Battle of Sluys sinks the French fleet
June 1340
Edward III's archers, packed onto galleys, raked the moored French and Genoese ships off the Flemish coast in a savage boarding action. By evening seventeen thousand French sailors were dead and the Channel belonged to England for a generation. The first great battle of the Hundred Years' War was an English naval massacre that secured the sea lanes for invasion.
In context
Also in 1340 (3 other events on record)
- Battle of Salado: Castile and Portugal halt Marinid invasion · Europe · War
- Ibn al-Shatir builds Damascus astronomical clock · Middle East · Science
- Oxford translation of the Mertonian Mean Speed Theorem · Europe · Science
Before and after in Europe
Before and after in War
Era
Late Middle Ages (1301–1500), one of 874 events from that era on Saeculum.
Sources