Hundred Years War Vol 3: v. 3 by Sumption Jonathan

Author:Sumption, Jonathan [Sumption, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571266562
Publisher: Faber and Faber Ltd
Published: 2011-06-01T20:00:00+00:00

Unknown to the English Council the future of the Anglo-Portuguese alliance on which the southern strategy depended had already become extremely uncertain. In Portugal the war with Castile was proving to be destructive and unpopular. With the coming of spring some eighty Castilian sailing ships and oared barges had appeared in the Tagus and begun to blockade Lisbon. Every day Castilian men-at-arms and Basque mountain troops landed from the ships to plunder and burn. They sacked the suburbs of Lisbon. They destroyed the fine mansions of the King and the nobility which stood along the banks of the river from Lisbon to Santarém. They launched large-scale mounted raids across the Ribatejo opposite the city. Much of this was cattle country which was rapidly denuded of its herds. There was no Portuguese fleet to resist them. It was more than a month before there was any organised defence even on land.9

Away in the east the English army passed six months, from January to June, by the Castilian frontier. Fernando had given strict instructions that the English were not to raid into Castile for fear of provoking a counter-attack for which his army was not prepared. His orders were not consistently obeyed. Early in the year ‘Canon’ Robesart led some 800 men across the Guadiana and into the foothills of the Sierra Morena. Another raiding force in the spring briefly penetrated into Castile north of Badajoz, supported by Portuguese frontier troops. But for most of the time the English sat unpaid and bored in their winter quarters waiting for orders and staring at the great featureless plain of the Alemtejo. Since they could not support themselves at the expense of their enemies they had little choice but to live off their hosts. Their encampments were situated in the richest agricultural region of Portugal. The English ranged through it, breaking into houses, stealing cattle, raping women. They tortured those who hid their goods and killed those who resisted them. An English chronicler, who presumably got his information from men serving with the army, reported that his countrymen treated the Portuguese ‘like worthless serfs’. The Portuguese King repeatedly complained to the Earl of Cambridge. But although the Earl issued orders that the offences were to stop he was not a man to make his wishes respected. After the outrages which had occurred around Lisbon the previous autumn relations between English and Portuguese sank to new lows. Englishmen travelling on their own were attacked and murdered. They were given poisoned bread to eat. Town gates were closed in their faces. Some of these were stormed by undisciplined mobs of English soldiers as if they were enemy strongholds.10

In the spring of 1382, at a critical stage of the preparations for invading Castile, a court scandal gravely weakened the Portuguese government. John of Gaunt’s Galician retainer Juan Fernández Andeiro had taken advantage of his return to Portugal with the English army to resume his affair with the Queen, Leonora Teles. With the King visibly ailing and only

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