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War Cruel and Sharp: English Strategy under Edward III, 1327-1360 (Warfare in History)

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It's been a while since I've enjoyed a book as much as this one.

Clifford Rogers provides a detailed analysis of Edward III's campaigns from 1327 through 1360, including his early campaigns in Scotland, through the first invasions of France in The Hundred Years War. He does so in an effort to show that, contrary to what other authors have said, Edward III's campaigns in France were not dominated by an effort to simply devastate the countryside and so undermine the authority of the Valois Kings in France, but rather that he actively sought battles with the French in order to bring about swifter, more decisive conclusions to their conflicts.

While Rogers does not use this work to attempt to dispel the more general thesis that Medieval Military Commanders sought to avoid War at all costs, it certainly invites a re-examination of other campaigns to see how well that theory holds up. And for those who continue to hold the outdated view that medieval warfare was without detailed strategy, and that military commanders of the time were without understanding of comprehensive military strategy, this serves as yet another nail in that particular coffin.

Keep in mind that this work discusses the campaigns as a whole - with less emphasis on individual battles. If you are looking for detailed battlefield accounts, other works would be more profitable.

I won't provide a blow-by-blow outline of Rogers' narrative here. Instead I will note the most positive aspects of this work. First and foremost is the reliance on contemporary and near-contemporary sources. This work is copiously footnoted (and the footnotes are important - take time to read them) with accounts of chroniclers that accompanied the various armies, providing frequent evidence that Edward was actively seeking battle and was extremely disappointed when he couldn't bring the French to one.

Second, Rogers goes into great detail covering the political aspects of these campaigns. He discusses the Franco-Scottish alliance, Phillip VI's confiscation of some of Edward's continental holdings when he was a minor, Edward's rights to the Kingship of France, the Papal efforts toward peace and the various alliances that were formed and broken throughout the 33-year period, and the implications of all of these for the War.

Third, he takes time to explain the historiography of the studies of Edward's political campaigns and goes on to refute the findings of other authors that Edward sought to avoid battle at all costs. I won't swear that he has proven his case as this is not the medieval period I am most familiar with - however he has provided a great deal of evidence in support of his view.

Fourth, he also goes into great detail regarding logistics. He discusses the difficulties Edward had in raising money for the early stages of these wars, the role that finding food and water, and foraging for these while on campaign, played in the various campaigns, and how the vagaries of the ability to supply his force and, most of all to secure lines of retreat, played in how aggressively he tried to bring the French to battle.

My quibbles with this book are few and not of great relevance to its overall aim. First, several times Rogers offers that "The first duty of a good lord was to defend his vassals ..." p13. I am not altogether certain this is true. Quite often the first requirement of a good lord was, IMO, to retain an effective fighting force and the loyalties of his nobles. Now these two are related, but not necessarily the same. Second, I found less evidence for his repeated assertions that Edward III sought battle largely through his faith in "the judgement of God" whereby the victor on the field placed his faith that the army held in God's favor would win. I'm not saying this wasn't a primary focus of Edward - just that I found it less fully proven. Personally I feel that Edward's willingness to seek battle with a numerically superior French army was more due to his possession of a more experienced force, his possession of longbow archers for which France had no good answer and, most of all, his faith in his own ability as a commander.

Beyond this, the book is well-written, IMO it is fairly fast-paced and provides a great deal of detailed information. It provides an excellent new look at the Wars of Edward III in particular, and of Medieval Military Warfare in general.

Read this for graduate history course in medieval history.

Clifford J. Rogers has written one of the best in depth histories of the military prowess of Edward III.

The British king who was primarily responsible for the longbows' success was Edward III, who reigned for fifty years. In order to gain a clear picture of why the longbow enjoyed its tactical success on the battlefield under the leadership of Edward III and his commanders, it is necessary to study Edward III's record regarding the logistics, recruiting, and training of the longbow men during the Hundred Years' War. The available records during the reign of Edward III, help to flesh out a really good understanding for historians concerning the lengths he went through to build Britain's first professional army using the longbow as its primary weapon.

Rogers delves into the logistical needs necessary to supply Edward III's invasion force. The requirement on localities to provide longbow men with weapons was very demanding. Edward III made great strides to take on the fiscal responsibility of equipping his army. This actually provided him with two advantages--that of quality control of weaponry, and reducing manufacturing cost through economy of scale. One example of how enormous a task it was to prepare for war comes from the armory records at the Tower of London. In 1359, the clerk of the armory is ordered to put bowyers (longbow makers), and fletchers (arrow makers), to work for the king, under penalty of imprisonment if necessary, if they were non-cooperative. Between 1353 and 1360, the armory added to its stores, 15,300 bows, 4,000 bow staves, and 24,000 sheaves of arrows. Each sheave contained twenty-four arrows; thus, this order equates to 576,000 arrows in all. In March 1345, 15 Sheriffs were issued orders to supply the Tower armory with, "3,000 bows, 8,400 sheaves of arrows and 20,000 bowstrings." By looking at supply records leading up to the battle of Crecy, Rogers was able to surmise several important factors about the supply of arrows. Each longbow man had an allotment of 60 arrows for the battle. The average arrow weighs 4 oz., so to supply 7,500 longbow men it took nearly a half-million arrows weighing 55 tons. This supply was easily transportable in some 60 one-ton carts from the port to the army. These figures can cast little doubt on the fact that the king was constantly writing back to England throughout his campaign in France ordering more supply of arrows and bowstrings. These facts about arrow supply gives one a good picture of just one facet of the monumental logistical, organizational, and planning skills necessary to support Edward III's invasion force of about 15,000 men crossing in ships numbering some 700 to 1,000.

Rogers has done outstanding work in publishing recruiting information from both primary sources and other historians' work to explain the methods necessary to fill the ranks with soldiers. Edward III refined the recruiting methods that his predecessors had in place to fight the Welsh and Scottish wars. Unlike his predecessors, who just wanted a lot of bodies, Edward III had his commissioners of array looking for particular skill sets such as longbow men and mounted archers. The two methods Edward III employed to build his army were commissioners of array and an increasingly popular program known as contracts of indenture. Though Edward III had hoped to raise 20,000 fighting men, most historians agreed he recruited about 15,000, which was no small feat for his day. The commissioners of array for each town or county usually numbered three to four men, who themselves would eventually go off to fight in the war. Each town or county would have a quota of men they were expected to raise and equip for war. Across the board, most of the towns and counties provided one-half to two-thirds of their quotas. The counties were largely responsible for recruiting longbow men on foot, and the towns had to supply a mix of both longbow men on foot and mounted longbow men. As a for instance, Kent was required to raise 280 men and Norfolk 200. In reality, the numbers of men actually going to war was somewhat less due to several factors. Some of the men would prove to be unfit for service when they appeared for muster. However, the record shows that there were complaints from commanders in the field about the condition and physique of soldiers sent to them. No doubt, undesirable men were recruited in order to help quota numbers. The granting of service exemptions was numerous usually accompanied by the applicant paying a fee to buy himself out of service. One such request shows an Otto de Halsale paying 4 for an exemption. Just like modern times, some men just simply did not show up for the muster call. It is interesting to note that the commissioners met with little resistance from town and country folk during the time of recruitment. The estimation among historians is that some 9,000 out of the 15,000 men that went ashore in Normandy were recruited through commissions of array. Unlike the French, who used many mercenaries from other countries, such as Italy, Edward III's army was recruited from men from the British Isles.

Rogers notes in his research that, "What commissions of array produced was quantity, not quality." Thus, an increasingly popular method of recruitment to fill the ranks was contracts of indentures. This system had nobles and bannerets (knights who were entitled to lead their own men into battle) raising their own troops, which they then hired out to the king, on a contractual basis. In addition to the normal pay, these men were often promised quarterly pay bonuses and shares from war booty. About 5,000 men were recruited in this fashion at the start of the invasion. Rogers research proved that, "The spread of the longbow into the north and west of England, which increasingly became the preferred recruiting ground for archers, was facilitated and sustained by prospects of employment and profit..." Rogers found that the indenture system grew during the conduct of the war. Many men who were brought to war under the array system, would sign an indenture contract after their term under the array system was completed. In fact, men would see which commanders had more battlefield success, and would clamor to sign on with the more successful commanders. No doubt, the lure of money was a motivating factor for these men. This meant that the indentured ranks were filling with war-hardened veterans, thus making them a formidable fighting force.

If any weapon system is to be a force multiplier and weapon of mass destruction on the battlefield, then it must have soldiers properly trained to employ it. The longbow is no exception to this rule. From the age of seven, English boys were practicing with their longbows. The longbow man was not a peasant who owed service or allegiance to a noble. Instead, he was a free man who was rightly paid for his services. These were strong muscular men with a robust build enabling them to pull a 125 lb. bow. Using a longbow was not an innate skill; it was honed and improved through years of training. The young bowmen were constantly under the watchful eye of veterans during training. The veterans knew how easy it was to fire at static targets, as opposed to an enemy knight bearing down on them mounted on a charging steed. "Over the course of hundreds of years it has been proven that the best manner of using a bow is to use the same force for every shot regardless of whether the target is close or far away." All archers were taught to find a spot on their face, usually the chin, that they would draw the bowstring to touch. This gave them the ability to standardize their draw and shot power. Longbow men held all their shots the same amount of time. As they gained experience, the time needed to prepare and aim their shot became shorter. In addition, the longbow men were armed with swords or axes as well, and often joined in the hand-to-hand combat as the battle progressed. "The whole history of English warfare from the middle of the twelfth century to the end of the fifteenth century proves that the flower of her infantry was the archers."

Edward III's strategic and tactical abilities were on full display during the Hundred Years' War. One of the most important tactical innovations that Edward III instituted to increase the fighting capability of the English army before the start of the Hundred Years' War was the introduction of mounted archers to its ranks. Mounted archers rode ponies for quick transport to the battlefield, and then they would dismount to shoot their longbows in battle. Undoubtedly, Edward III learned from the previous one hundred years of his predecessors' fighting the Scottish, that too many times the Scots outmaneuvered the English; thus, they escaped from having to fight a battle advantageous to the English. Edward III was going to do all he could to make sure that this did not happen to his army. Rogers' research shows muster records from 1334 listing mounted archers for the first time as part of Edward III's expedition into Scotland. This was Edward III's second largest campaign against an enemy during his reign. The expedition served as an excellent opportunity for Edward III and his army to prove their new tactics, which they would put to good use a dozen years later in France.

Crécy was the sight of the first major battle of The Hundred Years' War and was a rousing success for the invading English army of Edward III. The battle, which took place on just two days in August of 1346, was emblematic of the tactical successes that the British enjoyed at the battles of Poitiers and Agincourt. "Crécy was fought upon principles learnt by experience in Scotland; after Crécy the same principles had to be perfected, but were not altered." According to Edward III's own account of the battle in a letter he wrote to Sir Thomas Lucy, the French army finally caught up with the English outside of the town of Crécy. Finding the wide-open terrain suitable for the tactics which the English wanted to employ, the king ordered the army to make a defensive stand there. Edward III deployed his army in three divisions; two were on the line facing toward the French on the high ground of the valley, thus, giving the longbow men excellent fields of fire. The right division was under the command of the Black Prince, and took the brunt of the fighting during the battle, while the Earl of Northampton commanded the left division. The third division was in reserve and was commanded by Edward III. The 4,000 longbow men were placed on the flanks of the two forward deployed divisions in wedges of 1,000 men each, and the cavalry was on the far flank of the longbow men. The English dug potholes in front of them on the battlefield to entrap the French cavalry.

King Philip VI of France arrived midday in front of the English and was pleased that he had finally caught up with them. In addition, he was surprised that the English were standing ready to fight and not trying to flee from the numerically superior French forces, consisting of a multinational force of some 60,000 men under arms. Outnumbering the English some four to one, King Philip VI felt over- confident that his cavalry, who contained much of the French nobility, was going to sweep the English off the field. Instead of allowing his army to rest from their arduous march, he unwisely gave orders, counter to the pleas of his allied commanders, to have his army prepare for an immediate attack on the English.

King Philip VI ordered his 15,000 Genoese crossbowmen to advance and engage the English. Still suffering from fatigue from their earlier march that day, they advanced on the English in a disorganized manner and fired their crossbows; however, they inflicted no casualties on the English since they were out of range. While the Genoese were reloading, the English longbow men let loose with a devastating flight of arrows, "...with such force and quickness, that it seemed as if it snowed." The English arrows had such a demoralizing effect on the Genoese crossbowmen that Froissart reports that the Genoese cut their crossbow strings or threw them down and started to retreat to the French lines. Philip VI, seeing the Genoese retreat pell-mell as an act of treason or at least cowardice, ordered his cavalry to run the "scoundrels" down. A general melee ensued, and as many Genoese ran towards the English to try to escape the carnage from the French cavalry, the cavalry, in its haste to slaughter the Genoese, rode within range of the English longbows. Once again, the English launched another shower of arrows striking the Genoese and French cavalry with murderous effect. Most of the cavalry were unhorsed, due to their own wounds and from their horses' wounds inflicted by the English arrows, or by the Genoese trying to defend themselves, or the English potholes tripped the horses. Regardless, the results were that most of the Genoese and French in the first attack lay dead on the slopes below the English--few survived and made their escape off the field. Charles of Bohemia, also known as the King of Germany, lay dead upon the field.

The French cavalry regrouped, and as fresh French cavalry just arrived on the field, the king's hotheaded brother, the Comte d'Alencon, ordered them to follow him on another charge towards the English. The bulk of the French cavalry rode towards the position defended by the Black Prince. His longbow men fired barbed arrows at long range, creating agonizing wounds to both knights and horses unlucky enough to be struck in unarmored portions of their flesh. As the cavalry came within 100 yards of the longbow men, they used an arrow tipped like a chisel, known as a bodkin, which easily penetrated chain mail and weaker areas of armor. Livingstone and Witzel estimate that the 2,000 English longbow men commanded by the Black Prince, shot about 16,000 bodkin tipped arrows at a flat trajectory in the last minute of the charge, which killed hundreds of the French nobility, including the reckless Comte d'Alencon.

The primary accounts wax poetic about the skill and courage that the Black Prince and his men fought with as they fended off several waves of French attacks on that day and the next day as well. Geoffrey le Baker put it succinctly when writing about the sixteen-year-old Black Prince's baptism by fire in battle. "There he learnt that knightly skill which he later put to excellent use at the battle of Poitiers, where he captured the French king." Although heavily outnumbered, Edward III's longbow men were the force multiplier that garnered a stunning victory for the British over the French. Most estimates of the longbow tactics used in the battle state the over one-half million arrows fired by the English easily cut down the French cavalry. Thus, the longbow, and the brilliant way in which it was employed, was responsible for the lopsided casualty figures of the battle. Although casualty figures are somewhat unreliable, most sources put the French losses at one-third of the French nobility-about 12,000 men in all, against the English losses of 150 to 1,000 total. The mastery of the longbow men and the tactics they employed turned them into a weapon of mass destruction and a force multiplier. "They were some of the finest, most highly trained and militarily efficient troops that any nation ever put into the field of battle." The battle of Crécy taught all the armies of Europe that the longbow would reign as the supreme weapon in battle for the next 100 years.

Recommended reading for those interested in medieval history, and military history.

The title of this book is taken from Sir John Fastolf's memorandum of 1435, concerning the war in France. Fastolf advised that the English should revert to the strategy adopted by Edward III and the Black Prince in the fourteenth century: they should mount armed raids (chevauchées), instead of continuing to rely on either the strategies of conquest or static defence; yet his advice was never followed. The days of the raid were over and, since nothing else worked, the English were driven from France in 1453. The highest watermark of English conquest proved to have been reached in 1360, not 1422.

Yet Professor Rogers's groundbreaking book, a triumph of scholarship, is not mainly concerned with Fastolf's strategy, but with battle. This is refreshing, because we have heard too much in recent years of the idea that `battles were few and far between in the Middle Ages'. There may be some truth in that, but it rather depends on what one means by a battle; and, however infrequent they were, battles were very important.

The main thesis is that Edward III was a `battle-seeking' general, one who deliberately sought to fight the French in set-piece battles, despite the fact that he could not be certain of victory. This is so contrary to the strategy advocated by the Roman Vegetius (in his `Art of War') that it would cause one to question whether that treatise was as widely read in the Middle Ages as we have come to think. In addition, is it really very likely that Edward III was deliberately seeking to `take on' the French in a major set-piece battle in 1346 (this being the classic case for study)? The circumstances would suggest that it was more likely that, like Henry V in 1415, his aim was to bring his army safely or home, or at least to Calais, and that he was trapped by the French (albeit that in each case the outcome was a triumphant victory). However, the book did give me cause to re-assess my assumptions. Professor Rogers has marshalled so much evidence that one has to doubt whether it is ever safe to rely on what one might think of as probability, even `inherent military probability'.

Stephen Cooper