battle was the power to continue their march undisturbed
to the sea coast. On September 4, Edward reached the walls of Calais,
the last French town on the frontiers of Flanders, and the port whose
corsairs had inflicted exceptional damage on English shipping during
the whole of the war. With a keen eye to the military importance of the
place, the King abandoned the easy course of returning with his troops
to England, and at once sat down before Calais. It was an arduous and
prolonged siege. Calais was girt by double walls and ditches of
exceptional strength and was bravely defended by John de Vienne and a
numerous garrison. Moreover the yielding soil of the sands and marshes
around the town made it impossible for Edward to erect against the
fortifications the cumbrous machines by which engineers then sought to
batter down the walls of towns. The only method of taking the place was
by starvation. At first Edward was not able to block every avenue of
access to the beleaguered fortress. Winter came on; the troops demanded
permission to go home; the sailors threatened mutiny, and the French
were actively on the watch.

Amidst these troubles, Edward III showed a persistence worthy of his
grandfather. He remained at the seat of war, transacting much of the
business of government in the town of wooden huts which, growing up
round the besiegers' lines, made the winter siege endurable. In the
worst period of the year sufficient forces to man the trenches could
only be secured by wholesale charters of pardon to felonious and
offending soldiers, on condition that they did not withdraw from service
without the king's licence, so long as Edward himself remained beyond
the seas.[1] A parliament of magnates met in March, 1347, and granted an
aid. Instead of summoning the commons, Edward preferred to raise his
chief supplies by another loan of 20,000 sacks of wool from the
merchants, by additional customs dues voted by a merchant assembly, and
by considerable loans from ecclesiastics and religious houses. In April
and May all England was alive with martial preparation, and gradually a
force far transcending the Crecy army was gathered round the walls of
Calais, while a great fleet held the sea and prohibited the access of
French ships to the doomed garrison. Northampton, ever fertile in
expedients, discovered that, even after the high seas were blocked,
boats still crept into Calais port by hugging the shallow shore. He ran
long jettie