Free A Great and Glorious Adventure by Gordon Corrigan Page B

result. In his mid- to late twenties in 1337, he appears to have been
personally brave, unheeding of danger, reckless, flamboyant, as greedy as everyone else at the time, but a competent commander and a good leader of men withal.
    Instead, however, of going straight to Dordrecht, on the Rhine south-east of Rotterdam, as he should have done, Manny decided to embark upon a private frolic of his own. First, he attacked the
port of Sluys and was repulsed, whereupon he raided the island of Cadzand, east of Zeebrugge, where he captured enough notables to earn himself a tidy sum in ransom later. He then looted the town
and burned most of the inhabitants to death, having first locked them up in the church. Lucrative though the venture was to Manny, it achieved little of military value. Having at last landed his
party at Dordrecht, the admiral returned to England to prepare to transport the main army.
    On 16 July 1338, Edward of England sailed from Walton-on-the-Naze, south of Harwich on the Essex coast. After landing at Antwerp and much to-ing and fro-ing to secure local alliances, the king
eventually processed to Coblenz, where in a lavish ceremony in September the Holy Roman Emperor Louis of Bavaria – whose anti-French and anti-papal stance was reinforced by a hefty English
bribe – appointed Edward as overlord of all the emperor’s fiefs west of the Rhine. Even Edward’s flat refusal to kiss the emperor’s foot could not mar the occasion. It was
now too late for campaigning that year and so, having promised the rulers of the minor states supposedly now allied to him large subsidies for the provision of troops, Edward ordered them to
concentrate their contingents north of Brussels in July the following year. The English court settled down in Antwerp for the winter, leaving the king’s clerical staff to reply to the
remonstrance of the pope, who objected to Edward’s dealings with the excommunicated emperor and his giving of succour to Robert of Artois. The pope pointed out that previous English kings had
come to grief by trusting too much to foreign advice, a clear reference to Edward’s father’s fixation with Piers Gaveston.
    Far from the allied armies being on parade in July, it was not until September 1339 that Edward’s army was ready to move, and even then not all the promised participants had turned up. The
campaign wasexhausting and expensive, and it achieved nothing. Much manoeuvring in Picardy around Cambrai, St Quentin and Buironfosse failed to bring Philip and the French
army to battle. A win for Philip would not gain him England, whereas a defeat could lose him France. The longer Edward stayed in France without a decisive battle, the more likely it was that his
allies would slip away, and his funds would not last forever. The end of the campaigning season found Edward angry, frustrated and increasingly in debt. His priority now was to raise enough money
to continue the war, and also to persuade Flanders that neutrality was not an option.

    On 23 January 1340, in the marketplace in Ghent, Edward III proclaimed himself king of England and France. Not only was this a restatement of his mother’s and his own claim to the French
throne – one he was egged on to make by Robert of Artois – but, if he was king of France, then the Flemings could not be accused of treason if they fought against Philip, whom Edward
claimed to be a usurper. More importantly, given that there were genuine legal doubts as to whether English kings held their French lands in liege homage from the king of France or in full
sovereignty, if Edward III was the rightful king of France, then the question was irrelevant.
    The French fleur-de-lys was now incorporated into the English royal coat of arms, quartered with the English lions (or leopards), and Edward took as his motto
Dieu et Mon Droit
–
‘God and my right’ – which has remained the motto of English and then British sovereigns to this day. Oddly, perhaps,