The Hundred Years War (14 page)

Although he never once went on campaign, Charles masterminded all military operations throughout his reign. His strategy was a combination of scorched earth and guerrilla raids, and his troops were forbidden to engage in full-scale battle with the English. He recruited new commanders, obscure men who had proved themselves as captains of frontier garrisons or as
routiers.
He wanted guerrilla leaders, not paladins. Soon he had a formidable band-Olivier de Clisson, Boucicault, Amaury de Craon, the Bègue de Vilaines, the Admiral Jean de Vienne and, above all, Bertrand du Guesclin whom he made Constable of France.

Nothing shows Charles’s resourcefulness more than his use of du Guesclin. Perroy considers him to have been ‘incapable of winning a battle or of being successful in a siege of any scope, just good enough to put new life into pillaging
routiers
who recognized their master in him, swollen with self-importance’. This is not quite fair. Admittedly du Guesclin was a rotten general, but in the end he learnt to understand his King’s Fabian tactics, recognizing that there was no other way of defeating the English combination of archers and dismounted men-at-arms in a direct confrontation. He became a commander who, if he could not win battles, could win campaigns. Charles deliberately metamorphosed the ugly, ungifted plebeian little man into a folk-hero, ransoming him at exaggerated prices, making him a Count and finally burying him with the Kings of France at Saint-Denis.

Throughout 1368 Charles’s agents collected nearly 900 appeals against the Black Prince in Aquitaine, appeals by magnates and squires, by towns, by bishops and abbots. All this was done in secret, until at the very end of the year the French King announced publicly that he was entitled to receive such appeals. In January 1369 he sent a summons to the Black Prince at Bordeaux to answer them. ‘We command you to come to our city of Paris and there to show and present yourself before us in our chamber of peers.’ The Prince, visibly astonished, shook his head and then glared at the French envoys. ‘Sirs, we will gladly go to Paris,’ he replied grimly, ‘but I assure you that it shall be with helmet on our head and 60,000 men.’ However though Prince Edward might be able to send an army he could not now ride with it; since his Spanish campaign he had suffered from dysentery and mysterious fevers and was now swollen with dropsy—he could only travel by litter. Illness was affecting both his temper and his judgement.

Edward III, shrewder than his son, saw impending disaster and told him to withdraw the hearth tax. The English King implored Charles not to receive appeals from Aquitaine and suggested that both sides make the formal renunciations stipulated ten years earlier at Brétigny. Charles took no notice and sent a letter of formal defiance to King Edward ; it was delivered—so Froissart claims—by a scullion, which infuriated him. War was declared in June 1369. In November the French King announced that he had confiscated Aquitaine.

Before the English knew what was happening the French had also overrun Abbeville and the county of Ponthieu. Fighting broke out in Pérrigord, in Quercy and in the Agenais, while all the Rouergue was lost. At the end of 1369 the English suffered a truly disastrous casualty; the Prince had hastily recalled Sir John Chandos, who returned to be killed at an obscure siege on New Year’s Eve. Even his enemies mourned him—Charles V said that had Chandos lived he would have found a way of making a lasting peace.

The English resorted to old, tried tactics. King Edward’s third son John of Gaunt—now Duke of Lancaster-led a
chevauchée
into Normandy in midsummer 1369, before the harvest. It was indistinguishable from a Grand Company’s campaign as the English government was too short of money to pay the troops properly and made arrangements to pay them out of booty, appointing special receivers for the purpose. Indeed many of Gaunt’s men were
routiers,
together with large numbers of the worst criminals in England who had been promised pardons. The following year Sir Robert Knollys-who had once boasted that he fought neither for the King of England nor for the King of France, but for himself-was actually put in command of another and larger
chevauchée.
Many English lords in the army were horrified at having to serve under ‘the old bandit’
[vetus vispilio]
and went off on their own. Sir Robert struck boldly into the Ile de France devastating the country up to the very gates of Paris ; King Charles could see the smoke going up from burning villages at his palace, the Hôtel de Saint-Pol, but would not let his troops offer battle. Eventually, as in 1360, the English left in disgust.

Generally the French refused to fight a pitched battle even when odds were in their favour. The Constable’s tactics were those of raid, ambush, night attack and general harassment. He concentrated on isolated towns and fortresses where garrisons were small, savaging foraging parties and wagon-trains, cutting communications, and wearing down enemy morale by constant surprises. At sieges he offered good terms and even money to bring about a quick surrender, and he kept his word. His overall strategy was to encourage the French of Aquitaine to rise and he used persuasion, bribery and threats to make them do so. If they were frightened of English reprisals, he told them to stay behind their walls till the English had gone, emerging only to attack stragglers, and he promised them armed assistance.

One town which found such tactics less than successful was Limoges which, led by its Bishop, Jehan de Cros, turned against the English in 1370. The Black Prince was particularly angry because he had thought that the Bishop, who was his son’s godfather, was a friend, and swore ‘by his father’s soul’ that he would make the people of Limoges pay dearly. For an entire October the English mined the walls. (A medieval siege-mine was a tunnel beneath the foundations which was supported by wooden props ; when it was ready the props were fired, to bring the wall above crashing down.) The defenders counter-mined without success, and the attackers’ mine suddenly demolished a large section of the wall, the rubble filling the moat. The English poured into the town before the garrison realized that a breach had been made. Prince Edward was carried in on his litter, ordering his men to give no quarter. ‘It was great pity to see the men, women and children kneel down on their knees before the Prince for mercy, but he was so inflamed with ire that he took no heed to them.’ More than 3,000 civilians were massacred. The three leaders of the garrison survived, but only because they found themselves in single combat with John of Gaunt, his brother Cambridge and the Earl of Pembroke who accepted their surrender. Gaunt also saved the Bishop’s life. But the fate of Limoges did not deter other towns from rising against the English.

The siege was almost the Black Prince’s last campaign ‘for always his sickness increased’. He was also demoralized by the death of his eldest son. On the advice of his surgeon the Prince returned to England in January 1371, leaving John of Gaunt in charge. At home he recovered a little and next year sailed on an expedition, but was blown back by bad weather. In October 1372 he finally resigned his Principality of Aquitaine, retiring to his castle at Berkhamsted where, apart from a few rare public appearances, he spent his time as a bedridden invalid. The ‘flower of the chivalry of England’ died in April 1376. His monument may still be seen at Canterbury Cathedral—he wears armour and is much as he must have appeared at Poitiers. He left a remarkable legend. Shakespeare wrote of him, in King Richard II :

England’s new royal paladin was John of Gaunt—John, King of Castile and Duke of Lancaster to give him his full style and titles. He was probably the mightiest subject England has ever seen. The Duchy of Lancaster was an independent palatinate within whose boundaries the King’s writ did not run. In addition Gaunt possessed countless rich estates and properties throughout England, ranging from a vast sheep ranch in the Peak District to his splendid palace of the Savoy just outside the City. His revenues and his retinue were scarcely surpassed by those of his father. Moreover, as the husband of Pedro the Cruel’s daughter he was rightful King of Castile. Yet although vigorous and ambitious, he was not of the same stuff as his father and eldest brother and turned out a curiously ineffectual figure-not a man to roll back the French advance.

King Charles’s reconquest had continued. Although the Mayor of Poitiers supported the English, its people opened the gates to du Guesclin in 1372 and the rest of Poitou soon followed its capital. In June the same year, off La Rochelle, a Castilian fleet defeated an English fleet under the Earl of Pembroke—the new Governor of Aquitaine—sending the ship carrying his troops’ pay to the bottom and taking the Earl back to Spain as a prisoner. In consequence the Mayor of La Rochelle overpowered the English garrison and admitted du Guesclin. The Constable also took Usson in the Auvergne, while the whole of the Angoumois and the Saintonge went over to the French. There were not enough English troops to provide adequate garrisons and the enemy seemed to be everywhere. The English strongholds in Normandy and Brittany were falling and even Guernsey was invaded by a French force under Evan of Wales (a member of the former ruling family of Gwynedd).

King Edward, old, wifeless, in the hands of a greedy mistress—Alice Perrers—and possibly drinking too much, made a final effort. At the end of August 1372 a fleet of 400 ships carrying 4,000 men-at-arms, 10,000 archers and the ailing Black Prince left Sandwich, the King on board the
Grace-Dieu.
For six weeks the English armada sailed into contrary winds, beaten and buffeted and blown off course time and again, until the sailors despaired and put back to port. The abortive expedition cost the enormous sum of £900,000. ‘God and St George help us !’ cried old Edward. ‘There was never so evil a King in France as there is now, nor ever one who gave me such trouble.’

The following year the Archbishop of Canterbury asked for prayers for another
chevauchée,
which was the only answer the English had to the new French tactics. In midsummer 1373 John of Gaunt led 3,000 men-at-arms and 8,000 archers out of Calais on one of the most daring raids of this sort, going through Picardy, Champagne, Burgundy, the Bourbonnais, the Auvergne and the Limousin, cutting a hideous swath of fire and destruction down central France. After a terrible passage through the mountains of the Auvergne in the depths of winter, Gaunt reached Bordeaux and safety with 6,000 starving troops, having lost most of the rest and all his horses from cold and hunger. It was a brilliant feat—he had covered over 600 miles in five months-but he had not succeeded in capturing a single town or found anyone to fight him.

By the end of 1373 Aquitaine no longer existed. Even Guyenne was diminished ; during the year the Duke of Anjou had taken Bazas on the English side of the Garonne, and even La Réole, the key to Bordeaux. The d’Albret, ancient vassals of the Plantagenets, had gone over to the Valois, driving a salient into the duchy which was now smaller than when Edward III had begun the war in 1337. Furthermore, most of Brittany had been occupied by the French, including every English stronghold, and its Duke had had to take refuge in England. In the north only Calais and a garrison in Normandy held out.

But by 1374 both sides were growing weary, especially in Aquitaine. Edward III was drink-sodden and used up, an old man with a long white beard. For these last years of the reign John of Gaunt stood behind the throne, but his ministers were unpopular and he himself seems to have been incapable of organizing a concerted war effort—there was no overall strategy as in the 1340s or 1350s. The treasury was empty ; even before the War had recommenced in 1369 the vast sums paid for King John’s ransom had been spent, while the English economy—and therefore royal revenues-had not recovered from the Black Death.
Chevauchées
and all the tactics once so successful had failed totally. Gaunt, still recovering from his unpleasant experiences in the Auvergne mountains, was only too ready for a truce. From this year on, on the other hand, Charles V’s health grew progressively worse, gout being added to all his other afflictions. The Constable du Guesclin saw little hope of overrunning the heart of Guyenne. In January 1374 at Perigueux, he and Gaunt agreed to a truce covering all Aquitaine. In June 1375 a further truce was negotiated, to last for two years and covering not merely Aquitaine but all France. Pope Gregory XI, a Limousin from a province which had suffered severely, did his best to secure a lasting peace. From 1375-1377 a surprisingly modern-sounding peace conference sat permanently at Bruges, with Cardinals as negotiators and attended by both Gaunt and the Duke of Burgundy. A territorial compromise was reached, but neither side would give way on the old question of the sovereignty of Guyenne. Even so, the Duke of Burgundy gave a banquet for the participants when the conference ended.

On 21 June 1377 King Edward III died at the notable—for the time-old age of sixty-five. Sadly, on account of that most unpopular of mistresses, Alice Perrers, he was little mourned by his subjects although he had been a great King. However Charles V, who if no knight-errant did not lack chivalry, pronounced that Edward was worthy to rank with the world’s greatest heroes and said ‘how nobly and valiantly he had reigned’. He summoned the lords of France to attend a requiem for the English King at the Sainte-Chapelle. Edward was succeeded by the Black Prince’s ten-year-old son, Richard of Bordeaux.

Nevertheless the war began in June 1377, and this time took a new turn. While only five English ‘King’s Ships’ were still operating, the French had been steadily building up their navy at the Clos des Galées ; by the late 1370s they had at least twenty-five galleys. The English had to hire Genoese warships, though they were able to obtain oared sailing-barges known as ‘balingers’ from the Cinque Ports. What made the French naval effort so formidable was their excellent Admiral, Jean de Vienne, whose aim was to control the Channel and prevent English reinforcements reaching Guyenne and Brittany. The same month that King Edward died nearly fifty ships carrying 4,000 troops crossed the Channel. Rye was sacked, after which the French penetrated as far inland as Lewes which they burnt ; they then sailed on to burn Plymouth. In August they returned and burnt Hastings, but were beaten off at Southampton and Poole. Pinpricks by comparison with what had been done in France, such raids caused uproar in England. But though there were further raids-Winchelsea and Gravesend suf fered in 1380—these hit-and-run tactics failed to cut England’s sea communications which were buttressed by a string of fortresses on the French coast from Calais to Bayonne.