Essex Dogs is the first installment in the Hundred Years War trilogy.
The series sees the first great campaign of the medieval war between England and France through the eyes of its protagonists – chiefly a small company of men-at-arms and archers who call themselves the Essex Dogs, as well as a solitary mercenary and spy known as The Captain.
This first book covers the characters on their hair-raising adventures in the 1346 Crécy campaign, in which they join Edward III's armies as they cut a hellish swathe through France and the Low Countries on their way to a showdown with the French king's army at the battle of Crécy. Through the viewpoints of the characters, and inserted fragments of sermons, newsletters and chronicles, we see the stark reality of medieval war in the round – not only the experience of the fighters, but the interests of scheming merchants, renegade priests, calculating aristocrats and the ordinary people caught in the storm.