Despenser's Crusade

Part of the Hundred Years War and the Crusades

Map of France in 1382, showing English conquests in pink and Flanders (top) in yellow

Date	December 1382 – September 1383
Location	Western Flanders
Result	English withdrawal

Belligerents

Ghent rebels

Commanders and leaders

Henry le Despenser
Urban VI

Charles VI
Louis de Male
Clement VII

Despenser's Crusade (or the Bishop of Norwich's Crusade, sometimes just Norwich Crusade) of 1383 was a military expedition led by Henry le Despenser that aimed to assist the city of Ghent in its struggle against the supporters of Antipope Clement VII. It took place during the great Papal schism and the Hundred Years' War between England and France. While France supported Clement, whose court was based in Avignon, the English supported Pope Urban VI in Rome.

Popular at the time among the lower and middle classes, Despenser's Crusade "was only widely criticised in hindsight", and "for all its canonical propriety, [it] was the Hundred Years' War thinly disguised". Among contemporary critics of the crusade were John Wyclif and the French chronicler Jean Froissart, who charged its leaders with hypocrisy.

The County of Flanders, in which Ghent lay, was an ally of France (part of its territory was in France and part in the Holy Roman Empire). A revolt first broke out in Flanders in September 1379, and the English parliament of 1380, the last to convene at Northampton, recorded that no wool subsidy had been received because of the "present riot" in Flanders. Wool was a major English export to the Flemish looms, and between the fiscal years of 1381–82 and 1382–83 total exports dropped from 18,000 to 11,000 sacks. In 1382–83, only 2,192 sacks passed through the main English staple port of Calais, leading to the rise of Middelburg in competition.

When the citizens of Ghent rebelled against the count, Louis de Male, in January 1382, they requested English assistance. Louis attempted to block English imports. Under the leadership of Philip van Artevelde the Flemings expelled Louis from Flanders at the Battle of Beverhoutsveld and took Bruges. Louis soon procured a French army to relieve him, and the militia of Ghent was decisively defeated at the Battle of Roosebeke on 27 November, where Philip was killed. The city was forced to accept Louis's terms, to acknowledge Clement as the legitimate pope and to aid in the fight against the English. The fleet of Ghent escaped to England, where it kept up the war.Charles VI of France entered Bruges and confiscated all the English merchants' goods.

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Wikipedia