THE FRENCH WARS 



siderable name for himself. Born in 1341 of noble birth, he was forced 

 by the circumstances of the times to be a fighting man from the earliest 

 age, and as the country where he was brought up at was at that time 

 being ravaged by free companies who were nominally English, it is little 

 wonder that he grew up with bitter hatred for us. After distinguish- 

 ing himself on shore he was one of the men selected to lead the Franco- 

 Spanish fleet, which Charles V was raising to wrest the command of 

 the sea from the English. The Battle of La Rochelle was the first 

 triumph of this armada, but de Vienne does not appear to have been 

 present at that action. He was appointed Admiral of France, and it 

 was due to him that the French commenced the building of warships at 

 Rouen in 1374, the first real dockyard in Europe. 



He took the utmost advantage of the weakness of King Edward, and 

 by the spring of 1377 he had with him a magnificently built fleet of 

 specially-designed men-of-war armed with efficient cannon and manned 

 with just the men that he wanted. When he came to the throne King 

 Richard II was certainly not the man to oppose this armada, and the 

 measures that were taken were of a panic description that did 

 more harm than good. De Vienne made the most of his opportunities, 

 and burned a large number of towns along the South Coast from 

 Winchelsea to Plymouth. It was not a particularly clean type of war- 

 fare, but it was just what was needed to divert our attention from France, 

 and was followed by a number of other raids. One may call him savage 

 if one likes, but it is necessary to remember what he had seen in his own 

 native country as a boy. In many of these adventures he was assisted 

 by the Spanish, but his was the master-mind, and it is entirely due to 

 him that England was reduced to such a state of panic. So serious had 

 his ravages become that the defence and patrol of the Channel was put 

 out to contract, with very little success at first but with improved 

 prospects as the contractors found various more or less legal methods of 

 making money, and as the Government became more and more nervous 

 of enquiring into their doings. Such protection, however, mattered little 

 to de Vienne, whose one idea was to give the English so much to do at 

 home that they would leave France, and finally he contrived to persuade 

 his King to collect a fleet of six hundred sail for the invasion of England. 

 De Vienne entered the Forth with the idea of attracting King Richard 

 to the North, but he was a far better fighter than diplomat, and the Scots 

 were none too pleased to see him. Had his rulers backed him up accord- 

 ing to his plan it is highly probable that it would have succeeded, but as 

 soon as he had gone about the dummy attack they neglected their work 

 and the project fell through for the time being, the dispersal of their 

 fleet giving the English an opportunity of making many prizes. Unfortu- 

 nately, our Navy was not in a fit condition to follow up its advantages. 



John of Gaunt and Spain. 



In the year 1386 England was saved by the ineptitude of the French, 

 for John of Gaunt had drained the country of a large part of its naval 

 resources to support his claim to the throne of Castile, while the French 



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