The Perfect King (63 page)

On
2
November Edward set out on the road to Amiens. Three days later, burning the country and villages al
l around him, he approached Ther
ouanne. On the way he was met by a French knight, Sir Jean le Maingre, better known by his nickname Boucicaut. Boucicaut had previously been captured in Gascony and was on parole, and so could not take part in the fighting until he had paid his ransom. But that also meant he was safe from further punishment. He was led to Edward, who demanded to know where King John was. Still at Amiens, Boucicaut replied. Edward expressed his surprise. 'Holy Mary! Why is he waiting for me there, when he has so great a force and sees his land burned and devastated by so few men?'

Edward knew that Boucicaut had come mainly to spy on the size of his army, so he showed his confidence in his troops by allowing him to survey them. Boucicaut saw that the English were well-equipped, well-armed, experienced and high in morale, even if the army was smaller than that mustering at Amiens. Some accounts say that he thought the English were too few in number to accomplish Edward's objectives. This is unlikely, given later events, but, whatever Boucicaut actually thought, Edward levelled with him the following day. As the two men watched the English army destroy the countryside around Hesdin, Edward told him that he knew that he was spying, although he was on parole. He added that, given this, he could demand an increased ransom for him. But nevertheless he would let him go, and forgive him his ransom. The condition was that he would go to King John and tell him that Edward expected to see the French arrayed for
battle
within three days.

Boucicaut did as he was told. But the three days passed, and John did not give
battle
. He may have been unprepared to do so, awaiting a larger army, or he may simply have been too scared to risk his throne by a head-on confrontation with an English army of ten thousand men. Edward was disappointed. He was also beginning to regret his haste in marching south, for he had left his supply lines prone to attack from the French troops stationed around Calais, and his men had now run out of wine. As soon as the army was reduced to drinking local water from wells and streams, they were prone to illnesses and poisoning. With no sign of a French attack, Edward conferred with his fellow war leaders and decided to try the ploy which had worked at Crecy, to encourage the French to attack them in retreat. He accordingly gave the order to withdraw and encamp outside Calais, destroying everything on the way.

King John rose to the bait. Anxious that he should not be seen in the same light as his father, always shirking
battle
, he sent his marshal to issue a challenge to Edward. Edward responded with the proposal that he had first made to King Philip in
1340:
that the two kings should fight alone, the loser surrendering his claim on the throne of France to the victor. If that was unacceptable, Edward suggested that they each be joined in their struggle by their eldest sons, or perhaps a small number of their chosen knights. Once more, he was pitching his family's divine right against that of the de Valois, a trial by
battle
in all but name. This was very unattractive to King John, for how could he and the dauphin, Charles, be expected to take on King Edward - the paragon of knighthood - and the Black Prince, who had won his spurs so dramatically at Cr6cy? He turned him down. He also turned down the next English proposal, and the next. The strategic initiative had to all intents and purposes
become
the
battle
. Neither side was prepared to fight on terms suggested by the other. Neither side was prepared to attack the other on ground which their enemy had chosen.

Outside the walls of Calais, Edward was more anxious to fight than ever, for he now knew that he had made a second miscalculation in his preparations for the campaign, more serious even than jeopardising his supply lines. On
6
November, while he had been boasting to Boucicaut, a group of Scotsmen led by a French knight had broken into Berwick and destroyed much of the town. Suddenly Edward was aware that he was exposed. And it was his own fault. In
1345
he had been much more careful, arranging the defence of the northern border in anticipation of a Scottish attack timed to coincide with his invasion of France. This time he had rushed things, had changed his mind too often, and had not made adequate arrangements, assuming that David II's custody was a guarantee of peace. He certainly had not foreseen the dangers of small numbers of Frenchmen helping to lead a Scottish attack. Nor did he anticipate that Robert Stewart, the Guardian of
Scotland
, might want to renew hostilities during King

David's imprisonment, even though that was what the Scots were bound by treaty to do if France was attacked.

Cursing himself, Edward gave the order from Calais for parliament to assemble at Westminster, and issued one last challenge to King John. This too was rejected. The temptation to march forward and attack the French then and there must have been great, but he resisted it. Despite the bravado declarations that he would show John the smoke and flames of his realm, and that he would destroy everything he could see, and despite his showing off to Boucicaut, he was about to leave France hastily, without any reward for his efforts. The thousand volunteers from Germany and the Low Countries were dismayed to see Edward slink away, back to Calais, and back to England, without doing
battle
. This was not the great warrior-king whose victory they had expected to share.

The
1355
campaign in Normandy was a failure. Edward was not humiliated by the French, but by his own neglect of the necessary strategic precautions. The very fact that he had not covered himself in the glory of another victory was something of a humiliation for the most respected warrior-king in Christendom. Nevertheless, in the circumstances, he did the wise and correct thing Tactical retreats are rarely glorious but they are often as important as successful battles. If we look at the broader picture, Edward's fundamental approach to the war had not changed since he first went to the Low Countries in
1338.
The strategic bedrock of his entire foreign policy (and it is not inappropriate here to use this term) was, in his own words, that 'the best way to avoid the inconvenience of war is to pursue it away from your own country'. The attack on Berwick threatened that policy. It brought war back on to English soil, and that was something Edward could not and would not tolerate. He had to stand by his policy of maintaining the war on foreign territory above all else. Therefore, in considering his campaign of
1355,
we have to say that Edward was forced to retreat as a result of his own strategic miscalculations but, having acknowledged his failures, he did the wise thing in withdrawing from France to protect his kingdom's borders.

*

Ten days after challenging King John, Edward was sitting in the Painted Chamber at Westminster, with his magnates and representatives around him. He was in no mood for trifling with merchants or bargaining for a grant. There was a real threat to the kingdom in the north, and he wanted simply to make sure he had the means to attack the Scots and secure the border. He was also still smarting from his enforced withdrawal from France, and determined to ensure financial support for a renewal of his disappointing campaign. The heroic champion Lord Manny was therefore given the task of addressing the assembly and making clear why Edward was demanding a renewed grant of no less than six years' continuation of the wool subsidy.

Sir Walter was an eloquent man. He related the whole history of the struggle for peace, from the treaty discussed at Guines to the failure to ratify the treaty and the duplicity of Charles of Navarre. He told those present about the problems with the weather, and the attempts to do
battle
, and the French refusal. To his statement Chief Justice Shareshull added the loss of Berwick and the pressing need to respond to the Scots' incursion. After these speeches, the commons withdrew, and shortly afterwards assembled in the White Chamber, and responded with the magnates that they had unanimously decided to grant a subsidy on all wool and leather for the full six years. This was an extraordinarily long period of taxation, never previously known. Edward had been given the purse strings of the kingdom.

Of course there were conditions. The grant was followed by a number of petitions for the redress of injustices and other grievances. To most of these Edward gave a cursory answer. But one in particular caught his attention. It was a petition from his second cousin, Lady Wake, the sister of the duke of Lancaster. She claimed that the bishop of Ely had allowed his men to burn down some of her houses. She had taken legal action against him, and he had been ordered to pay
£900
in damages. Edward already knew this, and had rebuked the bishop at the time. But since then the bishop's thugs had murdered one of her servants, William Holm, in a wood near Somersham. Gangs of ruffians were notorious in the early fourteenth century, and Edward had done his best to stamp out organised crime. He had almost entirely eradicated the pattern of magnate-sponsored violence and maintenance (although Sir John Molyns did his best to keep the tradition alive). But it was unheard of for a bishop to be implicated in repeated acts of gang violence. Edward, roused by the threat to law and order, the dignity of the church and the insult to the royal family, ordered that he himself would deal with the case. He further decreed that he would confiscate the bishop's temporal possessions, and demanded that the bis
hop humble himself before him.

One week later Edward began his long ride north. His mind was set on wresting Berwick from the Scots and then punishing them for their rebellion. He was also angry with the bishop, who had refused to humble himself or even to apologise for his wrongdoing. He was at New
castle
by the end of December, and the army reached Berwick in the second week of January. Even before they arrived, the Frenchmen who had led the attack on the town had abandoned the Scottish cause, leaving the defenders to beg Edward for their lives. Robert Stewart had not anticipated Edward's immediate return and defence of his Scottish possessions. Nor had his men anticipated his wrath. The shame Edward felt in retreating from France only increased his anger. When he heard that his Chancellor and Treasurer had hesitated to confiscate the lands of the defiant bishop of Ely, he was pushed to the point of fury. Now Scotland stood to pay the price.

The campaign which followed became infamous in Scotland as 'Burnt Candlemas'. On
25
January, near Roxburgh
Castle
, Edward summoned Balliol before him and demanded that he resign the tide of King of Scots which he had borne usele
ssly for the last twenty years.
Balliol was given a pension and had his debts paid, and then left Scotland ignominiously, never to return. Edward then set about organising a destructive march across Scotland modelled on those he had used in France. An advancing front - twenty miles wide, in which everything was destroyed and burnt - was now employed to punish the Scots. It began at Roxburgh on
26
January and continued day by day until Edward marched into Edinburgh, the lower parts of which he burnt on Candlemas Day
(2
February). Then he moved on to Haddington, which he burnt, allowing the fires to consume the friary there. A bitter winter campaign followed as Edward destroyed everything in his path on the way across the lowlands to Carlisle. His men suffered from hunger and thirst, as the Scots destroyed their own stores to prevent the English having them. The situation was made worse by the loss of his supply fleet in bad storms, but Edward m
ade sure he punished the Scots.
A plot to ambush him in Ettrick forest failed when another contingent was sent through the danger zone ahead of his own force. The many Englishmen killed in his place were the only consolation for the desperate Scots whose most ardent supporters were now beginning to see the alliance with France as more of a benefit to the French than to themselves.

There is no doubt that the Burnt Candlemas campaign was hugely destructive. But how successful was it? It did not bring the war in
Scotland
to an end, and it seems strange at first to suppose it could have done. But to judge Edward's attempt to conclude the Scottish war as a failure on the basis that hostilities were renewed shortly after his death, twenty years later, is nonsensical. So we must ask whether it is possible that Edward believed that Burnt Candlemas would help to bring about a permanent peace. The Scots could not possibly hope to defeat a large English army in the field under Edward's command, so the devastation cannot be regarded as a means of forcing them into a decisive
battle
. But Edward could have believed that severe reprisals in themselves would bring the Scots to the negotiating table. Certainly he would have hoped that they would think twice before attacking England again at France's request. No doubt he also meant to send a very strong signal to the French, to let them know that he was still capable of inflicting dire suffering on his adversaries. But the most telling sign is that, soon after Burnt Candlemas, Edward agreed peace with the Scots and resumed negotiations to allow
David to return to his kingdom. Even more significantl
y, the negotiations were successful. The conflict with Scotland effectively ended then, not to be resumed during Edward's lifetime, and David returned to his inheritance. Finally, the day on which David's ransom was to be paid, in yearly instalments, was Candlemas. This would be a powerful reminder to the Scots of what Edward had done in
1356
and could do again. It may seem strange that such destruction should be committed in the name of peace but Burnt Candlemas does seem to have been carried out with the intention of ending hostilities, at least while the
king of England was a warrior.