The King Who Became Lord of the Sea – USNI News

History is rife with monarchs, presidents, and potentates who sent their navies off to warbut in the case of the largest, bloodiest, and most significant naval battle in the annals of medieval Northern Europe, it was the king himself who sailed forth into harms way at the head of his armed-to-the-teeth fleet.

Here was the age of knights and jousts, of chivalry and dynastic complexity: 14th-century England in the reign of King Edward III. To the north, the Scots threatened. To the south, the Frenchsimpatico with the Scotslikewise threatened. Edward, himself a scion of the French royal line, had a long-standing lineage claim to Frances throne as well, and in 1340 he opted to assert it with deadly force. Bravado? A hollow assertion? Perhapsbut an opportune one. For too long a time, French raids had been plundering and bedeviling the English coastand now came the moment to strike back.

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The King Who Became Lord of the Sea - USNI News