Sluys of
Jean Froissart In 1337,
Philip VI of France confiscated the English king's
Duchy of Aquitaine and the
county of Ponthieu. Instead of seeking a peaceful resolution to the conflict by paying homage to the French king, as his father had done, Edward responded by
laying claim to the French crown as the grandson of
Philip IV of France. The French rejected this based on the precedents for
agnatic succession set in 1316 and 1322 and upheld the rights of Philip IV's nephew Philip VI, leading to tensions that caused the
Hundred Years' War. In the early stages of the war, Edward's strategy was to build alliances with other Continental rulers. In 1338,
Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor, named Edward
Vicar general of the
Holy Roman Empire and promised his support. As late as 1373, the
Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1373 established an
Anglo-Portuguese Alliance. These measures produced few results. The only major military victory during this phase of the war was the English naval victory at
Sluys on 24 June 1340, which secured control of the
English Channel. This victory decimated a superior French fleet and lowered the threat of a French invasion of England, which increased English desires to attack France. This situation lasted less than a year. Edward was unlikely to have been happy with this victory due to his continuing financial problems. The English also captured 166 French merchantmen; they had been raiding the south coast of England for several years and were unpopular amongst English sailors. Up to 16,000 French sailors were killed and French captain,
Nicolas Béhuchet – who could otherwise have expected to be
ransomed – was hanged from his own
yardarm. Edward saw God's hand in his victory and a triumphal coin was struck in commemoration – showing Edward in a ship, probably meant to be Béhuchet's own – and the King gained a reputation as a naval warrior.
Cost of war Meanwhile, the fiscal pressure on the kingdom caused by Edward's expensive alliances led to discontent at home. The regency council at home was frustrated by the mounting national debt, while the King and his commanders on the Continent were angered by the failure of the government in England to provide sufficient funds. To deal with the situation, Edward himself returned to England, arriving in London unannounced on 30 November 1340. Finding the affairs of the realm in disorder, he purged the royal administration of a great number of ministers and judges. These measures did not bring domestic stability, and a stand-off ensued between the King and
John de Stratford,
Archbishop of Canterbury, during which Stratford's relatives
Robert Stratford,
Bishop of Chichester, and
Henry de Stratford were temporarily stripped of title and imprisoned respectively. Stratford claimed that Edward had violated the laws of the land by arresting royal officers. A certain level of conciliation was reached at the Parliament of April 1341. Here Edward was forced to accept severe limitations to his financial and administrative freedom, in return for a grant of taxation. Yet in October the same year, Edward repudiated this statute and Archbishop Stratford was politically ostracised. The extraordinary circumstances of the April Parliament had forced the King into submission, but under normal circumstances, the powers of the king in medieval England were virtually unlimited, a fact that Edward was able to exploit. featuring Edward III Historian
Nicholas Rodger called Edward III's claim to be the "Sovereign of the Seas" into question, arguing there was hardly any
royal navy before the reign of
Henry V (1413–1422). Despite Rodger's view,
King John had already developed a royal fleet of
galleys and had attempted to establish an administration for these ships and others which were arrested (privately owned ships pulled into royal/national service).
Henry III, his successor, continued this work. Notwithstanding the fact that he, along with his predecessor, had hoped to develop a strong and efficient naval administration, their endeavours produced one that was informal and mostly ad hoc. A formal naval administration emerged during Edward's reign, comprising lay administrators and led by William de Clewre, Matthew de Torksey and John de Haytfield successively bearing the title of ''Clerk of the King's Ships''.
Robert de Crull was the last to fill this position during Edward III's reign and would have the longest tenure in this position. It was during his tenure that Edward's naval administration would become a base for what evolved during the reigns of successors such as
Henry VIII's
Council of Marine and
Navy Board and
Charles I's
Board of Admiralty. Rodger also argues that for much of the fourteenth century, the French had the upper hand, apart from Sluys in 1340 and, perhaps, off
Winchelsea in 1350. Yet, the French never invaded England and King
John II of France died in captivity in England. There was a need for an English navy to play a role in this and to handle other matters, such as the insurrection of the Anglo-Irish lords and acts of piracy.
Command structure Edward's military command structure began with himself at the centre, and then members of the court acted as his generals. This included the King's family, and Edward utilised the martial capabilities of his sons, particularly his eldest son, Edward the Black Prince. This was not only pragmatic, in that they were all good warriors, but had the added propaganda value of demonstrating the hereditary nature of Edward's claim to the French throne. However, command was not always the prerogative of the nobility.
Knights Banneret – knights able to lead other knights – were also favoured as leaders of armies or divisions, as they were also already close to the king, being part of his household and bodyguard. They bore particular responsibilities during King Edward's
chevauchées, which often required the main army to split into smaller forces, each requiring its own captain. This sometimes led to dissension. For example, in the 1369
Loire campaign, the
Earl of Pembroke shared command with
Sir John Chandos; although the latter was appointed
seneschal of France by the Black Prince, Pembroke refused to work beneath him on account of his superior social status. Ultimately, though, the task of raising the armies that they would lead fell to both: the aristocracy could raise the largest number of tenants and
retainers after the King, but it was the lower men who acted as recruiting sergeants in the regions. Unlike during his father's or great-grandfather's campaigns in Scotland, the
feudal levy ― whereby military service was provided for free in exchange for land rights ― by the outbreak of the Hundred Years' War it had become the norm for men of all ranks to be paid for their service from the King. In return, the crown shouldered the responsibility for paying for the bulk of equipment. The military historian Andrew Ayton has described this transition as amounting to a "military revolution", and one spearheaded by the King himself.
Crécy and Poitiers By the early 1340s, it was clear that Edward's policy of alliances was too costly, and yielded too few results. The following years saw more direct involvement by English armies, including in the
Breton War of Succession, but these interventions also proved fruitless at first. Edward defaulted on large scale
Florentine loans, and partly as a result the lenders declared bankruptcy. A change came in July 1346, when Edward staged a major offensive, sailing for
Normandy with a force of 15,000 men. His army
sacked the city of
Caen, and marched across northern France, to meet up with
Flemish forces in
Flanders. It was not Edward's initial intention to engage the French army, but at
Crécy, just north of the
Somme, he found favourable terrain and decided to fight a pursuing army led by Philip VI. On 26 August, the English army defeated a far larger French army in the
Battle of Crécy. Shortly after this, on 17 October, an English army defeated and captured King David II of Scotland at the
Battle of Neville's Cross. With his northern borders secured, Edward felt free to continue his major offensive against France,
laying siege to the town of
Calais. The operation was the greatest English venture of the Hundred Years' War, involving an army of 32,000 men. The siege started on 4 September 1346, and lasted until the town surrendered on 3 August 1347. After the fall of Calais, factors outside of Edward's control forced him to wind down the war effort. In 1348, the
Black Death struck England with full force, killing a third or more of the country's population. This loss of manpower led to a shortage of farm labour and a corresponding rise in wages. The great landowners struggled with the shortage of manpower and the resulting inflation in labour cost. To curb the rise in wages, the King and Parliament responded with the
Ordinance of Labourers in 1349, followed by the
Statute of Labourers in 1351. These attempts to regulate wages could not succeed in the long run, but in the short term they were enforced with great vigour. All in all, the plague did not lead to a full-scale breakdown of government and society, and recovery was remarkably swift. This was to a large extent thanks to the competent leadership of royal administrators such as Treasurer
William Edington and Chief Justice
William de Shareshull. It was not until the mid-1350s that military operations on the Continent were resumed on a large scale. In 1356, Edward's eldest son,
Edward, Prince of Wales, won an important victory in the
Battle of Poitiers. The greatly outnumbered English forces not only routed the French, but captured the French king John II and his youngest son,
Philip. After a succession of victories, the English held great possessions in France, the French king was in English custody, and the French central government had almost totally collapsed. There has been a historical debate as to whether Edward's claim to the French crown originally was genuine, or if it was simply a political ploy meant to put pressure on the French government. Regardless of the original intent, the stated claim now seemed to be within reach. Yet a campaign in 1359, meant to complete the undertaking, was inconclusive. In 1360, therefore, Edward accepted the
Treaty of Brétigny, whereby he renounced his claims to the French throne, but secured his extended French possessions in full sovereignty. Edward kept his subjects fully informed of political and military developments abroad by a large number of regular reports from himself and his captains to various outlets, including
convocation, the
City of London and the archbishops, that, while the scholar A. E. Prince acknowledged that taken singularly, these reports may not represent a cohesive
public relations within government, they do perhaps indicate, as a whole, the existence of a "simple propaganda organization" with which the King boosted domestic morale. These then ended up as part of popular chronicles, either verbatim or in part, whether newsletters or public letters. == Government ==