Geopolitical constants have ensured that Britain, an island off a continental land mass, used similar defence strategies when faced with an overmighty power dominating Europe. In the last five hundred years the same general pattern can be discerned – when Elizabeth I and Lord Burleigh were faced with the Spanish power of Philip II in the sixteenth century, when William III formed his Grand Alliance against Louis XIV in the seventeenth century, when Britain was facing the armies of Revolutionary and Napoleonic France; and if you add the further dimension of air power, when in the twentieth century the danger of Hitler's Germany was from the ports of north-west France. British defence generally took three forms. The navy would send an expedition or mount a blockade of continental ports controlled by the enemy. Secondly, flotillas of small warships would take up defensive positions around the south and east coasts, not only as defence against invasion but as protection for coastal trade. Thirdly, ports and vulnerable beaches would be fortified and manned by the army, supported by militia, to ensure that at the least an invading force would be compelled to make a large-scale military effort, making a surprise attack by a small mobile force unviable. In conjunction with these naval and military measures, Britain would traditionally sign treaties and lesser agreements with other European powers alarmed at the growth of the one great power, and these treaties were often bolstered by subsidies.

It was not possible for Britain just to withdraw behind Channel fortifications and leave the powers of Europe to fight it out, as has recently been argued in discussions about the First World War. At the end of the eighteenth century ties between Britain and the Continent were even more complicated than they were in the twentieth century. Here there is space only to point to the Austrian Netherlands, as these territories were in 1792, from which a hostile power could launch an invasion, dangerously near the Thames Estuary and the Essex rivers. In addition, Hanover was still tied to the British crown, with no natural frontiers and indefensible, ‘a tempting bait permanently dangled before the open jaws of the French army’. In addition, an absolute necessity lay in maintaining trade with north-west Europe, not only because it was by far the largest market for British exports.

The declaration of war by the Western powers on 3 September 1939 surprised Hitler. Thus, he found himself in a war with Britain and France that he had not wanted in 1939. In his ‘Directive No. 9’ of 29 November 1939, ‘Principles of warfare against the economy of the enemy’, he considered interference with the British economy as the ‘most effective means’ to defeat Britain. Hitler was prepared to adopt this strategic concept for the navy, hitting Britain where she was most vulnerable by disrupting her sea lines of communication.

However, Hitler and his Naval War Staff operated on different planes of strategic thinking: Hitler expected a short war limited to Europe and did not want to jeopardise the hope of better relations with Great Britain. The Naval War Staff, on the other hand, was convinced that the conflict with Britain would be long. It would have to be won in the Atlantic, even if that meant the entry of the United States into the war.

Because of the inaction of the Western Allies, Hitler even believed that they had only declared war to save face. After the end of the fighting in Poland, Hitler therefore made a ‘peace offer’. However, for Paris and London there could no longer be any question of negotiating with Hitler. The strategy of the Allies was guided by the wish to disrupt the concentration of German forces on the border of France. In the spring of 1940, the spread of the war to Scandinavia gave the Allies the desired secondary theatre, but no opportunity to thwart Hitler's plans for a campaign in the west.

After France had been defeated, Britain was the only nation able to fight Germany and was not prepared to deny Germany's dominance of the Continent: ‘Germany had a military position and sufficient freedom of action to make Britain's defeat inevitable, if not quick and easy. Considering the greater resources of German controlled Europe, Britain's position without outside help, was hopeless.’ However, as soon as the existence of Britain came under threat, Germany would have to reckon with the United States.

On 11 August 1694 an incident took place which strained Anglo-Danish relations seriously. The Danish ship of the line Gyldenløveof fifty guns under the command of Captain Niels Lavritzen Barfoed, peacefully anchored at the Downs, was attacked by the seventy-gun HMS Stirling Castlefrom Sir Cloudesley Shovell's Squadron. The Gyldenløvesuffered three men dead and eighteen wounded, including Captain Barfoed himself. On the Stirling Castle, Captain Deane reported that he had eight men dead and about twenty wounded. The Danish ship was seriously damaged and had to undergo significant repairs. Barfoed and his officers were subsequently arrested, and they were only released after prolonged negotiations between Denmark and England.

Denmark remained neutral during the ongoing Nine Years’ War of 1688–97. However, the Danish king did provide auxiliary troops for the English war in Ireland from 1689 to 1691. Politically it would seem very unwise to compromise the good relations between the two countries by attacking a Danish warship, unless there was a very good reason. So what serious offence had the Gyldenløvecommitted to provoke such an attack? Or was it perhaps all a mistake? Surprisingly, the underlying cause was what we today might regard as a trifling matter of courtesy. The battle was the result of a dispute over the right of English warships to demand that foreign warships strike their pennants in the Channel. It was not the only incident of its kind, and in the period around the year 1700 such ‘courtesy battles’ involving both Danish and Swedish warships strained England's relations with the Scandinavian kingdoms. These conflicts have been noted by researchers before, but the fact that the English insistence on striking of pennants had long term strategic implications for the sailing patterns of the Danish and Swedish navies has not previously been described. This chapter seeks to present the flag disputes in their context as seen from a Danish and Swedish perspective.

Before we look at the wider perspective of the flag disputes, let us return to the situation in the Downs in August 1694. The wider context of that and other battles needs to be included in order to understand the incident.

This study has situated the archery and crossbow guilds of late medieval Flanders within their civic societies. The analysis of guilds as civic defenders, civic organisations and civic representatives in aristocratic and regional networks has demonstrated that the guilds acted as the embodiment of the urban ‘Common Good’. The guilds built on existing ideals of brotherhood and commensality, on evolving and often ardent devotions and, fundamentally, on the variations in the meaning of membership, to create strong communities both within towns and across Flanders. That war and instability were driving forces for urban men to take up archery seems obvious, but the guilds were not militias; their development and evolution was linked to civic self-representation and desires on the part of townsmen to demonstrate their prominence and augment their honour, and even to keep the peace.

Guilds were military groups. They served in war throughout the period, representing their communities on the town battlements and on the battlefield, but they were valued as far more than this by their civic societies. Guild-brothers were small but significant groups and recognised parts in the army that Louis of Male led into Brabant in 1356, and supported Maximilian at Guinegatte in 1479, proving the potential of their expertise by winning a swift victory. Yet the guilds were far more than soldiers or militias and the present study has proved that community and desires for peace were more important than war for the Flemish towns.

The ability of archery and crossbow guilds to bring individuals from different socio-economic backgrounds together to form communities was central to their formation and functions. Within their own towns, guilds built communities around saints, around socialising and around spiritual aid. They invested in devotion, allowing their members to demonstrate corporate and individual identity. The location of guilds’ chapels, their concern for charity and the role in them of women and children all demonstrate the guilds fulfilling civic values. Guilds, like towns, were not perfect; disputes and even violence happened; but, just as towns worked to maintain the ‘good’ and peace of their town, so too did guilds, expelling disobedient members and encouraging all members to eat and drink together to build bonds of community.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that historians are prophets of the past. Reporting on naval campaigns whose results are known, historians enjoy a comprehensive understanding of events that enables them to produce a clear and logical narrative. However, this narrative does not necessarily correspond with the seamen's experiences of the same campaigns. Historians have too often taken for granted that those who served on board, from the quarterdeck to the lower deck, were more or less aware of the strategic issues at hand and that they knew the fleet's destination and its objectives. This can be truly illusory and even misleading. I would like to assess the degree of knowledge that captains had about their missions when they set sail and the extent to which admirals were more informed than everyone else on board.

Not unexpectedly, the term strategy was never used in its modern sense. However, a clear, if not necessarily accurate, definition of objectives and means of action did exist at the level of the Conseil du Roi, where operations were decided year after year. What remains to be ascertained is what was communicated or explained to the admirals and captains. What did the officers on the quarterdeck know about what they were expected to do? Had someone at Versailles consulted them prior to ordering naval operations? To answer these questions, we must investigate the instructions given to flag officers or captains, official and individual logbooks, letters and memoirs.

Let us first examine how officers understood the concept of strategy as being something they carried out. However, the lack of being in on the secret did not prevent some officers from expressing their views, and many of them tried to understand the purpose of their missions.

Strategy in Theory and Practice

It should be observed that in France naval officers left behind many treatises on naval tactics or shipbuilding, but not on what we would define today as strategy. This is hardly surprising given that decisions on matters of war and peace – the heart of politics at the time – were made exclusively by the Conseil du Roiat Versailles and were consequently shrouded in mystery. Secrecy and surprise were the mainsprings of victory.

While many great and extended conflicts involving the use of the sea have been fought over the past two thousand years, the three most notable in modern times were undoubtedly those struggles for global mastery in the years 1793–1815, 1914–18 and 1939–45. Each of these conflicts has produced a plethora of detailed works upon aspects of the war in question, but the profession has avoided making a comparative study of them to draw broader conclusions about the influence of sea power in the modern world. This chapter makes an attempt to do that, and with a particular interest in examining why the exercise of naval force during the second of the three conflicts is generally regarded as having had much less effectiveness than in the other two. Examining why naval power in 1914–18 had much less ‘influence’ than its pre-war advocates hoped might then help us to a better understanding of the limitations of naval force as well as of its positive capabilities. Above all, the essay is interested in the changing contexts in which sea power had to operate over these one hundred and fifty years of what one scholar nicely termed ‘the influence of History upon Sea Power’.

This is a lengthy argument, and so the structure of the essay below has been divided, rather obviously, into wartime and peacetime sections. Since the great naval struggle for mastery between 1793 and 1815 is generally regarded as the apotheosis of sea power in action, no detailed account is offered below of the many great battles that took place within those years, or of where British diplomacy and naval influence successfully marched hand in hand, as in the Baltic, or of the campaigns in the Eastern Seas. What seemed more important was to produce a reasonably brief structural analysis of why it was that sea power played such a prominent role in a struggle for the mastery of Europe that in the final analysis obviously had to be settled by military victory over Napoleon on land.

On 5 June 1461 Philip the Good granted a charter of rights to the archers and crossbowmen of Gravelines. He allowed the guild-brothers of the archery guild of Saint Sebastian and the crossbow guild of Saint George to carry their ‘bastons et armures loisibles’ throughout his lands. Philip did so, his preamble states, with the advice of the men of the Council of Flanders and the Great Council and the privilege was granted for the ‘bien, garde et deffence’ (well-being, guard and defence) of Gravelines. Twenty years earlier a slightly longer charter had been issued to the lord of Drincham allowing him to re-establish an archery guild. The guild had been granted a charter by John the Fearless, but these letters had been burnt, and so Philip was persuaded to grant new privileges to Jehan, lord of Drincham. Philip recognised the good service of Jehan of Drincham and allowed him to (re-)establish an archery guild of 150 men, wearing his own livery, dedicated to Saint Sebastian and free to bear arms across Flanders. The 1441 charter was granted for the ‘seurte, garde et deffense’ (security, guard and defence) of the lordship of Drincham and rights were granted ‘comme font les archiers des autres confraires de notre dit pais de Flandre’ (as made for the other archery guilds in our land of Flanders).

Numerous other examples could be added of charters and rights being granted to guilds for the guard and defence of their towns. In both of the above cases charters are almost the only details known about the guilds. Gravelines was a relatively new town, founded in the 1160s as an outpost of Saint-Omer, but as a coastal port it was often caught up in conflict. John the Fearless had to defend it in 1405 and it was subjected to English pillage in 1412–13. Drincham was even smaller, meaning that a guild of 150 men was likely to be a personal retinue of some sort, as we shall see below, and yet the language here is very close to earlier charters granted to far larger towns. In 1405 the archers of Lille were granted permission by John the Fearless to bear their arms across Flanders ‘for the defence’ of Lille and in 1430 those of Mechelen had been granted land and an annual income ‘for the defence of the town’.

In 1383 the bailey and aldermen of Douai set out the rights and privileges of their crossbow guild. The guild should elect a constable on Trinity Sunday who should be ‘the most notable member of the serment’ and who should have been ‘sufficient’, and the constable should then be presented to the aldermen to take his oath for the year ‘as is the custom’. He was responsible for the guild's finances, and would be given money and wine by the aldermen to support the guild-brothers ‘being together in community’ on specified days for weekly shooting and for their annual papegay competition, for mass and for an annual meal. The detailed ordinance goes on to make clear that new members had to have a powerful bow, as well as suitable arms, and be skilled in shooting, as well as pay 36s to enter the guild. When the charter was confirmed by Philip the Bold in May 1400 a few additions were made, including the requirement that ‘the said crossbowmen will be companions of honest life and good renown’ and be bourgeois and residents of the town.

The Douai charter provides a huge amount of detail on what was expected of crossbowmen in the town, but it also raises a number of questions. How were guilds organised and run? How did one enter the archery and crossbow guilds? And, perhaps most crucially, who were the shooters? The first two questions will be answered with reference to sources from across Flanders and an effort made to consider geographical differences as well as commonalities across the region. In considering organisation and officials, the significance of unity and the strength of bonds formed within the shooting guilds can be appreciated. Such unity will be examined in more depth in the next chapter in considering the devotional and social internal workings of guilds. The focus here will be on the regulation and structure of guilds. In order to uncover what sorts of backgrounds the archers and crossbowmen came from, and in unpicking existing assumptions of elite or middle-class status, a case study is necessary. The second half of this chapter will briefly set out some regional patterns before turning to an in-depth prosopographical analysis of the archery and crossbow guilds of Bruges.

The last chapter by James Goldrick has made a number of important points. First, it stressed that it is wholly appropriate for this book to end on the subject of how best to bring their history home to navies because it is so important both for them and for the historians who produce it. It argued that history helps explain to navies what they are for and to some extent at least how they should set about their business. Second, navies need to be receptive to the past, to preserve and process the records (or what these days passes for records) of what they have done to build a bank of experience for the future. They need to nurture the declining number of long-serving professional practitioners who actually hadthat experience and are willing to talk about it if they only had the encouragement to do so, and the appropriate outlets (neither of which, as an aside, I believe they currently do).

Naval historians can help in all this of course, but it is good to be reminded of some of the things that historians must do in order to perform that function effectively. They should think of things ‘in the round’ – to pay due regard to context and to avoid narrow fixations on mono-causal explanations. They need to understand the technological and logistical realities, what it is actually like to beat sea. Hence the particular value of ex-sailors (like James Goldrick himself, and indeed John Hattendorf) who are also historians. They also need to avoid unconscious hindsight and to sympathise with their subjects who clearly could not enjoy its advantages.

The chapter ended with the encouraging conclusion that all this can be done and that properly encouraged, proper history can ‘stick’ amongst the barbarians. This argument could go further. My own experience at the Royal Naval Colleges of Dartmouth and Greenwich and the Joint Services Command and Staff College at Shrivenham is that the ‘barbarians’ actually quite often likebeing ‘stuck’ with naval history, provided it is ‘what it says on the tin’ – namely real, honest objective analysis of the naval past, not a threadbare academic covering for proselytising. We historians are pushing on an open door, or should be.

Identity – that imagined community of shared ideas which unite a group – is an important aspect of sea power and the strategies used to maintain or achieve it. This should not be a novel proposition. Clausewitz in his analysis of war as a trinity that encompassed the people, the government and the military clearly includes both the political process and the society that supports it in his theoretical model. With regard to sea power, Mahan alluded to this when he noted that one of the six determinants of sea power was ‘the character of the people’, or ‘national character’ as he also refers to it, a concept that has proven most long lasting in Britain where the idea that the British (or at least the English) were an island race, a race of natural sailors, or had a special relationship with the sea as a result of their island home was a common place one up to quite recently. On the other hand, Julian Corbett showed very little interest in the links between society, the political process and sea power in the theoretical model he constructed to underpin his Principles of Maritime Strategy, preferring to focus on how sea power can meet political goals. Corbett is not alone in avoiding any deep engagement with the swirling and perhaps immutable forces that shift and mould public opinion, the political interest in sea power, or the will to use armed force in war or in peace to achieve national ends. Professor Colin Gray has noted that several significant contributors to the field of strategic studies acknowledge the importance of societal and political issues, but that these same writers also recognise that mastery of sociology, anthropology and local or regional knowledge are not generally strengths of strategists; the inference being that all too often the strategist draws back from them in favour of the more mutable and quantifiable aspects of their discipline. Even Clausewitz and Mahan, having identified societal and political factors as being of considerable importance, concentrate on the perhaps more comfortable and more readily analysed pure military aspects of strategy and sea power.

This chapter serves as the previous chapter's quarterdeck companion. It approaches the strategic issue of securing adequate manpower in the context of the officers rather than the men of the lower deck. But it does not examine all officers, despite using the term quarterdeck – the ‘grand promenade of all the officers of the first class’, which could include not only the lieutenants but also the purser, surgeon, master and chaplain. There is not sufficient space to survey the labour market for all sea officers. For this chapter, the quarterdeck stands as a contrast with the lower deck explored in the previous chapter, and it refers only to the officers who were seamen and navigators: the commissioned officers and master. Thus the ‘quarterdeck manpower problem’ of the title is the imbalance in the labour market for commissioned officers and masters.

Unlike the problem on the lower deck, described in the previous chapter as a persistent shortage of able seamen, the problem for naval administrators on the quarterdeck was a surplus of commissioned officers and a shortage of masters. Officers were not subject to impressment, of course, so naval administrators had to devise strategies to attract masters to the navy, while also coping with a significant waste of manpower resources. Admittedly, the stakes were lower: failing to man the fleet would have had catastrophic consequences, while leaving a few thousand officers ashore on half-pay was unlikely to play a significant role in shaping the outcome of conflicts. For this reason, manning and impressment have received a good deal of scholarly attention, but few historians have attempted to grapple with employment prospects on the quarterdeck. But a shortage of masters was a serious problem. Examining the labour market for commissioned officers and masters demonstrates how naval administrators’ strategic choices were constrained by contemporary notions of social status – a concern often overlooked by historians of administration and strategy. After providing some background on the similarities between masters and lieutenants, the chapter discusses the supply of and demand for officers before concluding with the Admiralty's response to the imbalance in the labour market and its strategic consequences.

Shooting guilds were military groups, were diverse social and devotional communities and maintained important links to their lords. All of these elements of guild identity, with their ideals of peace and the centrality of civic honour, are best illustrated by an analysis of the spectacular competitions that guilds staged across the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

By 1498, when an elaborate event was held in Ghent, the competitions had become some of the largest and most impressive urban spectacles put on in Flemish towns. Competitions could last for months, as compared to the day or two given to princely entrances or to jousts, their size possible only with civic and ducal support. The events grew quickly from simple shooting contests, beginning before 1330, to become huge events that involved hundreds of competitors, thousands of followers, musicians, play wagons, silver forests, a wooden dragon and even an elephant.

The competitions, like jousts and entrance ceremonies, were not simply about pomp and show; rather, they carried layers of meaning and communicated urban honour and the guilds’ values. In the civic support they received and in their symbolic communication they are fascinating examples of urban identity – the same ‘urban panegyric’ analysed by Lecuppre-Desjardin in her study of processions. This chapter will first look at the origins of archery and crossbow competitions and provide an overview of what the competitions consisted of and how they were funded and organised. Following this, it will consider the role of honour and friendship in competitions. As noted, guild ordinances emphasised honour and community, and these same priorities become clear in a close analysis of some of the letters of invitation sent out by guilds in advance of their great events. The mechanics of civic representation and the forms that guild spectacle could take will be analysed with reference to the entrances made into Ghent in 1498, drawing on the ideals of civic honour expressed in the last chapter as well as the forces for community set out in chapter three. The centrality of community also becomes apparent through a discussion of the prizes given at shooting competitions, and the prominence of drink and drinking vessels confirms what has already been observed about the power of commensality to build bonds of brotherhood.

Once a year the crossbowmen of Lille gathered together as a community to celebrate their prestigious identity, to hold their annual competition and to unite all of the members in bonds of brotherhood. The date varied a little from year to year, but was always in early summer. The day began with the crossbowmen gathering in their guild chapel dedicated to Saint George to hear mass and pray for any guild-brother who had died during the year. Next they went to their jardin, where all guild-brothers were expected to take part in the annual papegay competition, so-called because the guild-brothers shot at a small wooden parrot atop a large wooden pole. After the competition the guild-brothers, who were all expected to be in their guild livery and on their best behaviour, retired to the guild hall. There they sat down for their annual meal and spent the night eating and drinking together, possibly enjoying some entertainment related to the identity and narrative of their guild. Such a picture of festivities on a certain day is common in guilds across Flanders, although details and the level of available records vary substantially.

The Papegay

Crossbowmen in Lille were expected to attend the annual shooting competition, dressed in their livery, or risk being fined 5s. Guild-brothers who failed to attend the feast risked fines – unless they were absent from the town – in large and small towns across the county. No evidence of fines being imposed has been recorded; but, as they were often specified to be used for drinks for those in attendance, it is possible that fines were paid, and drinks bought, without a written record being created.

The annual papegay shoot should have been attended by all, and the timing of the events is important. Many shooting competitions were held in late spring or early summer, presumably for the practical reason of a better chance of good weather, and also on account of their cultural significance. In the small town of Pecquencourt, just east of Douai, the crossbowmen met for their papegay contest on 1 May, while those of Roubaix met on the Sunday after the Day of Saint Urban (25 May).

In this tribute to Professor Hattendorf, a renowned expert in naval strategy, it seems fitting to offer an analysis of a little-known aspect in the history of the Spanish Navy in the eighteenth century: its offensive strategy. The common perception of the Bourbon dynasty in Spain and her colonial empire during this period is that it was always on the defensive, pressured by the double leviathan of the French Army and the British Navy. According to this conventional perception, Spain focused its energies on a traditional active defence of the status quo, aimed at securing communications and protecting its trade monopoly with Spanish America, in addition to sustaining its far-flung possessions overseas. This strategy forced its enemies – the French, Dutch and British – into expending a great deal of effort to turn the tide. Moreover, throughout the eighteenth century, the superiority of the British – Spain's principal rival at the time – in naval warfare and seamanship, and in commerce, manufacturing, technology and finance, had forced Spanish political and naval leaders to emphasise a defensive strategy. It truly was suicide to go looking for battle in the absence of superiority, or at least parity, of force. It was playing into the hands of the enemy. Spain's defensive stance, moreover, benefited from the line of battle, which meant that both opponents could not overpower each other, and was especially detrimental to the interests of Great Britain.

But this is only part of the picture. As is well known, strategy is the art of the dialectics of force, of opposing interests. It is also the art of creating, maintaining and regaining power.

We have seen that guilds were militarily significant for their town and their prince and that their membership came from across civic society to form members into a unified socio-devotional community. The guilds must now be placed within their civic and wider political context(s). The purpose of the present chapter is to look at the support given to guilds by towns and by lords and to try to explain their place within both civic culture and court–civic interactions. The significance of civic honour – indeed, honour as a concept – will be discussed and the guilds will be used to offer new insight into relationships between nobles and towns and, in particular, the rule of the dukes of Burgundy as counts of Flanders. The guilds were part of civic culture and part of their urban communities, but they were also part of the shared society and shared forms of cultural expression that developed between the ducal court and urban activities.

‘Honour’

Before analysing the archery and crossbow guilds’ relationship to civic honour, and indeed why the guilds were perceived as bringing honour to the dukes, the term itself must be considered. In medieval sources ‘honour’ is an even more ubiquitous term than ‘community’. A 1443 civic charter from the Lille aldermen on the occasion of the ‘reunion’ of the two crossbow guilds – the grand and the petit – gave the guild rights organised for the ‘honour, fortune and grace’ of the duke of Burgundy and the town of Lille. The guild-brothers were to uphold ‘good and honour’ in their conduct and at all times behave in an ‘honourable’ manner. If a competition was to be held in another town, then the best men must be sent ‘for the honour’ of the confraternity and of the town. The guild officials were to be ‘suitable for the good and honour of the town’ and all of the guildbrothers must be sufficiently armed and skilled ‘for the honour of the town’ and were to follow their regulations ‘profitably and honourably for the good and honour of the town and of the duke’.

Honour can be understood in numerous different ways and it is likely that the term meant different things to different writers, even within the towns of the late medieval Low Countries.