ABSTRACT
Most historians of the Hundred Years War see the battle of Sluys, fought on June 24, 1340, as the first major onslaught of this late medieval conflict between France and England. The battle of Sluys has excited the pens of many modern historians. The Low Countries’ authors also spend more time in describing, always in negative terms, the French at the battle of Sluys. In looking at contemporary or near contemporary perceptions of victory and defeat at the battle of Sluys, it becomes necessary to split the sources into three separate groups. Certainly, the English and the French sources are included in two of these categories, but, unlike other battles when only the sources concerned with the victors and the sources concerned with the defeated need to be analyzed, a third group of historical sources must be looked at when studying the battle of Sluys: those written by authors living in lands which were allied with the English forces.
