The Battle of Sluys: The History and Legacy of the First Major Naval Battle of the Hundred Years’ War

Summary

Although it ended over 550 years ago, the Hundred Years’ War still looms large in the historical consciousness of England and France, even if the name of the famous war is a misnomer. Actually a series of separate conflicts between the English and French monarchies, interspersed with periods of peace, its historical image is an odd one, in part because its origins were based on royal claims that dated back centuries and the English and French remained adversaries for nearly 400 years after it ended.

That said, the war was transformative in many respects, and the impact it had on the geopolitical situation of Europe cannot be overstated. While some might think of the war as being a continuation of the feudal tradition of knights and peasants, the Hundred Years’ War revolutionized Western European warfare, and it truly helped to usher in the concept of nationalism on the continent. In England, it is remembered as a period of grandeur and success, even though the English lost the war and huge swathes of territory with it, while the French remember it as a strategic victory that ensured the continued independence of France and the denial of English hegemony. The legacy of the war has lived on ever since, helping determine how England became politically severed from the continent, how the knightly chivalric tradition slid into irrelevance, and how battlefield dominance can still leave a nation a loser in war.

At the same time, the English forged a reputation for naval superiority, and one of their first demonstrations came at the Battle of Sluys. The town of Sluys (in Dutch Sluis and in French l’Ecluse) is located on the west coast of the region of Zeelandic Flanders in the province of Zeeland in the Netherlands. It has a population of about 23,000 and is relatively isolated, but its main claim to fame today is being the site of one of the first military encounters of the Hundred Years’ War in 1340.