Sea war on the English Channel 1338-1340

Sea war on the English Channel

Part of: Hundred Years War

date	March 1338 to January 1340
place	English Channel
output	draw

Parties to the conflict
Kingdom of England county of Flanders	Kingdom of France Genoese mercenaries Castilian mercenaries
Commander
Robert Morley , various others	Nicolas Béhuchet , Hugues Quiéret
Troop strength
different	different
losses
unknown	unknown

The naval war on the English Channel from 1338 to spring 1340 initially comprised a series of raids by the French Navy and hired pirates on English port cities, ships and islands in the English Channel in the early phase of the Hundred Years War . The aim was to seriously disrupt trade and shipping and thus to nip in the bud the English preparations for a land war against France. The panic caused by the raids and the loss of property and trade in the region led to a dramatic adjustment in English finances. In the further course there was a reversal of roles, in which the English Navy raided the French coasts and largely controlled the English Channel for the following two decades.

Coastal raids were not uncommon in 14th century England, even in peacetime, and were mostly carried out by pirates and occasionally royal ships from France , Castile , Genoa , Scotland and Scandinavia . The destinations were usually coastal shipping or fishing villages. The naval war on the English Channel in 1338 and 1339 differs mainly in that the attacks were planned and coordinated, were geared towards an overarching strategy and were aimed primarily at larger English cities rather than isolated settlements.

prehistory

In 1338 - the Hundred Years War had only started the previous year - the French King Philip VI saw himself . exposed to a serious threat from two sides. In the south was the English area of Aquitaine , from which mounted raids and raids (so-called Chevauchées ) into the French heartland could undertake. The course of the border in this area was only inaccurately recorded and was based more on the feeling of belonging of the local population than on the defined borders. In north-eastern France, the situation was even more desperate as the English-funded armies of the County of Flanders , the County of Hainaut , the Duchy of Brabant and even the Holy Roman Empire prepared, or at least threatened, to invade the northern French provinces.

Edward III , the leader of the loose Anglo-Flemish coalition, suffered serious financial problems. Despite the large English revenue from controlling the wool industry, the crown was bankrupt. As early as the spring of 1338, Edward had to borrow huge sums of money from Italian bankers at ruinous interest rates to finance the building of an army in Flanders. Without this funding from the British, the coalition would collapse in the foreseeable future. Edward's worries were not dissimilar to those of other rulers in Europe, and the French crown recognized that destroying the English ports and ships would cut off both the English wool trade and supplies for the troops on the continent, as well as continuing Edward's precarious financial situation would be aggravated.

Sea war began in 1338

At the beginning of February 1338 Philip VI appointed Nicolas Béhuchet as the new Admiral of France . He had previously served as treasurer and was now instructed to wage the trade war against England.

Portsmouth and Jersey

On March 24, 1338, Béhuchet began his campaign by leading a large fleet of small coastal ships from Calais to Solent across the English Channel and burning the port city of Portsmouth . The city had no walls and was undefended and the French attack came completely unexpected as the French ships were sailing under the English flag. The attack was a disaster for Edward. The ships and goods in the city were looted, the houses, warehouses and docks burned down, and the part of the population who could not escape was killed or taken into captivity. Neither the English fleet nor the militias in the region came to support the city.

The French fleet then sailed on to the Channel Islands , which had previously suffered from minor raids and were now facing a major attack. Jersey was occupied by the French and the entire eastern part of the islands, with the exception of Mont Orgueil Castle , was burned down. The attack had been announced by English spies, but the defensive measures taken were inadequate and attempts to intercept the attack failed.

piracy

These two raids caused panic in countless communities in the south of England and sparked costly defense upgrading activities along the coast that further reduced Edward's ability to fund the war against France. The most distant counties on the English coast, Devon and Cornwall , refused to hand over any funds or goods for the war against France that year and insisted that they needed the funds for their own defense. This assessment was not an exaggeration. After learning of the weakness of the English coast, dozens of traders and landowners in Normandy , Picardy and Brittany bought small coastal trading ships and equipped them for raids and piracy along the English coast. The sources do not indicate whether the French realized how effective their approach was. Béhuchet was certain that raiding English ships and coastal towns could cut off trade and seriously damage the English economy, but today's historians believe that he did not understand the full extent of the effects on the royal treasury.

Piracy also had an impact on the southern theater of war when French and Castilian ships operating from the Île d'Oléron and Ouessant raided grain, merchant and supply ships between England and Bordeaux . In particular, the attack on a convoy with food in front of Talmont on August 23, 1338 led to unrest in the city and the surrounding region.

Guernsey and Southampton

The maritime campaign continued in September when a large French and Italian fleet set off from the Channel Islands under the command of Robert Bertrand . The island of Sark , which had suffered a serious attack the year before, fell without resistance; Guernsey was captured after a brief struggle. There the forts Castle Cornet and Vale Castle initially withstood the invasion. Both forts could not last long, however, because they had only few crews and insufficient provisions. The garrisons there were eventually killed. The island was barely defended, as much of the Channel Islands garrison was stationed on Jersey to prevent another raid and the few troops that were also sent to Sark and Guernsey had already been intercepted at sea. The newsmen from the islands were also captured, so that the English administration had no knowledge of the capture of the islands for over a week. A brief naval battle took place between residents of the Channel Islands and Italian galleys . Although two Italian ships were sunk in the process, the attack by the islanders was repulsed with heavy losses for them. Guernsey remained French for some time and was only abandoned when its defense became impossible after the Battle of Sluis .

The next destination for Béhuchet and his Lieutenant Hugh Quiéret was the supply lines between England and Flanders. For this purpose they gathered over 40 large ships at Harfleur and Dieppe and attacked a small English squadron of five ships off Cadzand in the naval battle of Arnemuiden . These were loaded with goods (mainly wool) from England and were completely taken by surprise and quickly overwhelmed by the attack. All five English ships were lost, including the flagships of Edward III, the "Cog Edward" and the "Christopher". The crew were captured and executed, and the ships were incorporated into the French fleet. A few days later, on October 5th, 1338, this fleet made its worst attack, in which thousands of French, Norman , Italian and Castilian sailors were dropped off near the important port of Southampton and attacked the city both by sea and by land. The city walls were old and crumbling, and direct orders to repair them had been ignored. A large part of the city's occupation and residents fled inland in panic, only the occupation of the castle held out for some time, until the walls were overcome by Italian troops and the city fell. Just like Portsmouth before, Southampton was razed, thousands of pounds of valuables were transferred from warehouses and ships to France, and prisoners were massacred or made slavery. The following day, English militia troops began their first attacks on the invading forces in the outskirts of the city and the French withdrew. They left a ruined city that was further destroyed by privateers in the days that followed before English troops took possession of the city again.

The progress of the naval war in 1339/40

An early winter forced a lull in the English Channel warfare. In 1339 the situation had changed fundamentally. The English cities had used the winter to raise militias. These were primarily intended to drive away looters who were more interested in quick booty than in extensive fighting. Responsibility for these militias fell to a number of leading English counts , who had been warned by the king that failure to defend the coasts would be punished. Although sea piracy was still a serious problem, with ships wrecked and crews killed all the way north to the Bristol Channel , the large-scale raids of 1338 were over. Another attack on Jersey failed because the island was now heavily defended. Attacks on Harwich , Southampton and Plymouth were also repulsed with heavy losses. In particular, the mercenaries in the French ranks were unwilling to risk a large-scale battle. Hastings was burned to the ground, but this cannot be counted as a great success for the French side, as it was little more than a fishing village at the time. With increased English coastal defenses, the French could do little more than attack fishing boats and disrupt the trade routes along the Strait of Dover .

Furthermore, an English defensive fleet had been built up over the winter and mercenaries had been recruited for retaliatory attacks on French coastal shipping. The result of the latter efforts was a disaster for the English crown, as the mercenary captains quickly realized that they could make far more profit by raiding the Flemish convoys of Edwards allies than by raiding French fishing villages. Edward was forced to make large compensatory payments to the Flemish allies, and serious diplomatic rifts ensued. The build-up of the English fleet nevertheless proved to be vital when a fleet of 67 French and mercenary ships attacked Cinque Ports in July . Well-organized militia awaited the attackers at Sandwich and eventually turned to Rye in East Sussex. A few smaller villages were burned down along the way, but a permanent landing on land was unsuccessful. At Rye they were finally placed by the English fleet under Robert Morley , which forced the French fleet to return via the channel. In view of the strengthened British defense on land and sea, the Genoese mercenaries in Philip's service, who provided the most experienced troops of the French fleet, demanded higher wages . King Philip VI responded by imprisoning fifteen Genoese, after which the remaining mercenaries returned to Italy. The French had lost their best sailors and about two-thirds of their fleet in one fell swoop.

English retribution

The English quickly learned of this development. Morley led his fleet to the French coast and burned the towns of Ault and Le Tréport , penetrated inland, devastating several villages, causing a panic comparable to that in Southampton a year earlier. In early January 1340 he attacked Boulogne-sur-Mer , where he was able to destroy 18 unmanned galleys and 24 merchant ships. English and Flemish traders at the same time equipped their ships for raids, and soon the coasts of France in the north, but also in the west, were exposed to pirate attacks. The Flemish fleet also became active and attacked the important port of Dieppe in September and burned it down. The French had lost a large part of their offensive capacities, especially through the loss of the galleys in Boulogne, and were on the defensive for the first time in the course of the fighting on the English Channel. The ailing trade between England and Flanders recovered. The financial impact of the British raids on France was not as severe for France as the French raids of the previous year for England. The French continental economy was able to compensate for restrictions at sea better than the English island, which is much more dependent on sea traffic.

Outcome of the naval war

The conflict on the English Channel, which lasted about two years, remained without a winner. It is true that the French had succeeded in severely disrupting English trade and considerably delayed the establishment of an English invading army in Flanders. The reaction of the English side was more sustained, however, as they were ultimately able to master the threat and exercised sea control over the English Channel for the following two decades. In particular, the withdrawal of the Genoese mercenaries and the subsequent loss of almost all of the remaining galleys were heavy blows for the French side, which contributed significantly to the later defeat at the naval battle of Sluis in the following year and allowed Edward to land on the continent.

literature

• NAM Rodger : A naval History of Britain. Volume 1: The Safeguard of the Sea. 660-1649. HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, London 1997, ISBN 0-00-255128-4 .
• Jonathan Sumption: The Hundred Years War. Volume 1: Trial by Battle. Faber and Faber Limited, London 1990, ISBN 0-571-20095-8 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ The later refusal of the repayment by Edward should trigger a financial crisis in Italy and lead to the collapse of several banks .
2. ↑ cf. Sumption, p. 229.
3. ↑ See Sumption, pp. 320–321.