This Is Jersey

IN 1403 a truce between England and France was broken when English pirates plundered merchant ships off the Breton coast.

The handy presence of Jersey a mere 30 miles from Brittany meant that the Bretons could retaliate without going to the trouble of sailing across the Channel and attacking a hostile shore.

Once in Jersey, the Bretons burnt down houses, took prisoners and looted without much opposition.

Three years later, Don Pero Niño Count of Buelna, a Castilian nobleman turned corsair equipped with a licence to kill from his king, seems to have learned that Jersey offered easy pickings from the crew of a group of French salt-trading vessels on their way to Ile de Batz to pick up a cargo.

Because part of his official brief was to help the French in their renewed struggles with England, Jersey was a doubly attractive goal for a little light piracy. On 7 October Pero Niño’s fleet of galleys – crewed not only by Castilians but also by Breton and Norman adventurers – anchored in St Aubin’s Bay.

According to Niño’s biographer, Gutierre Diaz de Gamez, some of the force who were ‘men of scanty brain’ decided to go ashore as the tide dropped in search of shellfish. The people of Jersey, who had watched Niño’s vessels approaching with increasing trepidation, decided to act at once. They ran down the foreshore and attacked the shellfish-gatherers, killing or capturing those who failed to make it back to their boats.

The Islanders were buoyed up by this early triumph and the corsairs and their allies realised that Jersey might not be quite the pushover they had been led to expect. Niño therefore ordered his men to occupy the islet now dominated by Elizabeth Castle but which in those days was known as L’Islet and accommodated a small community of monks.

The following day, the corsairs and soldiers of fortune, who included Hector de Pontbriand, advanced across the natural causeway linking L’Islet with the dunes that used to lie to the west of St Helier. Jersey’s militia were, however, waiting for the attackers in prepared positions on the shore.

As defenders, they had learned much since, 33 years before, Bertrand du Guesclin had laid waste to the Island, but their confidence was too high.

Although they had mobilised a substantial force of 1,500 foot soldiers and 200 horsemen, they were up against a small but experienced army consisting of men who made their living through fighting and killing.

Thus, while Niño’s force kept its structure, defending its front and flanks with shield walls, many of the Jerseymen simply charged en masse. Predictably, they were quickly repelled by a hail of arrows, crossbow bolts and stones.

The second wave of militia were more disciplined, attacking in ranks, but after brutal fighting with spears, swords and axes during which de Pontbriand and fifty men-at-arms captured the Jersey banner of St George, the Jersey force broke and ran. As a result, the Island was again subject to pillage and destruction.

Scarcely two days after Niño’s fleet had dropped anchor, the corsairs and their partners in crime had gathered as much booty as they could find. They had also discovered a refuge called the ‘villa’, a massive defensive earthwork, the remnants of which are thought to exist at Chastel-Sedement not far from Diélament Manor.

The Jersey folk who had retreated to the relative safety of this refuge sent representatives to negotiate with Niño and, in effect, bought him off – at the reported price of ten thousand crowns plus an annual tribute of weapons and, for some reason, 12 trumpets.

It is said that those who had fled to the villa also tried to distance themselves from the defenders of Gorey Castle.

Playing the race card, the beleaguered Jerseymen claimed that they were of Norman and Breton stock whereas Gorey’s royal garrison was composed of English soldiers.

That did not incite Niño to attack the Island’s main stronghold. Motivated principally by loot, he seems to have had little interest in fighting the English just because they were his sovereign’s enemies. Accordingly, in the afternoon of 9 October, his ships weighed anchor and made for Brest.

If the great corsair was canny in this respect, he was on at least one occasion comprehensively taken in by his crew.

After a long summer of piracy and pillage off the Dorset coast, his men were eager to return to France to lay their vessels up for the winter and to engage in some rest and relaxation among the fleshpots of the French ports.

Niño, however, had his heart set on seeing London.

His sailing master said: ‘OK. If that’s what you want . . .’ – or words to that effect – and promptly took him up the coast as far as the Isle of Wight, where he was able to gaze to his heart’s content at . . . Southampton.

Satisfied that he had seen England’s rather disappointing capital, the man history has called the ‘undefeated knight’ promptly led his men to their winter quarters on the other side of the Channel.

This article originally appeared as part of the Jersey Evening Post Crowns in Conflict series, compiled for the 1204-2004 celebrations.