Right bitterly from six in the morning till three in the afternoon did they fight, Béhuchet himself behaving as a true knight, but all the courage in the world could not repair his error. “The French ships were so entangled in their moorings that they were helpless.” Their numbers availed not at all; one after the other they were boarded by the English. Nevertheless the resistance was so fierce that the fate of the day could yet have been changed by the aid of Barbavara, who was manœuvring on the enemy’s flanks, but a considerable reinforcement of Flemings arriving from Bruges and neighbouring districts by the port of Sluys, decided the fate of the French fleet. “In short, King Edward and his men gained all along the line; the Normans and all the other French were discomfited, dead, or drowned, none escaping, for if they tried to take refuge on land, the Flemings awaited them on the sands.” The English gave almost no quarter. Hugh Quiéret was, they say, slaughtered in cold blood after he had given himself up. Béhuchet was hanged from the mast of his own ship, “to spite the king of France.” Barbavara managed to make good his retreat and regained the open with his forty Genoese galleys, but the French were exterminated. It has been made out that their loss amounted to thirty thousand men. The English bought their victory dearly, but it was complete. The French navy was annihilated. That 24th of June, 1340, marks the naval début of the Valois dynasty.[d] This first naval battle between the two nations very much raised the confidence of the English and the alacrity of the Flemings. Edward had not only a larger army of his own than in the previous campaign, together with the troops of the German allies, but, in addition, forty thousand Flemings under Artevelde, besides those of West Flanders, who proceeded in the direction of St. Omer. This immense host, instead of marching to meet and overwhelm the French king, sat down before Tournay.