I am excited to finally head to Europe to follow Chaucer’s footsteps leading up to the Battle of Najera (northern Spain). It is the largest battle of the Hundred Year’s War, with some sixty thousand soldiers fighting, yet one many have not heard of. Chaucer may have helped the English allies of King Pedro the Cruel win the battle. But what was Chaucer, a wine merchant’s son and mere page at the court of King Edward the Third, doing there in the first place, and how did he change the course of a war?
On February 22, 1366, Geoffrey Chaucer and three travelling companions were granted safe passage through Navarre for three months by King Carlos the Second of Navarre. The kingdom (now a province) straddled the Pyrenees of northern Spain and southern France, the capital at Pamplona.
Chaucer received his pass from King Carlos at Olite, south of Pamplona, site of the royal palace (which remains one of the best preserved medieval castles in Europe today). We know this fact because the actual safe passage order that was written down by a notary in Olite was discovered by researcher Suzanne Honoré-Duvergé in 1955 – as described in Marion Turner’s fabulous account of Chaucer in her excellent 2019 biography, Chaucer: A European Life. When Chaucer was granted safe passage, war which had been on and off for the last decade, was only days away from boiling over again. Enrique Trastamara, half-brother to King Pedro the Cruel (or Just) of Castile, had gathered a substantial army comprised of mercenaries led by Bertrand du Guesclin and the English knight Sir Hugh Calveley, soldiers paid for by Pere the Fourth of Aragon. Pere and his own army had joined Enrique in trying to finally topple Pedro after they had both fought a ten year long battle to remove him. Pedro was tacitly supported by Prince Edward, based on Bordeaux, France. Bordeaux was the capital of Aquitaine, a massive swath of what is now southwest France controlled by the Plantagenet kings since Henry the First and Eleanor of Aquitaine took control two hundred years earlier.
Pere and Enrique were supported by King Charles the Fifth of France, as was King Carlos of Navarre.
So we have King Pedro of Castile backed by the English and Prince Edward, and his half-brother Enrique backed by the French king, King Pere of Aragon (in Barcelona), and both French and English mercenaries.
In the middle of all this imminent civil war arrives Geoffrey Chaucer.
Research trip route following Chaucer’s footsteps (with a few side-trips and contemporary liberties taken)
Chaucer was at that time a page for King Edward, the lowest rung at court. His father, John Chaucer, was a wine merchant and assistant wine butler to King Edward. John had placed Geoffrey at court a decade earlier. On this diplomatic journey Chaucer would have been received by Carlos, Pedro and Enrique one station above, as a valet. Chaucer was probably chosen for the task because he was clever with his words, was discrete (when not drinking), and would have spoken French at court, and may have learned some Castilian (and other languages) helping unload his father’s barrels of wine in at the Three Cranes Wharf in the Vintry district of London where he grew up.
So what was Chaucer doing in Olite, Navarre, just days before war broke out?
Authors L.J. Andrew Villalon and Donald J. Kagay have created the most thoroughly researched book we have to date on the events leading up to the largest battle in the Hundred Years War, the Battle of Najera, fought a year later. In their book To Win and Lose a Medieval Battle, they (along with Marion Turner) conclude that Chaucer was probably working as a diplomat and spy on behalf of King Edward the Third of England and his son, Prince Edward, to turn the the former English knight and now mercenary Sir Hugh Calveley back to Prince Edward and his ally, King Pedro. Since the Treaty of Bretigny years earlier, peace between England and France had left lower born knights like Calveley wth no option but to become a mercenary in Europe. If Chaucer was successful, Calveley would have to break his lucrative contract supporting Enrique, thereby losing gold, title and lands. All to support his king – a king who offered little more than respect, the reputation of an honourable knight, and love of his liege lord. Why would Calveley make such a choice? And how would Chaucer turn him?
And so the germ of the idea for my first novel in the Storyteller series, The Storyteller’s War, was born. And also the genesis for my research trip following Chaucer’s footsteps from London, to Bordeaux to Pamplona, Olite, Logrono, Burgos and Barcelona, then back to London. This was a trip planned for 2021 – and we know what happened then. I leave in five hours…