fate. All the coast, from Rouen to Caen, was ravaged and devastated; Cherbourg was burnt; and sixty-one ships of war, twenty-three crayers, and many smaller vessels laden with wine, were destroyed there or in the vicinity.[1]
It is not necessary to follow the military operations of the expedition. Army and fleet acted in conjunction, and Caen fell. Crecy was fought and won on August 25th, and Edward then laid siege to Calais, the fleet again assisting him.
While Edward was thus pressing the French in Normandy, his lieutenants were active in Gascony, where Aiguillon, on the Garonne, was besieged. Sir Walter Manny, who commanded the naval flotilla there, had numerous conflicts with the enemy, and, as before, greatly distinguished himself;[2] but, upon the whole, the English in that quarter were less successful than in the north.
The siege of Calais necessitated the despatch thither of continual supplies; and, as the French fleets were at sea under Pierre Flotte, Carlo Grimaldi and others,[3] strong measures had to be taken for the protection of the convoys. A squadron to effect this purpose seems to have been assembled at Sandwich.[4]
Parliament, which met on September 11th, though willing enough to provide for the support of the army, for the service of which it granted a fifteenth, requested that the sea might be defended at the king's expense only, and that the people might be released from that burden. The reply, on behalf of the sovereign, was to the effect that the ancient practice must he continued; and that there was no better way of defending the sea than by fighting abroad.[5]
Parliament, then as on many other occasions, seems to have believed that the safety of he narrow seas and of the coasts could be ensured by the retention of fleets in the home waters; and that there, and not on the enemy's confines, was the proper place of the Navy: while professional opinion took the sounder view, and advocated an offensive defence as the sole effective one. This conflict between popular and technical opinion re-arose continually in after ages; and, although the naval view often won the day, it can scarcely be doubted that the ignorant opposition to it frequently, and sometimes very dangerously, hampered the thorough
