hated foes.  Alone among the provinces of France, Normandy seems already to have experienced that intense national bitterness against the English which was soon to spread to all the rest of the country.  Not content with the vigorous war of corsairs which had inflicted so much mischief on our southern coast and on English shipping, the Normans formed bold designs of a new Norman Conquest of England, and in return for the permanent establishment of the local estates of Normandy, agreed with Philip and his son John, who bore the title of Duke of Normandy, to equip a large fleet and army, with which England was to be invaded in the summer of 1339.  Normandy, which monopolised the glory, was to monopolise the spoil.  If England were conquered, Duke John, like Duke William before him, was to be King of England as well as Duke of Normandy.  Thus the aggressions of Edward in France were to be answered by Norman aggressions in England.[2]

    [1] C. de la Ronciere, Hist, de la Marine Francaise; of. 
    Nicolas, Hist, of the Royal Navy.

    [2] See on this subject A. Coville, Les Etats de Normandie,
    pp. 41-52 (1894).

Nothing came of this grandiose project, though the burning ruins of Southampton, the capture of the great Christopher, which had borne Edward in 1338 to Antwerp, and the occupation of the Channel Islands—­the last remnants of the old duchy still under English rule—­showed that the Normans were in earnest.  The chief result of their energy was the equipment of the strongest French fleet that had ever been seen in the Channel.  Though a few Genoese galleys under Barbavera and a few great Spanish ships swelled the number of the armada, 160 of the 200 ships that formed the fleet were Norman.[1] Of the two Frenchmen in command, one, Hugh Quieret, was a Picard knight, but the other, the more popular, was Nicholas Behuchet, a Norman of humble birth, then a knight and the chief confidant of Philip VI.  Quieret and Behuchet had long challenged the command of the narrow seas.  But for their error of dividing their forces and preferring a piratical war of reprisals, they might have cut off communications between England and the Netherlands.  They had learnt wisdom by experience, and their ships were massed in Zwyn harbour to prevent the passage of Edward to his new allies.

    [1] S.  Luce, La Marine normande a l’Ecluse, in La France
    pendant la Guerre de Cent Ans, 3-31.

The coast-line between Blankenberghe and the mouth of the Scheldt was strangely different in the fourteenth century from what it is at present.[1] The sandy flats, through which the Zwyn now trickles to the sea, formed a large open harbour, accessible to the biggest ships then known.  It was protected on the north by the island of Cadzand, the scene of Manny’s exploit in 1337, while at its head stood the town of Sluys, so called from the locks, or sluices, that