliminaries
• Chapter II: The 1339 and 1340 Campaigns
• Chapter III: Brittany to the Battle of Morlaix, 1341–42
• Chapter IV: Brittany, 1342–47
• Chapter V: The War in Gascony, 1345–47
• Chapter VI: The Grecy Campaign, 1346
• Chapter VII: The Battle of Crecy
• Chapter VIII: The Siege of Calais
• Chapter IX: Between Crecy and Poitiers
• Chapter X: The Black Prince’s “Grande Chevauchée”
• Chapter XI: Lancaster’s “Chevauchée” in Normandy
• Chapter XII: Poitiers
• Chapter XIII: Edward’s Last Campaign
• Retrospect