User:Persiken/English Channel naval campaign (1338–1339)

The English Channel naval campaign of the years 1338 and 1339 saw a protracted series of raids conducted by the nascent French navy and numerous privately owned raiders and pirates against English towns, shipping and islands in the English Channel which caused widespread panic, damage and financial loss to the region and prompted a serious readjustment of English finances during the early stages of the Hundred Years War. This period was then followed by a French disaster caused by over-confidence and a reversing of roles which had a major effect in the English successes of the next two decades. However this result was by no means assured until late 1339 and had the French fought a little longer, they could have potentially ended the war before it had really begun.

Coastal raids were not uncommon in fourteenth century England, with privately owned shipping and occasionally royal ships from France, Castile, Genoa, Scotland and Scandinavia all conducting nuisance attacks against coastal shipping and fishing villages throughout the era, even during periods of peace. What made the naval campaigns of 1338 and 1339 so important was that these were focused and sustained raids with a deliberate strategic aim in mind, targeting major English towns rather than isolated hamlets and doing so at a critical point in the developing war.

The Hundred Years War
In 1338 with the Hundred Years War just a year old, the French government was facing a severe threat on two sides. On the south were the English territories of Gascony and Aquitaine, from which lancing raids and chevauchées could be launched into the French heartlands, and where the boundary was both poorly defined and relied far more on the allegiance of the local fief than upon national designations. To the north-east, the situation was even more grim, with the English funded armies of, Hainaut, Brabant and even the Holy Roman Empire either preparing or threatening invasion of France's northern provinces.

Financial troubles
However, King Edward III, the leader of this loose coalition, had one very serious problem. In spite of England's huge revenue from control of the wool industry, his exchequer was bankrupt. Without English funding, his coalition would collapse but such huge spending requirements were needed to maintain the army building in Flanders that by 1338 after just one campaign, he was unable to continue fighting without borrowing enormous sums from Italian bankers at ruinous interest (which he would later default on, prompting an enormous financial crash in Italy). Edward's concerns were common knowledge to other heads of state in Europe and it was recognised by the French government that by destroying English ports and shipping, they could gain such a stranglehold both on the wool trade and the shipping of reinforcements that Edward might be forced to abandon his invasion plans.

Portsmouth & Jersey
At the beginning of February, King Philip VI appointed a new Admiral of France, one Nicholas Béhuchet, who had previously served as a treasury official and now was instructed to wage economic warfare against England. On 24 March he began his campaign, leading a large fleet of small coastal ships across the Channel from Calais and into the Solent where they landed and burnt the vitally important port-town of Portsmouth. The town was unwalled and undefended and the French were not suspected as they sailed towards the town with English flags flying. The result was a disaster for Edward, as the town's shipping and supplies were looted, the houses, stores and docks burnt down and those of the population unable to flee killed or taken off as slaves. No English ships were available to contest their passage from Portsmouth and none of the militias intended to form in such an instance made an appearance.

The fleet then sailed to the Channel Islands, which had already suffered minor attacks the previous year but now faced a major threat, Jersey being invaded by the French crews and the entire eastern half of the island reduced to ruins, only Mont Orgueil holding out. The raid had been predicted by intelligence officers in the royal household, but defensive measures were woefully inefficient and efforts to intercept the attack had utterly failed.