Hilaire Belloc - Premium Collection: Historical Works, Writings on Economy, Essays & Fiction. Hilaire Belloc
and if further we have the postmark of the 19th on the postcard, then we can be absolutely certain that the majority of the fuller accounts were wrong, and that the Prime Minister crossed not on the 20th but on the 19th, for we have a converging set of independent witnesses none of whom have any reason to make the journey seem later than it was, all concerned with trivial duties, and each unconscious of the effect upon history of their evidence. It would be extraordinary if the servant had forged a date, and if we suppose him to have made a mistake, we are corrected by the equally trivial points of the postmark and the French stamp and the mention of the weather.
So it is with this manuscript record of the King’s Kitchen expenses and of the several halting-places at which they were incurred. Wherever there is conflict, it must override all other evidence.
The Clerk of the Kitchen, to whom we owe this very valuable testimony, was one William of Retford. His accounts were kept in a beautifully neat, but not very legible, fourteenth-century hand, upon long sheets of parchment, and are now luckily preserved for our inspection at the Record Office.
With every day’s halt the place where victuals were bought for the King, that is, where the King’s household lay, has its name marked upon these accounts; but unfortunately the abbreviations used in the MS., coupled with the difficulty of distinguishing the short strokes [e.g. m from ni, n from u, etc.] upon parchment which time has faded, and on the top of that the indifference of the scribe to the foreign names themselves, do not render the task particularly easy. The MS. has not, I believe, ever been published. I have spent a good deal of time over it, and I will give my conclusions as best I can.
The main army stayed at St. Vaast, as I have said, for six days, that is, until Tuesday, July 18th, 1346. This was presumably done to recruit the horses and the men. Foraging parties went out in the interval, but the bulk of the force did not move.
On that Tuesday it struck inland for Valognes, a march of 10½ miles. No proper coast-road existed even as late as the eighteenth century, let alone in the Middle Ages, and an army making for Paris or for the crossing of the Seine could not choose but to go thus slightly out of its way.
From Valognes there is a two days’ march to Carentan, which town was the lowest crossing-place of the River Douves. We may naturally expect the halt between the two to have been about midway, and this would give us a town called Ste Mère l’Eglise, but the Clerk of the Kitchen puts down St. Come du Mont. We conclude, therefore, that the King’s staff did not follow the great road which had existed from Roman times, but went by bypaths to the east of it where St. Come du Mont lies. It was a long day’s march of over fourteen miles, but the next day’s march, that of Thursday the 20th, to Carentan was a short one of not more than eight or nine (allowing in both cases for the windings of the side-road). On Friday the 21st the King lay at Pont Hébert. This is another example of something very like a long march followed by a short one upon the morrow. St. Lô was the halting-place of the Saturday, and Pont Hébert is but four miles from St. Lô. Of a total, therefore, of nearly seventeen miles, over thirteen are covered upon one day, and but four upon the next.
At this point it is worth noticing the character of all the advance with which we are dealing. Edward had been blamed for sluggishness. He was not so much sluggish as apparently without plan. He did not know quite what he was going to do next. His general intention seems to have been to make sooner or later for his allies in Flanders, and meanwhile to take rich towns and loot them, and to bring pressure upon the King of France by ravaging distant and populous territories which the French army could not rapidly reach. He therefore often makes a good and steady marching in this advance, but he also lingers uselessly at towns, and intercalates very short marches between the long ones. Thus he deliberately struck inland to St. Lô on his way to Caen, because St. Lô was a fine fat booty, instead of making by the short road which runs from Carentan through Bayeux. The whole character of the advance clearly betrays the point I have already made, that this early part of the Hundred Years’ War was essentially a series of raids.
At this stage it is well to point out to the reader two difficulties which have confused historians. The first is the fact that the Clerk of the Kitchen often takes a shot at a French name which he has either heard inaccurately or which he attempts to spell phonetically, so that we have to interpret him not infrequently to make sense of his record.
The second is the fact that the chronicler will give some particular spot quite consonant with the marching powers of troops for one day, but different from that given by the Clerk of the Kitchen.
This apparent discrepancy is due to the fact that an army marches if it can upon parallel roads involving various halting-places for various sections of it on the same night. An army upon a raid such as this also throws out foraging parties and detachments, which leave its main body for the purposes of observation or of plunder.
Again, we must always regard the King’s household (and therefore the Kitchen Accounts) as moving with what may be called “the staff.” Often, therefore, it will go much faster than the rest of the army, while at other times it will lie behind or to one side of it. Thus, at the very end of this campaign you have a transference of the King’s quarters, twenty miles to the north in one day, which would be a terribly long march for the army as a whole, and which, as a fact, we can discover on other evidence the army as a whole did not take.
With so much said, we can proceed to build up an exact account of the advance and the retreat.
Upon Sunday the 23rd of August Edward advanced from St. Lô to a place which the Clerk of the Kitchen calls “Sevances.” The spelling is inaccurate. The place intended is Sept Vents, twelve miles to the south and east of St. Lô. But other portions of the army halted elsewhere in the neighbourhood, as we know from Baker. The next halt, that of the 24th, is at Torteval, only five miles away, but a portion of the army got south of Fontenay le Pesnel, which the King did not reach till the 25th, and which the Clerk calls “Funtenay Paynel.” Three days are thus taken between St. Lô and Caen, and the whole army arrives before the latter large town, the capital of West Normandy, upon Wednesday, July 26th.
The town of Caen was not properly defended. It had no regular walls, and was a very rich prey indeed. The Constable of France and the Chamberlain were in the town, and the castle was held by a handful (300) of Genoese mercenaries. There was an armed force of militia and of knights in the streets of the town, of what exact size we do not know. The Prince of Wales with the advance guard occupied the outskirts of the city which lie beyond the branches of the Orne (the northern branch now runs mainly in sewers under the streets from the Hôtel de Ville to the Church of St. Peter). There was sharp fighting at the bridge, at one moment of which the King ordered a retreat, but the Earl of Warwick disobeyed the order. The King followed him, and the bridge was taken. There was considerable slaughter in the streets of the city; the Constable and the Chamberlain were taken prisoners, and about one hundred of the wounded knights. The English loss, which was not heavy, fell mainly upon the Archers and Spearmen, and the total, including wounded, was but five hundred, and was mainly due to the resistance of the inhabitants of the houses. The town was given over to pillage, and Edward thought of burning it, but was restrained. It is characteristic of the march that a delay of four days from the morning of the 5th was occupied in the loot of Caen, from which town (in communication with the sea by its river) Edward sent back his plunder on board the Fleet which he dismissed.
The army marched out of Caen on Monday, the 31st of July, and undertook its three days’ march to Lisieux, the next rich town upon this random advance, now deprived of support from the sea. Edward probably intended to force some passage of the Seine, preferably, it may be surmised, at Rouen, or a little higher up, with the vague object of making for the north-east and Calais. We are not certain of this. It is more than possible that the capture of Calais later on in the campaign gave rise to the story that some such plan was intended. Anyhow, we get two halts and three marches between Caen and Lisieux, a distance of only twenty-five miles, which could easily have been accomplished in two days had there been a really definite plan in the commander’s head. We may be pretty certain that there was not.
The halts of the King himself on the 31st of July and the 1st of August were made at two places which read in the MS. as “Treward,” and an abbreviated name which stands for “Leopurtuis.”