On 1 June 1355 Edward III addressed the archbishops of Canterbury and York, among other clerical leaders, requesting their prayers, and through them the prayers of the people, for himself and his men for the upcoming campaigns. The king explained that he had sought peace while Jean II of France had used the peace negotiations to delay and cost him (Edward III) large sums of money, even as the French king was ‘preparing for war.’ His request concluded: ‘therefore the king [Edward III] is compelled to renew the war.’ Edward III could have done little else that would have so quickly published the upcoming campaign to his subjects. He meant for the news to spread. The request directed the clergy to share the information throughout England and further instructed them to pray publicly for the success of the expedition, thus enabling the king to reach the majority of his subjects. While this may have been the first time many of his subjects learned of the expeditions, for others it was old news as the actual preparations had been underway for some months.

The future success of the 1355 campaign rested upon careful preparations in England, and these preparations encompassed a wide variety of necessary tasks. Money had to be raised; food had to be purveyed; horses had to be purchased; ships had to be manned. Men also needed to be recruited, as we shall discuss in the next chapter. All of these tasks took time to complete, and the planning and preparations began – had to begin – well before the Prince and his company sailed from Plymouth. The process began with the decision to send an English army to Gascony. Logically, discussions of finances, supplies and the Prince's fleet followed. All of these preparations took place within the larger context of the existing purveyance structure in England and benefitted from England's experience in transporting men, horses and supplies to France.

The Decision to go to War

Henry of Grosmont (c.1310–1361), the duke of Lancaster, left England for the papal court in November 1354 ‘on the weighty business of the king and his realm,’ namely the negotiation of a suitable peace (pace competenti) with France before the existing truce expired on 5 April 1355.

The preparations in England completed and a favorable wind at long last obtained, the Prince and his company finally set sail from Plymouth on 9 September 1355 and arrived in the Gironde on 20 September. The elevenday passage seems to have been moderately uneventful, although several horses were lost during the voyage. Several Cheshire archers belonging to the companies of Hamon Mascy and Robert Brun lost their horses during the voyage and collected £12 18s 8d as a ‘gift in aid of expenditures for … horses lost at sea.’ At least one ship was lost. The owner, Nicholas de Rothum, received a pardon of a 100-marks debt and ‘the goods in a ship of Scotland arrested by him in the Tyne and the ransoms of the Scots therein’ as compensation, and an unnamed shipmaster accepted 13s 9d as a reimbursement for repairs to his vessel.

Upon landing in Bordeaux, final preparations for the fall chevauchée began and must have proceeded quickly, as the campaign set out within two weeks of dropping anchor in Bordeaux – they did have to wait for the horses to recover from the eleven-day voyage. The rapidity with which these last arrangements were made suggests that the Gascons had already been preparing for the expedition. On the whole, the expedition was well organized, prepared for the logistical challenges of the march, and flexible enough to pursue what Yuval Harari terms a radical raiding strategy through southern France, a strategy which the army used effectively. That strategy and the organization of the army into three battles may have been decided upon prior to the departure from England but would certainly have been revisited in Bordeaux when the Gascons joined the force. The first section of the march was probably pre-scouted, almost certainly to Arouille (81 miles [130km]) where the banners were unfurled and the army divided into three battles, and possibly as far as Toulouse, about 153 miles (246km) following a mostly direct route but roughly 186 miles (300km) following the route taken by the army.

This chapter, then, covers the first half of the Prince's campaign: the march from Bordeaux to Narbonne.

The data below is drawn from Baker's Chronicon, The Black Prince's Register, Rymer's Foedera, the Gascon Rolls, the Patent and the Calendar rolls, Henxteworth's accounts, and The Soldier in Later Medieval England project, particularly the searchable database (http://www.medievalsoldier.org).

Vanguard (prima custodia)

Commanders:

Thomas Beauchamp, KG, earl of Warwick, constable of the army

Middle Guard (media custodia)

Commander:

Edward of Woodstock, KG*, Prince of Wales

When the Prince and his forces set out on 4 August 1356 on the Poitiers campaign, he and the army had the success of 1355 to build upon. And the 1355 chevauchée was, in the estimation of the English anyway, a success. The Anglo-Gascon army had marched 606 miles (975km) from Bordeaux to Narbonne and back again in fifty-nine days with minimal logistical difficulties. It had crossed the Garonne river and carried the war to parts of France that had not seen war for some time, destroyed towns, infrastructure and economic resources, and returned to Bordeaux laden with booty and records. The logistics of the Anglo-Gascon army were up to the task, even when faced with long and arduous marches, some of which had little available water along the way. No great losses were reported. While an additional 600 archers were recruited in early 1356, there is no real way to know how many men were lost. A number of horses undoubtedly perished, and Baker notes more than one march that resulted in the loss of a number of horses. Despite that difficulty – the loss of some horses was no doubt anticipated – the army's progress was not slowed, which is further evidence of the organization and excellent advance planning of the campaign. The planning and the organized system of supply during the campaign enabled the Prince to succeed in his first solo command and to achieve the stated goals of the expedition with no significant losses.

According to the documentary evidence, the intended outcomes of this campaign were to punish the count of Armagnac, to aid the Gascons in their struggle against Armagnac and the French crown, and to extend the reach of the English crown in France through retaking lands lost to Armagnac, convincing those Gascons whose loyalties were wavering that their best interests lay with England and winning new allies. Following the conclusion of the campaign, the Prince's and Wingfield's letters claim success based on these criteria: they had reclaimed lands, punished rebels, disrupted France's ability to fight against the English and persuaded some Gascons lords to return to their allegiance to Edward III. The campaign itself backs their words: The stated goals were more than rhetorical cover for plundering.

When the Prince left Plymouth on 9 September 1355, a sizeable though not extraordinarily large army sailed with him. This force had to be recruited, paid and equipped. It had to be organized, and effective organization required a certain amount of bureaucracy and the attendant support staff. But as with purveyance, recruiting an army was something of which the English had experience.

Numbers

The Anglo-Gascon force that marched from Bordeaux was by no means a small army; nor was it unusually large for the fourteenth century, even after the Black Death. Previous estimates of its total size vary from too low (3400) – usually because the Gascons are not included – to obviously exaggerated. Discounting the several thousand Gascons, of course, skews the numbers downward. The assumption is that the chroniclers always exaggerated their figures, and revising those figures downward is also problematic, as in most instances there is no explanation for why and how the numbers were established. Logistics and ineluctable realities, as well as the administrative documents, can be used to check the accuracy of the chroniclers and correct them as appropriate so that we can arrive at a figure more precise than John Trevisa's ‘many men of armes and archeres.’ First, though, a brief survey of previous estimates will illustrate the variety of figures and methods used to arrive at them.

Herbert Hewitt, in his study of the expedition, only offers numbers for the English troops. He gives the following figures: ‘1000 men-at-arms, 1000 horse archers, 300 to 400 foot archers, about 170 Welshmen.’ His numbers are based on the earlier works of A.E. Prince and J.H. Ramsay, as well as the chronicles and the indenture between the Prince and Edward III, but he offers no further explanation as to how he arrived at these figures.

Ramsay concludes the Prince took 3400 men to Gascony: the 1100 men specified in the indenture for the Prince's personal retinue and then double that number for the magnates’ contingents, thereby arriving at an estimate close to Robert of Avesbury's 3000, plus Welshmen. It is unclear why and how he arrives at that number for the earls’ retinues.

The Prince's army halted at Narbonne, about 114 miles (184km) from Toulouse, most of which distance was traveled along the Via Aquitania. This was the furthest east the army marched, although a few raiding parties did venture a bit farther. After the halt at Narbonne, the Anglo-Gascon army turned for Bordeaux. The return march was more arduous than the outward one from Bordeaux to Narbonne. The days grew shorter: only 9.7 hours of daylight in Narbonne on 10 November and 8.9 daylight hours by the time the army reached La Réole on 2 December. The speed was faster, the rests were fewer and the French forces were in pursuit.

The Anglo-Gascon army reached Narbonne on Sunday 8 November. It had covered an impressive distance (300 miles [482km]) in the 35 days since leaving Bordeaux on 5 October. Of those days, 12 were spent resting, some of which were necessary for both men and horses. The army, then, marched only 23 days during the campaign to Narbonne. It had maintained an average rate of 13 miles (21km) per day during the first half of the campaign, with a ratio of about one rest day for every two march days. The return to Bordeaux proceeded at an accelerated pace. The army marched 289 miles (465km) in 24 days total: 19 marching days and 5 halts. Its rate of march accelerated to an average of 15 miles (24km) per day, and the ratio of rest to march decreased to one rest day for almost every four days of marching. This acceleration was despite the increased baggage and had several causes, not least of which were the lateness of the season – it was already November and the army was 300 miles (482km) from Bordeaux and about 200 miles (321km) from friendly territory – and the pursuit by French forces. The march back, however, began with a halt.

The Anglo-Gascon Army at Narbonne

The Prince and his army halted at Narbonne on 8 November, where they remained encamped on the following day. According to the Prince, Narbonne was ‘a noble city and of fair size, greater than Carcassonne.’ Narbonne itself had some 30,000 residents and was 88 acres within the walls.

On 19 September 1356 Edward of Woodstock (1330–1376) and his Anglo- Gascon army defeated Jean II (1319–1364) of France at the Battle of Poitiers. In many ways, this victory was the culmination of the Prince's expedition that began in 1355. The Prince could not have anticipated such a triumph when he and his army left Plymouth in September 1355 and sailed to Bordeaux. His campaign was Edward III's (1312–1377) response to the Gascon lords’ appeal for help in resisting the French, specifically the military actions of Jean I, count of Armagnac (1311–1373). The Prince campaigned through southern France – from Bordeaux to Narbonne and back – in the fall of 1355, but the victory at Poitiers often overshadows the successes of the 1355 campaign. The 1355 chevauchée, one of the fast-moving raids that were a common feature of English warfare in this period, is typically cast as the prelude to Poitiers. Indeed, a recent title states this relationship explicitly: In the Steps of the Black Prince: The Road to Poitiers, 1355–1356. While the two campaigns of 1355 and 1356 were part of the same expedition, each needs to be assessed and examined individually. The 1355 chevauchée should be understood as a discrete campaign, not solely as the prelude to Poitiers. As such, it can be a case study of the logistics of a chevauchée, useful because there were no extraordinary battles. It was typical in that the Prince's army had to be transported from England to the continent and cross lands held by the English, Gascons, potential allies, and enemies, which necessitated the army pursuing a variety of strategies for acquiring supplies. This campaign demonstrates that a chevauchée needed logistical support; moreover, the logistics speak to the Prince's goals for this specific campaign and more generally to Edward III's larger strategy. Thus, the logistics are a method for understanding decisions made during a campaign, decisions that might otherwise remain opaque.

While the roots of the Hundred Years War are well known and need not be restated here, a few words about the war's progress in Gascony in the decade preceding the campaign are necessary. English and Gascon forces led by Henry of Grosmont (1310–1361), the earl of Lancaster as of 1345, retook Bergerac, La Réole and Aiguillon in Gascony during Lancaster's campaigns of 1345–1346.