The Perfect King (36 page)

Late that afternoon, when the foremost English vessels broke through the first French line, the second line was open to attack. Seeing the disaster unfolding, the third line fled that evening. The men of Flanders, who had been watching from the shore, themselves rushed to their boats and put out into the estuary. Attacked from both sides, and with very
little
chance of sailing around the island of Cadsand and away from the carnage, the majority of the French had no option but to fight to the death. Many threw themselves into the water and struggled to shore, where the Flemings caught and mutilated them. For many more there was no retreat, for their leather or metal armour would have drowned its wearer. And this being warfare at sea, which held special fears for men-at-arms, there were no chivalric courtesies. Probably seventeen thousand Frenchmen were killed or drowned, including both commanders
of the French fleet. One of the
French admirals was captured alive, but his skills rendered him too dangerous to ransom. Edward ordered the man to be hanged
from the mast of his own ship.

It was the most extraordinary victory, and one for which Edward could take the full credit. Not only had he fought in the front line against heavy odds, the decision to sail had been his, the martial experience and ethos of his men had been down to him, and the strategic use of archers had been his. But even more than these, his leadership was responsible for this victory. He had inspired his men to take on a much larger and better-equipped fleet, knowing that the penalty for failure was death. He may have been half-mad with anger, frustration and worry when he had resolved to set sail; nonetheless he had convinced himself and his men that he could win. In his first great
battle
against the French - the
battle
of Sluys, as it came to be known — Edward captured
166
ships. Only twenty-four escaped. He had destroyed French naval supremacy in the Channel.

*

In London they could not believe the news. Only the previous October they had been driving piles and stakes into the Thames, fortifying the city, and arranging for church bells to be rung in warning, fully expecting to see two hundred French ships come sailing up the river to burn the city. Now that enemy fleet no longer existed. They could not believe it until a letter from Edward spelled it out for them. In Ghent too there was great rejoicing. Obviously the men he had led to victory themselves did the most celebrating, 'making much noise and much joy from the instruments they had brought'. Edward himself was deeply affected, and gave thanks to God over and over again. It was a propitious day; he had received victory by divine clemency: it was a great miracle. Thanks were given to God 'who had shown mercy to Edward in his great danger'.
2
'' The significance of it being the feast of St John the Baptist was not lost on Edward either (although it was probably a coincidence that his newborn son had been christened John shortly before). Thanks to that saint were offered in abundance. Edward could not walk or ride because of his thigh injury, and had to stay on board die
Thomas
for two weeks, but, if he had been able to, he would have no doubt gone on a pilgrimage straightaway. He did not neglect to send a letter to all the archbishops and bishops in England informing them of his victory and desiring their prayers. And he wrote to his son with news of the victory, stressing that the
Christopher
and the previously captured vessels had been retaken together with several other ships as large as die
Christopher.
This was news not just of a victory but of an improved platform for English trade, for it hugely increased die seaborne defences and security of the English wool fleet. As soon as he was well enough, he proceeded to the shrine of the Holy Blood at Bruges and the church of the Virgin Mary at Aardenburg to give thanks for his safe delivery.
28
Only then did he progress to Ghent to see Philippa and his new son.

Edward had spent the time laid up with his injury discussing
with
van Artevelde how best to prosecute the next stage of the war. The sieges of Tournai and Saint-Omer, which had been planned earlier in the year, remained the top objectives. These were both French-controlled towns on the Flemish border, both of strategic significance to Flanders and of great symbolic value to Edward. Tournai in particular was fanatically loyal to Philip. There was no time to lose. Despite his recent victory, the archbishop of Canterbury had written to say that the council was having difficulty in gathering the wool to fund the expedition. The Peruzzi and Bardi banks were also failing to meet part of a loan agreed for the expenses of the royal household. Edward knew he had to keep the momentum going to avoid a repetition of the
1339
fiasco. He split his army into two parts. One, the smaller, was to attack Saint-Omer under the command of Robert d'Artois. He himself would command the other in an assault on Tournai when he was fit enough.

The expedition began badly. Robert d'Artois was an old man unused to Edward's new strategic thinking and unable to organise and inspire the English archers and men-at-arms. He was not trusted by the Flemish infantry either. He sought to take on the French with traditional methods, and was heavily defeated. Many valuable troops were lost to the alliance, and only remnants of the army made their way back to Edward. The siege did not just fail, it did not begin.

Edward reached Tournai on
23
July, one month after Sluys. As he and his allies were taking up positions around the city, it became clear that it was well-prepared to sustain a siege. Its massive walls had been built for just such a purpose. The River Scheldt ran through the centre of die city, making it impossible to deprive it of water. No attempt to take it by force
had ever succeeded. More recentl
y, Philip had stationed a strong French garrison there to galvanise the resistance of the twenty thousand inhabitants. The suburbs had been burnt in advance of the allies' arrival. It looked as though it would be a long siege.

Edward, still high after his victory at Sluys, decided the best way to keep the momentum going would be to challenge Philip to a duel. This was what he claimed to have done already in his letter to the Venetians. Now he actually issued such a challenge. On
26
July he sent a letter to Philip, 'count of Valois'. In it he demanded the throne of France, and compl
ained that Philip had violentl
y withheld from him his rightful inheritance. He went on to say that, since the quarrel was between the two men themselves, 'let the controversy between us be fairly decided by ourselves, body to body, that the great nobility and valour of each other may be seen before all men'. Failing that, he offered a pitched battle between each king and a hundred men. And failing that, a pitched battle between their two armies before the walls of Tournai. The sooner Edward could have a positive and decisive victory on land, the less the cost to him, and the sooner he could advance negotiations into his real object: the return of all the lands he had lost since his coronation.

Philip's reply was to pretend that he knew no one who answered to the name of Philip de Valois. It was a dull response, and it frustrated Edward, who clearly took pride in his being prepared to issue a personal challenge as a king. Everything now pointed to Tournai as where the great land
battle
would take place. It fell to Edward and his allies to subdue the city as quickly as possible. Against a city whose burghers themselves manned its defences and who volunteered to go out on raiding parties to attack the English, that was not going to be an easy task. It was
26
August - a whole month later - before any determined assault was made on the city walls. Two thousand Flemish sought to break through the northern defences. Despite its weakening state, they failed. They failed again a week later.

As the siege went on, Edward grew more and more disillusioned and angry. His money supplies had again dried up. The German allies who were doing nothing on the east of the city were reprimanded for their slackness. They resorted to the reasonable defence that Edward had not yet paid them. The Hainaulters on the southern fringe of the city were engaging often and having successes in ravaging the countryside. But they too were disillusioned by the inactivity of their allies. The Brabanters fell out with van Artevelde, feeling that he was winning the favouritism of the English king. Matters worsened after a Brabant lord told van Artevelde to 'go back to Ghent and brew beer', prompting van Artevelde to draw his sword and kill him. And still the defences of the city had not been breached. The French army under Philip, with the sixteen-year-old King David of
Scotland
in tow, was drawing close. Edward knew he would have the greatest difficulty resisting them, but there was no alternative. All the allied armies were drawn together, regardless of their squabbles, to face the French advance on
7
September. The citizens of Tournai took arms and prepared to launch themselves on the rear of the allied troops when the battle was underway. Edward stationed a rearguard to protect his armies, and readied his archers.

In one of the most prescient acts of his pontificate, Pope Benedict had sent secret messengers to both Philip and Edward two weeks earlier. To Philip he had sent the low-ranking William Amici, provost of Lavaur. For once we have a secret messenger's instructions written down, for a copy was kept in Pope Benedict's own register. The reason for sending a low-status messenger was to be explained to Philip; it was so he might move more freely than the cardinals sent in the past. He was to set before Philip the pope's fears for his safety and the safety of his eldest son, John, duke of Normandy. He was to stress how successful the English had been at sea, and how the tide in Gascony was beginning to turn in favour of the English. He was to accentuate the size of the Flemish army with Edward, and to underline the dangers of a revolt in the French nobility against Philip, about which the pope had obviously heard mutterings. Finally, there was a renewed danger of a Moorish invasion. Considering all these things the pope heartily desired there to be peace between the two sides, and suggested that Aquitaine should remain in Philip's overlordship with Edward offering fealty and homage for it, as he had before the war. To Edward he sent his chaplain, William Bateman, a trusted agent of Edward's, explaining that just because he had won one crushing victory did not mean he would always be victorious, Tor one who was conquered seventeen times won the eighteenth
battle
and another who won two victories was totally defeated in the third engagement'. He also made William write down a series of good reasons why Edward should want peace, namely the problems he was facing through being away from his own kingdom, and the danger of the huge army Philip was bringing against him.

Although the seeds of Pope Benedict's advice had always fallen on stony ground before now, and these low-ranking clerics were not directly successful, both kings listened to these emissaries. Their words prepared the ground for a more personal appeal, on the night of
22
September. At the pope's request, Jeanne de Valois, dowager countess of Hainault and an abbess since her husband's death, came to Edward in his tent. As Edward's mother-in-law and sister of King Philip, and mother to the count of Hainault (whom Philip was threatening to decapitate), she was well-placed to gain access to the leaders and able to beg for peace. She had already wept on her knees before Philip. Now she begged Edward to think of Hainault and the destruction and damage that was being done to her son's dominions. She implored Edward for the love of God to desist from fighting.

Normally Edward would have paid scant attention to such pleas. But he faced a very serious dilemma. A messenger from Tournai to Philip had been caught escaping from the city and had informed the English that the people were close to surrendering. That was certainly the feeling in the French camp; many French nobles were gathering with Philip in fear that their relatives in the city were starving to death. Edward desperately wanted to take Tournai. He saw it as a test of his military capability. But at the same time his army was falling apart. If the city lasted out another two weeks, he would lose altogether, and his army would begin to desert. Money from England had entirely dried up, and he was having to borrow at very high rates of interest just to keep going. Thus Jeanne de Valois' pleas and protestations - made by a holy woman, and a special emissary from the pope - gave Edward an honourable way to begin negotiations with Philip. He could pretend that he was agreeing to parley out of benevolence. He agreed that he would send an embassy to treat with Philip at the chapel of Esplechin, about three miles away.

As Edward admitted frankly in a later letter to the pope, his problem was money. Tournai might have been about to fall, or it might not, but Edward could not afford to go
on. In this respect he did exactl
y the right thing, agreeing to terms, for Tournai was not strategically that important to him, and he stood to gain more from a generous peace than a hard-won victory. Three days after Jeanne de Valois' visit, a truce was agreed, to last until the following midsummer. This would apply to France, the Low Countries,
Scotland
, Gascony: everywhere that the two kings were at war. All armies and troops, including the Scots, would be required to cease their operations, including sieges, with immediate effect. Those who had made conquests could keep what they had won for the time being. There would be freedom to travel and trade. Prisoners were to be restored. The proclamation was to be read in all the countries affected within twenty-six days. One cannot say that normality was restored - war had become more 'normal' than peace between England and France - but a period of stability and relative safety had been settled.