CHAPTER XVI.

THE EARLY CAMPAIGNS OF THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. In the late summer of 1339 Edward III. was at last able to take the offensive against France. During the negotiations England strained every effort to provide her absent sovereign with men and money, but neither the troops nor the supplies were adequate. The army which assembled in September in the neighbourhood of Brussels consisted largely of imperial vassals, hired by the English King, and clamorous for the regular payment of their wages. Already Edward told his ministers that, had not "a good friend in Flanders" advanced him a large sum, he would have been obliged to return with shame to England. As it was, enough was raised to set the unwieldy host in motion, and on September 20 he marched from Valenciennes, and thence advanced into the bishopric of Cambrai, whose lord, though an imperial vassal, had declared for France and the papacy. The rolling uplands of the Cambrésis were devastated with fire and sword. One night an English baron took the Cardinal Bertrand, who with his comrade Peter still accompanied Edward's host, to the summit of a high tower, whence they could witness the flaming homesteads and villages of the fertile and populous district. In that woeful spectacle the churchman saw the futility of his last two years of constant labour, and fell in a swoon to the ground. But the confederates could do little more than devastate the open country. Cambrai itself was besieged to no purpose, and Edward pressed on to the invasion of France. On October g he spent his first night on French soil at the abbey of Mont Saint-Martin. He learnt how slender was the tie which bound his foreign allies to him, for his brother-in-law, William of Hainault, refused to serve, except on imperial soil, against his uncle Philip VI. Consoled for this defection by the arrival of the sluggish Duke of Brabant and of the Elector of Brandenburg, the eldest son of the emperor, Edward marched through the Vermandois, the Soissonais, and the Laonnais, burning and devastating, without meeting any serious resistance. Philip of Valois timidly held aloof in the neighbourhood of Péronne. By the middle of October, when Edward was near St. Quentin on the Oise, the Duke of Brabant suggested the expediency of seeking out winter quarters. The slow-moving host was almost in mutiny, when the master crossbowman of the King of France brought a challenge from his lord. "Let the King of England," ran the message, "seek out a field favourable for a pitched battle, where there is neither wood, nor marsh, nor river." Edward cheerfully accepted a day for the combat, and chose his ground higher up the Oise valley, among the green meadowlands and hedgerows of the Thiérache. The appointed day passed by, and the French came not. At last, when Edward almost despaired of a meeting, he was told that the French were arrayed at Buironfosse, on the plateau between the Oise and the upper Sambre, and that Philip was ready to fight the next day, Saturday, October 23. Edward once more chose a suitable field of action in a plain between La Flamangrie and Buironfosse, a league and a half from the French. "On the Saturday," wrote Edward to his son in England, "we were in the field, a full quarter of an hour before dawn, and took up our position in a fitting place to fight. In the early morning some of the enemy's scouts were taken, and they told us that his advanced guard was in battle array and coming out towards us. The news having come to our host, our allies, though they had hitherto borne themselves somewhat sluggishly, were in truth of such loyal intent that never were folk of such goodwill to fight. In the meantime one of our scouts, a knight of Germany, was taken, and he showed all our array to the enemy. Thereupon the foe withdrew his van, gave orders to encamp, made trenches around him, and cut down large trees in order to prevent us from approaching him. We tarried all day on foot in order of battle, until towards evening it seemed to our allies that we had waited long enough. And at vespers we mounted our horses and went near to Avesnes, and made him to know that we would await him there all the Sunday. On the Monday morning we had news that the lord Philip had withdrawn. And so would our allies no longer afterwards abide." Thus ended the inglorious campaign of the Thiérache. Edward returned to Brussels "like a fox to his hole," and each side denounced the other for failing to keep the appointed tryst. The chivalry of the fourteenth century saw something ignoble in the sluggishness of Philip; but no modern soldier would blame him for his inactivity. Without striking a blow, he obtained the object of his campaign, for the enemy abandoned French territory. Had Edward been fully confident of victory, he could easily have forced a battle by advancing on Buironfosse; but he preferred to run the risk of a fiasco rather than abandon the defensive tactics on which he relied. Thus, even from the chivalrous point of view, he was by no means blameless. From the material standpoint, his first French campaign was a failure. It left its only mark on the devastated countryside, the beggared peasantry, the desolated churches and monasteries, the farmsteads and villages burnt to ashes. Edward seemed ruined both in reputation and purse. He had exhausted his resources in meeting the extravagant demands of his allies, and their help had profited him nothing at all. Yet his inexhaustible energy opened up a surer means of foreign assistance than had been supplied by the unruly vassals of Louis of Bavaria. At the moment when the imperial alliance was tried and found wanting, the way was opened up for close friendship between Edward and the Flemish cities. In earlier years the chivalrous devotion of Louis of Nevers to his overlord had secured the political dependence of Flanders upon the King of France. If the action of their count made the Flemings the tools of French policy, their commercial necessities bound them to England by chains forged by nature itself. Alone of the lands of northern and western Europe, Flanders was not a self-sufficing economic community.[1] Its great ports and weaving towns depended for their customers on foreign markets, and the raw material of their staple manufacture was mainly derived from England. When in 1337 Edward prohibited the export of wool to Flanders, his action at once brought about the same result that the cessation of the supplies of American cotton would cause in the manufacturing districts of Lancashire. A wool famine, like the Lancashire cotton famine of 1862-65, plunged Ghent, Ypres, and Bruges into grievous distress. The starving weavers wandered through the farms begging their bread, and, when charity at home proved inadequate, they exposed their rags and their misery in the chief cities of northern France. Even wealthy merchants felt the pinch of the crisis which ruined the small craftsmen. [1] See for this Pirenne, _Histoire de Belgique_, vols. i. and ii., and Lamprecht, _Deutsche Geschichte_, iii., 304-324, and iv., 134-142. A common desire to avoid calamity bound together the warring classes and rival districts of Flanders, as they had never been united before. Bruges and Ypres had borne the brunt of earlier struggles, and had not even yet recovered from the exhaustion of the wars of the early years of the century. Their exhaustion left the way open to Ghent, where the old patricians and the rich merchants, the weavers and the fullers, forgot their ancient rivalries and worked together to remedy the crisis. A wealthy landholder and merchant-prince of Ghent, James van Artevelde, made himself the spokesman of all classes of that great manufacturing city. He was no demagogue nor artisan, though his eloquence and force had wonderful power over the impressionable craftsmen of the trading guilds. He was no Netherlandish patriot, as some moderns have imagined, though he was anxious to unite Flanders with her neighbour states, on the broad basis of their identity of economic and political interests. A man of Ghent, above all things, his policy was to save the imperilled industries of his native town, and to make it the centre of a new movement for the vindication of commercial liberty against feudal domination. By the winter of 1337 this rich capitalist allied himself with the turbulent democracy of the weavers' guilds, and put himself at the head of affairs. Early in 1338 he began to negotiate with Edward III., and his loans to the distressed monarch had the result of removing the embargo on English wool. The famished craftsmen hailed the enemy of their class as a god who had come down from heaven for their salvation. Louis of Nevers and Philip of Valois took the alarm. Seeing in the ascendency of Artevelde the certainty that Flanders would join the English alliance, they left no stone unturned to avoid so dire a calamity. Artevelde, conscious of the narrow basis of his own authority, was prudent enough to be moderate. Instead of pressing the English alliance to a conclusion, he accepted the suggestion of Philip VI., that Flanders should remain neutral. Louis of Nevers hated the notion; but in June, 1338, Edward and Philip agreed to recognise Flemish neutrality, and he was forced to acquiesce in it. Both monarchs promised to avoid Flemish territory, and offered free commercial relations between Flanders and their respective dominions. Artevelde and the men of Ghent were the real masters of Flanders. They kept their count in scarcely veiled captivity, forcing him to wear the Flemish colours and to profess acceptance of the policy that he disliked. In such circumstances the neutrality of Flanders could not last long. Both Edward and Artevelde regarded it simply as a step towards a declared alliance. Before long Philip became uneasy, and lavished concession on concession to keep the dominant party true to its promises. He gave up the degrading conditions which since the treaty of Athis had secured the subjection of Flanders. But Edward could offer more than his rival. He proposed to the count and the "good towns" of Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres that, in return for their alliance, he would aid them to win back the towns of Lille, Douai, Béthune, and Tournai, which the French king had usurped from the Flemings, as well as the county of Artois, which had been separated from Flanders since the days of Philip Augustus. He also offered ample commercial privileges, the establishment of the staple of wool at Bruges as well as at Antwerp, free trade for Flemish cloth with the English markets, and a good and fixed money which was to be legal tender in Flanders, Brabant, France, and England. The Flemings demanded in return that Edward, by formally assuming the title of King of France, should stand to them as their liege lord, and thus free themselves and their count from the ecclesiastical penalties and dishonour involved in their waging war against a king of France. Late in 1339, these terms were mutually accepted, and Count Louis avoided further humiliations by flight into France. In January, 1340, Edward entered Flemish territory and was magnificently entertained in the abbey of Saint Bavon at Ghent. "The three towns of Flanders," declared Artevelde to his guest, "are ready to recognise you as their sovereign lord, provided that you engage yourself to defend them." The deputies of the three towns took oaths to Edward as their suzerain, and thereupon Edward was proclaimed King of France with much ceremony in the Friday market of Ghent. A new great seal was fashioned and new royal arms assumed, in which the lilies of France were quartered with the leopards of England. The new regnal year of Edward, which began on January 25, was styled the fourteenth of his reign in England, and the first of his reign in France. Urgent affairs called Edward back to his kingdom, but his debts to the Flemings were already so heavy that they only consented to his departure on his pledging himself to return before Michaelmas day, and on his leaving as hostages his queen, his two sons, and two earls. At last, on February 20, he crossed over from Sluys to Orwell. He had been absent from home for nearly a year and a half. From February 21 to June 22, 1340, Edward remained in England. During that period, formal treaties with the Flemings confirmed the hasty negotiations of Ghent. Benedict XII, still pursued Edward with remonstrances. He warned the English king to have no trust in allies like the Flemings, who had shamefully driven away their natural lords and whose faithlessness and inconstancy were by-words. He told him that his strength was not enough to conquer France, and reproached him with calling himself king of a land of which he possessed nothing. Somewhat inconsistently, he offered his mediation between Edward and Philip. But Philip was only less weary than Edward of the self-seeking pontiff. Benedict was forced to drink the cup of humiliation, for after the rejection of his mediation, he was confronted with a proposal that the schismatic Bavarian should arbitrate between the two crowns. Meanwhile, after many delays, Edward embarked a gallant army on a fleet of 200 ships, and on June 22 a favourable west wind bore them from the Orwell towards Flanders. On arriving next day off Blankenberghe, he learned that a formidable French squadron was anchored in the mouth of the Zwyn, and that he could only land in Flanders as the reward of victory. From the outbreak of hostilities in 1337, there had been a good deal of fighting by sea, and in the first stages of warfare the advantage lay with the French. Since the days of Edward I., and Philip the Fair, the maritime energies of the two countries had developed at an almost equal rate, and the parallel growth had been marked by bitter rivalry between the seamen of the two nations. The Normans had taken the leading share in this expansion of the French navy.[1] They welcomed the outbreak of war with enthusiasm, as giving them a chance of measuring their forces with their hated foes. Alone among the provinces of France, Normandy seems already to have experienced that intense national bitterness against the English which was soon to spread to all the rest of the country. Not content with the vigorous war of corsairs which had inflicted so much mischief on our southern coast and on English shipping, the Normans formed bold designs of a new Norman Conquest of England, and in return for the permanent establishment of the local estates of Normandy, agreed with Philip and his son John, who bore the title of Duke of Normandy, to equip a large fleet and army, with which England was to be invaded in the summer of 1339. Normandy, which monopolised the glory, was to monopolise the spoil. If England were conquered, Duke John, like Duke William before him, was to be King of England as well as Duke of Normandy. Thus the aggressions of Edward in France were to be answered by Norman aggressions in England.[2] [1] _C_. de la Roncière, _Hist, de_ la _Marine Française_; of. Nicolas, _Hist, of the Royal Navy_. [2] See on this subject A. Coville, _Les États_ de _Normandie_, pp. 41-52 (1894). Nothing came of this grandiose project, though the burning ruins of Southampton, the capture of the great _Christopher_, which had borne Edward in 1338 to Antwerp, and the occupation of the Channel Islands--the last remnants of the old duchy still under English rule--showed that the Normans were in earnest. The chief result of their energy was the equipment of the strongest French fleet that had ever been seen in the Channel. Though a few Genoese galleys under Barbavera and a few great Spanish ships swelled the number of the armada, 160 of the 200 ships that formed the fleet were Norman.[1] Of the two Frenchmen in command, one, Hugh Quièret, was a Picard knight, but the other, the more popular, was Nicholas Béhuchet, a Norman of humble birth, then a knight and the chief confidant of Philip VI. Quièret and Béhuchet had long challenged the command of the narrow seas. But for their error of dividing their forces and preferring a piratical war of reprisals, they might have cut off communications between England and the Netherlands. They had learnt wisdom by experience, and their ships were massed in Zwyn harbour to prevent the passage of Edward to his new allies. [1] _S_. Luce, _La Marine normande à l'Écluse_, in _La France pendant la Guerre de Cent Ans_, 3-31. The coast-line between Blankenberghe and the mouth of the Scheldt was strangely different in the fourteenth century from what it is at present.[1] The sandy flats, through which the Zwyn now trickles to the sea, formed a large open harbour, accessible to the biggest ships then known. It was protected on the north by the island of Cadzand, the scene of Manny's exploit in 1337, while at its head stood the town of Sluys, so called from the locks, or sluices, that regulated the waters of the ship canal, which bore to the great mart of Bruges the merchantmen of every land. It was in this harbour that Edward, on arriving off Blankenberghe, first spied the fleet of Quièret and Béhuchet. He anchored at sea for the night, and on the afternoon of June 24, the anniversary of Bannockburn, he bore down on the French, having the sun, the tide, and the wind in his favour. On his approach Barbavera urged that the French should take to the open sea; but Quièret and Béhuchet preferred to fight in the harbour. As an unsatisfactory compromise, however, the French moved a mile or so towards the enemy. Then they lashed their ships together and awaited attack. [1] For this see Professor Tait's inset map of the district in _Oxford Historical Atlas_, plate lvi. The English, unable to break the serried mass of their enemies, feigned a retreat, whereupon the Normans unlashed their ships and hurried in pursuit into the open water. At once the English turned and met them. The battle began when the English admiral, Robert Morley, lay alongside the _Christopher_, which, after its capture, had been taken into the enemy's service. Soon the ships of both fleets were closely grappled together in a fierce hand-to-hand fight which lasted until after nightfall. The desperate eagerness of the combatants strangely contrasted with the slackness of the campaign in the Thiérache. "This battle," says Froissart, "was right fierce and horrible, for battles by sea are more dangerous and fiercer than battles by land, for at sea there is no retreat nor fleeing; there is no remedy but to fight and abide fortune, and every man to show his prowess." In the end the English won an overwhelming victory, which was completed next morning after more hard fighting. During the night Barbavera and his Genoese put to sea and escaped, but the magnificent Norman fleet was in the hands of the victor. The English loss was small, though it included Thomas of Monthermer, a son of Joan of Acre, and Edward himself was wounded in the thigh. The Norman force was almost annihilated. Quièret fell mortally wounded into Edward's hands; Béhuchet was captured unhurt. A later Norman legend tells how Béhuchet, when brought before the English king, answered some taunt by boxing the king's ears, whereupon the angry monarch hanged him forthwith from the mast of his ship.[1] But the tradition is unsupported by English authorities, and, with all his faults, Edward was not the man to deal thus with a captive knight who had fought his best. Master at last of the sea, Edward landed at Sluys amidst the rejoicings of the Flemings, and made his way to Ghent, where he greeted his wife, and first saw his infant son John, born during his absence, to whom Artevelde stood as godfather. [1] Luce, _Le Soufflet de l'Écluse_, in _La Frame pendant la Guerre de Cent Ans_, 2nd série, pp. 3-15. Edward's military fame was established over all Europe, and, says the Flemish writer, John van Klerk, "all who spoke the German tongue rejoiced at the defeat of the French". Yet the victory at Sluys was the prelude to a land campaign as ineffective as the raid into the Thiérache. Eager to restore their lost lands to the Flemings, Edward made the mistake of dividing his army. He sent Robert of Artois to effect the reconquest of Artois, while he himself besieged Tournai, which was then in French hands. Robert's attempt to win back the lands of his ancestors was a sorry failure. Defeated outside Saint Omer, he was unable even to invest that town. Almost equally unsuccessful was Edward's siege of Tournai, which resisted with such energy that he was soon at the end of his resources. At last, in despair, Edward challenged Philip VI. to decide their claim to France by single combat. The Valois answered that he would gladly do so if, in the event of his winning, he might obtain Edward's kingdom. In the same spirit of caution, Philip tarried half-way between Saint Omer and Tournai, watching both armies and afraid to strike at either. The armies wore themselves out in this game of waiting until the widowed Countess of Hainault, then abbess of the Cistercian nuns of Fontenelles, was moved by the desolation of the country to intervene between the two kings. The mother of the Queen of England and the sister of the King of France, she succeeded not only by reason of her prayers, but through the refusal of the Duke of Brabant, the Count of Hainault, and the other imperial vassals to remain longer at the war. On September 25, 1340, a truce was signed at the solitary chapel of Esplechin, situated in the open country a little south of Tournai. By it hostilities between both kings and their respective allies were suspended, until midsummer day, 1341. Each king was to enjoy the lands actually in his possession, and commerce was to be carried on as if peace had been made. The most significant clause of the truce was that by which both kings pledged themselves that they "procure not that any innovation be done by the Church of Rome, or by others of Holy Church on either of the said kings. And if our most holy father the pope will do that, the two kings shall prevent it, so far as in them lies." The truce of Esplechin, renewed until 1345, put an end to the first, or Netherlandish, period of the Hundred Years' War. The imperial alliance, which had failed Edward, was soon to be solemnly dissolved. Early in 1341, Louis of Bavaria revoked Edward's vicariate, and announced his intention of becoming henceforth the friend of his uncle, the King of France. This alliance between Philip and Louis completed the discomfiture of Benedict XII. In 1342 he died, and his successor was Peter Roger, the sometime Archbishop of Rouen, who assumed the title of Clement VI. By persuading Brabant and Hainault to be neutral between France and England, the new pontiff broke up the last remnant of the Anglo-imperial alliance. Even Flanders and England became estranged. Artevelde, who found it a hard matter to govern Flanders after the truce, would willingly have supported Edward. But Edward had henceforth less need of Artevelde than Artevelde had of him. In 1345 Edward again appeared at Sluys and had an interview with him, and then returned to his own country without setting foot on Flemish soil. Artevelde soon afterwards met his death in a popular tumult. His family fled to England, _where_ they lived on a pension from Edward. This was the end of the Anglo-Flemish alliance. After the treaty of Esplechin, Edward returned to Ghent. The conclusion of military operations was a signal to all his creditors to clamour for immediate settlement of their debts. Neither subsidies nor wool came from England, though the king wrote in piteous terms to his council. Edward was convinced that the real cause of his failure was the remissness of the home government, and resolved to wreak his vengeance on his ministers. He was encouraged to this effect by Bishop Burghersh, who still remembered his old feuds with Archbishop Stratford, and may well have believed that the archbishop, who had a financier's dread of war, had wilfully ruined his rival's diplomacy. But Edward dared not openly return to England, for his Flemish creditors regarded his personal presence as the best security for his debts. He was therefore reduced to the pitiful expedient of running away from them. One day he rode out of Ghent on the pretext of taking exercise, and hurried secretly and without escort to Sluys. Thence he took ship for England, and, after a tempestuous voyage of three days and nights, sailed up the Thames, and landed at the Tower on November 30, 1340, after nightfall. At cockcrow next morning, he summoned his ministers before him, denounced them as false traitors and drove them all from office. The judges were thrown into prison, and with them some of the leading merchants, including William de la Pole of Hull. A special commission, like that of 1289, scrutinised the acts of the royal officials throughout the kingdom, and exacted heavy fines from the many who were found wanting. Nothing but fear of provoking the wrath of the Church prevented Edward from consigning to prison the dismissed chancellor, Robert Stratford, Bishop of Chichester, and the late treasurer, Roger Northburgh, Bishop of Coventry. Their successors were lay knights, the new chancellor, Sir Robert Bourchier, being the first keeper of the great seal who was not a clerk. Earlier in the year the king had quarrelled with Archbishop Stratford, who resigned the chancellorship. But before Edward sailed from Orwell in June there had been a partial reconciliation, and the king left Stratford president of the council during his absence. When his brother and colleagues were dismissed, the archbishop was at Charing. Conscious that he was the chief object of Edward's vengeance, he at once took sanctuary with the monks of his cathedral. Every effort was made to drag him from his refuge. Some Louvain merchants, to whom he had bound himself for the king's debts, demanded that he should be surrendered to their custody until the money was paid. He was summoned to court and afterwards to parliament. But he prudently remained safe within the walls of Christ Church, and preached a course of sermons to the monks, in which he compared himself to St. Thomas of Canterbury, and hinted at the danger of his incurring his prototype's fate. Edward replied to this challenge by a lengthy pamphlet, called the _libellus famosus_. The violence and unmeasured terms of the tractate suggest the hand of Bishop Orleton, Stratford's lifelong foe, who had by Burghersh's recent death become the most prominent of the courtly prelates. The archbishop was declared to be the sole cause of the king's failures. He had left Edward without funds, and in trusting to him the king had leant on a broken reed. Stratford justified himself in another sermon in which he invited inquiry and demanded trial by his peers. Edward so far relented as to issue letters of safe-conduct enabling the archbishop to attend the parliament summoned for April 23, 1341. But when Stratford took his place, the king refused to meet him, and ordered him to answer in the exchequer the complaints brought against him. The lords upheld the primate's cause, and declared that in no circumstances could a peer of parliament be brought to trial elsewhere than in full parliament. Edward's fury abated when he saw that he would get no grant unless he gave way. He restored Stratford to his favour, and acceded to his request that he should answer in parliament and not in the exchequer. The childish controversy ended with the personal victory of the primate and the formal re-assertion of the important principle of trial by peers. But not even then was Edward able to get a subsidy. He was further forced to embody in the statute of the year the doctrines that auditors of the accounts of the royal officers should be elected in parliament, and that all ministers should be chosen by the king, after consultation with his estates, and should resign their offices at each meeting of parliament and be prepared to answer all complaints before it. Thus the fallen minister brought the estates the greatest triumph over the prerogative won during Edward's reign. Before long Edward was magnanimous enough to resume friendly relations with him, but he was never suffered to take a prominent part in politics. He died in 1348, after spending his later years in the business of his see. It was a strange irony of fate that this worldly and politic ecclesiastic should have perforce become the champion of the rights of the Church and the liberties of the nation. His victory established a remarkable solidarity between the high ecclesiastical party and the popular opposition, which was to last nearly as long as the century. Disgust at this alliance moved Edward to take up the anti-clerical attitude which henceforth marks the policy of the crown until the accession of the house of Lancaster. The victory of the estates of 1341 was too complete to last. For a medieval king to hand over the business of government to a nominated ministry was in substance a return to the state of things in 1258 or