English Channel naval campaign, 1338–1339
This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (May 2012) |
English Channel naval campaign, 1338–1339 | |||||||
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Part of The Hundred Years' War | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Kingdom of England County of Flanders |
Kingdom of France Genoese mercenaries Castilian mercenaries | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Richard FitzAlan |
Hugues Quiéret, Nicolas Béhuchet | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
Varied | Varied |
The English Channel naval campaign of the years 1338 and 1339 saw a protracted series of raids conducted by the nascent French navy and numerous private raiders and pirates against English towns, shipping and islands in the English Channel, which caused widespread panic, damage and financial loss to the region and prompted a serious readjustment of English finances during the early stages of the Hundred Years' War. This period was then followed by a French disaster caused by over-confidence and a reversing of roles which had a major effect on the English successes of the next two decades; this result was by no means assured until late 1339 and had the French fought a little longer they might have ended the war before it had really begun.
Coastal raids were not uncommon in fourteenth-century England, with privately-owned shipping and occasionally royal ships from France, Castile, Genoa, Scotland and Scandinavia all conducting nuisance attacks against coastal shipping and fishing villages throughout the era, even during periods of peace. What made the naval campaigns of 1338 and 1339 so important was that these were focused and sustained raids with deliberate strategic intent, targeting major English towns rather than isolated hamlets and doing so at a critical point in the developing war.
The Hundred Years' War
In 1338, in the first year of a conflict subsequently called the Hundred Years' War, the French government faced a severe threat on two sides. On the south were the English territories of Gascony and Aquitaine, from which lancing raids and chevauchées could be launched into the French heartlands, and where the boundary was both poorly defined and relied far more on the allegiance of the local fief than upon national designations. To the northeast, the situation was grimmer, with the English-financed armies of Hainaut, Brabant and the Holy Roman Empire either preparing for or threatening invasion of France's northern provinces.
Financial troubles
Portsmouth and Jersey
At the beginning of February,
The fleet then sailed to the Channel Islands, which had already suffered minor attacks the previous year but now faced a major threat, Jersey being invaded by the French crews and the entire eastern half of the island reduced to ruins, only Mont Orgueil holding out. The raid had been predicted by intelligence officers in the royal household, but defensive measures were woefully inefficient and efforts to intercept the attack had utterly failed.
Piracy
This raid caused panic in numerous communities of southern England and prompted a flurry of expensive defense precautions along the coastline further reducing Edward's ability to make war on France from the continent. The furthest reaches of the English coast, at Devon and Cornwall refused to supply any materials or money for the war for the remainder of the year, insisting they needed their resources to defend themselves. Such precautions were not misplaced; hearing of the weakness of the English coast, dozens of merchants and landlords in Normandy, Picardy and Brittany bought coastal traders and equipped them for war resulting in pinprick raids and piracy right along the English coastline. Evidence is unclear whether the French understood exactly how effective this tactic was; Béhuchet clearly grasped that by raiding English shipping and cutting off a trade he could cripple the English economy but it is not known if he understood the financial drain his coastal raids had on Edward's exchequer (modern historians tend to think that perhaps he did not but that he considered them to be good for the war effort in any case[1]).
This piracy also affected the other theatre of war, as French and Castilian ships attacked grain, trade and payroll ships between England and Bordeaux, reducing that city and the region it governed to near mutiny, especially after a large food convoy was badly damaged in an action off Talmont on the 23 August, 1338.
Guernsey and Southampton
The campaign at sea resumed in September 1338, when a large French and Italian fleet descended on the Channel Islands once again under Robert VIII Bertrand de Bricquebec, Marshal of France. The island of Sark, which had suffered a serious raid the year before, fell without a fight and Guernsey was captured after a brief campaign. The island was largely undefended, as most of the Channel Islands garrison was in Jersey to prevent another raid there, and the few that were sent to Guernsey and Sark were captured at sea. Messengers from the islands were also captured, preventing the English government from discovering what had happened for over a week. On Guernsey, the forts of Castle Cornet and Vale Castle were the only points to hold out. Neither fort lasted very long as both were undermanned and unprovisioned. The garrisons were put to death. A brief naval battle was fought between Channel Islanders in coastal and fishing vessels and Italian galleys, but despite two of the Italian ships being sunk the Islanders were defeated with heavy casualties. Guernsey remained French for some time, only being relinquished when defending the island became untenable in the aftermath of the battle of Sluys.
The next target for Béhuchet and his lieutenant
1339
An early winter forced a pause in the Channel warfare, and 1339 saw a vastly different situation, as English towns had taken the initiative over the winter and prepared organised militias to drive off raiders more interested in plunder than set-piece battles. Responsibility for these militias was placed in the hands of several leading Earls, who were warned that if they failed to defend their stretch of coastline there would be penalties. Although piracy at sea was still a serious problem, with ships burnt and crews massacred as far north as the Bristol Channel, the large-scale raids of 1338 were over. An attack on Jersey failed as the island was now too strongly defended and attacks on Harwich, Southampton again and Plymouth were driven off with heavy losses, the mercenary elements of the French force unwilling to risk a large scale battle. Hastings was burnt to the ground, but it was little more than a fishing village at the time and did not represent a major success. The combined fleet was reduced to attacking fishing boats and parading the bodies through the streets of Calais.
An English fleet had also been constituted over the winter and this was used in an effort to gain revenge on the French by attacking coastal shipping. The result was an embarrassing disaster as the mercenary captains of the fleet realized that more money could be made by attacking and looting the Flemish convoys of Edward's allies rather than the French, forcing Edward to pay a huge amount of compensation and endure severe diplomatic embarrassment. This force did prove vital though in July when 67 French and mercenary vessels attempted to attack the Cinque Ports. The expedition was met by an organized militia at Sandwich and turned towards Rye, burning several small villages on the way but failing to land at the town. There the English fleet under Robert Morley caught up with them, forcing the French force to flee back across the Channel. This scare had been too much for the Genoese mercenaries who made up the most experienced part of the French fleet, and they demanded more pay. King Philip VI responded by imprisoning fifteen of them, whereupon the others simply returned to Italy, at a stroke costing the French their best sailors and ships as well as two-thirds of their navy.
English revenge
The English soon heard of this development, Morley taking his fleet to the French coast, burning the towns of
References
- ^ P. 229, Trial by Battle, Jonathan Sumption
Sources
- ISBN 0-00-255128-4
- ISBN 0-571-13895-0