The Crécy campaign was a series of large-scale raids (chevauchées) conducted by the Kingdom of England throughout northern France in 1346 that devastated the French countryside on a wide front, culminating in the Battle of Crécy. The campaign was part of the Hundred Years' War.
The campaign began on 12 July 1346, with the landing of English troops in Normandy, and ended with the capitulation of Calais on 3 August 1347. The English army was led by King Edward III, and the French by King Philip VI.
Edward was under pressure from the English Parliament to end the war either by negotiation or with a victory. As his forces gathered, Edward vacillated as to where in France he would land. Eventually he decided to sail for Gascony, to succour the Duke of Lancaster, who was facing the much larger main French army. Hampered by contrary winds, Edward instead made a surprise landing on the nearest part of France, the northern Cotentin Peninsula.
The English devastated much of Normandy, and stormed and sacked Caen, slaughtering the population. They then raided the suburbs of Rouen before cutting a swath along the left bank of the Seine to Poissy, 20 miles (32 km) from Paris. Turning north, the English became trapped in territory which the French had denuded of food. They escaped by fighting their way across a ford in the Somme river against a French blocking force. Two days later, on ground of their choosing, the English inflicted a heavy defeat on the French at the Battle of Crécy on 26 August 1346, before moving on to besiege Calais. After an eleven-month siege, which stretched both countries' financial and military resources to the limit, the town fell.
Shortly afterwards, the Truce of Calais was agreed; it ran for nine months to 7 July 1348, but was extended repeatedly over the years until it was formally set aside in 1355. Fighting continued during the truce, but not on the same scale as during the chevauchée period. Calais served as an English entrepôt into northern France that was held for over two hundred years.
Background
Since the Norman Conquest of 1066, English monarchs had held titles and lands within France, the possession of which made them vassals of the kings of France. The status of the English king's French fiefs was a major source of conflict between the two monarchies throughout the Middle Ages. French monarchs systematically sought to check the growth of English power, stripping away lands as the opportunity arose. Over the centuries, English holdings in France had varied in size, but by 1337 only Gascony in south-western France and Ponthieu in northern France were left. The Gascons preferred their relationship with a distant English king who left them alone to one with a French king who would interfere in their affairs. Following a series of disagreements between Philip VI of France (r. 1328–1350) and Edward III of England (r. 1327–1377), on 24 May 1337 Philip's Great Council in Paris agreed that Gascony and Ponthieu should be taken back into Philip's hands on the grounds that Edward was in breach of his obligations as a vassal. This marked the start of the Hundred Years' War, which was to last 116 years.
1345
Although Gascony was the cause of the war, Edward was able to spare few resources for it, and whenever an English army campaigned on the continent it operated in northern France. Edward determined early in 1345 to attack France on three fronts: a small force would sail for Brittany, under the command of William, Earl of Northampton; a slightly larger force would proceed to Gascony under the command of Henry, Earl of Derby; and the main force would accompany Edward to northern France or Flanders. In early 1345 the French decided to stand on the defensive in the south-west. Their intelligence had uncovered the English plan for offensives in the three theatres, but they did not have the money to raise a significant army in each. They anticipated, correctly, that the English planned to make their main effort in northern France. Thus they directed what resources they had to there, planning to assemble their main army at Arras on 22 July. South-western France was encouraged to rely on its own resources.
Edward III's main army sailed on 29 June. It anchored off Sluys in Flanders until 22 July, while Edward attended to diplomatic affairs. When the ships sailed, probably intending to land in Normandy, they were scattered by a storm and found their way to English ports over the following week. After more than five weeks on board ship, the men and horses had to be disembarked. There was a further week's delay while the King and his council debated what to do, by which time it proved impossible to take any action with the main English army before winter. Aware of this, Philip dispatched reinforcements to Brittany and Gascony. During 1345 Derby had led a whirlwind campaign through Gascony at the head of an Anglo-Gascon army. He decisively defeated two large French armies at the battles of Bergerac and Auberoche, captured French towns and fortifications in much of Périgord and most of Agenais and gave the English possessions in Gascony strategic depth. Late in the year he captured the strategically and logistically important town of Aiguillon, "the key to Gascony". In October the Earl of Northampton commenced a campaign in northern Brittany, but it fizzled out in a series of failures to capture French-held Breton towns, and Northampton and most of his force were recalled in the spring.
Prelude
French preparations
As always, money was short for the French in 1346. In spite of borrowing over 330,000 florins (£60 million in 2025 terms) from the Pope, orders were issued to local officials to: "Amass all of the money you can for the support of our wars. Take it from each and every person you can ..." It was a clear indication of the desperate state of the French finances. Nevertheless, two armies were formed, at Orléans and Toulouse. Duke John of Normandy, the son and heir of Philip VI, was placed in charge of all French forces in south-west France, as he had been the previous autumn.
In March 1346 the French, numbering between 15,000 and 20,000 and including a large siege train and five cannon, enormously superior to any force the Anglo-Gascons could field, marched on Aiguillon and besieged it on 1 April. On 2 April the arrière-ban, the formal call to arms for all able-bodied males, was announced for the south of France. French financial, logistical and manpower efforts were focused on this offensive. Derby, now known as Lancaster after the death of his father, sent an urgent appeal for help to Edward. Edward was not only morally obliged to succour his vassal, but also contractually required to; his indenture with Lancaster stated that if Lancaster were attacked by overwhelming numbers, then Edward "shall rescue him in one way or another".
English preparations
In England, Parliament had voted a large war subsidy in 1344. Much of this had been spent, but some of the proceeds were still being collected. The ability to collect further revenue from English taxpayers was exhausted. As short of money as the French, the English exacted £15,000 in forced loans from church officials; commensurate amounts from English towns; and confiscated a year's income from all benefices held in England by foreigners. Huge orders for military equipment and victuals were placed, and much was compulsorily purchased. It had long been the case that all Englishmen of military age could be called to arms to defend the country against invaders; in early 1346 this was extended to a requirement to also serve overseas. The English were weary of the apparently pointless and fruitless war, and the previous Parliament, of June 1344, had demanded that Edward "make an end to this war, either by battle or by a suitable peace".
The English intended to gather an even larger army in 1346 than in 1345, over 20,000 men. This was supposed to gather around Portsmouth in February, but the date was postponed for two months, and then for another month. The Scots, incited by Philip, had been perceived as a threat by the English for some time; two years earlier the Chancellor of England had told Parliament the Scots were "saying quite openly that they will break the truce as soon as our adversary [France] desires and will march into England". Edward exempted the counties north of the River Humber from sending men to join the invasion force, and some limited financial commitments were made to them. It was also feared that with military resources committed to France, the South Coast of England would be exposed to French depredations, as it had been in 1338 and 1339. Extensive measures were taken to guard against this, including placing everyone dwelling within 15 miles (24 kilometres) of the sea under the control of local commanders. Both these measures reduced the force available to Edward, as did a degree of resistance to the new conscription regime. In an attempt to make up the numbers, the previous year's expedient of permitting convicted felons to enrol on the promise of a pardon if they served for the duration of the campaign was repeated, with up to a thousand being recruited. Edward mustered perhaps half of his hoped-for total by the end of June.
Naval preparations
Despite English efforts to conceal their preparations, the French were aware of them. Given the extreme difficulty of disembarking an army other than at a port, the English no longer having access to a port in Flanders, and the existence of friendly ports in Brittany and Gascony, they assumed that Edward would sail for one of the latter; probably Gascony, to relieve Aiguillon. To guard against the possibility of an English landing in northern France, Philip relied on his powerful navy. This consisted of requisitioned merchant ships and hired war galleys. The merchant ships were cogs, with a deep draught and a round hull, propelled by a single large sail set on a mast amidships. They were converted into warships by the addition of wooden "castles" at the bow and stern and the erection of crow's nest fighting platforms at the masthead. At least 78 were taken into royal service and fitted out as warships in Lower Normandy, and more in Picardy and Upper Normandy. Galleys were oar-propelled and highly manoeuvrable, making them effective for raiding and ship-to-ship combat, but relatively expensive and difficult to move long distances. The French had hired a fleet of at least 32 from Genoa, and it was contracted to arrive in Boulogne by 20 May. In the event, by early July it had not got further than the Tagus roadstead, off Portugal. It has been suggested that the extremely slow progress of the Genoese may have been the result of English bribery.
Edward requisitioned the largest fleet assembled by the English to that date, 747 ships. It was scheduled to assemble by 1 March; this was first postponed to 1 May and then 15 May. By English common law, the king was required to compensate the owners of ships impressed into service, but in practice he paid little and late, which caused shipowners to be reluctant to answer summonses to arms. Edward himself arrived at Porchester on 1 June. He had originally planned to land in Brittany, but was frustrated by Northampton's failure to capture a port. He then focused on Gascony, and decided to reinforce Lancaster and confront Duke John of Normandy outside Aiguillon. The fleet took on sufficient supplies for the journey to Bordeaux and sailed from Portsmouth on 28 June. Not all the ships had reached the assembly point and Edward paused off Yarmouth for latecomers to arrive. By the time they had, the wind was foul and the fleet sat off the north-east corner of the Isle of Wight for two weeks. This was the normal duration of the whole journey, and ships ran short of food and water. After the debacle of the previous year, Edward decided not to risk disembarking his army with the intention of resupplying and setting off for Bordeaux once more. He was aware that with the French focused on Aiguillon, northern France would be effectively defenceless. So, on 11 July, with the wind still preventing movement down the English Channel, he changed his plans and sailed due south and made landfall at St. Vaast la Hogue, 20 miles (32 km) from Cherbourg, on 12 July. The Genoese galley fleet was still well to the south of the major French port of La Rochelle, on the Bay of Biscay. The French cogs converted to warships or in the process of being converted had not yet assembled.
Campaign in France
Devastating the Cotentin
The English army was estimated to be between 7,000 and 10,000 strong and consisted of both English and Welsh soldiers combined with specialists and officials. It is considered to have been unusually well equipped for a medieval army and included miners, blacksmiths and Welsh to English interpreters. It included several Norman barons who were unhappy with French rule, including Geoffroy de Harcourt, Viscount of Saint-Sauveur. The region where they landed, the Cotentin Peninsula, was virtually undefended and the English were able to disembark on the long sandy beaches. They spent six days unloading, organising themselves, plundering the countryside and baking bread. This pause was mostly to refresh the horses, who would have needed at least this long to recover from being cooped up on board ship for two weeks. The army included a sizeable supply train carrying ammunition, stores, gunpowder weapons and food; the latter could be replaced from local sources to maintain a reserve for when the army needed to concentrate and was unable to forage. Over 50 men were dubbed knights, including Edward's eldest son, in an act of ceremonial preparation for the campaign.