3
The story of the Hundred Years War is in many ways that of the professional versus the amateur, with the increasing professionalization of English armies followed, usually all too late, by those of France. By the time of Edward I, the English military system, a fusion of the pre-Conquest Anglo-Saxon military organization with Norman feudalism, was beginning to creak. The Anglo-Saxons had depended on semi-professional household troops employed directly by the king and supported by the fyrd or militia, a part-time force which was embodied when danger threatened and could be required either to operate solely within its own shire or, like those elements which accompanied King Harold to Stamford Bridge and down again to Hastings in 1066, nationwide. The Norman feudal system depended on the notion that all land belonged to the king and was granted to his supporters, who in turn owed him military service. This service was expressed in terms of the number of knights the landholder, or tenant-in-chief, was required to provide for a fixed time, usually forty days. Often the tenant-in-chief would sub-allocate land to his tenants, who then took on the military service obligation. Each knight was required to provide his own equipment – armour (initially mail, giving way progressively to plate), helmet, sword, shield and lance – and at least one horse. Each knight brought his own retinue with him: a page to look after and clean his armour, a groom to care for his horses, and probably a manservant to look after him. Often there would be numerous armed followers, frequently described as esquires, or well-bred young men aspiring to knighthood. Bishops and monasteries also had a military obligation, usually, but not always, commuted for a cash payment in lieu. The number of knights required for each land holding fell steadily during the post-Conquest period, presumably because knights and their equipment became more expensive, and by 1217 a total of 115 tenants-in-chief are recorded as producing between them 470 knights.7
When Edward III came to the throne, the English peerage had not developed into the modern system of baron, viscount, earl, marquis and duke. It was Edward himself who created the first English duke – his eldest son, the Prince of Wales. After the Conquest, the Normans took over the existing Anglo-Saxon title of earl (from the Scandinavian jarl), although it was given to Normans and not to those who held the rank before the Conquest; and William I introduced the rank of baron, which came below an earl. The term ‘knight’ did not have the exactitude that it does today, when we have two types of knight: the knight bachelor, who is dubbed by the monarch and entitled to be described as Sir Thomas Molesworth and his wife as Lady Molesworth, and who holds the title for his lifetime only; and the hereditary knight baronet, also entitled to be described as Sir Thomas but with the abbreviation ‘Bart.’ or ‘Bt.’ after the name. The latter honour is relatively recent, having been introduced by King James I as a money-raising scheme in 1611.
During the medieval period, the honours system was much more elastic. A military knight had not necessarily been dubbed but was able to afford the cost of knight’s equipment and was probably a landholder. Assuming that he did reasonably well, he would almost certainly be dubbed eventually, often on the eve of battle. A knighthood banneret, a title that lapsed in the seventeenth century, could only be awarded on the field of battle and only if the king was present;27 it entitled the holder to display a rectangular banneret, as opposed to the triangular pennon of lower-ranking knights, and his own coat of arms or heraldic device. The men who filled the knightly class were brought up and trained for battle, but it was battle as individuals – tourneys and jousts for real, if you will – and under the feudal system there was real difficulty in getting them to act as a team or to persuade them to adopt a common tactical doctrine. The knights – whether dubbed or not – were what we would call the officers of the army, while the Other Ranks were provided by commissions of array, or conscription from able-bodied men of the hundreds or shires. Again, these were only required to serve for a limited period, and there were frequent arguments over whether or not they could be compelled to serve outside their own locality, and whether it was a local or national (that is, royal) responsibility to feed and pay them.
When the king knew personally all or most of the landholders in the kingdom, the feudal military system worked reasonably well. It sufficed for dynastic squabbles and raids from Scotland, but, as time went on, it could not cope with expeditions abroad or with sieges that lasted more than forty days, nor could it provide permanent garrisons. Men could not reasonably be expected to be absent from their homes during the planting season, nor for the harvest, and this greatly restricted the scope and duration of any military campaign. Even as early as the reign of Henry II, in 1171, the king faced his rebellious sons with forces that, while largely composed of men carrying out their feudal dues, included ‘knights serving for wages’. Given that English kings would increasingly fight their wars abroad, mainly in France or in Scotland, and that soldiers would be required to be away from home for far longer than the feudal system allowed, the transition from a feudal host, where the officers served as part of their obligation to their overlord, to an army where all served for pay was an inevitable progression. Once soldiers (of any rank) serve for pay, rather than almost as a favour, they can be ordered to arm themselves and fight in a certain way; they can be sent to where the king wants them rather than where they want to go or not go; and, as long as the money holds out, loyalty is assured. It was Edward I who began this professionalization of the army, and eventually he paid everybody except those whom we would term generals. It was his efforts that laid the groundwork for the great victories of his grandson Edward III, against French armies which were usually far larger but still raised under a semi-feudal system.
One way of raising soldiers, once the feudal system had irreparably broken down, was to hire foreign mercenaries, and there were lots of these ready to sell their services to the highest bidder. Most of the mercenary bands were from areas where nothing much grew, like Brittany; or where there was overcrowding, such as Flanders or Brabant; or where other career paths were limited, as they were in Genoa. The difficulty was an inherent English dislike of foreigners (some things don’t change), so, while there were contingents from Brittany and Flanders in English armies abroad, there were very few actually employed in England. Even the Welsh, who provided large numbers of soldiers for Edward’s wars, tended to be mustered and then marched off to the embarkation ports as speedily as possible.
It was not only the move from feudal to paid service that marked a revolution in military affairs, at least in England, but the composition of armies too. During the feudal period, the major arm was the heavy cavalry, composed of armoured knights on armoured horses who provided shock action and could generally ride through and scatter any footmen in their way. As socially the cavalry were regarded as several cuts above the infantry, who were often a poorly equipped and scantily trained militia, this held true for a very long time. The cavalryman wore mail or latterly plate armour, carried a sword, lance and shield, and was mounted on either a destrier or a courser. The destrier, or great horse, was not, as is sometimes alleged, the Shire horse or the Percheron of today. Rather, it was similar to today’s Irish Draught: short-coupled, rather cobby, with strong quarters and well up to weight, the destrier was probably between fourteen and fifteen hands,28 although some of the horse armour at the Royal Armouries at Leeds is made for a horse of fifteen to sixteen hands.29 The courser was similar, but lighter and cheaper. Destriers are sometimes said to have been entires, and the Bayeux Tapestry certainly shows them as uncastrated, but this seems unlikely. An uncastrated horse is far less tractable than a gelding or a mare, and the depiction of the complete animal in paintings and tapestries of the period may simply be symbolic – our horses are male and rampant, and so are we.
There has been much discussion of the role of the stirrup in equestrian warfare. Some authorities state that it was only with the invention of the stirrup that the cavalryman could be anything other than an appendage to an army: useful for reconnaissance and communications but incapable of serious fighting, because only when able to brace against the stirrups could a man deliver a weighty blow without falling off. It is probable that those who make this assertion have little experience of riding. While the stirrup is a useful aid to balance when the horse does something unintended and unexpected, it is by no means essential and it would have been very difficult to fall out of a stirrupless Roman saddle, with its high pommel and cantle. Similarly, the armchair nature of the medieval saddle, with or without stirrups, made for a very safe seat except if the horse fell, when the rider, rather than being thrown clear as he would hope to be in a modern saddle, would be trapped under the horse, risking a broken pelvis or his throat being cut by an opportunistic infantryman. All the depictions of the armoured medieval cavalryman show him riding with a straight leg and very long leathers, so he could not brace against the stirrups in any case. It seems that the usefulness of the stirrup was in mounting the horse when there was no mounting block available or when the weight of armour made it impossible to vault astride the withers.
In addition to his warhorse, the armoured warrior would also have a palfrey, a hack to be ridden when not in battle and not encumbered by armour, and a packhorse to carry his kit. Fodder for a minimum of three horses per man and rations for him and the host of camp-followers, to say nothing of the cost of horses and armour, made the armoured knight a very expensive fellow, but it was not cost that forced his decline and eventual banishment from the battlefield altogether, but advances in technology and the quality of the infantry.
During the Welsh wars, the English began to have doubts about the merits of an army composed mainly of heavy cavalry: the hills and valleys of Wales did not lend themselves to flat-out charges or to wide envelopment, and the Welsh infantry spearman was generally able to put up a stout defence unless surprised and scattered. There were other pointers: at Courtrai in 1302, a Flemish infantry army had roundly defeated the flower of the French heavy cavalry by digging ditches across the approaches to their position and then standing on the defensive. The French duly charged, the impetus was destroyed by horses falling into or breaking legs in the ditches, and the Flemish won the day. As far as the English were concerned, it was Bannockburn that began to bring it home to thinking soldiers that well-organized and equipped infantry, however ill-bred, could see off the mounted host if they could bring their enemy to battle on ground of their choosing. There, on 23 June 1314, Robert Bruce’s Scottish army took up a dismounted position at one end of a flat field, with both his flanks protected by woods and marshes. His men dug holes and ditches, three feet deep by three feet wide, across the inviting approaches, camouflaged them with wooden trellises covered with grass and leaves, and waited. Having had his vanguard repulsed on that day while trying to move round the Scottish flank to reach Stirling and relieve its siege, Edward II ordered, as expected, a cavalry charge on 24 June. It was a disaster. The Scots infantry did not flee, and by presenting a wall of pikes they prevented even those horsemen who did negotiate the obstacles from getting anywhere near them. Eight years later, Sir Andrew Harcla’s wedge of pikemen supported by archers stopped Thomas of Lancaster’s infantry and cavalry getting across the only bridge over the River Ure at Boroughbridge, while an attempt to put cavalry across by a nearby ford was stopped by archers alone.
Very few radical advances in tactics come all at once or are the product of one commander’s thinking. The shift towards reliance on infantry in England and Scotland was not a sudden one but a product of experimentation and discussion at home and abroad. Many Scots took service as mercenaries in Europe and would have brought home ideas from Flanders, and the costs of the mounted arm would have forced rulers to consider cheaper alternatives. But there can be little doubt that the rout of Bannockburn accelerated English thinking, while skirmishes at home gave scope for trying out various combinations of archer, horse and foot.
That the English had absorbed the lessons of Bannockburn and Boroughbridge was duly confirmed at Dupplin Moor and Halidon Hill. At Dupplin Moor, six miles south-west of Perth, on 11 August 1332, the 1,500-strong army of the Disinherited – nominally commanded by Edward Balliol but with English advisers there with the unofficial blessing of Edward III – defeated the Bruce army of 3,000 commanded by Donald, earl of Mar. The Disinherited lost two English knights and thirty-three men-at-arms. The Scots losses are unknown but included three earls and must have been many hundreds. On 19 July the following year at Halidon Hill, two miles north-west of Berwick-upon-Tweed, an English army of around 4,000 led by Edward III in person roundly defeated Sir Archibald Douglas’s 5,000-strong Scots army. Again, English losses were negligible – one knight, one esquire and ten infantrymen of various sorts – while Douglas and five Scots earls were killed and an unknown number of lesser nobles and soldiers, perhaps as many as 1,000 all told. After Halidon Hill, there was no one left in Scotland capable of raising an army and Robert Bruce’s kingdom was effectively at an end.
Both Dupplin Moor and Halidon Hill had a number of factors in common which enabled English armies to inflict crushing defeats on greater numbers, and those factors were to be incorporated in English military doctrine for the Hundred Years War. In each case, archers formed the largest portion of the armies and the victorious commanders chose to stand on a piece of ground where their own flanks were secure and which restricted the frontage of the enemy. At Dupplin Moor, the Disinherited took up a defensive position at the head of a steep-sided valley, while at Halidon Hill Edward’s right flank was covered by the sea and on his left was marshy ground with a river flowing through it. In both cases, English forces fought on foot, including Edward himself at Halidon Hill, in two ranks with archers on the flanks, and in both cases the archers concentrated their arrow storms on the advancing Scots flanks, forcing them to close in towards their centre and reducing their frontage and hence their shock effect still more. By the time the Scots finally reached the English infantry line (or failed to do so at Halidon Hill), they had suffered so many casualties from the archers that their cohesion was broken and they were repulsed and fled. The pursuit was taken up by the English remounting their horses and following the defeated Scots. The policy of dismounting and standing on the defensive on carefully chosen ground, using archers to prevent outflanking moves and to break up enemy attacking formations, and presenting a solid mass of infantry in a two- or four-deep line to meet the attacking remnants was the recipe for the great English victories of the war. It was only when the English overreached themselves, and the French finally began to learn from their own defeats, that English military supremacy began to wane.
Technology came in the shape of the longbow. Bows and arrows are as old as prehistoric man: simple missile weapons, they are depicted in Palaeolithic and Neolithic cave paintings, and archaeological excavations have uncovered bows and arrows dating back to the third millennium BC.8 Bows were in use by Roman auxiliaries and light hunting bows were used by both sides at Hastings in 1066. Quite how and where the short bow, drawn back to the chest and with its limited range and penetrating power, mutated into the English longbow is uncertain: it would not have been a sudden change, and the longbow may have first been used by the southern Welsh in the second half of the twelfth century, although the evidence is scanty. It was anyway gradually, and eventually enthusiastically, adopted by the English, and, as a reluctance to spend money on defence is not confined to twenty-first-century British governments, its cheapness would have appealed. The longbow would become the English weapon of mass destruction; it was consistently ignored by England’s enemies, who would consistently be slaughtered by it. From the time of Edward I’s Assize of Arms in 1285, all free men were required to keep weapons at home and to practise archery regularly at the village butts, for the longbow was not something that could be picked up and used by anybody. Rather like Scottish pipers, archers began to develop their skills as children, gradually increasing the size and ‘pull’ of their bows as they grew up. Exhumed bodies of medieval archers show greatly developed, or over-developed, shoulder and back muscles.
The standard longbow was made of yew wood, either native English yew or imported from Ireland, Spain or Italy, and approximated in length to the height of the archer. Thus, there would not have been very many that were six feet in length, as modern reproductions are. Rather, the average would have been around five feet two or three. While originally the same craftsman would manufacture bows and arrows, this soon diverged into two trades, the bowyers who made bows and the fletchers who made arrows, each with their own guild. The bow had a pull of around 100 pounds and shot a ‘cloth yard’ arrow out to an effective range of about 300 yards. There is dispute over exactly how long a cloth yard was, the measurement being one used by Flemish weavers, many of whom were encouraged to come to England by Edward III. Definitions vary from 27¼ to 37 inches, the latter supposedly codified by Edward VI, the short-lived son of Henry VIII, while some sources describe an arrow as being an ell in length. As an English ell was 45 inches, this seems unlikely. Whatever the length of the arrow – and the shorter seems more realistic – its construction was a skilled affair, requiring the fletcher to obtain good straight wood for the shaft, usually ash, to cut it to the correct length, and to affix the arrowhead and the feathers to stabilize the arrow in flight. Three pinion feathers per arrow were required and generally came from a goose. As a goose only had six feathers that were suitable, three on each wing, which regrew annually, and as many hundreds of thousands of arrows were ordered during the wars, the goose population in the kingdom must have been considerable.
Arrowheads came in two basic types: one to pierce flesh with broad barbs; the other, much narrower with a sharp point and no barbs, to penetrate armour. While the arrow was said to be capable of going through an inch of oak at a hundred yards, it would not have gone through plate armour except at relatively close range and at a flat trajectory. The usual way of employing archers was to mass them and have them shoot volleys at a 45-degree angle, thus obtaining maximum range and ensuring that they struck from above. While this might not immediately kill armoured cavalrymen, it would wound them, panic their horses and generally discourage an enemy from pressing home his charge. As a competent archer was expected to be able to discharge ten arrows a minute, the 5,000 or so archers that Henry V had at Agincourt in 1415 could produce a horrifying arrow storm of 25,000 arrows every thirty seconds.
The other missile weapon in general use was the crossbow. This was made of a composite of wood and horn, and even steel, and shot a bolt, or quarrel, of iron, steel or ash with more force to a greater range and with more accuracy than the longbow; but the effort and the length of time needed to pull the bowstring back to engage with the trigger meant that its rate of discharge was only around two quarrels a minute. The English generally only employed the crossbow as a defensive weapon in castles and fortified places. It could, however, be shot from behind cover, unlike the longbow, and unlike the longbow required little training to use. In the field, crossbowmen carried a large shield, a pavise. As tall as a man and with an easel-type leg at the back allowing it to stand up unsupported, this afforded the crossbowman cover while he reloaded. The French did have some longbowmen but presumably considered the training and development not to be worth the effort. Still fighting their wars with a feudal host, they employed large numbers of mercenary crossbowmen, to their detriment as we shall see.
In England, contracts for very large numbers of bows and arrows were placed. In 1341, when the king had returned from France and was gearing up for another foray there, 7,700 bows and 12,800 sheaves of arrows were purchased and stored in the Tower of London.9 A sheaf was twenty-four arrows, so the astonishing total of 307,200 arrows, with the feathers of 153,600 geese, was still only three minutes’ shooting for the 10,000 archers that Edward was intending to take to France. The rate of purchase continued throughout the war, and, in 1421, the crown bought and stored in the Tower 425,000 arrows, to which 212,500 geese had contributed. A sheriff would receive written instructions from London to obtain a certain number of bows, arrows and bowstrings from his bailiwick, and he would place the order with local craftsmen, receive the finished product, box them up and despatch them to the Tower. Bows might be ‘white’ – that is, in natural wood – or painted, although this latter could refer to some form of preservative oil, as paint would soon flake off when the bow was flexed. The accounts of the chamberlain of Chester Castle show that he paid one shilling and sixpence (£0.075) for a bow, and one shilling and fourpence (£0.064) for a sheaf of arrows.10 Today a replica longbow costs around £300 and arrows are £130 a sheaf. While in 1346 Edward would take foot and mounted archers to France, thus reducing his speed of movement, the foot archers would be phased out over time, and by the following decade most archers would be mounted – that is, they would move on horseback while dismounting to fight. Archers were protected by an iron or steel helmet and wore a ‘jack’, a short, quilted jacket sewn with iron studs. An archer-heavy army was ideal for the English: bows and arrows were cheap, laws were enacted to ensure that the male population remained proficient in their use, and they were an early example of English armies using technology as a force multiplier when opposed by far more numerous enemies.
The other major element of the English military machine was the man-at-arms, the successor of the heavily armoured mounted knight. Men-at-arms were mainly of gentle birth, ranging from actual knights or those hoping to become knights to esquires or minor gentry, usually in the proportion of one knight to four others.11 Like the mounted archers, they moved on horseback but fought on foot. As the transition from mounted to dismounted battle took place, the shield they carried grew smaller and eventually was dispensed with altogether. Men-at-arms were still well protected, although, unlike their French equivalents, mainly in mail, rather than plate, armour. While they were equipped with swords – and a variety of axes, maces and daggers were also carried – their main weapon was the halberd, or half-pike. The chronicles are lacking in details about exactly how the men-at-arms fought, but it is likely that they were drawn up in two or four ranks, depending on the frontage to be covered, close together but not so close that they could not swing their weapons, with each man taking up two-and-a-half feet or so of frontage. Another infantry element was the spearman, or light infantryman, many of whom were Welsh. They formed up in schiltrons or phalanxes to present a hedge of spears to an attacker who, once impaled on a spear, would be finished off with what were described as knives but were in fact short swords. Finally, the infantry included skirmishers and scouts, lightly armed with javelins and daggers, whose main occupation when not scouting seems to have been cutting the throats of enemy wounded. They were recruited from Wales, Cornwall and Ireland, with a few renegade Scots.
While the heavy cavalry component had almost disappeared in English armies, there was still a requirement for light cavalry, and these were the hobelars, shown in the muster rolls as armatti, who were lightly armed and mounted on ponies or on what today would be considered light hunter types. Their role was not to charge the enemy but to reconnoitre, patrol, find routes, forage for rations, collect intelligence and provide communications. With so much of the army now mounted, there was of course a requirement for grooms and farriers to accompany it, to say nothing of the huge amount of forage that would have to be either shipped with the army or bought or sequestered on the ground. Other specialists would be miners for siegework, armourers to repair weapons and suits of armour, masons and carpenters to construct defences and build bridges, bowyers and fletchers to repair and replace the archers’ necessities, and even a military band. Edward III may also have had some early cannon, or gunpowder artillery, although the details are vague.
The army that Edward was gathering was made up of three types of soldier: those belonging to retinues, either the king’s or those of magnates; paid contingents raised by individual contractors; and men summoned by commissions of array. There were two sorts of retinues: those composed of household troops and those of men who were indentured. Household retinues consisted of those men who were tenants of the lord and whose families owed a feudal obligation to him. These personal retinues would become less important as the war went on, but in the 1340s they were still significant. Indentured retinues – sometimes unkindly referred to as ‘bastard feudalism’ – were those raised by an individual, who had to be of the rank of banneret or above, and its members were employed on contract, occasionally for a specific period but more often to serve the lord in peace and war for life. The contract was written, laid down the wages and expenses to be paid, stipulated exactly what type of service was to be provided, including whether it was to be within England only or abroad, and usually included the proviso that a certain proportion of any ransom or plunder acquired was to go to the lord. Service was owed to that particular lord and could not be transferred to anyone else without the agreement of both parties. The contract was sealed and both parties kept a copy. Members of indentured retinues were required to be of the rank of knight or esquire and to wear the lord’s badge or uniform.12 The retinues varied in size from that of the earl of Northampton, who in 1341 undertook to provide seven bannerets, seventy-four knights, 199 men-at-arms, 200 armed men (spearmen and hobelars) and 100 archers, or the earl of Derby, who in 1342 agreed to muster five bannerets, fifty knights, 144 esquires and 200 mounted archers, both forces a mix of household and indentured retinues; to less well-off members of the gentry like John Beauchamp, who produced one knight (himself), five esquires, six men-at-arms and four mounted archers.13
As knights still had a feudal obligation, it was in the government’s interest to have lots of them, and there were various regulations to persuade those of means (lands worth £40 a year) to accept knighthood. To those who were going to war, whether as part of an overlord’s retinue or of their own volition, knighthood was an advantage, for not only did it double the man’s pay but a captured knight was also more likely to be held for ransom rather than slaughtered out of hand. That said, the expense of armour, horses, servants and the other trappings of gentility did deter some, and fines were levied against those who turned knighthood down. When the king was strong and admired – Edward I, Edward III, Henry V – there were few who resisted becoming knights and contributing to the war effort, while when kings were weak or unpopular – Edward II, Richard II, Henry VI – the contrary applied.
Contract forces raised by the king and the government were similar to indentured retinues but without personal loyalty to an individual lord. They were the first true professional or career soldiers and might be considered the national army, as opposed to local or private armed bodies. An individual, usually referred to as a captain, contracted to produce a certain number of soldiers of a stipulated type for a prescribed period of time to serve in a particular area; terms and conditions of service were laid down and agreed. Like indentured retinues, numbers varied widely, from Edward Montagu, captain, who in 1341 agreed to provide six knights, twenty men-at-arms, twelve spearmen and twelve archers for forty days in Brittany for a total of £76,30 to men like Sir Hugh Calveley, who could recruit a thousand soldiers to serve in the same area.
In the early stages of the war, soldiers raised by commissions of array – a system of conscription that had changed little since Saxon times – outnumbered those in retinues or under contract, although as time went on the army would become more and more composed of professionals. With the exception of those living in coastal areas, all males aged between sixteen and sixty were liable to conscription organized by arrayers, who might be sergeants-at-arms (royal servants and more like mobile inspectors and trouble-shooters rather than the senior non-commissioned officers they are today), knights of the king’s household or local officials. Using the local authorities to select men was administratively simple but invited corruption, as local arrayers sought or were offered bribes to exempt those who did not wish to go, and often the men selected were quite unfit for military service. Sergeants-at-arms or the king’s own officials were less susceptible to corruption, and, because they had military experience themselves and knew the sort of man they wanted, they tended to get a better quality of recruit.
Even then, there were problems. Often the best men had already been recruited either into a local lord’s retinue or into an indentured company. And despite various statutes, not everybody possessed weapons, which had to be provided or paid for locally, and it was a stipulation that those who did not serve were required to contribute towards the cost of those who did. Because of the difficulty of finding sufficient men by array, there had to be incentives. These included assurances to pressed men that they could keep a certain proportion of the value of goods captured, usually up to £100, which was twenty years’ salary for a foot archer, and pardons for outlaws. If a man who was ordered to appear before the courts on a criminal charge consistently failed to appear, then he was declared outlaw, or ‘without the law’, which meant that, technically at least, he could be killed with impunity depending on the seriousness of his alleged offence. Outlawry only applied to the man’s county, so someone on the run had only to escape to the next county to be safe from retribution, but, as an outlaw’s goods and chattels were forfeit to the crown, it was not a comfortable state. The king, and only the king, could grant pardons in exchange for military service, although sensibly the pardon was usually withheld until the service was complete and the man’s good behaviour attested to by his commander. In the year 1339/40, a total of 850 charters of pardon were granted for military services rendered, of which around three-quarters are estimated to have been to murderers. Altogether, perhaps up to one-tenth of an English army was made up of criminals working their passage to forgiveness.14
Men raised by commissions of array were organized into vintenaries, or twenties, under a vintenar or junior officer, usually a knight but, if not, someone of military experience. Five vintenaries made a centenary commanded by a centenar, who was mounted even if his troops were not. The nearest modern equivalent is the platoon and the company. We have little knowledge of how these men were trained, but clearly there must have been a training syllabus over and above weekly archery practice. While soldiers of the time did not march in step, they would have been required to move with a measured pace at a set rate of paces per minute, in order that they could change formation without losing cohesion. The men would have been made to become accustomed to moving and fighting as part of a team, to obey orders without question, to understand military terminology, and to handle their weapons as the army demanded. Development of physical fitness and training in living in the field would not have been as important as it is for young British recruits today, but some understanding of field hygiene and first aid would presumably have been instilled.
Soldiers wearing a uniform are recognizable and hence easier to control and discipline – they also find it more difficult to desert. While there was not as yet a national uniform in the modern sense, many contingents were equipped to a common standard of dress, and many of the richer magnates, and even localities, vied with each other in the provision of uniform clothing. Mostly, the men seem to have been clothed in various shades of white, but the Welsh contingents were clothed in hats and quilted tunics that were white on one side and green on the other, while the men of London wore red and white stripes. But even if units were all uniformed to a greater or lesser extent, recognition in the heat of battle cannot have been easy, given the number of contingents in the army and the plethora of individual coats of arms on bannerets’ surcoats – to say nothing of the standards and banners displayed by barons, earls and formation commanders. Edward III eventually reverted to his grandfather’s practice of ordering all to wear an armband of the red cross of St George.
By now, it was recognized that, lingering feudal obligations notwithstanding, officers and men of an army had to be paid. Rates of pay, varying somewhat depending upon the success or otherwise of recruitment, were expressed as daily rates (as British army rates of pay still are). A duke (and at first there was only one – the Prince of Wales) got thirteen shillings and fourpence (£0.67); an earl eight shillings (£0.40); a knight banneret four shillings (£0.20); a knight bachelor two shillings (£0.10); a man-at-arms who was not a knight one shilling (£0.05); an English vintenar, a hobelar and a mounted archer sixpence (£0.025); a Welsh vintenar, a dismounted archer and an English light infantryman threepence (£0.0125); and a Welsh spearman twopence (£0.0083). Taking the numbers that they might command, then the duke might be a brigade commander, the earl a battalion commander, the banneret a company commander and the knight a platoon commander. Thus, the ratio of pay was 7:4:2:1, which in terms of responsibility is probably about right.31
While of less importance after the Battle of Sluys, it was still necessary to guard against sea-borne raids, and this was the responsibility of the Keepers of the Maritime Lands, officials in the counties bordering the sea. Appointed by the king, they organized and commanded the Garde de la Mer, which combined dedicated coastal observers with a warning system and a call-out in the event of a French landing. The warning system consisted of a line of beacons along the shore and stretching inland, which were to be ignited if a landing was about to take place; pitch was preferred to twigs in the beacons as being less likely to be affected by rain. Each beacon was attended by between four and six men, who manned an observation post consisting of two or three wine barrels filled with sand and stacked on top of each other, with a watcher perched on top looking out to sea. Churches were ordered that under normal circumstances only one bell was to be rung, as the ringing of all the bells was the signal that a landing was happening. Men living in the Maritime Lands – defined as the coastal strip extending three leagues (nine miles) inland – were exempt from military service outside that area, while owners of estates within the area were reminded that they must live on them, as they provided the officers in the event of a call-out of the militia to counter an invasion. There were also arrangements whereby the militia of inland counties could be deployed to coastal counties if invasion threatened. One of the difficulties was the need to prevent residents of the Maritime Lands from leaving them, as many who lived on the Isle of Wight and in Portsmouth and Southampton – areas regularly raided by the French – not unnaturally tried to do. The arrangements had changed little from pre-Norman times, and, while such a system could cope with minor raids, it is doubtful whether it could have done very much to counter a full-scale invasion. Fortunately, after Sluys, it did not have to.
While Edward was raising money and an army to return to France, which he would do in 1346, the English military machine was not idle, for there were momentous happenings in Brittany that England could not ignore. Brittany had always been important to England: strategically placed between Normandy and Aquitaine, it controlled the coastal sea route between England and Bordeaux, one along which the lucrative trade in grain one way and wine the other could flow and thereby avoid the treacherous storms of the Bay of Biscay. It was very much in England’s interests that Brittany should be at best an ally, and at worst neutral, in any struggle with France. Although technically vassals of the king of France, dukes of Brittany issued their own coinage and underwent a ceremony suspiciously similar to coronation; they had always managed to retain independence to a greater or lesser degree, depending on how much control French kings could exercise over a relatively remote province. When Bretons aggrieved by a decision of the duke or his courts appealed to the parlement in Paris,32 as they were legally entitled to do, dukes generally ignored the findings, and there was very little that the king could do.
Duke Arthur II, who ruled from 1305 to 1312, married twice. By his first wife, Marie, viscountess of Limoges, he had two sons: Jean III, who succeeded him in 1312, and Guy, who died in 1331. By his second wife, Yolande, countess of Monfort, he had one son, John de Montfort. Duke Jean III died in 1341 without legitimate issue. Guy, who predeceased him, had a daughter, Jeanne de Penthieve. The candidates for the succession, therefore, were Jeanne and her half-uncle John de Montfort. Both John de Montfort and his mother Yolande had always felt that they had not been granted the landholdings to which their position and birth entitled them. John had spent most of his time out of the duchy as a vexatious litigant pursuing lawsuits in the Paris courts and in Flanders, where he believed that he was entitled to certain landholdings by virtue of having married a daughter of the count of Flanders. On hearing of the death of Duke Jean III, John de Montfort accepted the support of Edward III – whether at his initiative or at Edward’s is disputed – but if Edward was king of France, as he said he was, then he was entitled to decide the succession. Philip VI, however, called an assembly in Paris which decided in favour of Jeanne. As she had been married since 1337 to Charles of Blois, a stout supporter of the Valois, this came as no great surprise, even if only a few years previously Philip had argued strenuously against inheritance through the female line. John intended to press his claim by force of arms, but at first few Bretons rallied to his cause – after all, he had hitherto shown little interest in his claimed birthright. It was the advance of a large French army towards Brittany to assist Charles of Blois to take possession that forced the population to take sides. In general, the leading nobles supported the French candidate, while the lesser, Breton-speaking gentry supported Montfort, probably because they resented French encroachments on their independence. In addition, many of the merchants and those who lived near the ports and profited from trade with England also threw in their lot with him.
At first what was now a civil war did not go well for the Montforts. The French army, commanded by John, duke of Normandy, Philip VI’s son, concentrated at Angers and moved to the Brittany frontier, capturing Champtoceaux on the Loire and laying siege to Nantes, which capitulated on 18 November when John de Montfort was captured. Negotiations now began – what might Montfort accept as compensation for giving up his claim? – but, as the anti-French party had other issues besides the question of succession, the war went on and Rennes and Vannes fell to the French in the spring of 1342. Just when it looked as if the Montfort cause was doomed, Montfort’s wife, Jeanne of Flanders, a formidable woman described by the chronicler Froissart as having ‘the heart of a lion and the courage of a man’, took herself to England and prevailed upon Edward III (who would have needed little persuasion) to intervene with troops. The redoubtable Sir Walter Manny, with forty knights and 200 archers, was first to land in Brittany in March 1342, followed in July by William Bohun, earl of Northampton, with fifty knights and 1,000 archers.
Northampton now took over command of the entire force and, somewhat ambitiously given the size of his contingent, laid siege to the town of Morlaix. When in September a French army under Charles of Blois approached to raise the siege, Northampton abandoned his lines, marched his troops by night four miles north-west of Morlaix, and positioned them in a well-chosen defensive position across the French line of advance, with his back to thick woods and his flanks protected by further woods and by ditches he had his men dig. Adopting the tactics of Bannockburn, he also had his men dig ditches and pits, concealed by grass, across the front of his position and on all likely avenues of approach, and then formed his men into one dismounted line. Contrary to what had become and would continue to be the standard English defence tactic, he did not employ his archers on the flanks but included them in the infantry line, presumably because, had he not thus augmented it, the line would have been too thin to withstand attack. As it was, assuming that all ninety knights and 1,200 archers were still on parade, then he could have presented a two-rank frontage of 600 yards, but, given the lack of heavy weapons (halberds, two-handed swords, maces) among the archers, it is perhaps more likely that he
formed them in three or even four ranks, offering a frontage of 400 or 300 yards. In any event, when a portion of the French army, which may have been as much as 5,000-strong, appeared on 30 September and launched their usual successive charges of heavy cavalry, the horsemen could not negotiate the ditches and pits and the result was chaos and slaughter. At least fifty French knights were killed and perhaps 150 captured, and the rest fled the field. Wisely, given the small force under his command, Northampton did not pursue.15
Northampton was soon reinforced by the king himself, who landed at Brest in October with 5,000 men. Soon the castles and fortified places along the coast were in Anglo-Breton hands, but both John, duke of Normandy, and his father Philip VI, who had now arrived in the area with more troops, adopted delaying tactics and refused to give battle, playing for time until Edward ran out of money or patience or made a major mistake. Vannes was eventually betrayed to Edward, but not before a number of attempts to take it by assault had failed, including one led by Robert of Artois in which he was wounded and, while supposedly recovering, caught dysentery, which killed him. His body was brought back to England and buried in London. Vannes now became the Anglo-Breton administrative headquarters, but otherwise the stalemate lasted until January 1343, when a truce was brokered which allowed the status quo to remain and both kings to withdraw so that negotiations could begin in earnest under papal supervision. Now John de Montfort, no doubt exasperated by the lack of progress, broke his parole, escaped from imprisonment and fled to England, where he did homage to Edward – who had narrowly escaped shipwreck on the way home – as king of France. John then returned to Brittany in 1345, determined to galvanize the struggle, and promptly died in September of that year, the cause of death probably gangrene from what had been thought to be a minor wound. In any case, the Montfort hopes now rested in John’s five-year-old son. From now on it would be the English who kept the war of succession going, partly to ensure a friendly or client Brittany, but also to give Edward another point from which he could attack France when hostilities were resumed.
Meanwhile, in England, preparations for the next expeditionary force to France continued. While the army would attempt to live off the land in enemy territory and by local purchase in the country of an ally, the men would have to be fed while they waited to embark, while they were at sea, and on landing until other arrangements could be made. Royal commissaries would purchase the necessary rations in bulk and have them delivered to the muster stations or ports of embarkation, or this might be delegated to the admiral in command of a fleet. Meat would usually be salted beef, pork, bacon and mutton, although beef on the hoof could also be bought and transported, while vegetables would be peas, beans and oats. Wheat would be bought but ground into flour before delivery; cheese was bought by the ‘wey’, a wey being twenty-six stones; and large quantities of dried fish, mainly herring, were also supplied. The potato was, of course, unknown and its equivalent was bread, which was the staple for medieval man, who did not (unless he was very rich) eat from a plate but from a ‘trencher’, a flat, boat-shaped piece of bread. As wheat, which produced white flour, would only grow in ground that was well manured, white bread was restricted to the rich (the officers), while the lower ranks made do with black bread made from rye, or loaves made from barley or even from ground peas. Water was generally contaminated, unclean and the bearer of all sorts of diseases, and so was only drunk in extremis. Instead, people drank ale, which was brewed from barley.33 The barley was soaked until it germinated and produced malt, which was dried and ground and then mixed with hot water and allowed to ferment. The result was only very mildly alcoholic – certainly not of strength to have any effect – and the ration for a soldier or a sailor was one gallon per man per day. Many households brewed their own ale, and, although brewing was one of the few commercial activities open to women, there were very few brewers who could supply the quantities needed by an army or a fleet. In 1340, when Yarmouth contracted to supply thirty ships for forty days to ply between England and Flanders, the 60,400 gallons of ale for the 1,510 men of the ships’ crews came from just three suppliers at a cost to the treasury of one penny a gallon.34
From late 1345 and into the spring of 1346, soldiers were ordered to muster points and then to the ports of embarkation, while the king’s sergeants-at-arms were ordered to ‘arrest’ shipping and have it prepared to transport the army to France. The requisition of ships in this way was not popular with owners or merchants, as it interfered with trade. Nor could it be done quickly: the ship would have to unload its cargo, often in an unintended port, and then be moved to Portsmouth, Winchelsea or Sandwich, prepared for the transport of troops and horses, and then loaded with rations and equipment to await the arrival of the troops. Ships that were to become horse transports had to have extra-wide gangways installed and stalls built on board for the horses. In Hampshire alone, orders were placed for twenty gangways and 1,000 hurdles to make the partitions for the stalls, plus nails, rings to tie the horses to and rope for halters.
Soldiers conscripted by commissions of array were to be from the counties ‘citra Trent’ – south of the River Trent – only, as the Scottish threat could not be discounted. The men were ordered to muster points in their own localities and then, when enough had reported to justify detaching an officer or vintenar to command them, sent off to one of the embarkation ports. On 2 January 1346, thirty men from Salisbury were despatched to Sandwich and took six days to cover the 130 miles; men from Stafford took seven days to cover the 140 miles to the same port; and men from Shaftsbury took twelve days to get to Winchelsea via Southampton, a distance of 155 miles. Men were therefore expected to march up to twenty miles a day along rough roads and tracks while carrying their weapons and personal kit. In an age when the only means of locomotion was by horse or on foot, physical fitness was not a problem. When the arrayed soldiers arrived at a muster point and waited there, and again while they were on the march to a port, their wages were the responsibility of their counties, but, once they arrived at that port, they went onto ‘king’s wages’. As in some cases they had to wait for long periods until other contingents arrived or until the weather was suitable, their presence was no doubt welcomed by prostitutes and tavern-keepers, although perhaps not so enthusiastically by others. Modern-day Aldershot is not so very different.
The total numbers assembled by Edward for his 1346 invasion of France are not easy to come by: many original records, pay rolls and the like have been lost and chroniclers seem to have plucked a number out of the air, nearly always wildly exaggerated. The best guess is that Edward’s army totalled around 16,500 combatants,16 perhaps slightly more, plus specialists (standard-bearers, trumpeters, chaplains, physicians, farriers, miners, gunners, artisans various and the bishop of Durham, whose pay rate was six shillings and eight pence, or £0.33 a day). Of this figure, some 7,700 were men of retinues, either feudal or indentured or contracted companies, while around 8,600 were men raised by commissions of array. With eight earls, fifty-five bannerets, 599 knights and 1,821 esquires, it was somewhat over-officered by modern standards, but, as only the earls, bannerets and some of the senior knights would actually command sub-units of any size, the ratio of officers to soldiers is not too different from present-day arrangements. The army contained around 2,500 men-at-arms and 2,200 mounted archers, all in retinues or contracted, 5,000 foot archers, 3,000 Welsh spearmen and 1,200 hobelars, all arrayed. Each Welsh vintenary had an interpreter, as many of the men spoke no English. Given that in battle only the earls and the bannerets would be mounted (so that they could see what was happening) and that all others would fight on foot, then the army would field nearly 8,000 infantry and, with the royal bodyguard (of Cheshire bowmen), about the same number of archers.
Edward had originally ordered that ships and men be assembled at Portsmouth and the subsidiary embarkation points by 14 February 1346. However, when it became apparent that the ships would not be ready in time, this was extended to the middle of Lent (23 March in 1346), then to two weeks after Easter (30 April), when another, supposedly final delay of two weeks was ordered. Even then, high winds and foul weather meant that embarkation could not begin until July, and the process of loading something in the order of 20,000 horses and the last of the fresh rations took several days. As the king was responsible for replacing or paying for horses lost in battle, each horse as it was loaded had its description (height and markings such as star on forehead, white off-pastern, and so on), owner and value noted. This latter could vary from a hobelar’s hack at £1 to a knight’s warhorse at £10. Before the king embarked, the ceremony of handing over the Great Seal took place on the altar of the church in Fareham, Hampshire, and at last, on 5 July, the ships with their cargo of men, horses, equipment and stores set sail from their respective ports to rendezvous off the Isle of Wight. Once the entire fleet was assembled, messengers were sent to London, Dover, Winchelsea and Sandwich with the royal command that no one was to be permitted to leave the country for eight days – a measure intended to prevent French spies from reporting the movement of ships, something that could hardly be concealed from watchers on land. The fleet now headed for France. Edward III was about to earn his place as one of England’s greatest soldier kings.
The Battle of Crécy, 1346. A highly stylised version from the Chronicles of Froissart, where neither the ground nor the dress of the combatants has any similarity to reality. It does, however, show how the crossbowman winding his windlass could not approach the rate of discharge of the archer. The Oriflamme of St Denis, indicating no quarter, was present as shown.