Read The Hundred Years War for Free Online

waited for the tide to turn. When his sailing-masters finally put their helms over and steered towards Sluys, they had the wind and the sun behind them and the tide running with them. Barbanera at once realized the danger. ‘My Lord’, he told Béhuchet, ‘the King of England and his fleet are coming down on us. Stand out to sea with your ships, for if you remain here, shut in between these great dykes, the English, who have the wind, the tide and the sun with them, will hem you in and you will be unable to manoeuvre.’ But this last desperate warning went unheeded, whereupon the Genoese galleys slipped anchor and escaped just in time.
    At about 9 o’clock the English fleet sailed straight into the French ships who, still at their moorings, were ‘arrayed like a line of castles’. According to an enthralled English chronicler, ‘an iron cloud of quarrels from crossbows and arrows from long-bows fell on the enemy, dealing death to thousands’. Then the English ships crashed into the French and grappled together. The men-at-arms boarded with swords, axes and half-pikes, while the bowmen continued to shoot flight after flight and seamen threw heavy stones, iron bolts and quicklime from the mast-tops; there were even divers who tried to sink the enemy ships by boring holes in their hulls below water. The battle surged backwards and forwards from one vessel to another.
    An early casualty was a fine English cog which was carrying ‘a great number of countesses, ladies, knights’ wives and other damosels, that were going to see the Queen at Ghent’. Although strongly guarded by archers and men-at-arms, their ship was sunk—it is said—by cannon. The screams of the drowning ladies must have maddened the English.
    Froissart, who had met men who were there, writes: ‘This battle was right fierce and terrible [ moult felenesse et moult orible ] ; for the battles on the sea are more dangerous and fiercer than the battles by land; for on the sea there is no reculing nor fleeing ; there is no remedy but to fight and to abide fortune, and every man to shew his prowess.’ The King was in the thick of the mêlée and was wounded in the leg—his white leather boots were covered in blood. There was an especially murderous struggle to regain the great cog Christopher which was defended by Genoese crossbowmen, but at last it was ‘won by the Englishmen, and all that were within it were taken or slain’. The English found considerable difficulty in capturing the Castilian ships because their sides were so tall. The battle ‘endured from the morning till it was noon, and the Englishmen endured much pain’.
    Eventually archers gave the advantage to Edward’s men —they could shoot two or even three arrows for every one crossbow quarrel—and the first French squadron was overwhelmed. Many of the enemy jumped overboard, their wounded being thrown after them. The sea was so full of corpses that those who did not drown could not tell whether they were swimming in water or blood, though the knights must have gone straight to the bottom in their heavy armour. Hue Quiéret, after being badly wounded, surrendered—to be beheaded immediately. Béhuchet was also captured, to be strung up by English knights within a matter of minutes.
    The sight of their Admiral’s corpse swinging from the yardarm of the Thomas (the King’s flagship) caused panic among the French second squadron, many of whose crews leapt overboard without resisting. The onset of dusk went unnoticed, so bright was the light of the burning ships. When darkness fell the King remained before Sluys, ‘and all that night abode in his ship ... with great noise of trumpets and other instruments’.
    During the night thirty enemy vessels slipped anchor and fled, while the Saint-Jacques of Dieppe continued to fight on in the dark—when she was finally taken by the Earl of Huntingdon, 400 corpses were found on board. Those French ships who stayed were attacked from the rear