Part 1 (1/2)

Hundred Years War.

Fields of Glory.

Michael Jecks.

For my parents, Beryl and Peter, with much love.

A new direction . . .

And For Andy and Mandy.

in the hope this may distract you both from the events of the last horrible couple of years.

Lots of love.

Sir John de Sully.

Knight Banneret from Devon Richard Bakere Esquire to Sir John Granda.r.s.e under Sir John, the Centener: leader of a hundred men.

Berenger Fripper the leader of one vintaine of twenty men under Granda.r.s.e.

Members of Berenger's vintaine:.

Clip Eliot Jack Fletcher Jon Furrier Gilbert 'Gil'

Luke.

Matt Geoff atte Mill Oliver Walt Will 'The Wisp'

Ed 'The Donkey'

orphan found by the vintaine in Portsmouth Roger vintener of the second vintaine Mark Tyler/Mark of London Roger's most recent recruit Archibald Tanner a 'gynour' trained in gunpowder and cannon Erbin leader of a party of Welsh fighters.

Dewi and Owain Welshmen under Erbin King Edward III King of England.

King Edward II the King's predecessor, rumoured to have died in Berkeley Castle King Philippe VI.

King of France Edward of Woodstock son of Edward III, later known as 'the Black Prince'

Earl Thomas of Warwick a noted peer of the realm and Marshal of England Beatrice Pouillet.

daughter of a gunpowder merchant in France.

In those far-off days when I was still at school, I was a member of a book club that was devoted to non-fiction books on warfare, and bought vast numbers from them. They remain on my bookshelves, the greater part of them very well-thumbed and yellowed, but all offering a haven of peace whenever I need it. Lyn MacDonald's They Called It Pa.s.schendaele (which I read when only eleven), books on the Somme, Max Hastings' The Korean War, and books about the Das Reich Panzer Division and Bomber Command they are still there in front of me as I type this.

But one in particular, sadly, is missing. It was a t.i.tle I enjoyed so much that I kept offering it to other people to read. One of them took it and lost it. I have mourned the loss of that book for many years. It was The Hundred Years War by Desmond Seward, first published by Constable in 1978. I must have bought my copy in about 1983 or so, and I read it twice, back to back, in my cottage in Oxted, Surrey.

The book is a gem of concise, undramatic but enthralling writing. So much so that I was forced to buy a new copy as soon as I was able to do so. Of course, it's not the only book on the Hundred Years War, and, if I'm brutally honest, it's probably not the best. There are many other t.i.tles, from Jonathan Sumption's superb studies of the same subject to books by experts like Terry Jones (I have sung his praises many times before, but I'll do it again: if you haven't read Chaucer's Knight: Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary it is high time you did) but it was Seward's book that fired my imagination in the first place. It was his book that persuaded me to find out more about this terrible time, and his book that inspired me to write about the Battle of Crecy.

It is difficult to write a book that includes the lives of real people.

In Medieval Murderers, the performance group I founded more than a decade ago, we have had many debates about whether or not to use real characters from history. When I set out to create my medieval world, I was determined not to look at matters from the point of view of real characters, because I had a secret dread of someone doing that to me. I could all too easily envisage a time when someone read an article on their . . . what will it be in a few hundred years? On their wall? In their retina? Well, no matter where they would see it, they would read about this fellow Jecks who was alive in the early twenty-first century, and might want to write about him. They would have him as a witty, clever fellow, no doubt. Fair enough. And a criminal investigator. And they would state that I was vegan, teetotal, a cat-loving, anti-hunting, football-supporting campaigner for the European Union. In short, I would have to give up my proud disdain for all things psychic and take up haunting the foul blighter for his or her calumnies.

You can see why I did not want to take a real person and infuse them with my own feelings, beliefs and prejudices. It just wouldn't be fair. A kind of 'post-mortem slander'. That is why, in my earlier books, although I make some use of characters like Walter Stapledon, I don't look at the world through his eyes. He is simply included because he was there, in Exeter, at the time. I couldn't ignore him.

However, over time my att.i.tude has changed. There are some situations which do need the perspective of key players. And for this book, I chose a man who has fascinated me for many years: Sir John de Sully.

If you look him up on the internet, you will find his life doc.u.mented at the website for the Collegiate Church of the Holy Cross and the Mother of Him Who Hung Thereon in Crediton (plex fellow and not a mere brute.

Above all, this is the story of a vintaine. A small group of Englishmen in a foreign land, fighting and killing and dying for a cause which they only dimly understood. But they knew that there was money to be looted, that there were women, and there was wine. They were not saints. Soldiers rarely are. But what they achieved was astonis.h.i.+ng, and for that, if nothing else, they deserve admiration.

The Battle of Crecy has always been a source of argument. Firstly because most historians find it inconceivable that the commander of such a relatively small force could have deliberately sought to meet the full might of the ma.s.sive French army in battle; secondly because there has been hot debate over the precise battle-formation used by the English during that battle.

I do not presume to argue the cases either way. You can find the arguments marvellously summarised in War Cruel and Sharp by Clifford J. Rogers, Boydell Press, 2000. In Chapter 10 'Invasion of 1346: Strategic Options and Historiography', he goes through them on both sides in some detail. However, it seems clear to me that the English King Edward III would have known that he ran the significant risk of battle by taking war to the north of France. He had tweaked the French King's tail too often already to think he would escape unhindered once more. The prestige of Philippe VI was at stake.

For my story, I have a.s.sumed that the argument from Rogers's book is correct: that the English King knew he would force the French to battle and was confident nonetheless, convinced that his ma.s.sed archers would be so overwhelming that the French must be crushed. He suffered setbacks, true, especially on the long march to the Somme, but I believe he had a strategic ambition to draw the French to him on well-prepared ground in a planned manner.

The second issue has given me a great deal more heartache than the simple question of whether the English intended to fight. How did King Edward dispose his troops?

I have resorted to many books in researching the battle, from Jonathan Sumption's superb Trial By Battle, Rogers's War Cruel and Sharp mentioned above, J.F. Verbruggen's The Art of Warfare in Western Europe, Maurice Keen's Medieval Warfare, Kelly DeVries's Infantry Warfare in the Early Fourteenth Century . . . all the way to Ian Mortimer's The Perfect King: The Life of King Edward III, with stop-offs at Froissart and other chroniclers.

Some think that there were three battles (groups of fighting men, in modern terms 'Battalions' is the nearest word), with English soldiers spread side-by-side over the top of the hill, with groups of archers between these groups of men, and more archers at either side. I disagree, and side with those who consider the next scenario more likely: that the English had the three battles one placed before the other, and with two large groups of archers at either flank with cannon, so as to keep up a withering fire both on the killing ground before them on the plains, and, as the enemy grew nearer, launching their weapons and missiles directly into the flanks of the French advance. Not only is this the most likely formation to have achieved the victory won at such low cost to the English but also it was the formation practised and rehea.r.s.ed in so many prior battles.

But after all my research, there is still a margin for error. I have occasionally guessed at mysteries such as, where precisely was Sir John in the battle-line? and where my guesses have missed their mark, I can only apologise. Any errors are my own.

This story, then, is the story of soldiers through the centuries, and I have unashamedly used scenes as described by George MacDonald Fraser in his magnificent autobiography Quartered Safe Out Here, as well as many contemporary accounts. The story of fighting men, and their experiences in battle, has not changed all that much. Their lives are full of fear, boredom, misery and sudden horror. But they also enjoy making jokes at each others' expense, and gradually they learn to trust and rely on one another.

Finally, I should say that when I was writing this, I had in my mind the young men and women who are fighting with the British Army in Afghanistan.

May they all return safe and well.

Michael Jecks.

North Dartmoor.

January 2013.

St-Vaast-la-Hogue, 12 July 1346.

Berenger Fripper, vintener of this pox-ridden mob of sixteen men under Sir John de Sully, ducked as another wave splashed over the gunwale and drenched him.

's.h.i.+t, s.h.i.+t, s.h.i.+t,' he muttered, wiping a hand over his face to clear it of water. White foam was everywhere, and he was already frozen to the marrow in the bitter wind. He cursed the day he'd agreed to lead the men on this raid.