A Great and Glorious Adventure (21 page)

Lancaster’s army never got to Brittany: constant bad weather and unseasonable winds kept blowing his fleet back to England’s shores. The only English army that crossed the Channel
and stayed was that
of the Black Prince. Prince Edward landed in Bordeaux in September 1355 with perhaps 1,000 men-at-arms, 1,700 archers and a few hundred Welsh spearmen.
Now twenty-five, he had proved his personal bravery at Crécy but had never previously been in independent command. His father had, however, provided him with seasoned and wise officers to
assist him. The earls of Warwick, Suffolk and Salisbury had all served in the Scottish wars, at Crécy and at the siege of Calais. They would give advice when needed and curb any tendency to
hot-headed adventurism.

At Bordeaux, the English were joined by their Gascon troops and, having unloaded his horses and allowed his men time to recover from sea sickness, the prince moved off on a
chevauchée
through Armagnac and Languedoc. He burned, he killed, he looted, he levelled, and by November he had reached the Golfe de Lion, having traversed 300 miles from coast to
coast. So far, he had avoided fortified towns and castles. While tempted by Toulouse, he bypassed it, and when he came under a bombardment from French trebuchets at Narbonne – and it was
apparent that the garrison was a strong one – he wisely withdrew, burning the suburbs as he went. Now it was time to turn about and return to friendly territory – the nights were
drawing in, the rivers were rising and a large number of horses had been cast, having been ridden too hard on inadequate feed. French troops were also on the move, as were private adventurers who
sniped at the baggage train, heavy with a month’s worth of loot. To return to Aquitaine meant crossing a series of rivers, now swollen with the rains and their bridges broken down by the
French, but to the amazement of the latter – the Ariège and the Garonne were supposed to be impossible to cross with horses – the English managed as much and struggled on
westwards. Soon the pursuing French forces were only a day’s march behind, and at night the English could see their enemy’s camp fires. But the French too were held up by flooded rivers
and dissension among their commanders, as they argued about what to do next, and on 28 November 1355 the Black Prince and his army crossed the border into Aquitaine.

In some ways, 1355 had been a disappointing year: the expected perpetual peace had not arrived, the three-pronged attack had not happened, and the Scots had once more invaded England. The latter
threat was soon dealt with, however, and, while the Black Prince’s mounted raid led to no great battles, it once again demonstrated the inability of the
French king to
protect his subjects, put heart into the Gascons, reduced the taxes that could be raised from the raided areas, and liberated a great deal of valuable plate, cloth and wine, to say nothing of
horses and prisoners for ransom. Edward’s troops had good reason to be satisfied and they looked forward to similar success the following year. In that hope they were not to be disappointed,
for 1356 would see the second of the great English victories on land of the Hundred Years War.

The tomb of Edward the Black Prince in Canterbury Cathedral. A highly competent military commander, his early death at the age of forty-six set back by forty
years England’s hopes of regaining her rights on the continent of Europe.

The Black Prince spent the winter of 1355 and spring of 1356 consolidating his position in Aquitaine and preparing for another
chevauchée.
Although no major
operations were launched, there were constant but limited raids into French territory designed to recapture English possessions, and by the spring of 1356 thirty castles and towns had been
recovered and garrisons installed. Orders were sent to England for the despatch of reinforcements and Sir Richard de Stafford was instructed to enlist 300 mounted archers. Two hundred were to be
from Cheshire and the rest from wherever they could be found. They were to be arrayed, tested and equipped, and conveyed to Plymouth to take ship for Bordeaux without delay and in any case by Palm
Sunday (15 March 1356). A resupply of weapons was also needed, so the prince sent one of his logisticians, Robert Pipot of Brookford, back to England to purchase 1,000 bows, 2,000 sheaves of arrows
and 400 gross (57,600) of bowstrings. Clearly, the wastage rate of bowstrings was considerable. Pipot had problems in getting arrows, as all available stocks had already been bought up by the king
and fletchers had to be hired to work night and day to make the quantities needed.

There was at least no problem in persuading soldiers to enlist, provided that they were available, for the depredations of the plague were of course still a major factor. Pay was reasonable and
the rules for the division of plunder and ransom clearly spelled out. Wages were calculated by the day and there was usually a generous advance of pay on enlistment. In addition to their own pay,
captains and leaders of companies were paid a bonus of 100 marks (about £66.66) per quarter for every thirty men they
produced, and a leader who could produce 100 men
(and there were some) could amass a lot of money in a reasonably short period of time – to say nothing of his cut of the loot and any ransoms paid for men captured by his company.

From the English point of view, it was increasingly important to meet the main French royal army and defeat it. Despite the successes of the 1355 campaign and the enormous plunder that had been
realized from it, the English were still no nearer to forcing the French to recognize the legitimacy of English France. A decisive battle was needed, one which would end the war. Once again, the
English plan was to coordinate attacks into central France from three directions: Henry of Lancaster from Normandy, King Edward from Calais and the Black Prince from Aquitaine. The prince would
strike north for Paris, and, while we have no written evidence, he was almost certainly aiming to link up with Lancaster somewhere around the River Loire. The expense of such a plan – keeping
three armies in the field, maintaining the various scattered garrisons and providing for the defence of Calais and Aquitaine – was enormous: around £100,000 in the financial year 1355/6
alone, about half of this for the Black Prince’s forces. But England could afford it, partially from taxation but mainly from customs duties and profits accrued from the campaigns so far and
the ransoms obtained.

Jean of France had huge problems. His policy of avoiding pitched battles until the English ran out of money and went home had failed completely; he had demonstrably failed to protect those whom
he regarded as his subjects; his government was riven with dissent and still suffering from the dislocation caused by the plague; his son and heir was plotting against him with the king of Navarre;
and he was very short of money with which to continue the war – so much so that he declared a moratorium on the payment of government debt, which ruined great man and humble tradesman alike.
This last point was perhaps Prince Edward’s major achievement of the previous year, for in a great swathe of territory from Bordeaux to the Mediterranean Sea the economy had been utterly
ruined; it was calculated that by the destruction of Carcassonne and Limoux alone the French had been deprived of the funds to support 1,000 men-at-arms.
²⁶
English propaganda made much of Jean’s inability to prevent the English from going wherever they wanted and of his profligate frittering away of
funds and oppressive taxation, stressing how much better life would be under the legitimate king of France – Edward III of England. The only solution open to Jean short of
surrendering to all the English demands – which, given the attitudes of disgruntled French magnates, would have cost him his throne and possibly his life – was to abandon previous
strategy and bring the English to battle, preferably on terms favourable to the French. Orders went out for men to be conscripted and mustered at various points along the River Loire.

On 4 August 1356, the Black Prince struck north towards Paris. As he could not afford to let a French army take advantage of his absence to invade Aquitaine, the seneschal, John de Chiverston,
was left behind with a large force of about 2,000 men, leaving Prince Edward with a total of around 5,000 – 3,000 archers and 2,000 men-at-arms with a few hobelars. The whole army was
mounted: they would move fast, never stopping long enough for the French to catch them at a disadvantage and only offering battle when it suited them to do so. As in previous
chevauchées
, no attention was paid to strongly fortified or defended castles or towns, but those that were only lightly held, or where the walls had fallen into disrepair, were
swiftly taken and their stocks of food and wine taken to replenish the army. The baggage train was minimal and largely for carrying plunder and spare arrows and weapons – the plan was that
the army would live off the land. The prince’s troops were covering around ten miles a day until the end of August, when they reached the town of Vierzon on the River Cher, which was found
abandoned. The usual looting and burning in a wide area round about took place, and a detachment of troops under Sir James Audley and Sir John Chandos was sent off to do the same at Aubigny,
twenty-five miles to the north-east.

Audley and Chandos were, like Manny, Holland and Dagworth, men of relatively modest origins who rose in wealth and status from their prowess in war. Audley, who was aged thirty-eight or
thereabouts in 1356, was the illegitimate son of an Oxfordshire knight and a knight’s daughter and is first mentioned by the chroniclers as being in the retinue of Edward, Prince of Wales,
during Edward III’s expedition of 1346/7. He was present at Crécy and at the siege of Calais, and, while we do not know when he was knighted, he was one of the founder members of the
Order of the Garter. John Chandos was a younger son of a Derbyshire knight, and, while his
date of birth is unknown, he was probably much the same age as Audley, for they
appear to have been great friends and comrades in arms. Chandos was knighted in 1339, largely as a result of favourable comment on his courage and ability in a single combat outside Cambrai. He
fought at the sea-battle of Sluys and, like Audley, was in the Prince of Wales’s retinue at Crécy. He was on board the prince’s ship at Winchelsea in 1350 and, again like Audley,
was a founder member of the Garter.

Audley and Chandos completed their work of destruction at Aubigny and on their way back ran into and routed a band of French freebooters commanded by one Phillip de Chambry, known to his friends
as Gris Mouton – ‘Grey Sheep’ – presumably from his appearance. It was from prisoners captured in this skirmish that the Black Prince discovered that the French were not as
far away as he had thought. By now, Jean of France had assembled an army and had moved the various contingents to Chartres, but he still had no definite idea where the English were. With the
obvious clues of a fifty-mile-wide trail of devastation pointing towards Paris and hordes of refugees fleeing the invaders, Jean knew from which direction the Black Prince was advancing but had no
real idea of exactly how far he had got. What was clear to the French was that once the English crossed the Loire – assuming they could cross it – then the advantage would swing towards
the French. For the river was in spate and the French hoped to trap the English army against it, leaving them no escape route.