A Student's History of England Volume I Part 15

10. =Attacks on the West of France. 1341--1345.=--If Edward was to obtain still greater success, he had but to fight with a national force behind him on land as he had fought at sea; but he was slow to learn the lesson. Personally he was as chivalrous as Philip, and thought that far more could be done by the charge of knights on horseback than by the cloth-yard shafts of the English bowmen. For six more years he frittered away his strength. There was a disputed succession in Brittany, and one of the claimants, John of Montfort, ranged himself on the side of the English. There was fighting in Brittany and fighting on the borders of Edward's lands in Aquitaine, but up to the end of =1345= there was no decisive result on either side. In Scotland, too, things had been going so badly for Edward that in =1341= David Bruce had been able to return, and was now again ruling over his own people.

11. =The Campaign of Crecy. 1346.=--Surprising as Edward's neglect to force on a battle in France appears to us, it must be remembered that in those days it was far more difficult to bring on an engagement than it is in the present day. Fortified towns and castles were then almost impregnable, except when they were starved out; and it was therefore seldom necessary for a commander--on other grounds unwilling to fight--to risk a battle in order to save an important post from capture. Edward, however, does not appear to have thought that there was anything to be gained by fighting. In =1346= he led a large English army into Normandy, taking with him his eldest son, afterwards known as the Black Prince, at that time a lad of sixteen. It had been from Normandy and Calais that the fleets had put out by which the coasts of England had been ravaged, and Edward now deliberately ravaged Normandy. He then marched on, apparently intending to take refuge in Flanders. As the French had broken the bridges over the Seine, he was driven to ascend the bank of the river almost to Paris before he could cross. His burnings and his ravages continued till Philip, stung to anger, pursued him with an army more than twice as numerous as his own. Edward had the Somme to cross on his way, and the bridges over that river had been broken by the French, as those over the Seine had been broken; and but for the opportune discovery of a ford at Blanche Tache Edward would have been obliged to fight with an impa.s.sable river at his back. When he was once over the Somme he refused--not from any considerations of generalship, but from a point of honour--to continue his retreat further. He halted on a gentle slope near the village of Crecy facing eastwards, as Philip's force had swept round to avoid difficulties in the ground, and was approaching from that direction.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Shooting at the b.u.t.ts with the long-bow.]

12. =The Tactics of Crecy. 1346.=--Great as was Edward's advantage in possessing an army so diverse in its composition as that which he commanded, it would have availed him little if he had not known how to order that army for battle. At once it appeared that his skill as a tactician was as great as his weakness as a strategist. His experience at Halidon Hill (see p. 234) had taught him that the archers could turn the tide of battle against any direct attack, however violent. He knew, too, from the tradition of Bannockburn (see p. 226), that archers could readily be crushed by a cavalry charge on the flank; and he was well aware that his own hors.e.m.e.n were in too small numbers to hold out against the vast host of the French cavalry. He therefore drew up his line of archers between the two villages of Crecy and Vadicourt, though his force was not large enough to extend from one to the other. He then ordered the bulk of his hors.e.m.e.n to dismount and to place themselves with levelled spears in bodies at intervals in the line of archers. The innovation was thoroughly reasonable, as spearmen on foot would be able to check the fiercest charge of horse, if only the horse could be exposed to a shower of arrows. The English army was drawn up in three corps, two of them in the front line. The Black Prince was in command of one of the two bodies in front, whilst the king himself took charge of the third corps, which acted as a reserve in the rear.

13. =The Battle of Crecy. August 26, 1346.=--When Philip drew nigh in the evening his host was weary and hungry. He ordered his knights to halt, but each one was thinking, not of obeying orders, but of securing a place in the front, where he might personally distinguish himself. Those in the rear pushed on, and in a few minutes the whole of the French cavalry became a disorganised mob. Then Philip ordered 15,000 Genoese crossbowmen to advance against the enemy. At the best a crossbow was inferior to the English long-bow, as it was weaker in its action and consumed more time between each shot. To make matters worse, a heavy shower of rain had wetted the strings of the unlucky Genoese, rendering their weapons useless. The English had covers for their bows, and had kept them dry. The thick shower of their arrows drove the Genoese back. Philip took their retreat for cowardice. "Kill me those scoundrels!" he cried, and the French knights rode in amongst them, slaughtering them at every stride. Then the French hors.e.m.e.n charged the English lines. Some one amongst the Black Prince's retinue took alarm, and hurried to the king to conjure him to advance to the son's a.s.sistance. Edward knew better. "Is he dead?" he asked, "or so wounded that he cannot help himself?" "No, sire, please G.o.d," was the reply, "but he is in a hard pa.s.sage of arms, and he much needs your help." "Return," answered the king, "to those that sent you, and tell them not to send to me again so long as my son lives; I command them to let the boy win his spurs." The French were driven off with terrible slaughter, and the victory was won. It was a victory of foot soldiers over horse soldiers--of a nation in which all ranks joined heartily together over one in which all ranks except that of the gentry were despised. Edward III. had contributed a high spirit and a keen sense of honour, but it was to the influence of Edward I.--to his wide and far-reaching statesmanship, and his innovating military genius--that the victory of Crecy was really due.

14. =Battle of Nevill's Cross, and the Siege of Calais.

1346--1347.=--Whilst Edward was fighting in France, the Scots invaded England, but they were defeated at Nevill's Cross, and their king, David Bruce (David II.), taken prisoner. Edward, when the news reached him, had laid siege to Calais. In this siege cannon,[18] which had been used in earlier sieges of the war, were employed, but they were too badly made and loaded with too little gunpowder to do much damage.

In =1347= Calais was starved into surrender, and Edward, who regarded the town as a nest of pirates, ordered six of the princ.i.p.al burgesses to come out with ropes round their necks, as a sign that they were to be put to death. It was only at Queen Philippa's intercession that he spared their lives, but he drove every Frenchman out of Calais, and peopled it with his own subjects. A truce with Philip was agreed on, and Edward returned to England.

[Footnote 18: It has been said that they were used at Crecy, but this is uncertain.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Contemporary view of a fourteenth-century walled town.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Gloucester Cathedral. The choir, looking east: built between 1340 and 1350.]

15. =Const.i.tutional Progress. 1337--1347.=--Edward III. had begun his reign as a const.i.tutional ruler, and on the whole he had no reason to regret it. In his wars with France and Scotland he had the popular feeling with him, and he showed his reliance on it when, in =1340=, he consented to the abolition of his claim to impose tallage on his demesne lands (see p. 221)--the sole fragment of unparliamentary taxation legally retained by the king after the _Confirmatio Cartarum_. In =1341= the two Houses of Parliament finally separated from one another, and when Edward picked a quarrel with Archbishop Stratford, the Lords successfully insisted that no member of their House could be tried excepting by his peers. The Commons, on the other hand, were striving--not always successfully--to maintain their hold upon taxation. In =1341= they made Edward a large money grant on condition of his yielding to their demands, and Edward (whose const.i.tutional intentions were seldom proof against his wish to retain the power of the purse) shamelessly broke his engagement after receiving the money. On other occasions the Commons were more successful; yet, after all, the composition of their House was of more importance than any special victory they might gain. In it the county members--or knights of the shire--sat side by side with the burgesses of the towns. In no other country in Europe would this have been possible. The knights of the shire were gentlemen, who on the Continent were reckoned amongst the n.o.bility, and despised townsmen far too much to sit in the same House with them. In England there was the same amalgamation of cla.s.ses in Parliament as on the battle-field. When once gentlemen and burgesses formed part of the same a.s.sembly, they would come to have common interests; and, in any struggle in which the merchants were engaged, it would be a great gain to them that a cla.s.s of men trained to arms would be inclined to take their part.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The upper chamber or solar at Sutton Courtenay manor-house. Date, about 1350.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Interior of the Hall at Penshurst, Kent: showing the screen with minstrels' gallery over it, and the brazier for fire in the middle: built about 1340.]

16. =Edward's Triumph. 1347.=--Edward's return after the surrender of Calais was followed by an outburst of luxury. As the sea-rovers of Normandy and Calais had formerly plundered Englishmen, English landsmen now plundered Normandy and Calais. "There was no woman who had not gotten garments, furs, feather-beds, and utensils from the spoils." Edward surrounded himself with feasting and jollity. About this time he inst.i.tuted the Order of the Garter, and his tournaments were thronged with gay knights and gayer ladies in gorgeous attires.

The very priests caught the example, and decked themselves in unclerical garments. Even architecture lent itself to the prevailing taste for magnificence. The beautiful Decorated style which had come into use towards the end of the reign of Edward I.--and which may be seen[19] in the central tower of Lincoln Cathedral (see p. 227), in the west front of Howden Church (see p. 230), and in the nave of York Minster (see p. 238)--was, in the reign of Edward III., superseded by the Perpendicular style, in which beauty of form was abandoned for the sake of breadth, as in the choir of Gloucester and the nave of Winchester (see pp. 244, 276). Roofs become wide, as in the Hall of Penshurst (see p. 246), and consequently halls were larger and better adapted to crowded gatherings than those at Meare and Norborough (p.

247).

[Footnote 19: Lichfield Cathedral (p. 213) is transitional.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A small house or cottage at Meare, Somerset. Built about 1350.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Norborough Hall, Northamptonshire. A manor-house built about 1350. The dormer windows and addition to the left are of much later date.]

17. =The Black Death. 1348.=--In the midst of this luxurious society arrived, in =1348=, a terrible plague which had been sweeping over Asia and Europe, and which in modern times has been styled the Black Death. No plague known to history was so destructive of life. Half of the population certainly perished, and some think that the number of those who died must be reckoned at two-thirds.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ploughing.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Harrowing. A boy slinging stones at the birds.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Breaking the clods with mallets.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Cutting weeds.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Reaping.]

18. =The Statute of Labourers. 1351.=--This enormous destruction of life could not fail to have important results on the economic condition of the country. The process of subst.i.tuting money rents for labour service, which had begun some generations before (see p. 168), had become very general at the accession of Edward III. so that the demesne land which the lord kept in his own hands was on most estates cultivated by hired labour. Now, when at least half of the labourers had disappeared, those who remained, having less compet.i.tion to fear, demanded higher wages, whilst at the same time the price of the produce of the soil was the same or less than it had been before. The question affected not merely the great lords but the smaller gentry as well. The House of Commons, which was filled with the smaller gentry and the well-to-do townsmen--who were also employers of labour--was therefore as eager as the House of Lords to keep down wages. In =1351= the Statute of Labourers was pa.s.sed, fixing a scale of wages at the rates which had been paid before the Black Death, and ordering punishments to be inflicted on those who demanded more. It is not necessary to suppose that the legislators had any tyrannical intentions. For ages all matters relating to agriculture had been fixed by custom; and the labourers were outrageously violating custom.

Custom, however, here found itself in opposition to the forces of nature, and though the statute was often renewed, with increasing penalties, it was difficult to secure obedience to it in the teeth of the opposition of the labourers. The chief result of the statute was that it introduced an element of discord between two cla.s.ses of society.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Stacking corn.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Threshing corn with the flail.]

19. =The Statute of Treasons. 1352.=--In =1352= was pa.s.sed the Statute of Treasons, by which the offences amounting to treason were defined, the chief of them being levying war against the king. As no one but a great n.o.bleman was strong enough even to think of levying war against the king, this statute may be regarded as a concession to the wealthier landowners rather than to the people at large.

20. =The Black Prince in the South of France. 1355.=--In =1350= Philip VI. of France died, and was succeeded by his son John. The truce (see p. 243) was prolonged, and it was not till =1355= that war was renewed. Edward himself was recalled to England by fresh troubles in Scotland, but the Black Prince landed at Bordeaux and marched through the south of France, plundering as he went. Neither father nor son seems to have had any idea of gaining their ends except by driving the French by ill-treatment into submission. "You must know," wrote a contemporary in describing the condition of southern Languedoc, "that this was, before, one of the fat countries of the world, the people good and simple, who did not know what war was, and no war had ever been waged against them before the Prince of Wales came. The English and Gascons found the country full and gay, the rooms furnished with carpets and draperies, the caskets and chests full of beautiful jewels; but nothing was safe from these robbers." The Prince returned to Bordeaux laden with spoils.

21. =The Battle of Poitiers. 1356.=--In =1356= the Black Prince swept over central France in another similar plundering expedition. He was on his way back with his plunder to Bordeaux with no more than 8,000 men to guard it when he learnt as he pa.s.sed near Poitiers that King John was close to him with 50,000. He drew up his little force on a rising ground amidst thick vineyards, with a hedge in front of him behind which he could shelter his archers. As at Crecy, the greater part of the English hors.e.m.e.n were dismounted, and John, thinking that therein lay their secret of success, ordered most of his hors.e.m.e.n to dismount as well, not having discovered that though spearmen on foot could present a formidable resistance to a cavalry charge, they were entirely useless in attacking a strong position held by archers. Then he sent forward 300 knights who retained their horses, bidding a strong body of dismounted hors.e.m.e.n to support them. The hors.e.m.e.n, followed by the footmen, charged at a gap in the hedge, but the hedge on either side was lined with English bowmen, and men and horses were struck down. Those who survived fled and scattered their countrymen behind. Seeing the disorder, the Black Prince ordered the few knights whom he had kept on horseback to sweep round and to fall upon the confused crowd in the flank. The archers advanced to second them, and, gallantly as the French fought, their unhorsed knights could accomplish nothing against the combined efforts of horse and foot.

King John was taken prisoner and the battle was at an end.

22. =The Courtesy of the Black Prince.=--The Black Prince had been cruel to townsmen and peasants, but he was a model of chivalry, and knew how to deal with a captive king. At supper he stood behind John's chair and waited on him, praising his bravery. "All on our side," he said, "who have seen you and your knights, are agreed about this, and give you the prize and the chaplet if you will wear it." After the astounding victory of Poitiers, the Black Prince, instead of marching upon Paris, went back to Bordeaux. In =1357= he made a truce for two years and returned to England with his royal captive.

23. =Misery of France. 1356--1359.=--In =1356=, the year in which the Black Prince fought at Poitiers, his father ravaged Scotland. Edward, however, gained nothing by this fresh attempt at conquest. In his retreat he suffered heavy loss, and in =1357=, changing his plan, he replaced David Bruce (see p. 242) on the throne, and strove to win the support of the Scots instead of exasperating them by violence. In the meanwhile the two years' truce brought no good to France. The n.o.bles wrung from the peasants the sums needed to redeem their relatives, who were prisoners in England, and the disbanded soldiers, French and English, formed themselves into free companies and plundered as mercilessly as the Black Prince had done in time of war. Worn down with oppression, the French peasants broke into a rebellion known as the Jacquerie, from the nickname of Jacques-Bonhomme, which the gentry gave to them. After committing unheard-of cruelties the peasants were repressed and slaughtered. An attempt of the States-General--a sort of French Parliament which occasionally met--to improve the government failed. Peace with England was talked of, but Edward's terms were too hard to be accepted, and in =1359= war began again.

24. =Edward's Last Invasion. 1359--1360.=--So miserably devastated was France that Edward, when he invaded the country in =1359=, had to take with him not only men and munitions of war, but large stores of provisions. He met no enemy in the field, but the land had been so wasted that his men suffered much from want of food, in spite of the supplies which they had taken with them. "I could not believe," wrote an Italian who revisited France after an absence of some years, "that this was the same kingdom which I had once seen so rich and flourishing. Nothing presented itself to my eyes but a fearful solitude, an extreme poverty, land uncultivated, houses in ruins. Even the neighbourhood of Paris manifested everywhere marks of destruction and conflagration. The streets were deserted; the roads overgrown with weeds; the whole a vast solitude." In the spring of =1360= Edward moved on towards the banks of the Loire, hoping to find sustenance there. Near Chartres he was overtaken by a terrible storm of hail and thunder, and in the roar of the thunder he thought that he heard the voice of G.o.d reproving him for the misery which he had caused. He abated his demands and signed the treaty of Bretigni.

[Ill.u.s.tration: West front of Edington Church, Wilts: built about 1360.

An example of the transition from the Decorated style to the Perpendicular.]

25. =The Treaty of Bretigni. 1360.=--By the treaty of Bretigni John was to be ransomed for an enormous sum; Edward was to surrender his claim to the crown of France and to the provinces north of Aquitaine, receiving in return the whole of the duchy of Aquitaine together with the districts round Calais and Ponthieu, all of them to be held in full sovereignty, without any feudal obligation to the king of France. Probably it cost Edward little to abandon his claim to the French crown, which had only been an after-thought; and it was a clear gain to get rid of those feudal entanglements which had so frequently been used as a pretext of aggression against the English kings. It was hardly likely, however, that England would long be able to keep a country like Aquitaine, which was geographically part of France and in which French sympathies were constantly on the increase. "We will obey the English with our lips," said the men of Roch.e.l.le, when their town was surrendered, "but our hearts shall never be moved towards them."

CHAPTER XVI.

REIGN OF EDWARD III. AFTER THE TREATY OF BRETIGNI.

1360--1377.

LEADING DATES

Reign of Edward III., 1327-1377.

Battle of Navarrete 1367 Renewal of war with France 1369 Truce with France 1375 The Good Parliament 1376 Death of Edward III. 1377

1. =The First Years of Peace. 1360--1364.=--To hold his new provinces the better, Edward sent the Black Prince to govern them in =1363= with the t.i.tle of Duke of Aquitaine. King John had been liberated soon after the making of the peace, and had been allowed to return to France on payment of part of his ransom, and on giving hostages for the payment of the remainder. In =1363= one of the hostages, his son, the Duke of Anjou, broke his parole and fled, on which John, shocked at such perfidy, returned to England to make excuses for him, and died there in =1364=. If honour, he said, were not to be found elsewhere, it ought to be found in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of kings.

2. =The Spanish Troubles. 1364--1368.=--John's eldest son and successor, Charles V., known as the Wise, or the Prudent, was less chivalrous, but more cautious than his father, and soon found an opportunity of stirring up trouble for the Black Prince without exposing his own lands to danger. Pedro the Cruel, king of Castile, who had for some time been the ally of England, had murdered his wife, tyrannised over his n.o.bles, and contracted an alliance with the Mohammedans of Granada. The Pope having excommunicated him, his own illegitimate brother, Henry of Trastamara, claimed the crown, and sought aid of the king of France. Charles V. sent Bertrand du Guesclin, a rising young commander, to his help. Du Guesclin's army was made up of men of the Free Companies (see p. 252), which still continued to plunder France on their own account after the Peace of Bretigni. In this way Charles got rid of a scourge of his own country at the same time that he attacked an ally of the English. In =1366= Du Guesclin entered Spain. The tyrannical Pedro took refuge at Bayonne, where he begged the Black Prince to help him. The Gascon n.o.bles pleaded with the Prince to reject the monster, but the Prince was not to be held back. "It is not a right thing or reasonable," he said, when they urged him to keep aloof from the unjust undertaking to which he invited them, "that a b.a.s.t.a.r.d should hold a kingdom, and thrust out of it, and of his heritage, a brother and heir of the land by legal marriage. All kings and sons of kings should never agree nor consent to it, for it is a great blow at the royal state." In =1367= the Black Prince entered Spain, and with the help of his English archers thoroughly defeated Henry at Navarrete. Then vengeance overtook him on the side on which he had sinned. Pedro was as false as he was cruel, and refused to pay the sums which he had engaged to furnish to the Prince's troops. Sickness broke out in the English ranks, and the Black Prince returned to Bordeaux with only a fifth part of his army, and with his own health irretrievably shattered. In =1368= Henry made his way back to Spain, defeated and slew Pedro, and undid the whole work of the Black Prince to the south of the Pyrenees.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A gold n.o.ble of Edward III., struck between A.D. 1360 and 1369.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Effigy of Edward the Black Prince, from his tomb at Canterbury: showing the type of armour worn from 1335 to 1400.]

3. =The Taxation of Aquitaine. 1368--1369.=--Worse than this was in store for the Black Prince. As his soldiers clamoured for their wages, he levied a hearth tax to supply their needs. The Aquitanian Parliament declared against the tax, and appealed to the king of France to do them right. In =1369= Charles, who knew that the men of Aquitaine would be on his side, summoned the Black Prince to Paris to defend his conduct, on the pretext that, as there had been some informality in the treaty of Bretigni, he was himself still the feudal superior of the Duke of Aquitaine. "Willingly," replied the Black Prince when he received the summons, "we will go to the court of Paris, as the king of France orders it; but it shall be with helmet on head and sixty thousand men with us."