Invasion: The Forgotten French Bid to Conquer England by Duncan Cameron

Author:Duncan Cameron [Cameron, Duncan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amberley Publishing
Published: 2019-12-11T16:00:00+00:00

12

NEW FRENCH INVASION PLANS

From this time onwards France was engaged in what should have been a well-thought out strategy for taking care of the English menace. For thirty years the English war machine, much of the time led by Edward III, in later years by his sons, had been relentlessly struggling to undermine France – its territory and its leadership. If that meant destroying civilian lives and wrecking the infrastructure of entire regions, all well and good. But despite a string of brilliant military victories, the English forces were never large or strong enough to conquer all of France. Yet despite being a much bigger and wealthier country than England, France had – until the reign of Charles the Wise – never created a war economy, one that had the monetary resources to build a powerful army and navy and the manpower needed to act effectively. For the next twenty years, until the end of the 1380s, that is the path that Charles chose for his country, to become a military superpower.

By 1369 the post-Poitier year zero must have seemed a long time ago, and the Black Death was no longer part of the day-to-day condition of life. The destruction and chaos of the early years of Charles’ years as Dauphin were in the past. The nitty-gritty financial and manpower changes that Charles had brought in were working, and much of the money was being spent in Rouen and Harfleur, and in the Channel ports such as Honfleur and Dieppe. They were enjoying royal favour and the dockyards were busy. Sailors were being recruited and paid a daily allowance while on service. Castilian, Genoese and Monegasques experts were getting paid for their services. By now they were engaged in practical details such as laying in supplies of food and drink.1

This was to be the French response to English aggression. It was to be a full-scale invasion force, like the types of invasion that Edward had carried out with such devastating success twenty years ago but in reverse. The French fleet was not yet fully operational, but with the help of the Castilians, the Genoese and the trusty Monegasques many of the deficiencies could be made up. Most of the French ships were merchantmen impressed into service and converted to military use with fore and aft castles and with arrangements to stable horses in stalls in the hold. Unfortunately, French recovery had only come so far and most of the vessels were a mere 50 tons or so. For the Castilians the timing of the request for assistance from King Charles was unfortunate as they were engaged in their own internal problems – they were in the midst of a civil war.

Now Charles was spending much of his time in residence in Rouen, and he often appeared with his guests and companions to watch men busily at work preparing to best the English. Ships and sailing were not normally seen as worthy of the attention of a king and the subject

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.