Battle of Sluys
The battle was one of the opening engagements of the Hundred Years’ War. It took place in the roadstead of the port of Sluys on a since silted-up inlet between Zeeland and West Flanders. The English were able to manoeuvre against the French and defeat them in detail, capturing most of their ships. The battle gave the English fleet naval supremacy in the English Channel. Operationally, the battle allowed the English army to land and to then besiege the French town of Tournai.
About Battle of Sluys in brief
The battle was one of the opening engagements of the Hundred Years’ War. It took place in the roadstead of the port of Sluys on a since silted-up inlet between Zeeland and West Flanders. The English were able to manoeuvre against the French and defeat them in detail, capturing most of their ships. The battle gave the English fleet naval supremacy in the English Channel. Operationally, the battle allowed the English army to land and to then besiege the French town of Tournai, albeit unsuccessfully. The French lost 16,000–20,000 men in the battle, which marked the start of the war, which was to last 116 years. Edward III of England led a fleet of 120–150 ships against a 230-strong French fleet led by the Breton knight Hugues Quiéret, Admiral of France, and Nicolas Béhuchet, Constable of France. Edward owned only three warships; the king relied on requisitioning cogs, the merchant vessels of English traders. By common law, the crown required the owners of ships into service, but in practice, the king was reluctant to answer to the summons, which caused the shipowners to be reluctant to pay. In March 1338, Edward paid the high sum of £1,000 to the owners, but they refused to answer the high summons, causing the king to pay them little, which in practice caused him to pay little, and so the king paid little, until he was forced to do so in March 1340, when he paid them a fine of £2,000.
In 1338 the king also paid the owners £3,000 for the service of his ships, which impressed the owners into agreeing to pay him the fine. The king paid this fine to the owner of his three warships, but the owners refused to pay the fine, so Edward had to pay it to them in full in 1339, when the battle was won. The Battle of l’Écluse was fought on 24 June 1340 between England and France, also known as the Battle of L’Ecluse. It was won by the English by a score of 1,500 to 1,300, with the French losing by about 1,000, and the English losing by around 1,200, to the French loss of around 2,500, to a total of about 2,200. It is the only battle in which the French lost more than 1,400 men, and it was the only one in which both sides lost at least 1,800 men. It also marked the beginning of the end of the First World War, which began in 1340. The war lasted for 116 years, and ended in 1362 with the fall of Charles VII of France and his son Charles I. The Hundred Years War was the longest war in English history, lasting from 1340 to 1360. The first battle was fought in the Channel between the English and the French, and lasted from 1339 to 1350.
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This page is based on the article Battle of Sluys published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 23, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
