Read A Great and Glorious Adventure Online
Authors: Gordon Corrigan
A Great and Glorious Adventure (43 page)
Despite warm personal relations that exist between many Britons and French men and women, France as a nation has never liked us, and does not now. The feeling is mutual, and one suspects that
the widespread British antipathy to the European Union might be a lot less intense were France not a major player in it. Some years ago, this author, having commanded the British contingent at a
French Armistice Day parade in Limoges, was invited to lunch with the French general who had taken the salute, a delightful and cultured man who employed a superb cook and kept a very fine
wine-cellar. After the consumption of much excellent claret and a considerable quantity of fine cognac, the general put his arm around me, looked me straight in the eye, and said:
‘
N’oubliez jamais
:
vous êtes l’ennemi héreditaire
.’
Could things have been different? Perhaps, if Henry V had not died when he did, he might have been accepted by the French as king, with his French wife; or if England had not tried to achieve
quite so much and had contented herself with recovering Aquitaine, unquestionably English by legal and moral right, and fought to have it in full sovereignty, then
we might
perhaps still have a foothold in Europe today. Certainly, there was no excuse for the Tudor laxness that lost us Calais in 1558. It is much more likely, however, that at some stage the sovereignty
of English France would have been given to a younger son and that the crowns would have once more diverged. As it was, an English child king and internal strife at home after the death of Henry V
left little appetite for further European adventures until it was far too late, and, despite her going to war with France many times in the succeeding centuries, England’s future lay in the
seas and in empire, whereas that of France was as a land power. For all that, the Hundred Years War was a great adventure, and a great and righteous cause.
1
All verses from R. T. Davies (ed.),
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, Faber & Faber, London, 1963.
2
Seward, Desmond,
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3
Maxwell, Sir Herbert (tr. and ed.),
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4
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6
Brie, Friedrich (ed.),
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Ibid.
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12
For the detailed organization of indentured retinues, see N. B. Lewis,
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13
Ayton, Andrew and Preston, Philip,
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14
Hewitt, op. cit.
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For a detailed account of the Battle of Morlaix, see Kelly DeVries,
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16
I have found the most convincing assessment of the size and composition of the 1346 army to be that of Andrew Ayton, ‘The
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17
Sumption, Jonathan,
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18
For an account of how ransom worked, see Michael Prestwich,
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Sumption, op. cit.
21
The arguments for and against the ‘traditional’ site are well and meticulously examined by Sir Philip Preston in
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22
Maxwell, Sir Herbert (tr. and ed.),
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30
Martin, G. H. (tr. and ed.),
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Ibid.
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See Boardman, A. W.,
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Bradmore described the process in a Latin treatise
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Details of retinues from Anne Curry,
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Taylor, Frank and Roskell, John S. (tr.),
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