Siege of Guînes (1352)
The Channel port of Calais suited this purpose; it was also highly defensible and would provide a secure entrepôt into France for English armies.
With French finances and morale at a low ebb after Crécy, Philip failed to relieve the town, and the starving defenders surrendered on 3 August 1347.
[17] Despite the truce being in effect Charny hatched a plan to retake Calais by deception and bribed Amerigo of Pavia, an Italian officer of the city garrison, to open a gate for a force led by him.
[18][19][20] The English king became aware of the plot, crossed the Channel and led his household knights and the Calais garrison in a surprise counter-attack.
[24][25] Angered by the attempt to weaken the blockade of Calais, the new French king, John II, had Raoul executed for treason, preventing the transaction from taking place.
[26] In early January 1352 a band of freelancing English soldiers, led by John of Doncaster, seized the town of Guînes by midnight escalade.
According to some contemporary accounts Doncaster had been employed as forced labor there after being taken captive earlier in the war and had used the opportunity to examine the town's defenses.
[29] The French garrison of Guînes was not expecting an attack and Doncaster's party crossed the moat, scaled the walls, killed the sentries, stormed the keep, released the English prisoners there, and took over the whole castle.
[27] The French were furious: the acting commander, Hugues de Belconroy, was drawn and quartered for dereliction of duty, at the behest of Charny, who had returned to France after being ransomed from English captivity.
From there they harassed the French in what the modern historian Jonathan Sumption describes as "savage and continual fighting" throughout June and early July.
In mid-July a large contingent of troops arrived from England, and, reinforced by much of the Calais garrison, they were successful in approaching Guînes undetected and launching a night attack on the French camp.
[34] The French captured and slighted a newly built English tower at Fretun, 3 miles (4.8 km) south-west of Calais, then retreated to Saint-Omer, where their army disbanded.
The potential offensive threat posed by Calais caused the French to garrison 60 fortified positions in an arc around the town, at ruinous expense.
[35] The war also went badly for the French on other fronts and, encouraged by the new pope, Innocent VI, a peace treaty was negotiated at Guînes beginning in early 1353.
[36] Charny was killed in 1356 at the Battle of Poitiers, when the French royal army was defeated by a smaller Anglo-Gascon force commanded by Edward's son, the Black Prince, and John was captured.
[37] In 1360, the Treaty of Brétigny ended the war, with vast areas of France being ceded to England; including Guînes and its county which became part of the Pale of Calais.
