Siege of Calais (1346-1347) and the Six Burghers of Calais

The siege of Calais was an eleven-month blockade of the French port by King Edward III of England, lasting from September 1346 to August 1347, early in the Hundred Years’ War. Its surrender gave England a fortified harbour opposite Dover that it kept for more than two centuries. The siege is also remembered for the six burghers who offered their lives to save their town, a story made world-famous by Auguste Rodin’s sculpture.

Background: from Crécy to Calais

Edward III claimed the French crown through his mother, Isabella of France, and in July 1346 he landed in Normandy with a large army. On 26 August he crushed Philip VI’s army at the Battle of Crécy. Rather than march on Paris, Edward turned north to the coast.

He needed a port. Supplying armies across the Channel was slow and expensive, and the English had no safe harbour in northern France. Calais, close to Edward’s Flemish allies and only about 40 kilometres from Dover, was the obvious target. It was also a base for privateers who attacked English shipping.

Calais was hard to take. It was surrounded by walls, a double moat and marshland that made mining and the use of heavy siege engines very difficult. Its garrison was commanded by an experienced Burgundian knight, Jean de Vienne.

Course of the siege

Edward’s army arrived on 4 September 1346. Recognising that assault was unlikely to succeed, he chose to starve the town. His men built a temporary wooden town outside the walls, called Villeneuve-la-Hardie, with streets, a market and houses for the king and his commanders. Over the winter, ships and reinforcements came from England, and by the summer of 1347 Edward’s army was one of the largest an English king had yet sent abroad, with estimates of roughly 26,000 to 32,000 men.

The key to the siege was the sea. As long as French ships could slip in with food, Calais could hold out. In the spring of 1347 the English strengthened their naval blockade and built a fortified position covering the harbour entrance. Supply runs grew rarer and more dangerous.

Inside the town, food ran short. To save supplies, Jean de Vienne twice expelled people who could not fight. Late in 1346 Edward allowed the first group, said to number about 1,700, to pass through his lines. A second group of around 500, sent out in 1347, was refused passage and many died of starvation and exposure between the walls and the English camp.

Edward’s position was also strengthened elsewhere. On 17 October 1346 an English army defeated the Scots at Neville’s Cross and captured King David II, ending the threat of a Scottish invasion that Philip VI had hoped would draw Edward home.

The failed relief

Philip VI was slow to raise a new army after Crécy. He finally marched to the coast in July 1347 and camped near Sangatte, west of Calais, at the end of the month. The English held the dunes and the marshy approaches, and the routes to the town were too narrow for a large army to attack across.

After negotiations led by papal envoys failed, Philip offered battle on open ground of Edward’s choosing. Edward did not take the offer seriously. On 1 or 2 August the French army burned its camp and withdrew. With all hope of relief gone, Calais asked for terms.

The six burghers

The most famous account of the surrender comes from the chronicler Jean Froissart, who based it largely on the earlier chronicle of Jean le Bel. According to Froissart, Edward at first wanted to kill or ransom the whole population as punishment for the long resistance. His councillors persuaded him to be content with six leading citizens, who must come to him bareheaded, barefoot, with ropes around their necks and the keys of the town in their hands.

The first to volunteer was Eustache de Saint-Pierre, one of the richest men in Calais. Froissart names three others, Jean d’Aire and the brothers Jacques and Pierre de Wissant; the remaining two are traditionally identified as Jean de Fiennes and Andrieu d’Andres. Edward ordered them to be beheaded, but his queen, described by Froissart as pregnant, Philippa of Hainault, knelt before him and begged for their lives, and he gave way.

Many modern historians, including Jean-Marie Moeglin, see the scene as a ritual of submission familiar in the fourteenth century. Public humiliation, the halter and a dramatic royal pardon allowed a ruler to show both severity and mercy. Whether or not Edward ever truly intended to execute the six, the account was shaped to show a king who could be moved to clemency.

Key people

• Edward III (1312–1377): King of England from 1327, who led the siege in person and claimed the French throne.
• Philip VI (1293–1350): First Valois king of France, whose failure to relieve Calais damaged his prestige after Crécy.
• Jean de Vienne: Captain of the Calais garrison, who held out for eleven months and was taken prisoner at the surrender.
• Eustache de Saint-Pierre: Wealthy burgher named by Froissart as the first of the six volunteers.
• Philippa of Hainault (c. 1310–1369): Edward’s queen, credited by Froissart with saving the six burghers.

Consequences

Calais surrendered on 3 August 1347. Edward expelled most of the French inhabitants and repopulated the town with English settlers, granting them property and trading privileges. Eustache de Saint-Pierre himself appears to have kept some of his property and to have cooperated with the new regime.

On 28 September 1347 a truce was agreed. Both kingdoms were exhausted, and within months the Black Death reached western Europe, helping to prolong the pause in fighting.

Calais became England’s gateway to the Continent. It was heavily fortified, with a large permanent garrison, and from 1363 it housed the Staple, the official market through which most English wool exports had to pass. The customs revenue made it valuable to the crown. The Pale of Calais, the territory around the town, even sent members to the English Parliament under Henry VIII.

England held Calais until January 1558, when French forces under Francis, Duke of Guise, took it in a surprise winter campaign, recorded on Chronicle as the loss of Calais.

Rodin’s Burghers of Calais

In 1884 the town council of Calais commissioned Auguste Rodin to make a monument to Eustache de Saint-Pierre. Rodin chose to show all six men, not as heroic figures on a tall column, but as individuals in anguish, walking to what they believed was their death. He completed the plaster model in 1889. The bronze was unveiled in Calais on 3 June 1895, and the sculptor wanted it set low so that viewers would meet the figures at their own level.

Casts now stand in several cities, including one in Victoria Tower Gardens beside the Palace of Westminster in London, installed in 1915, and others in Paris, Philadelphia and Copenhagen.

Timeline

• 1346, 26 August: Edward III defeats Philip VI at Crécy.
• 1346, 4 September: The English army arrives outside Calais.
• 1346, 17 October: The Scots are defeated at Neville’s Cross; David II is captured.
• 1347, spring: The English tighten the naval blockade of the harbour.
• 1347, late July: Philip VI’s relief army arrives near Sangatte.
• 1347, 1–2 August: The French army withdraws without a battle.
• 1347, 3 August: Calais surrenders; the six burghers submit to Edward.
• 1347, 28 September: A truce is agreed between England and France.
• 1558, January: France recaptures Calais.

Why it matters

The siege of Calais turned the victory at Crécy into a lasting gain. It gave England a fortress and trading town on the Continent for 211 years. The story of the six burghers, whatever its exact truth, became one of the most famous images of civic courage in European history.