English Channel naval campaign (1338–1339)

English Channel naval campaign, 1338–1339

Date	March 1338 – October 1339
Location	English Channel
Result	Indecisive

Belligerents

Castilian mercenaries

Commanders and leaders

Robert Morley,
Various others

Hugues Quiéret,
Nicolas Béhuchet

Strength

Varied

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.

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.

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.

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