Meanwhile, Blanche of Castile was all activity and determination in promoting the objects of her absent husband, and at Calais a fleet of eighty large ships and a great number of small vessels was equipped under the eye of Eustace the Monk. The work, however, notwithstanding Blanche’s energy and Eustace’s experience, went on slowly, and it was not till the day preceding the Feast of St. Bartholomew that everything was ready, and the military force, consisting of three hundred knights and many thousands of ordinary fighting men, embarked with large anticipations. Indeed, they might, from all they heard, entertain hopes of rivalling the achievements of the Norman adventurers of a hundred and fifty years earlier, of whom it is written that “men who had crossed the sea in the quilted frock and with the dark wooden bow of foot soldiers appeared upon war horses and girded with the knightly baldric to the eyes of the new recruits who crossed the sea after them; and he who had come over a poor knight soon had his own banner and his company of men-at-arms, whose rallying cry was his name; so that the drovers of Normandy and the weavers of Flanders with a little courage and good fortune soon became in England great men, illustrious barons, and their names, base or obscure on one side of the Channel, were noble and glorious on the other.” No wonder that, with such encouraging examples before their eyes, the recruits of Blanche of Castile were enthusiastic and eager.
On the day before the feast of St. Bartholomew the French armament left Calais, and never, since he left his monastery in Flanders to adopt the life of a sea-rover, had Eustace the Monk felt more in his element; never, since Robert Fitzwalter and Sayer de Quency reached Paris to offer Louis a crown, had Blanche of Castile seen so fair a prospect of sitting, by her husband’s side, on her maternal grandsire’s throne. It was, in truth, a noble armament, with a magnificent display of painted shields and gorgeous banners, and much feudal pomp to strike the eye and impress the imagination; and Eustace the Monk was in great glee as he put to sea, with a fair, swelling wind which rapidly carried him towards the English coast, his own ship leading the van, and guiding the others on their way to the land which they looked on as their prey.