Flag and Fleet: How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas. William Wood
Monk, a Flemish hireling who had fought first for John and then for Louis. He was good at changing sides, having changed from monk to pirate because it paid him better, and having since been always up for sale to whichever side would pay him best. But he was bold and skilful; he had a strong fleet; and both he and his followers were very keen to help Louis, who had promised them the spoils of England if they won. Luckily for England this danger brought forth her first great sea commander, Hubert de Burgh: let his name be long remembered. Hubert had stood out against Louis as firmly as he had against John, and as firmly as he was again to face another bad king, when Henry III tried to follow John's example. Hubert had refused to let Louis into Dover Castle. He had kept him out during the siege that followed. And he was now holding this key to the English Channel with the same skill and courage as was shown by the famous Dover Patrol throughout the war against the Germans.
Hubert saw at once that the best way to defend England from invasion was to defeat the enemy at sea by sailing out to meet him. This is as true today as ever. The best possible way of defending yourself always is to destroy the enemy's means of destroying you; and, with us of the British Empire, the only sure way to begin is to smash the enemy's fleet or, if it hides in port, blockade it. Hubert, of course, had trouble to persuade even the patriotic nobles that his own way was the right one; for, just as at the present day, most people knew nothing of the sea. But the men of the Cinque Ports, the five great seaports on the south-east coast of England, did know whereof they spoke when they answered Hubert's call: "If this tyrant Eustace lands he will lay the country waste. Let us therefore meet him while he is at sea."
Hubert's English fleet of forty ships sailed from Dover on the 24th of August, 1217, and steered towards Calais; for the wind was south-south-east and Hubert wished to keep the weather gage. For six hundred years to come, (that is, till, after Trafalgar, sails gave way to steam), the sea commanders who fought to win by bold attack always tried to keep the weather gage. This means that they kept on the windward side of the enemy, which gave them a great advantage, as they could then choose their own time for attacking and the best weak spot to attack, while the enemy, having the wind ahead, could not move half so fast, except when running away. Hubert de Burgh was the first commander who understood all about the weather gage and how to get it. Even the clever Eustace was taken in, for he said, "I know these clever villains want to plunder Calais. But the people there are ready for them." So he held his course to the Forelands, meaning to round into the mouth of Thames and make for London.
Then Hubert bore down. His fleet was the smaller; but as he had the weather gage he succeeded in smashing up the French rear before the rest could help it. As each English vessel ranged alongside it threw grappling irons into the enemy, who were thus held fast. The English archers hailed a storm of well aimed arrows on the French decks, which were densely crowded by the soldiers Eustace was taking over to conquer England. Then the English boarded, blinding the nearest French with lime, cutting their rigging to make their vessels helpless, and defeating the crews with great slaughter. Eustace, having lost the weather gage, with which he had started out that morning, could only bring his fleet into action bit by bit. Hubert's whole fleet fought together and won a perfect victory.
More than a century later the unhappy Hundred Years War (1336–1431) broke out. All the countries of Western Europe took a hand in it at one time or another. Scotland, which was a sort of sub-kingdom under the King of England, sided with France because she wished to be independent of England, while the smaller countries on the eastern frontier of France sided with England because they were afraid of France. But the two great opponents were always France and England. The Kings of England had come from Normandy and other parts of what is now France and what then were fiefs of the Crown of France, as Scotland was a fief of the Crown of England. They therefore took as much interest in what they held in France as in their own out-and-out Kingdom of England. Moreover, they not only wanted to keep what they had in France but to make it as independent of the French King as the Scotch King wanted to make Scotland independent of them.
In the end the best thing happened; for it was best to have both kingdoms completed in the way laid out by Nature: France, a great land-power, with a race of soldiers, having all that is France now; and England, the great sea-power, with a race of sailors, becoming one of the countries that now make up the United Kingdom of the British Isles. But it took a hundred years to get the English out of France, and much longer still to bring all parts of the British Isles under a single king.
In the fourteenth century the population of France, including all the French possessions of the English Crown, was four times the population of England. One would suppose that the French could easily have driven the English out of every part of France and have carried the war into England, as the Romans carried their war into Carthage. But English sea-power made all the difference. Sea-power not only kept Frenchmen out of England but it helped Englishmen to stay in France and win many a battle there as well. Most of the time the English fleet held the command of the sea along the French as well as along the English coast. So the English armies enjoyed the immense advantage of sea-transport over land-transport, whenever men, arms, horses, stores, food, and whatever else their armies needed could be moved by water, while the French were moving their own supplies by land with more than ten times as much trouble and delay.
Another and most important point about the Hundred Years War is this: that it does not stand alone in history, but is only the first of the two very different kinds of Hundred Years War which France and England have fought out. The first Hundred Years War was fought to decide the absolute possession of all the lands where Frenchmen lived; and France, most happily, came out victorious. The second Hundred Years War (1689–1815) was fought to decide the command of the sea; and England won. When we reach this second Hundred Years War, and more especially when we reach that part of it which was directed by the mighty Pitt, we shall understand it as the war which made the British Empire of today.
The first big battle of the first Hundred Years War was fought in 1340 between the French and English fleets at Sluys, a little seaport up a river in the western corner of what is Holland now. King Philip of France had brought together all the ships he could, not only French ones but Flemish, with hired war galleys and their soldiers and slave oarsmen from Genoa and elsewhere. But, instead of using this fleet to attack the English, and so clear the way for an invasion of England, he let it lie alongside the mudbanks of Sluys. Edward III, the future victor of Cressy, Poitiers, and Winchelsea, did not take long to seize so good a chance. The French fleet was placed as if on purpose to ensure its own defeat; for it lay at anchor in three divisions, each division with all the vessels lashed together, and the whole three in one line with a flank to the sea. The English officers who had landed to look at it saw at once that if this flank was properly attacked it could be smashed in on the next bit of the line, and that on the next, and so on, before the remaining bits could come to the rescue. On the turn of the tide Edward swooped down with his best ships, knocked this flank to pieces, and then went on till two divisions had been rolled up in complete confusion. Then the ebb-tide set out to sea; and the Genoese of the third division mostly got away.
Ten years later (1350) the English for the first time fought a Spanish fleet and won a battle sometimes called Winchelsea and sometimes Espagnols-sur-mer or Spaniards-on-the-sea. Edward III had sworn vengeance against the Basque traders from the coast of Spain who had plundered the English vessels coming in from France. So he made ready to attack the Spanish Basques sailing home from Antwerp, where they had hired Flemings and others to join the fray. This time each fleet was eager to attack the other; and a battle royal followed. On the fine afternoon of the 28th of August King Edward sat on the deck of his flagship listening to Sir John Chandos, who was singing while the minstrels played. Beside him stood his eldest son, the famous Black Prince, then twenty years of age, and his youngest son, John of Gaunt, then only ten. Suddenly the lookout called down from the tops: "Sire, I see one, two, three, four—I see so many, so help me God, I cannot count them." Then the King called for his helmet and for wine, with which he and his knights drank to each others' health and to their joint success in the coming battle. Queen Philippa and her ladies meanwhile went into Winchelsea Abbey to pray for victory, now and then stealing out to see how their fleet was getting on.
The Spaniards made a brave show. Their fighting tops (like little bowl-shaped forts high up the masts) glinted with armed men. Their soldiers stood in gleaming armour on the decks.