Edward III’s siege of Calais was a pivotal moment in the Hundred Years’ War. Dan Jones argues that it bears comparison with one of the most brutal clashes of the modern era
One August morning in 1346, an English army led by King Edward III slumped, exhausted, on a bloody battlefield in northern France, near the forest of Crécy. During the previous two days, the English had destroyed a larger, fresher army commanded by the French king Philip VI.
The fighting had been vicious: at least 1,500 French knights lay dead, along with thousands more ordinary soldiers. “Never since the destruction of great Troy had there been such mourning,” wrote one poet.
Edward had pulled off a near-miraculous victory. It was several years since he had first claimed to be king of France as well as England, fuelling the struggle that today we call the Hundred Years’ War.
Now his cause was vindicated: Philip VI was on the ropes, and Edward just had to decide how to strike his next blow. Or rather, where.
The road to the battle of Crécy had been hard. On 12 July, Edward – accompanied by his 16-year-old eldest son, the ‘Black Prince’ – had landed 15,000 troops on the beaches of Normandy. For six weeks this vast army had marched through France.
At first they had rampaged: burning their way through the Norman countryside in a campaign of terror known as a chevauchée. Then they had gone on the run, chased by Philip’s army, who were determined to drive them out of France for good.
So although at Crécy the English had won a famous victory, the king had a tough decision to make. He wrote back to England in triumph, declaring that “our expedition has been very long and continuous. But we do not expect to depart the kingdom of France until we have made an end of our war.”
Exactly what that meant, though, was left open. In truth, Edward’s men were underfed, over-marched, diseased and depleted. They were in no state to head to Paris and capture Philip’s crown. “The end of our war” had to be achievable and, ideally, to lie close at hand. Thus, at the end of August, Edward turned his army north and set out for Calais.
Calais was an attractive target for a variety of reasons. Firstly, it was the closest French port to the south-east coast of England and had good commercial ties with the Cinque Ports (the most important towns, militarily and economically, on England’s south-east coast).
It was also highly defensible for whoever held it, equipped with a circuit of high stone walls, a castle and a set of double moats. Calais was protected by the sea on one side and an expanse of marshland cut through with streams on the other. One chronicler called it “one of the strongest cities in the world”.
- On the podcast | Medieval Stalingrad: the siege of Calais
What’s more, Calais had long been a haven for pirates who preyed on English sea-traffic in the Channel; its capture would please the English merchants who had contributed large sums to Edward’s war chest.
Finally, Calais was near the cities of Flanders. Edward had gone to great expense courting the independent-minded urban oligarchs who controlled these cities, positioning himself as the only man who could save them from absorption into the kingdom of France. Edward was eager to reassure the Flemish that he was a worthy ally – taking Calais would be a fine show of his commitment to their cause.
So it was that on 4 September 1346, Edward brought his army up to the Calais marshes and arrayed them before the city’s soaring walls. According to the chronicler Jean le Bel, the king declared that “winter or summer, he wouldn’t leave until [Calais] was in his hands”.
In the end, he was true to his word – but it really would take both a winter and a summer. The siege of Calais was a cruel, painful 11-month slog: a sort of medieval Stalingrad, during which the awful human and material cost of the Hundred Years’ War was laid bare.
Calais: six centuries of conflict
1350 French plot foiled
A French force, led by the experienced knight Geoffrey de Charny and abetted by an Italian spy within the garrison, planned to recapture Calais from the English on New Year’s Day. The plot was betrayed.
Edward III and the Black Prince rushed to Calais, fought in disguise alongside the English defenders, and captured or killed all of the attackers.
1459 Yorkist refuge
During the Wars of the Roses, Calais served as a Yorkist centre of power, overseen by the family’s sometime ally Richard Neville, known as Warwick the Kingmaker, who was captain of the town.
When Edward, Earl of March fled England in 1459 he took refuge in Calais, and began plotting his return, which saw him seize the crown as King Edward IV.
1520 A seat of diplomacy
Henry VIII’s spectacular diplomatic parley with Francis I of France, known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold, was held between Henry’s bolt-hole in Calais and the nearby French town of Ardres.
Twelve years later Henry visited Calais again, this time with his mistress Anne Boleyn, whom he presented to the French court as though she were already his queen.
1558 Calamitous news for England
The last English stronghold in France was lost when Francis, Duke of Guise, led a lightning attack, crossing frozen marshes and seizing the town in less than a week, though it was provisioned to hold out for three months.
The shock was said to have hastened Mary I of England’s death: she reputedly said on her deathbed that Calais would be inscribed on her heart.
1940 Holding the Line
In late May, during the Nazi invasion of France, British and French troops held Calais for several days against the advancing German 10th Panzer division, helping to buy time for the evacuation of Dunkirk.
Heavily fortified by the Germans, Calais was later bombed to ruins before and during the Allied invasion and liberation of France.
Starvation awaits
The Hundred Years’ War, which lasted from 1337 to 1453, produced many dramatic sieges. In 1415, Henry V blasted the walls of Harfleur with cannon during the Agincourt campaign. In 1429, Joan of Arc appeared at Orléans to help the French drive the English away. The siege of Calais in 1346–47 is not as famous as these encounters, but it was every bit as important.
From the moment the English arrived outside Calais, military operations were divided into three spheres of activity. The first of these was Calais itself.
The scale and variety of the defences made it obvious that the city could not be stormed. English chronicler Geoffrey le Baker summed up the problem: “The king put Calais under a strong siege, but he realised his army could not fight without danger because of its high walls and ditches [ie, moats]. Neither did he want to erect siege engines… since there was an absence of firm ground to set up the machines.”
Edward did have gunpowder-fired cannon in his armoury – he had used them at Crécy. But these primitive guns were useless for bringing down walls. It was clear that the only way to take Calais would be by starving the inhabitants out.
A campaign of attrition, almost certain to take months rather than weeks, was not an ideal prospect for a battle-drained army. To make the experience more bearable, Edward built on the marshes a semi-permanent siege town of wooden dwellings, shops and civic buildings.
The English called it Villeneuve-la-Hardie, meaning ‘bold new town’, and at its height it had a population a third the size of London’s. A memorable pensketch of this extraordinary settlement was recorded by the chronicler Jean Froissart, who said it contained “houses of wood, laid out in streets, and thatched with straw or broom; and in this town… was everything necessary for an army… butcher’s meat and all other sorts of merchandise, cloth and bread… might be had there for money, as well as all comforts.”
There were regular market days, with produce brought for sale from England and Flanders. Villeneuve was even fitted with spectator stands from which skirmishes could be watched by the non-combatant nobility, including Edward’s wife, Queen Philippa, who arrived in time to hold a grand Christmas court at the end of 1346.
This was about as comfortable as a military camp could be. Its population was maintained through repeated summons to England for fresh troops, many of them criminals serving at their own expense in return for a pardon for all their offences against the crown. Nevertheless, once winter set in, disease ripped around Villeneuve and men deserted in droves.
The Flemish front
The second sphere of operations during the siege comprised the towns around Calais that were held by the French but coveted by Flanders. Here, Flemish and English interests intertwined.
Indeed, there had already been fighting here during the Crécy campaign, as an Anglo-Flemish army commanded by the larger-than-life Norfolk knight Sir Hugh Hastings – who wore a wig made of orange cow-hair, and who is immortalised in a large monumental brass in St Mary’s church in Elsing, Norfolk – had attacked settlements including Béthune.
In 1346–47, the English made further sallies against the towns of Lille and St Omer in Artois. One of the most notorious encounters took place at Thérouanne in mid-September 1346, when English troops fell upon the city during market day.
They plundered the market, put the bishop commanding the resistance to flight and captured a French knight called Sir Arnoul d’Audrehem, who would later go on to play a leading role in the Hundred Years’ War, rising to the rank of marshal of France.
According to one chronicle, the English committed some disgraceful acts in Thérouanne. While the battle for the city was under way an English archer ran into the cathedral, and shot the head off a statue of the Virgin Mary. Another individual desecrated the high altar by using it as a toilet.
Escapades like these continued throughout the siege of Calais. But arguably the most famous episode in the ‘Flemish’ theatre involved the count of Flanders, a young man called Louis de Male. Louis’ father had been killed at Crécy, and Louis was now to be married to Edward’s daughter Princess Isabel.
Yet he was a very unwilling groom and determined to wriggle out of the arrangement. In the spring of 1347, as his wedding day approached, Louis absconded from his guards while out hunting, escaped to Philip VI’s court and never came back.
The war at sea
The final arena of combat around Calais was the sea. Calais was a port with connections to others up and down the French coast. It was therefore obvious that in order to starve the city, Edward would have to enforce a strict naval blockade.
But this was easier said than done. The English had enjoyed a naval advantage in the Channel since defeating the French fleet at the battle of Sluys in 1340. Nevertheless, for the first six months of the siege of Calais, they lacked the ships to enforce a full stranglehold on the harbour.
The citizens of Calais, meanwhile, could call upon the support of a gang of pirates led by one Marant, a ruthless privateer from Boulogne. Marant and his associates were dangerous but enterprising characters who frequented a tavern near Calais known as the Pot d’Etain (The Tin Jar).
Although usually to be found on the wrong side of the law, in 1347 they were hired by the French crown to run a Berlin airlift-style supply operation into Calais, shipping in food and supplies from the ports of Dieppe and St Valery.
It took the English many months to stop the pirate convoys. Only in spring 1347, when a surge of ships and troops arrived from England, did they shut down Marant’s operations, by scuttling a large ship in the mouth of Calais’ harbour, then seizing and fortifying a spit of land called the Risbank, which guarded the city’s seaward approach.
This tightening of the naval blockade marked the real turning point of the siege. Over the cold, miserable winter of 1346–47, the English army’s numbers had dwindled to just a few thousand. But by Easter they had bounced back to more than 20,000. From this point, only two fates were possible for Calais: either Philip VI would bring an army to relieve the city, or the citizens would starve.
They starved. At least twice during the siege, Calais’ leader, a resourceful soldier called Jean de Vienne, tried to reduce the number of hungry mouths in the city by expelling women and children, but this provided only temporary respite. Relief would have to come from outside: from Paris.
Yet in the aftermath of Crécy, King Philip had panicked and disbanded his army, then dithered about summoning another one. By the time the French king was fit to fight again, in the high summer of 1347, the citizens of Calais were in a terrible way. It was too late.
In July, Philip marched his troops to within a few miles of Calais, planning to launch an attack on the English camp. Seeing the king arrive, Jean de Vienne lit a signal fire above one of the city’s towers, letting Philip know the citizens were still alive. He also sent out a letter describing the desperate conditions inside the walls. The horses, dogs and rats had all been devoured, wrote Vienne. “There is nothing left here which has not been eaten, unless we eat the flesh of men.”
Sadly for Vienne, the French king lost his nerve. When he saw the size of the English forces billeted in Villeneuve, he burned his army’s tents and beat a hasty retreat. Thus was Calais’ fate sealed. Half-mad with hunger, the citizens gave up the ghost, and sent word to Edward that they were ready to open their gates.
A queen’s pity
A famous sculpture by Auguste Rodin, which today stands in front of the Calais town hall, depicts the best known historical vignette from the siege of Calais’ conclusion. It shows six ‘burghers’ (wealthy merchants) coming out of the city to surrender its keys and their lives to Edward. They are dressed in their undershirts, with nooses around their necks.
Edward made these burghers plead for their lives, and those of their fellow citizens. At first he insisted they should all die, but – so the story goes – his heart was softened by the tender pleas of Queen Philippa, now heavily pregnant, who fell to her knees and begged for mercy.
Whether this was a genuine moment of high peril and historical melodrama, or a stage-managed display of royal mercy, is for historians to debate – my own feeling is that it was likely to be the latter.
Either way, Calais’ fall in August 1347 was a boon for the English. Calais’ merchants were expelled and English settlers (including many businessmen who had underwritten Edward’s campaigns) were summoned to set up shop in their place.
An English garrison was installed, and the city would remain English for more than 200 years – a commercial powerhouse and military outpost that gave Plantagenet and Tudor monarchs a precious foothold in northern France.
Yet seen another way, of course, the capture of Calais was crucial in allowing the Hundred Years’ War to rumble on so long. So, although Edward did eventually “depart the kingdom of France”, he never had an end to his war.
- On the podcast | Medieval Masterclass with Dan Jones
This article was first published in the November 2023 issue of BBC History Magazine