A Great and Glorious Adventure (26 page)

That same year, the plague returned, and, while (as in its first visitation) it had a less destructive effect in England than in France, it nevertheless slowed down the complex and inevitably
bureaucratic process of transferring lands to English rule. In England, the first outbreak of the pestilence had hit the aristocracy less severely than the common people, probably because of the
cleaner living conditions and better food of the former. This time, the mortality rate was reversed. Overall, the death rate was lower: in Bishop’s Waltham, fifty-three tenants died this time
compared to 264 in 1348/9, although there were, of course, fewer tenants to start with in 1361. In Yorkshire, ‘only’ 14 per cent of priests died this time, whereas 22 per cent of
tenants-in-chief
and 24 per cent of the lords of Parliament were taken.
³³
It has been suggested that the class disparity
in the mortality rate points to the 1361 outbreak being of a different disease to the previous epidemic, but the contemporary chronicles all say that the symptoms in 1361 were identical to those of
the earlier plague. Rather, it may be that the lower orders had acquired some immunity, which could have been passed on to their children but was denied to their betters, who had not been in
contact with the disease on its first appearance.

In July 1362, the Black Prince was confirmed as the ruler of Aquitaine, in return for an annual payment to the king of one ounce of gold. Prince Edward, Joan and Joan’s four Holland
children all moved to Bordeaux. While English officials and garrison commanders were appointed to the more senior posts, there was little interference with the local administration at the grass
roots. It was hoped that the duchy could be entirely self-supporting, and, given that a long period of peace was now expected and that the wine trade, already lucrative, would presumably become
more so, this was a reasonable assumption to make. It had not taken into account the intentions of the dauphin.

The cause of the death of Jean II in London in 1364 is unknown. It may have been a last flicker of the plague, although rich food and an abundance of alcohol may have had something to do with
it. In any event, Jean was only in his forties and his reign could not in any sense have been described as successful. The dauphin now ascended the French throne as Charles V. Known to the French
chroniclers as Carolus Sapiens (Charles the Wise) in tribute to his library of over 1,000 books in the Louvre, he was sickly, of insignificant appearance and no soldier, but he was no fool either.
He had no intention of accepting the new status of the English in France, but was too much of a lawyer to attempt to oppose it openly. Rather, he would whittle away at English possessions and try
to undermine their government rather than attempt to confront them militarily, which he was experienced enough to know he could not do – at least not yet. He was a far greater threat to the
English than either of his Valois predecessors. The problems facing Charles were reduced when Duke John of Brittany, now put in place by the English, accepted that he held that duchy as a fief of
the king of France (as in law he did) and paid homage to Charles for it. In Brittany, at least, there would be
relative stability. That left the problems of Charles of
Navarre (who had by now acquired the soubriquet ‘the Bad’), the
routiers
(free companies) and the shortage of funds in the national treasury.

Charles of Navarre was a constant threat because he held lands near Paris and could block the routes into and out of that city. He had vacillated between opposing Charles when he was dauphin and
making alliances with him, and was very much a man who looked to the main chance, whatever the rights or wrongs might be. Infuriated by Charles V’s bestowal of the duchy of Burgundy on his
son Philip and insisting that his claim was much stronger than that of the Valois, Charles of Navarre raised a largely mercenary army, consisting of
routiers
, Navarrese, renegade Frenchmen
and the Captal de Buch and his Gascons, and marched on Paris, only to be roundly defeated by the king’s forces and forced to retreat back into Normandy. He had no option but to sue for peace
in 1365 and had to surrender all his lands near Paris to get it.

The
routiers
were a far greater problem. Owing loyalty only to themselves, they were well organized, well led and well equipped, and preyed on vast tracts of the French hinterland. To
the French, they were all ‘English – the scourge of God’, whereas their companies were in fact made up of Spaniards and Germans and occasional Bretons and Normans as well as
Englishmen, and the majority in their ranks were Gascons. Nonetheless, most companies were commanded by officers who had held commands in the English army and were now demobilized – men like
Sir Hugh Calveley, Sir Robert Knollys, who was of Cheshire yeoman stock and had started his military career as an archer under Calveley, and Sir John Hawkwood, the son of a London tanner and
another ex-archer. The
routiers
had strict rules on the division of spoils, a proper chain of command and in most cases a uniform. They had become accustomed to life as soldiers and to
being able to burn and plunder as they liked, and saw no reason to stop doing so just because there was now peace between England and France.

As far as Edward of England was concerned, provided the
routiers
did not profess to act in his name, he was perfectly happy that they should exist – and, given that they did
exist, it was better that they should ply their unpleasant trade in France than in England. Although each of the many
routiers
was nominally independent, they did
occasionally combine into ‘great companies’, sometimes numbering several thousand, which allowed them to indulge in undertakings even more ambitious than mere large-scale
brigandage. At one time, a great company under Sir Robert Knollys advanced on Avignon and menaced the pope, while another carried out a
chevauchée
around Lyons. Charles V’s
France was in no state to put them down by force and more often than not local dignitaries and city authorities simply bought them off. Then a recurrence of the war by proxy gave Charles V his
chance to rid France of the
routiers.

The Iberian peninsula in the 1360s was divided into the kingdom of Portugal, with borders more or less where they are today, Castile and Leon covering central and northern Spain, Aragon south of
the Pyrenees and east to the Mediterranean, Navarre bordering on Aquitaine to the north and sandwiched between Castile and Aragon, and the last Moorish kingdom, Granada, in the south. The king of
Castile, Pedro the Cruel, was in dispute with his half-brother, Enrique of Trastamara, who claimed the throne, a dispute that escalated into civil war. Enrique appealed to Charles V for help, and
Charles, seeing a chance of striking a blow at the pro-English Pedro and getting rid of his own troublesome
routiers
at the same time, ordered Bertrand du Guesclin to gather together the
greatest company he could and take them into Spain to fight for Enrique. Bertrand did just that. He assembled perhaps 10,000 men, a mixture of English, Gascon and Navarrese free companies, French
men-at-arms and mercenary crossbowmen, and crossed into Castile, where he collected Castilian supporters of Enrique, deposed Pedro and placed Enrique on the throne. Up to this point, the Black
Prince was not overly concerned: Pedro was generally regarded as a nasty piece of work and the prince did nothing to stop the free companies and his own Gascons from marching off to join du
Guesclin. In England, King Edward took a different view. However unpleasant a character Pedro might be, it was not in England’s interest to have a French client state controlling the north of
Spain: Castilian galleys had menaced the English coast and the routes for the Bordeaux wine trade in the past and might well do so again. When Pedro invoked the treaty of alliance with the English,
signed in 1362, King Edward ordered his son to put Pedro back on his throne. The Black Prince began to collect an army which would consist of his own retinue of professional English soldiers,
Gascons lately in the pay of du Guesclin and Enrique, and a contingent from England, mainly archers, commanded by the Black Prince’s younger brother, the twenty-seven-year-old John of Gaunt,
duke of Lancaster since 1362.
⁵⁸

If the English were to support Pedro with an army from Aquitaine, then they would need to cross the Pyrenees, and that meant getting Charles of Navarre, who controlled the mountain passes and
could easily close them, on their side. This was achieved by Pedro promising him Castilian territory that would allow Navarre an outlet to the sea
and a cash grant of
£20,000. As Pedro had no money and little of value save the crown jewels that he brought with him when he fled from Castile to Bayonne and threw himself on the Black Prince’s mercy, the
money was lent to him from the coffers of Aquitaine. In Castile, Enrique, now that he was on the throne, saw no need to retain the huge and expensive army that had put him there, so he paid off the
free companies except for du Guesclin’s Bretons and a force of around 400 English archers commanded by Sir Hugh Calveley. With their severance pay in their knapsacks, the companies either
returned to Aquitaine, where they promptly took service with the Black Prince’s army – they had been well paid to put Enrique on the throne and were quite happy to be well paid to knock
him off it – or headed east into Aragon, where there was employment in guarding the frontier area against Castilian incursions.

When Enrique heard from French spies that the Black Prince was marshalling an army to come against him, he realized that neither Calveley nor his archers would fight against the Black Prince.
But if he could prevent the English from getting into Spain, he would be safe, so, at some time around Christmas 1366, he approached Charles of Navarre, who was persuaded to turn his coat by
Enrique’s promise to match everything that Pedro would give him, with the added bonus of the fortress town of Logrono and £11,000 in cash. Satisfied that the invasion would not now take
place, Enrique paid off Calveley, which was sensible, but also du Guesclin’s Bretons, which was not. Once the Black Prince heard the news that Navarre was now in Enrique’s pocket, his
immediate reaction was to send messengers to Sir Hugh Calveley, who was in northern Castile on his way back to Aquitaine, ordering him to invade Navarre from the south. This put the wind up Charles
of Navarre to the extent that he personally hastened to meet the Black Prince to explain that it had all been a most unfortunate misunderstanding and that he would of course support the cause of
Pedro and supply a contingent of 400 men-at-arms.
⁵⁹
Once Enrique realized that the passes would not,
after all, be closed to the
English, he hastily recalled du Guesclin and any mercenary troops that he could contact.

In mid-February 1367, the prince’s army of around 8,000 men started its march up the traditional invasion route from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port through the pass of Roncesvalles. Roncesvalles
can be treacherous even in summer, and now it was the middle of winter, with thick snow, temperatures well below freezing, and not a blade of grass for the horses nor an ear of corn for the men to
be found. It says a very great deal for the logistic arrangements of the army that they traversed the pass and reached the plains north of Pamplona in good order. We do not know the names of the
quartermasters who worked out how much fodder and rations needed to be carried, and who hired the mules and the carts to transport it, but, with experienced men like Sir John Chandos, Sir Robert
Knollys and Sir William Felton,
⁶⁰
it was an army well accustomed to campaigning in difficult terrain and in foul weather. From Pamplona, the Black
Prince’s objective was Burgos, the capital of Castile which sat on the main communication routes north and south. Enrique did his best to block the river crossings, but by March the English
had reached the plains before Vitoria.

The Black Prince hoped for a decisive battle at Vitoria. The army was arrayed in battle formation and various challenges were sent out, but, if Enrique had not fought the English in
France,
⁶¹
du Guesclin and his French officers certainly had and their advice was bolstered by a letter from Charles V of France, who advised Enrique
that he should on no account be tempted into a set-piece battle, which the English would win, but rather that he should delay until the English ran out of food and fodder and had to retreat. What
the Castilians could do was fall upon patrols and scouts, and it was in one of these minor skirmishes that Sir William Felton was killed. He was in command of a foraging party of around 300 mounted
men-at-arms and archers west of Vitoria when he was surprised by a much larger French force. Taking up a position on a knoll near the village of Arinez, Felton’s little group held off all
comers
until Felton was killed and the archers ran out of arrows, whereupon they had to surrender. For centuries afterwards, the knoll was known as
Inglesamendi
– the Hill of the English.
⁶²