← This is History: History’s Greatest Fails
Loading summary
Transcript20 lines
- [00:01]
Podcast Host
NPR's Throughline podcast sort of feels like stepping into a time machine. Each episode, our Peabody Award winning show travels beyond the headlines. To answer the question how did we get here? Listen to one of Apple's favorite podcasts of 2024 by searching for Throughline on Apple Podcasts or on your favorite podcast app.
- [00:30]
Dan Jones
As the horse pulls the carriage over the bumpy wooden causeway through the marsh towards the town of Calais, Queen Philippa hears some strange sounds echoing over the bleak wetland. At first, from a long way away, they sound like little pops, like bubbles bursting or a heavy door slamming on the other side of one of her palaces. But as the wheels of her carriage rumble closer to her husband's war camp, the pops get louder. They turn into bangs, then full blown roars. They don't come regularly, but she can tell when the next one is about to happen. There's a hubbub of men's voices shouting urgently. She can make out some of the words. Ready, Add the fire now get down, by God. And then boom. A bang. A roar, a blast. A puff of black smoke drifts upwards and a few hundred yards away on Calais town walls, the 37 year old queen can pick out a different sort of cloud masonry dust and shattered stone, little fragments of the wall tumbling silently down towards the wide double moats that surround this town. Philippa knows what she's looking at. She's heard her husband, Edward iii, and their eldest son, known later as the Black Prince, talk obsessively about this topic many times before. What's making all this sound and smoke are guns. Peau de fer. People call them iron pots. They're pretty crude devices, but they have a magic ingredient that makes them loud, dangerous and scary. It's called gunpowder. It's newly arrived in Europe from the Far east, and the finest military minds are still figuring out how best to use it. Philip has heard how her husband used gunpowder on the battlefield in his famous victory at Crecy last summer, experimenting with noisy, if not especially deadly, cannons. Now he's playing around with it again. Not in a battle, in a siege. For several months now, Edward, the Black Prince and a rotating cast of their noble friends and allies have been living on the marshland outside Calais, trying to break the spirit of the townsfolk. Philippa has barely seen Edward in all that time, and now, with Christmas approaching, she's decided to pay him a visit. This isn't going to be an unpleasant surprise. Philippa knows Edward will be delighted to see her. They're rarely parted for this long. They've been married for almost 20 years now. And their personal and political partnership goes from strength to strength. What she isn't prepared for is the scale of the siege camp that Edward and his troops have built at Calais. Guns or no guns, this place is something else. As far as the eye can see, Calais is surrounded. The town itself isn't huge, but the English military encampment very much is. The sandy, muddy marshland is crisscrossed by wooden causeways like the one her carriage is now rolling bumpily along. Everywhere that the land is dry enough to build on, there are temporary shacks and buildings. There are thousands of rudimentary huts in which filthy, bedraggled soldiers live, their clothes hung here and there on washing lines in a vain attempt to dry them out. But in the center of this shanty town is what looks like a fully fledged city. It's built from timber rather than stone, but Philippa can make out everything you'd expect to see in a provincial English market town. Churches, hospitals and stables, blacksmiths, bakeries and butchers. There's a grand wooden hall with a thatched roof, which she assumes must be Edward's palace. And everywhere there are people, thousands upon thousands of them. Many are obviously troops, broad shouldered archers and gunners with faces and hands stained black from spending all day around these noisy, smelly cannons. Squires bustle around. Men at arms wearing gleaming plate armour grooms lead horses around, patting them reassuringly on their flanks to calm them whenever there's a bang from the guns. There are women, too. Laundresses, alewives, and a few done up to the nines with their faces painted and enough of their bodies on display to suggest that they work in what must be the siege camp's red light district. The Queen has seen plenty of incredible things in her time, but this is up there with the wildest. There might be a few onlookers who wonder as her carriage rumbles along the causeway, what exactly Queen Philippa has come here for. Her reputation as a queen is for being a great companion to her husband. She's been by his side when he's campaigned in Scotland, and she's always the life and soul of parties and tournaments at court. That said, no one in their right mind would choose to stay very long in this siege camp outside Calais if they didn't have to. Besides, the dirt, the wet, the stench and the noise, disease has been whipping around and lots of men have been dying of dysentery. Is it really worth the Queen's while being here? Well, it's true that the Siege of Calais in the dead of winter makes a wet weekend at Glastonbury look like a five star spa retreat. And it's equally true that war in the 14th century is not a traditional place for a queen to roll up her sleeves and get stuck in. But what no one can know as Queen Philippa arrives at Calais is that in fact she's going to play a pivotal and iconic role in the most dramatic moment of this siege. A role that will not only leave chroniclers at the time open mouthed with wonder, but but will later be immortalized by one of the greatest artists who ever lives. I'm Dan Jones and from Sony Music Entertainment. This is history Season 6 of A Dynasty to Die For Episode 6 the Siege of Calais say you want to get your head with a third on.
- [08:09]
Advertisement Voice
And make your own range of kickass squad jackets and matching merch and make.
- [08:14]
Dan Jones
Money at the same time.
- [08:15]
Advertisement Voice
There's only one place to go. That's the sound you'll hear when you make another sale on Shopify. It's the all in one commerce platform to start, run and grow your business. It doesn't have to be squad jackets. It can be anything art, plants, health or beauty. Shopify simplifies selling online and in person so you can successfully grow your business however you want to sell. Shopify has you covered with a shopfront ready POS system and and it works with social media marketplaces too like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. It's time to get serious about selling and get Shopify Today. Sign up for a £1 per month trial period at shopify.co.uk thisishistory all lowercase go to shopify.co.uk thisIshistory to take your.
- [09:02]
Dan Jones
Business to the next level today.
- [09:04]
Advertisement Voice
Shopify.co.uk ThisIshistory in the middle Ages, guarding your correspondence was fairly simple.
- [09:11]
Dan Jones
If your seal had been broken, someone had snooped.
- [09:14]
Advertisement Voice
Today it's a lot more complicated to protect our data and our communication.
- [09:18]
Dan Jones
That's where ProtonMail comes in. ProtonMail is the world's largest secure email service. It can give you unparalleled email privacy.
- [09:27]
Advertisement Voice
Through end to end encryption. That means only you and your recipient.
- [09:32]
Dan Jones
Can access your message. If it's a private and secure alternative.
- [09:35]
Advertisement Voice
To traditional email services. It provides safeguarding from hacking, surveillance targeted ads and it protects you against phishing attempts.
- [09:44]
Dan Jones
I've been trying it out and it's.
- [09:46]
Advertisement Voice
A super simple interface. You can add multiple email addresses and.
- [09:50]
Dan Jones
It'S got more data than I will ever use. Your data is yours. Keep it that way with ProtonMail's Privacy first email service, go to Proton Me ThisIsHistory or simply click the link in.
- [10:02]
Advertisement Voice
The description to get started and receive.
- [10:05]
Dan Jones
A 30.
- [10:07]
Advertisement Voice
In the middle Ages, when the French king is captured and put into the Tower of London, France goes into full blown anarchy. If only they'd had access to Indeed, they could have found the perfect replacement king straight away and saved the country from total meltdown. That's because when it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Indeed sponsored jobs help you stand out and hire fast. That makes a huge difference. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs. So while it's too late for medieval French revolutionaries, it's the perfect time for you to get your job seen by the right people fast and listeners of this show will get a £100 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com dynasty just go to indeed.com dynasty right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com dynasty terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.
- [11:09]
Dan Jones
When I was growing up, the French town of Calais was known by Brits for one thing, the booze cruise alcoholic drinks were maybe still are cheaper in France than in the uk. So if your parents were planning a big party, a family wedding or similar, they'd hop in the car, drive to Dover, get on the ferry and go to the closest point in France across the channel to stock up. They'd load up the car with wine and then bring it back to Blighty and a few weeks later, voila, a great party. Everyone gets wasted and maybe there's a big fight. Now all that might seem a million miles away from the world of the Plantagenets and Edward iii, but in fact it's not. Arguably, all of it is rooted in the extraordinary 11 month siege that happens in Calais in 1346-7, when Edward and as many as 30,000 English troops set up shop outside the French city and refuse to leave until they've made it part of England. Edward ploughs what seems like insane amounts of time, blood, sweat and money into besieging Calais. Yet he does so because he knows that it's a prize like no other. Calais is the closest bit of France to England, visible on a clear day from the white cliffs of Dover. It has a symbolic value on that basis alone, but Calais also offers immense economic, military and political opportunity to England. Edward started the Hundred Years War because he says he wants to be the ruler of France as well as his Plantagenet territories. Whether he believes that in his heart or just sees it as a brilliant bargaining tool isn't always certain, but either way, there are few more alluring targets than a place that's so close that with a bit of hardcore freestyle training, you could swim to it. Calais, in English hands could be a mercantile colony and a military bridgehead. On the Continent, it's close to cities run by Flemish allies of Edward's. If a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, Calais is that first step. So I think Edward's little known siege of Calais is a topic well worth exploring at length. In fact, a couple of years ago, I wrote an entire novel set in the midst of that siege, which I'll be discussing on this week's subscriber episode with producer Georgia. So let's pick up our story where we left off last time, with Edward having smashed Philip VI's forces at the Battle of Crecy, and our Plantagenet hero working out what his next play in the Hundred Years War might be. It's late August 1346, when Edward wins the Battle of Crecy and he's in a pretty strong position against all the odds. He's smashed up the French countryside on a chevauche, defied Philip's attempts to trap him by breaking river bridges, taken on the cream of the French nobility and won. His son, the Black Prince, has proven himself a man just about in the thick of the fighting. A lesser king might have decided to call it a day and go home for a well earned celebration. Not Edward. He knows that his men are too tired and too few to turn around from Picardy and march to Paris. No matter how badly Philip has screwed up, that would be to hand the advantage back to him. But Edward can still turn the screw, and it's Calais where he decides to turn it. It's obvious when he arrives outside Calais in early September that this is not going to be an easy place to besiege. Calais is naturally very well defended. On one side there's the sea, on the other three sides there are soaring walls with high defensive towers built into them. Outside that, there's a double ring of moats fed with salt water from the sea. And beyond that, as we've already heard, there are miles of wetland which is miserable to live on. Dithering Philip VI can be relied upon to take weeks, maybe months, before he raises an army. That gives Edward time to ship in reinforcements from England and the materials he needs to build an encampment that can house his army over the winter. All the same, Calais has a full garrison of soldiers inside it. And what's more, Edward doesn't have enough ships available to mount a full naval blockade. That means the French can bring in men, food, supplies and weapons from other places on the coast. Their naval operation to do that is run by a pair of pirates known as Jean Marron and Jean Mestrielle, who have the means and the balls to sail regularly into Calais harbour, dodging cannon fire and attempts by English vessels to intercept them. Since Edward's guns aren't powerful enough to actually blow holes in the walls themselves, he's relying on starvation to persuade the people of Calais to give up and hand over their city to him. But unless he can properly cut off the supplies to the city, that's not going to happen. Which is why he has to accept that taking Calais is going to be a battle of attrition. Will he manage to put a chokehold on Calais supplies? Or will the citizens keep him at bay for long enough that he runs out of money or patience and gives up? That's the dilemma. The one thing that's certain is that the siege is going to last a very long time. The siege camp that Queen Philippa sees when she arrives is so large and semi permanent that the English actually give it a name. It's called Villeneuve Lahadi, which roughly translates as the bold new town. There's a great description of it by a chronicler called Jean Le Bel, which I think takes us right into the reality of what this siege was like. The chronicler notes that Edward knows he has no chance of reducing the city by battering it. So he had a lodge made with timber and planks and roofed with straw to house his him all that winter, and ordered the building of good earthworks around his army to prevent them from attack and harm all his lords and knights. Made the best lodges they could, some of wood, some of broom, some of straw, until soon they had built a strong and substantial town. Indeed, you could buy whatever you wanted there at a good price. They had a meat market and a market for clothes and all manner of goods as fine as at Aras or Amiens. Those are nearby towns in Flanders. The same chronicler describes how the English will go out on raids to nearby French towns that are less well defended and rustle cattle or burn buildings. He also describes how from time to time, the garrison in Calais will kick out a few hundred of the ordinary towns, for so there are fewer useless mouths to feed as winter approaches. But the fact is that as autumn turns to winter in 1346, people in Edward's army are starting to wonder how they'll ever break the deadlock. By the time Queen Philippa arrives at Christmas, however, Edward has a plan. What's more, Queen Philippa has brought some sensationally good news from hundreds of miles away at the other end of his kingdom. That news has the potential to break the months long deadlock at Calais. It involves our old friend, the watery, boweled King of Scotland, David the altershitter. English soldiers jog across a wooden bridge over the River Brownie. They're battered, muddy, and some of them are wincing in pain, but they're in high spirits. They've just won a sensational victory. These guys aren't in Calais, they're in northern England, in County Durham. But the battle they've just won is going to have an impact on King Edward's struggle with Philip vi. This is the Hundred Years War and everything is connected. The clash of arms they've just won is known as the Battle of Neville's Cross. The enemy they've defeated is a Scottish army led by none other than King David ii. On the field of combat, thousands of Scots lie groaning as they bleed out, having been butchered by a combination of English longbow shot and ferocious attacks by English men at arms. Those who aren't dead or dying have scarpered. Now the English troops jogging over this bridge are on a mission to track down the leader of the Scots army. He's been seen heading this way. Where could he have been going? Suddenly, one of the soldiers stops. He puts his finger to his lips and points at the river. The others look confused, but then they twig. In the reflection of the river water is a very bloody face. It's got an arrow sticking out of it, but it's recognisable all the same. It's King David. He's miraculously alive and he's hiding under the bridge, hoping he'll be able to make a getaway. No chance. The soldiers creep down to the waterside and one of them peers into David's hiding spot. Peekaboo. Alter shitter. The game's up now. Cut back to calais at Christmas 1346. And this news has really put a smile on King Edward's face. For one thing, it's a major coup achieved while Queen Philippa was back in England holding the fort. This royal couple are always at their best when they're winning together. For another, it's basically total victory over the Scots. David is Captured and in prison in London now, with doctors puzzling how to get the arrowheads out of his face. That means Edward will be able to devote more and more resources to the Calais siege, rather than having to split his men and attention evenly between Scotland and France. As winter 1346 turns to spring 1347, Edward's government back in England starts to send over a surge of troops and weapons. Tens of thousands of Englishmen are packed onto ships and sent the short distance across the Channel. Many of them are hardened criminals who've agreed to sign up to the Royal army in exchange for a pardon for their crimes. It doesn't really matter to Edward where these roughnecks have come from or what they've done. Boots on the ground is everything. What's more, Edward has finally figured out a way to stop the pirate supply runs getting into Calais harbour. He's done it by ordering his men to sink a ship. Not a pirate ship, one of their own. They've sailed a large vessel into the mouth of Calais harbour. The crew have put holes in the hull and then bailed, leaving the ship to glug, glug, glug to the seab. The water in the harbour mouth is shallow enough that this ship is now a deadly obstacle to any other craft trying to get into Calais. The job of blockade runners, like the two pirates, Marron and Mestrielle, is now massively more difficult. Plus, the English use their troop surge to seize a spit of land that guards the harbourmouth, known as the Risbank. They build a wooden fortress there and install catapults to bombard any enemy shipping that does try it on. The effect of all of this is simple and brutal. Edward tightens a stranglehold around Calais. There's no way for the French to get food or other supplies in to keep the citizens going. From the spring of 1347 onwards, there are only two hopes for Calais. Either the English get bored and go home, which is never going to happen, or Philip VI gets a grip and brings an army to drive Edward away. Philip, as we know all too well, seldom does anything with a sense of urgency. It takes him weeks, then months, to get his act together. By the time he does start marching troops towards Calais, it's the summer and things inside the city are getting really rough. And I mean really rough. When news that Philip is coming to try and break the siege filters into Calais, the citizens smuggle out a letter to him. Taken by a swimmer, the letter tells Philip, in no uncertain terms just how bad things are. It reads Know, most gentle Lord, that your people in Calais have eaten their horses, dogs and the rats, and there is nothing left here which has not been eaten unless we eat the flesh of men. But the letter never gets to Philip. It's intercepted by the English and taken to Edward, who now knows that he has Calais on the verge of giving up. In the end, he doesn't even have to fight Philip off. The French King, in a classic Philip move, marches his troops close to the English position. But then, yes, dithers, panics, loses his nerve and convinces himself that Edward has so many troops that it's a suicide mission to attack him. So Philip just goes home. When the people inside Calais see from their walls that the King's army is retreating, they do the only thing that's possible. They send out messengers to tell Edward that they give up. The messengers sent to carry out the formal handover of the city are six burghers, or wealthy merchants. And they're told they need to present themselves to Edward, ready to die wearing just their undershirts, with nooses round their necks. When they meet the King, he's stony faced and berates them for wasting so much of his time keeping this huge army in the field when they were doomed to give up all along. The burghers beg for their lives, but Edward isn't having any of it. He sentences them all to death. But that's where Queen Philippa comes in. When she hears Edward sentence the burghers to die, she throws herself dramatically onto her knees and pleads with him to have mercy, whether it's performative or real. Edward relents and allows the burghers to escape with their lives. But he claims his right to seize all the buildings and property within Calais and grant it to English merchants and his friends as reward for backing his campaign. It's probably no coincidence that Queen Philippa gets the choicest properties for herself. The burghers of Calais, appearing in their pathetic rags, ready to die, will become an iconic moment from the Hundred Years War. Centuries later, it becomes the subject for one of the French sculptor Auguste Rodin's most famous works, an astonishing study in human suffering in the face of death. Versions of the sculpture can be found all over the world. There's one outside the Houses of Parliament in London and another in the middle of modern day Calais in 1347. However, Calais is more than just the inspiration for great art. It's a heavy blow struck by Edward against Philip vi. The town will remain in English hands for more than 200 years and will play a crucial role in the rest of the Hundred Years War. Edward now has a commercial colony and a military access point on the French coast. Once again, he's mugged Philip VI right off. It looks like he's set up to batter a path all the way to the gates of Paris. But within 12 months, everything is in turmoil because charging towards Western Europe is a new enemy deadlier than anything seen in human history before or since. It's a pandemic called the Black Death, and it's going to change the world forever. But that's for next time on this Is History.