Naval Battle of Sluis

Naval Battle of Sluis

Part of: Hundred Years War

Illumination in the Chroniques of the French historian Jean Froissart (around 1337 - around 1405)

date	June 24, 1340
place	near Sluis
output	English victory

Parties to the conflict
Kingdom of England	Kingdom of France
Commander
Edward III.	Hugues Quiéret †, Nicolas Béhuchet †
Troop strength
120–160 ships of various types, number of sailors and soldiers unknown	6 galleys, 22 rowing boats, 6 sailing ships, 167 merchant ships, another 11 ships of unknown design, approx. 19,000 seamen, among 500 crossbowmen, approx. 150 armed men
losses
no ships lost, number of dead unknown	190 ships, 16-18,000 killed

The naval battle of Sluis ( English Battle of Sluys , French Bataille de l'Ecluse ) on June 24, 1340 in the Zwin in front of Sluis was the first major direct confrontation between the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of France during the Hundred Years War .

The English King Edward III. planned to land an invading army in Flanders to support his troubled Flemish allies against a simultaneous French attack on land. The French King Philip VI. ordered all available ships from the French ports of the Channel coast to be hurriedly pulled together to repel the British invading army. Taking advantage of favorable conditions, the English achieved a first important victory, which finally broke the French dominance in the English Channel and enormously increased the threat to France's northeast border. The conflict off Sluis was one of the two naval battles that Edward III. personally commanded (the other was the naval battle of Winchelsea or "Les Espagnols sur Mer").

Preparations for battle

The French fleet arrived at the mouth of the Scheldt on June 8th, first plundered the island of Cadzand and then placed itself on hold, being reinforced in the following days by eleven more Castilian Flemish ships loyal to France. Since a large part of the French galleys had been destroyed in an English attack at the beginning of the year, the assembled fleet consisted mainly of merchant ships, which were only suitable for offensive operations to a very limited extent. The two commanders of the French fleet, Nicolas Béhuchet and Hugues Quieret therefore decided to wait on the spot for Edward to arrive. Shortly before the battle, the French ships were supposed to build up like a barrier in the Zwin and block the entrance of the English. Due to various delays, the English fleet could only be assembled on June 20, 1340 in the mouth of the Orwell off Ipswich . It passed Harwich on the 22nd and finally arrived off the Flemish coast on June 23rd.

As soon as the English came into sight, a council of war was held on the French fleet. Pietro Barbavera , the commander of the Genoese mercenary galleys, pointed to the favorable wind for the British and repeatedly called for an immediate attack by the numerically superior French fleet. The two admirals Béhuchet and Quieret, however, stuck to their blockade strategy. The French ships were eventually arranged in three lines across the width of the Zwin, with the largest ships in the first row. Among the foremost ships were the very large English ships "Cog Edward" and "Christopher", captured two years earlier in the naval battle of Arnemuiden . All ships in a line were connected with long iron chains to prevent the English from slipping through.

The English fleet initially anchored at Blankenberge , where a council of war was held. It was agreed to first drop a small reconnaissance force ashore in order to be able to inspect the French fleet at close range. After their return and the report of the troops, it was decided to wait until the next day with an attack, when the favorable winds would still be supported by the tide pressing into the Scheldt estuary .

The coasts surrounding the Zwin were now populated with thousands of onlookers, some of them armed, who wanted to watch the upcoming battle.

Course of the battle

In the early afternoon of June 23, 1340, the English fleet began its entry into the Zwin. Just like the French, the ships were formed in three rows, with the largest ships at the front. The chain-linked formation of the French had been in some disarray since the day before. A slight current had driven the ships eastwards towards the island of Cadzand, in front of which they were finally all side to side in three rows side by side. When the French noticed the imminent attack by the English, the chains between the ships were hastily loosened and an attempt was made to retake the stretched line formation from the previous day over the entire breadth of the Zwin. This project failed in the short time and soon the French fleet got into some disorder. A ship in the first row, the "Riche de Leure", was steered too far to the north and occasionally ended up first in the incoming English fleet.

As is customary in medieval sea battles, the following battles were mainly fought in direct hand-to-hand combat between the crews. With the help of grappling hooks and throwing ropes, people tried to catch the enemy ship, moor it to their own ship, and then storm it. A few warships also had ballistae and slingshot machines mounted on board , which mostly did little damage and above all had a psychological effect. The archers and crossbowmen on board the ships were mostly posted in the masts or other superstructures - sometimes on platforms specially attached for this purpose - in order to cover the enemy with bullets from above.

The fights were fought with great severity and lasted from around 3 p.m. in the afternoon until well into the night. Even if the English fleet was outnumbered in men and ships, it soon prevailed in hand-to-hand combat. In part, this was because the English longbow archers shot faster and more accurately than the crossbow archers of the French fleet. On the other hand, the English ships carried the invasion army planned for Flanders, which was clearly superior in terms of training and equipment to the French ships, which were mainly manned by sailors from Normandy. The fact that the English fleet consisted for the most part of merchant ships and included only a few actual warships was irrelevant for the battle itself, since the French defended a fixed point and the speed and maneuverability of the ships were therefore hardly important.

At around 7 p.m. the first line of the French fleet was defeated and the English fleet continued to move towards the second line. Now the English were at a clear advantage, as they had not lost any of the large ships in their front row and were now mainly facing the smaller French units. In addition, they now had the sun on their backs, which put the French crossbowmen at a further disadvantage. At nightfall, the remaining French lines broke apart and the battle split into many small skirmishes across the entire Zwin. When the outcome of the battle began to become clear in the early evening, the Flemings watching on the banks of the river intervened. In small groups they guarded the bank or manned small rowing boats and slew all the French they could get hold of.

At around 10 p.m., the fighting abated and the few remaining French ships turned to flee. Only the "Saint-Jame" from Dieppe and a ship from Sandwich were so entangled that they could not come apart and the fighting continued until dawn. A total of 23 French ships managed to escape the carnage, including the six galleys of Barbaveras, which had retreated early in the evening in view of the impending defeat, and four of the rowing boats that escaped in the falling darkness. Another 13 ships surprisingly escaped into the English Channel at dawn. A pursuit of the fleeing ships, set up by John Crabbe the next morning, was unsuccessful.

The British did not pardon the ships that remained behind, and all those injured and captured were killed. The Flemings also ensured that an escape into the water remained almost hopeless. The two admirals Quieret and Béhuchet were among the dead. Quieret was killed in battle in the storm on his ship, while Béhuchet was taken alive and then immediately hanged on the mast on the orders of Edward - in revenge for the naval battle of Arnemuiden.

consequences

English gold florentine in memory of the sea battle. Marginal writing: IHC TRANSIENS PER MEDIUM ILORUM IBAT (“But He [Jesus] walked through the middle of the crowd and walked away. ”) Luke 4:30.

The Battle of Sluys was an overwhelming victory for the English. He gave Edward a much-needed victory over the French, which his Flemish allies, but also the English people, expected of him. Due to the extensive destruction of the French canal fleet, the danger of major raids on the southern English coast was averted for decades and trade between England and Flanders was again able to take place unhindered. The landing of the invading army also gave Edward the opportunity to further increase the pressure on France on land in the following months. To commemorate his victory, he had a gold coin minted in 1344, the so-called Nobel , which was the leading coin in North and Baltic Sea trade until the end of the 14th century .

For France, the outcome of the battle represented a serious setback. Not only was the campaign against Flanders, which had just started the month before, acutely endangered by the British invasion troops, but the strategic threat to the northeast border was also given a new dimension. The loss of a large part of the Canal fleet also deprived France of the possibility of effectively preventing future troop supplies from the British or of continuing to massively disrupt the English wool trade. Domestically, Béhuchet, who came from bourgeois circles, was quickly made the scapegoat for the defeat. As a result, the general resentment of the French nobility against high bourgeois representatives of the French bureaucracy increased, which in the following decades contributed to the gap between the nobility and the third class that widened.

See also

• Hundred Years War
• Egidio Boccanegra

literature

• M. Mollat: Naval Battle of Sluis. In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages. Volume 7: Planudes to City (Rus'). Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-423-59057-2 , pp. 2010–2011.
• Jonathan Sumption: The Hundred Years War. Volume 1: Trial by Battle. Faber and Faber Limited, London 1990, ISBN 0-571-20095-8 , pp. 321-329.

Web links

Commons : Battle of Sluis  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ cf. Sumption p. 323.
2. ↑ cf. Sumption, p. 324.
3. ↑ cf. Sumption, p. 325.
4. ↑ cf. Sumption, p. 327.
5. ↑ cf. Sumption, p. 329.
6. ↑ cf. Sumption, p. 328.