The 1360 treaty of Brétigny made by Edward III, although it was abrogated by Charles V of France in 1369, remained the basis of Henry V’s diplomacy with the factions in France until well after Agincourt. John the Fearless and Queen Isabeau came to Meulan in person in June 1419 to talk with him after he had made major inroads into Normandy, bringing Princess Catherine with them, expecting to offer him Normandy in full sovereignty and Aquitaine as it had been understood in ‘the Great Peace’ (by which they meant Brétigny). But all three parties realized that this would not work. Isabeau explained why in a subsequent letter: the Armagnac lords were advising her that she should support her son, the Dauphin Charles (her two older sons now having died) and, if she had concluded an agreement with Duke John and King Henry, she would have lost the support of the French nobles, the cities and towns, who, siding with the Dauphin, would have made war on her. This was something like what did happen eventually, but Henry V changed his diplomatic tactic because a new set of circumstances arose: what we would call a gamechanger.
The Dauphin Charles and Duke John agreed to meet and settle their differences but, as the arrangements were being made, it was plain to see that neither party trusted the other. The meeting was arranged to take place at Montereau-sur-Yonne on 10 September 1419. Fences had been erected on the bridge to keep the meeting secret. John the Fearless passed a wicket gate that was then shut behind him. Tanguy de Châtel, the dauphin’s close associate who had saved him from the Cabochiens in Paris in 1413, struck the blow that killed Duke John, while the dauphin was not far away. There seemed no doubt that this action was the Armagnacs’ revenge for the murder of Louis of Orleans fifteen years before on Duke John’s orders. Moreover, nothing ‘could disguise the fact that John of Burgundy had died under the dauphin’s safe conduct at the hands of the dauphin’s men’. The enormity of the crime led to the exclusion of the dauphin from the throne for lèse-majesté and having him declared illegitimate. It was said that when King Francis I visited John the Fearless’s tomb at the Carthusian house in a suburb of Dijon in 1521, and wanted to see John the Fearless’s skull, one of the monks showed him the wound in it, remarking, ‘Sire, this is the hole through which the English entered France.’ Yet the consequences of the murder had been realized by members of Dauphin Charles’s entourage straight away. One of them, immediately upon learning what had happened, said, ‘This has greatly imperilled the crown of France.’1
The English were making rapid advances in Normandy in 1419 and, having already taken Caen, they were soon to take Rouen, its capital. Queen Isabeau wrote to Henry V to condemn Burgundy’s murder and offer her co-operation. Charles VI showed favours to Philip, the new duke, soon known as ‘the Good’, especially since he was his son-in-law. He displaced the Dauphin Charles by making Philip lieutenant of the kingdom. The only winner in all this was Henry V. Philip of Burgundy and the Queen signed the Treaty of Troyes with him in the cathedral there on 21 May 1420 with a certain amount of theatrical pomp. Charles VI, now out of his mind again, did as he was told. Henry was to become his heir when he was dead, and regent for him while he lived. Henry married Catherine on 2 June. By the treaty, any male child they produced would be king of France and of England, each country having its own administration and separate laws. Charles VI disinherited his only surviving son because he had ‘rendered himself unworthy’ by his part in John the Fearless’s assassination, and Queen Isabeau disclosed no details of a suspected liaison with Louis, Duke of Orleans, but agreed to have Charles of Ponthieu declared illegitimate.2
The treaty document opened by the statement that, because Henry V had married his daughter, Charles VI had taken Henry to him as his son, and that Henry V would honour him and Queen Isabeau as his parents. Henry was to assume the title ‘heir of France’ at once. The validity of the treaty was not to rest upon the authority of the mentally handicapped king, nor was the crown private property to be transferred at will, but the change was to be ratified in the Parlement of Paris and in the English Parliament. Only in this way would it carry legality. Oaths to abide by it were taken by the French nobles, so to abrogate it would be treason. The treaty applied to England, Burgundy and the parts of France still under the authority of Charles VI, but there were vast swathes of territory in France not under his authority to the south and south-east of the Loire. These maintained allegiance to the disinherited Dauphin Charles and fought for his cause. The war against him was to continue, and any lands taken from him were to be added to the French part of the dual monarchy. There was a real problem with the Treaty of Troyes: the Anglo-Burgundian alliance was ‘thoroughly unnatural’ … ‘precipitated by the act of naked aggression which ended John the Fearless’s life at the bridge of Montereau’. The Burgundian council in 1419, before the treaty, accepted an alliance with Henry V, in their own words, as the lesser of two evils. They regarded it as a short-tem solution to a passing emergency. As long as support for the dauphin remained, it could not bring peace.3
When Henry died at Vincennes on 31 August 1422, after contracting dysentery at the siege of Meaux in the spring, the Burgundians began to look for and find legal loopholes in the treaty, so as to break it when the alliance between Duke Philip and the Duke of Bedford broke down fifteen years later. Another commentator has asserted that, rather than a peace treaty, it condemned Henry VI’s England and Charles VII’s France to perpetual warfare until one of them lost.4 It could be concluded, then, that the origins of the loss of Normandy in 1450, and of Gascony only three years afterwards – the preoccupation of this study – were in the treaty of Troyes of 1420.
Charles VI fell ill too. He recovered somewhat after a diet of oranges, but died on 21 October. The infant son of Henry V and Catherine inherited his kingdom and, in all likelihood, his illness. War continued between the English, governed by a regency of Henry V’s brothers, Bedford in France and Gloucester in England (Clarence had died in battle at Beaugé in 1421), and with his uncle Beaufort, bishop of Winchester – the richest bishop in England – sometimes acting as paymaster and no longer prevented, as he had been by Henry V, from accepting his cardinal’s hat.5 John of Bedford married Philip of Burgundy’s sister Anne, and the Anglo-Burgundian alliance lasted while she lived. In 1435 Philip and Charles VII concluded the treaty of Arras from which Bedford excluded himself. Bedford’s death soon followed, and Charles was able to take Paris.
* * *
The heir to the Treaty of Troyes was a nine-month old baby, born at Windsor on 6 December 1421 while his father was in France and so never saw him. From 21 October 1422 he was king of the double monarchy of England and France. As the monk of St Albans, Thomas Walsingham, was to remark in his Great Chronicle in a fit of depression,6 ‘Woe to the nation whose king is a child.’
He was the third Lancastrian king after his paternal grandfather’s usurpation of the throne from Richard II in 1399, and the last twenty-two years had seen a ‘Lancastrian’ tradition developing, with sufficient supporters to provide an establishment from which the regency council for the infant and adolescent king could be formed. They decided upon the legal fiction of a public personality for the child, so that collective decisions made by the council were made in the king’s name as if he were already of age. They did this in order to prevent his uncles Bedford and Gloucester or his great-uncle Beaufort from assuming any personal power in England during his minority.7
Fifteenth-century English society could not function without an active king whose directives were taken as the genuine initiatives of national policy at home and in the arena of international politics. The king was not above the law, but he had his function in the making as well as in the application of it. As John Watts has said,
Service to the common weal had to be focused upon the crown and was concentrated and directed by the will of the king. Even though this will was to be wholly responsive to the common interest, it had to exist apart from and above the mass of individuals who made up the communitas. Only this way could common interest be preferred before that of any group or individual. Fifteenth-century advice-writers recognised that their polity required direction, but were careful to restrict the freedom of the royal will to the purposes for which it was required … Only a single independent will, rooted deep in the king’s own person, could guarantee a single common interest and the unity of the realm with which it was so closely associated.8
How was such an understanding to be implemented when the king was a minor or, later, when the king had succumbed to an inherited malady? It was in these conditions, particularly in the minority, that the attempt was made to make Lancastrian principles operate. What were these Lancastrian principles?
The Tudor myth asserted that the deposition of Henry VI in 1461 was retribution for the sin committed by his grandfather in 1399 of deposing Richard II.9 Shakespeare, who dramatized the myth, has Henry V on the eve of Agincourt praying that his soldiers’ hearts will be steeled for the fight, but makes him add:
Not today, O Lord,
O not today, think not upon the fault
My father made in compassing the crown.
I Richard’s body have interréd new,
And on it have bestowed more contrite tears
Than from it issued forcéd drops of blood.
Five hundred poor have I in yearly pay
Who twice a day their withered hands hold up
To pardon blood. And I have built
Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests
Sing still for Richard’s soul …10
However, behind this Tudor myth was what might be called the Lancastrian justification. In 1415, Henry V did indeed found two new religious houses, the Carthusian monastery at Sheen with forty monks which provided confessors for the king’s courtiers, and the Bridgettine convent at Syon, modelled on practice at Vadstena in Sweden. These were part and parcel of the Lancastrian religious orthodoxy which Henry V imposed upon England.11
The origin of these Lancastrian principles pre-dated the usurpation of 1399 but were more fully elaborated during the reigns of Henry IV and Henry V. After the death of these two kings, they were applied by the regency council to the way in which it was hoped the dual monarchy would work out in England. There were also supporters for it in France: the treaty of Troyes, ratified in the Parlement of Paris, envisaged the separate evolution of two nations under one ruler.
The originator of Lancastrianism was Thomas, second Earl of Lancaster, Edward I’s grandson who led the baronial opposition to Edward II, presenting grievances to the king about the way government and finance was being handled. These complaints led to Ordinances being issued in 1311 in favour of good government envisaging baronial restraint on the king’s power. Earl Thomas eventually lost the struggle in his military defeat at Boroughbridge on 6 April 1322, deserted by many of his followers. He was executed six days later. But, as steward of England, and in Parliament, he had embodied a political programme of good government as opposed to Edward II’s tyranny. After his execution at Pontefract, Thomas’s tomb became the scene for reported miracles, and Edward III from his accession in 1327 onwards promoted his cause as a reformer. The way in which people prayed for his soul revealed ‘a nascent political programme’ to which the name Lancastrianism would be appropriate. It was claimed that he had died for the liberty of England’s laws, for justice and for the whole realm of England. The pope never officially regarded him as such, but he was a saint in the eyes of those who came to his tomb as pilgrims until the Protestant Reformation put a stop to it.12
Richard II recognized in Thomas the same kind of opposition as he faced in the Lords Appellant in 1388, but for his adviser and uncle, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the memory of Thomas was ambiguous, and he did not deny the benefits of his reforming legacy in sponsoring a Lancastrian version of history in the chronicle known as the Brut which was currently being translated from Latin into English. While Gaunt was pursuing his ambitions in Spain, his son, Henry Bolingbroke, supported Thomas’s programme and joined the Lords Appellant against Richard II, thus incurring his vindictive wrath in banishing him from England for ten years. When Gaunt died, Richard II denied Earl Henry his inheritance as Duke of Lancaster. Bolingbroke was in Paris and made a secret treaty with Louis of Orleans while his brother Charles VI was incapacitated and then landed at Ravenspur in Yorkshire on 4 July 1399 while Richard II was in Ireland.
Richard II came back to England, met the new Duke of Lancaster at Flint castle and submitted to him in return for the promise of his life. He was lodged in the Tower of London at the end of September 1399, and the Lords and Commons heard it announced that he had resigned the throne ‘with a cheerful expression’. Lancaster had supplanted him, claiming to be God’s choice in a realm that was ‘at the point of ruin for lack of governance and destruction of good laws’. Parliament accepted his claim to be King Henry IV, but the acceptance of this insecure claim needed to be re-confirmed four times by Act of Parliament. Lancastrian principles of good government were asserted to justify Henry’s usurpation of Richard’s throne after the tyrant had starved to death. So ‘the dominant theme of political discourse during the ensuing two decades was … to establish the legitimate foundations of Lancastrian rule.’13
Writers and poets like Thomas Hoccleve, John Gower, Thomas Chaucer and John Lydgate were motivated by their princely patrons to give their support which was widely appreciated by their Lancastrian readers. The English language was used to record government proceedings so there was an element of popular appeal in all this. It was of importance that
In the wake of Richard’s deposition an appeal to the Commons both mitigated the act of usurpation itself and nullified the suspicion that Henry had come to the throne at the head of a narrow political faction. Yet it introduced a degree of debate into the business of kingship, forcing the Lancastrian kings to submit their rule to the approbation of their servants and of the wider political nation to a far greater extent than their predecessors.14
An appeal was also necessary to the Church for its support, since there could be no stability without it. Because Lollardy (the programme of the Oxford theologian John Wyclif) at the beginning of the fifteenth century had such a popular appeal, the attitude towards it for the first fifteen years of Lancastrian rule was ambivalent, despite the Act of Parliament for the burning of a heretic (de heretico comburendo) being passed in April 1401. Nevertheless, Lancastrians wanted to be seen on the side of orthodoxy. This went along with Henry IV’s condemnation of such clergy as preached that Richard II was still alive, and ‘linked sedition with heresy’.15 Nevertheless, the Lancastrians did not allow condemnation without an attempt to persuade the Lollards to leave their mistaken ways. Prince Henry spent many hours with one John Badby who was eventually burned in 1410 for refusing to accept the doctrine of Transubstantiation.
Lancastrian orthodoxy was neither static nor reactionary but expressed itself in progressive new forms of worship under the aegis of certain members of the royal households of Henry IV and his son. The Chapel Royal fostered new polyphony in music and was certainly a priority. Malcolm Vale has pointed out the frequent references to ‘conscience’ in Henry V’s letters dictated under the signet in which there is ‘a ring of authenticity and immediacy’.16 Henry V’s personal involvement in episcopal appointments for suitable candidates has also been noted. The Lancastrian kings had a particularly ‘hands-on’ approach to the Church in England, although it was nothing like the emergent Gallicanism that Charles VII was later to favour in his Pragmatic Sanction issued at Bourges in 1438. It is no wonder that Henry VI, the third Lancastrian King, should have responded so eagerly to the advice of his bishops over his royal ecclesiastical and educational foundations at Eton and Cambridge.
* * *
One of the terms of the Treaty of Troyes stated that Normandy, the pays de conquête must be returned to the kingdom of France when Charles VI died. Nevertheless, Bedford kept the province separate from the rest of France and maintained its administrative and judicial capital at Rouen. Henry VI’s councillors in France undertook to legitimize his rule there by the minting of a new coinage. The principal French coin was the gold salute, and the new version showed an angel bearing the English shield with leopards announcing the coming of the saviour to the Virgin who carries a shield bearing the fleur de lys.17 Could this heavy-handed symbolism have convinced many Frenchmen of the rightness of young Henry’s entitlement to rule over them?
At the same time, Bedford, as Henry’s regent in France, commissioned a poem from an Anglo-French notary called Lawrence Calot in which the new king’s descent from the ancient French and English ruling houses would be set out. The poem went with elaborate genealogical paintings which were displayed in churches tracing his ancestry back to Saint Louis IX18 who had defeated Henry III at Taillebourg in 1242. The irony of this imagery cannot have escaped many French men and women (particularly one young woman) who were increasingly ready to accept the Dauphin Charles as King of France. Nevertheless, the new order was accepted by several influential French cathedral chapters and, to some extent, by the even more influential University of Paris.19
There were reservations in England: the Parliament of 1420 expressed fears that the treaty would at some future time lead to the domination of England by France which explains the reluctance of parliaments before 1429 to grant supply for further warfare. Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick (too early for the Kingmaker) commissioned an English translation of Calot’s poem in French from John Lydgate. David Grummitt comments upon the debate this would have opened among the literate public, unavoidably leading to anxieties about the Lancastrian regime’s priorities. The poem’s survival in forty-six manuscripts, however, suggests that it was taken seriously. Lydgate himself followed his commissioned translation of Calot with an original prose work of his own called The Serpent of Division. Its thesis was that only the unity among the lords could save Henry’s crowns. The poet seemed to have accepted the inevitability of failure since his work is full of paradoxes and ambiguities. Peace in England and France could be brought about only by prosecuting war, the union of the two realms only by the ‘besy peyne’ of that exemplar of active kingship, Henry V. Lancastrian principles of government were now embodied in a small child and however much his council might plan, ‘it was “pitous fate” that would ultimately decide the fortunes of the dual monarchy.’20
When Henry V was on his deathbed at Vincennes, he had given instructions to be followed about the future in both kingdoms but, of course, at that time Charles VI was still alive and not expected to die so soon after him. He laid stress on the importance of the English alliance with Burgundy, the necessity of keeping Normandy, and of not releasing the French prisoners taken at Agincourt until his son had come of age. Philip of Burgundy was offered the regency in France but, when he refused, John of Bedford took it on and arrangements were made in the Paris Parlement on 19 November 1422. With his marriage to Anne, Philip of Burgundy’s sister,
Bedford was perfectly placed to make the Dual Monarchy a political reality. He epitomised the cosmopolitan international princely pretensions of the House of Lancaster. He was thoroughly Francophone, patronising French monasteries, artists and poets and when he died in 1435 he chose to be buried in Rouen cathedral.21
Just under three weeks before Bedford’s ceremonial assumption of authority in Paris, on 30 October 1422, the dauphin struck his own blow on the political anvil by having himself proclaimed as King Charles VII at Mehun-sur-Yévre.22 He had heard of his father’s death on 24 October. He sent a circular letter to the towns of his kingdom to announce his accession to them and moved back to Bourges. The war against the English was obviously his preoccupation. Charles VII soon showed that he was his own man with undeniable self-confidence. From Bourges as dauphin, he had been working on building up foreign support. So, at his accession, not highly regarded by his enemies, he had acquired the support of Savoy and Castille, and disarmed the hostility of Pope Martin V in whom the Great Schism in the western Church had been ended. His father-in-law of Anjou was gaining ground in southern Italy and prestige for the large part of France that was loyal to him. The northern Italian princes were taking notice of him.23
Charles VII did not move from Bourges. He had presided over the Estates-General that met there in January, and the only time he left his base was to go to Selles in August to preside over another meeting. News came that Meulan had capitulated to the English on 1 March. There was a major setback at Cravant near Auxerre on 31 July where the French and Scots under the count of Vendôme and the Earl of Buchan had been cut to pieces by an Anglo-Burgundian army commanded by the Earl of Salisbury. This Scottish force was almost completely wiped out (but there would be others), and Salisbury’s skills as a general were confirmed,24 though he had no more than six more years in which to demonstrate them.
But there was better news for Charles VII by 9 October when he wrote to the residents of Tournai to announce that the count of Aumâle had gone into Normandy and had fought a battle near La Gravelle in Maine on 26 September against more than 2,000 English, who were all killed except their captain and between eighty and a hundred of his men. The greater part of the English force had taken flight and were soon captured or killed. The French lost only eight or ten gentlemen, and ‘a few varlets’. Aumâle claimed he had found the means to overcome the English archers’ longbow.25
Charles wrote that he expected more good news from Aumâle. There had also been a ‘great robbery’ made on the border of the Maconnais by Admiral Culant and other commanders, where about three hundred Burgundian officers had been taken prisoner (Think of the ransoms!). The king, buoyed up by all this, stated that his intention for the next battle season was to go with a large force from Macon to Reims for his coronation (Charles VII had this idea himself while Joan of Arc was still a child at Domrémy) and then to reduce all his rebel subjects – the Burgundians – with the help of his ‘beau cousin’ count Gaston IV of Foix and another contingent of 8,000 Scots who were expected to arrive soon. ‘All this,’ he told the inhabitants of Tournai, ‘to take away from you and others the dangers you are in.’ He had more good news to tell the towns on Saturday 3 July: a son (un très beau fils) had been born to Queen Marie of Anjou. The future Louis XI, had come into the world, with all that that entailed.
Charles VII’s mother-in-law, Yolande of Aragon, turned up in Bourges from Tarascon in Provence to re-assume her role as his confidante and adviser (son rôle de mère vigilante). The royals had taken over the archbishop’s palace, hung with tapestries offered by the Duke of Orleans. A sumptuous baptism ceremony was arranged. Louis had John II, Duke of Alençon and Martin Gouge, bishop of Clermont-Ferrand, for godfathers, and his godmother was one of the queen’s ladies, the countess of Tonnerre.26
There followed a progress in the Touraine, to the Estates-General at Selles, then to Loches, and a joyful entry at Tours. On the road again through Vierzon, Selles and Bléré, and then there was an alarm signal: rumour – which turned out to be false – had it that the English were threatening Tours and were already occupying Le Lude. This did not prevent more celebrations in Tours, or the town’s bourgeoisie presenting the king and queen with ten pipes of wine to wet Louis’ head again, along with ten measures of barley, a hundred fatted sheep, a hundred wax torches and two livres tournois from each of them. The king was received at the abbey of St Martin of Tours on 8 November and made an oath before the canons there.27
The itinerant court moved on after two months to Chinon for yet another meeting of the Estates-General, and then to Bourges for Christmas. The English were all this time threatening the central provinces and the king took measures to protect the towns in the Berry that were on the frontier with the Nivernais. At the end of January there were complaints made at Selles to the royal council that the recruited French soldiers were disorderly. In reply the king issued an ordinance in which he sent all his French soldiers home and announced that he would only pay wages to his Scottish and Lombard soldiers. Ten thousand more Scots arrived soon afterwards on 8 March under the command of the Earls of Douglas and Buchan and other lords. This army was made up of 2,000 knights and squires, 6,000 trained archers, and 2,000 highlanders (escos sauvages) armed with axes. Charles also had 2,000 heavy cavalry from Milan at his disposal (those Lombards whose wages he would continue to pay). Milanese armourers were famous in all Europe, and Milanese steel was the best hope of resisting English arrowheads.28
Once more at Selles, the Estates-General heard the king give his assessment of his kingdom, and repeat his intention to pursue the war more actively. The Estates voted an aid of a million livres, and agreed to recall the army that had been sent home to be ready on 15 May 1424. Jacques and Charles de Bourbon were appointed lieutenants-general: one in Languedoc and the other in the Maconnais. Ambassadors were sent to bring about a rapprochement with the Duke of Brittany. In ordering the army to assemble on the banks of the Loire, Charles VII announced with formality that he would use all his powers to repulse the enemy, and to be present in person as the need arose.
With Yolande of Aragon’s return, factions revived with as much force as they had when Charles VII had been dauphin. The Chancellor, Bishop Martin Gouge, seconded by Yolande, wanted peace and actively promoted a reconciliation with Philip of Burgundy on the basis of what was actually accepted in the Treaty of Arras twelve years later. The other party wanted foreign alliances, and hoped for armed assistance from Spain, Lombardy and, above all, Scotland to fight against the Anglo-Burgundian alliance and free the kingdom from the yoke of the captains [known as écorcheurs (literally, ‘strippers’)] who were dishonouring the king’s cause by their excesses.29
Then came the Duke of Bedford’s ‘Second Agincourt’30 at Verneuil on 17 August 1424 where Scots led by Douglas and Buchan were ‘cut to pieces’.31 Bedford had held his council of war in Paris in June to plan the conquest of Anjou and Maine and of Picardy. His Anglo-Norman force had recently been reinforced by the Earl of Warwick, Lord Willoughby and Sir William Oldhall with men on short contracts. Bedford had called up all who held lands from the crown and were used to bearing arms, whether English or Norman. They were to meet at Vernon on 3 July. He also took 2,000 men from the Norman garrisons, but some of these had to be disciplined for fraud since, having received their wages until November, they left their units and enrolled in the castles so as to receive double pay.
The Earl of Suffolk was besieging the fortress of Ivry south-west of Paris and after three weeks it was ready to capitulate, having arranged 14 August as a ‘day of battle’ on which to surrender if an Armagnac relieving force did not arrive. This force was on its way, but Aumâle and Alençon, who had been dispossessed of their lands in Normandy, decided not to proceed to Ivry, but to occupy Verneuil, thirty miles further to the south-west. Bedford arrived before Ivry in person on the day before and regarded their failure to encounter him there as a breach of chivalry.32
Charles VII had also realized how important the campaigning season of 1424 was to be and, aware of the dissensions between Bedford, Gloucester and Philip of Burgundy, decided to set the recovery of Normandy in hand. With an estimated 15,000 men, assembled between Le Mans and the Loire, and sufficient resources from the Estates to pay them and the Scots, Lombards and Aragonese who were with him, he decided upon resolute action. The French contingents were from the Auvergne, the Limousin, Anjou, Languedoc, Dauphiné and from Brittany. It was a heterogeneous force.33 There were half-a-dozen commanders but no concerted battle plan. Charles VII had wanted to lead the army himself, but his council persuaded him against taking the risk. On the English side, however, there was a unified command, disciplined, sure of itself. Bedford was in total control, with Salisbury, Suffolk, Talbot, Falstolf and Scales as his subordinates, who knew how to make the best use of their smaller numbers. When the time was ripe and conditions permitted, Charles VII would learn from the malfunction of the French armies during these years.
The French army did, however, organize some crafty dealings at Verneuil. Aumâle, Alençon and Narbonne had made their rendezvous with Douglas and Buchan at Chateaudun, intending to advance to the relief of Ivry, but they decided it would be better to take Norman frontier towns one after the other instead, starting with the nearest which was Verneuil where there was an English garrison. They took advantage of the fact that the Scots with them spoke English. They tied them facing backwards on their horses roped together as if they were prisoners and spattered their clothes with theatrical blood as if they were wounded. They led them in front of the town walls and made them utter loud lamentations in English, saying that Bedford had been beaten at Ivry and that they were the remnants of his army.
The English garrison believed what they were hearing, closed the gates and manned the towers. Then the Armagnacs brought Guillaume d’Estouteville, the seigneur of Torcy, and handed him over to them, tied up like the others. He told them that all the English cavalrymen had died that very day before Ivry. They believed him, opened their gates and surrendered to the French and Scots, not knowing that this Norman lord had changed sides to serve the dauphin. Estouteville died in the battle that followed. An anonymous contemporary source calls this action of Estouteville’s ‘treason’.34 There were several Norman defectors who took the serious step of leaving Bedford. They were willing to risk everything, which shows that ‘they must have been confident that the French intended to fight and their chances of victory were high.’35 The ruse worked and Verneuil was taken. They were not so lucky later on: even if they survived the battle, their lands were confiscated by the English.
Bedford by this time had taken Ivry, and went off to Evreux, leaving Suffolk to watch the French army’s movements. When he knew that Verneuil had been taken, he resolved to take it back, angry at the ruse which the French had used. The question of chivalry was important to him. He had heard about the approaches Philip the Good had been making towards Charles and sent de L’Isle Adam with his three thousand Burgundians away to Picardy, reducing his army to eight thousand men. He reached Damville, twenty kilometres north-west of Verneuil, on 16 August.36
Aumâle and Alençon now had the advantage of choosing where the battle should take place. The flat fields to the north of Verneuil were ideal for an action by the Lombard heavy cavalrymen, and the plan was to have them ride down the English archers before they could let off any of their famous volleys from the safety of their embedded stakes that had been so successful at Agincourt. The English fought on foot, and tethered their horses together in the rear by the wagons, with a reserve force to guard them, while they themselves could act as a protection against attack.37
In mid-afternoon, the Milanese began their advance, brushed the archers aside, and separated Bedford’s division from Salisbury’s. They did not regroup from behind, but stopped to pillage the baggage wagons. The disciplined English rallied and advanced in their turn against the French men-at-arms. Whether the archers used their longbows or not (the sources seem to be silent about this), this movement decided the battle. For Bedford, the Scots who were fighting under Douglas and Buchan were oath-breakers. Their king, James I, had recently been released from captivity in England and his officers had sworn not to ally themselves with England’s enemies, so Bedford had ordered in advance that no quarter was to be given, and the combatants did as they were told: discipline was good in his army. The Scots were hounded to death on the field of Verneuil-sur-Avre.38
‘Bedford completely routed the dauphin’s forces.’39 The death-count on the Franco-Scottish side was 7,262, among them the French commander, the count of Aumâle, and both the Scottish ones, Douglas and Buchan. Alençon was a prisoner, held for a ransom of 200,000 gold saluts,40 together with his half-brother, the bastard Pierre, and the Marshal Lafayette. Bedford claimed that the English had lost two men-at-arms and ‘very few’ archers.
The victory had a symbolic value for the dual monachy. The Duke wore a surcoat which bore the French white cross combined with the English red one to represent it, over which he put on a blue velvet robe when he was not fighting, representing his status as a Knight of the Garter.41
By depicting himself as a chivalric knight, commanding a brotherhood of knights certain of the justice of their cause, Bedford claimed the moral high ground against the Dauphin whose councillors had advised him against taking the field in person. Indeed, the unjust nature of the Dauphin’s cause was underlined in the battle’s aftermath: the body of one of the French commanders, the count of Narbonne, who had been killed during the battle and who had been implicated in the murder of John the Fearless, was strung up on Bedford’s orders and later quartered in front of the Anglo-Norman army.42
Charles VII put his plans for his coronation at Reims on hold, and, for a time ‘abandoned himself to a life of indolence in his kingdom of Bourges’. Bedford returned as a hero to Paris. Salisbury and Suffolk went on to seize Senonches and Nogent-Le-Rotrou, while the French general La Hire agreed to evacuate other fortresses. The first wave of conquest ended when the English had taken Maine and Anjou. The only objective not taken was Mont Saint-Michel.43
The importance of Bedford’s victory at Verneuil is reflected in the decision of many in Normandy that further resistance to English occupation and the implementation of the Treaty of Troyes would be futile. Nicolas le Jendre had been at the head of a priory outside the walls of Ivry and had accepted English rule from 1419 onwards when Rouen had been taken. But renewed hostilities meant that income from pilgrims’ offerings to his priory dried up, and he went to live in the town after the Armagnacs had captured it. He was elected abbot of Saint-Germainde-Truite, and went on to be consecrated by the bishop of Evreux, but refused to take the oath of allegiance to Henry VI because he feared how the Ivry garrison wound react toward him. He was in Ivry when he heard of Bedford’s advance and fled into English Normandy. Once Ivry was no longer in French hands, he took his oath after receiving a pardon for not having done so before.
Other residents of Ivry also received Bedford’s pardon for supplying the Armagnacs during their occupation of the place, as was also the case with those who had believed Aumale’s ruse with the Scots at Verneuil and opened their gates to him. The non-combatant attendants who had run off as soon as the Lombard cavalry crashed through the English formations spread the rumour that Bedford and his lieutenants had lost the battle. There was, as a result, a Norman rebellion against Bedford. When the truth was known, the rebels, who had killed a few of the fugitives, submitted.44
* * *
During and after the time of Verneuil, Henry VI’s younger uncle, Humphrey of Gloucester, was branching out on an adventure of his own which was to rock Bedford’s boat to say the least. He had fought and been wounded at Agincourt but he was no statesman and regarded the possibility of eventual peace with France as ‘casting a slur on the memory of a brother whom he had revered’. His fame as a soldier whetted his appetite for more of it.
He had been ‘Guardian of England’ during some of Henry V’s absence in Normandy and it was argued that Henry V’s wish from his death-bed was that Gloucester should be regent again. The Regency Council, as has been noted, had other ideas. There were other restrictions placed upon him as well: his powers of patronage in England were limited to the nomination of officials with the council’s consent. He was interested in literature and scholarship as expressed in his patronage of Oxford University with his famous library. He fostered the anti-foreign feelings of the Londoners. But ‘nothing can hide his factious irresponsibility’ which is best seen in his relationship with Jacqueline, countess of Hainault, Holland and Zeeland.
This ‘unfortunate lady’ was daughter and heiress to William, count of Holland, had considerable wealth, and had been married twice, firstly to the French Dauphin Jean de Touraine, and then, at his death, to John, Duke of Brabant, a marriage contrived by his cousin, Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, to increase his own power. This second husband was ‘a feeble debauchee’. She could tolerate neither him nor the way he handled her property. She fled to London, to seek Henry V’s help. Gloucester fell in love ‘either with her or her possessions, possibly with both – though love of the latter endured the longer’. Gloucester bigamously married her in January 1423 (he obtained a dispensation from the last of the antipopes of the Great Schism, Benedict XIII at Avignon), and then arranged an expedition to recover her lost possessions. The couple arrived in Calais in October 1424 with an English army and set up headquarters at Mons. He was successful in Hainault itself, but he over-reached himself when he decided to attack Jacqueline’s erstwhile husband in Brabant and actually approached the town walls. This could have sabotaged the Anglo-Burgundian alliance entirely only three months after his brother’s victory at Verneuil. Philip the Good issued orders to his nobles – Jean de Luxembourg and the Croy brothers – to be ready go under arms to the Duke of Brabant’s assistance. Brabant was his cousin after all and his lands were important for the consolidation of the Burgundian state.
Philip responded to a letter from Gloucester with a challenge to personal combat, a trial by battle, ‘a deadly serious affair’45 for which he went into strict training and spent large sums on equipping himself. However, the pope intervened to prohibit it and Bedford arranged a chivalric court in Paris to declare that honour had been satisfied without the duel taking place. Gloucester abandoned Jacqueline to the Duke of Burgundy and, accompanied by her lady-in-waiting, Eleanor Cobham, whom he made his next duchess (she was later imprisoned on suspicion of having used witchcraft to the detriment of Queen Margaret), he returned to England.46 With this loose cannon bumping about on deck, it was no wonder that Lydgate expressed misgivings about the possibility of cooperation between the English royal dukes to make the dual monarchy effective for any length of time.
The cause of Bedford’s decision to send de L’Isle Adam and his Burgundian troops away from his army was that it was becoming known that Philip was making approaches to the court at Bourges on the basis of Gloucester’s insult to the Duke of Brabant. But now, in defeat, Charles VII was given concessions by Duke Philip, and they signed a treaty to avoid war between them in the county and duchy of Burgundy, the Bourbonnais, the Maconnais and Forez, and then regularly renewed truces between themselves.
Gloucester’s folly had more serious results, inasmuch as Duke Philip made ‘tentative concessions’ to the dauphin when he signed a treaty of abstinence from war with him in September. The treaty was limited in scope, since it did not include areas where Bedford was interested in further conquest, but it was the first in a series of such agreements and, in signing it, Philip acknowledged the dauphin as King Charles VII of France:47 another one in the eye for the dual monarchy, to which he had been a signatory.
This dispute between Gloucester and Burgundy also damaged another of Bedford’s projects. Before the campaign which led to Verneuil, he had signed a tripartite treaty at Amiens with Burgundy and Brittany, committing the signatories to ‘true fraternity’ and the preservation of their honour, sealed with marriage alliances. Bedford married Anne of Burgundy, and Jean IV of Brittany’s brother, Arthur de Richemont, married her sister Margaret. Richemont had been a prisoner in England after Agincourt for seven years, but had been released upon taking an oath to Henry V, served in France with Suffolk and was made lord of Ivry. After Verneuil, Charles VII offered him the post of Constable of France. Because of the offence he had been given by Gloucester’s activities, Burgundy advised Richemont to accept, which he did in a spectacular about turn. Burgundy then married his sister Agnès to Charles of Bourbon, an Armagnac, whose father was still an Agincourt prisoner. The Duke of Brittany himself then revoked the treaty he had made at Amiens with Bedford and, in October 1425 signed the treaty of Saumur with Charles VII expressly to expel the English from France.48
Humphrey of Gloucester had by no means finished his tergiversations. Another source of danger for the stability of the English monarchy during the minority, let alone the implementation of the Treaty of Troyes was the acrimonious dispute that broke out between him and the bishop of Winchester, Henry Beaufort. During Gloucester’s absence from England, Beaufort was exerting the influence of being the wealthiest diocesan bishop in England to ‘mould the personnel and policies of the government in his own interests’.49 Since the death of his nephew Henry V, Beaufort had gained in influence, helped on by his elder brother, the Duke of Exeter, being appointed the infant king’s guardian. His continued ability to make loans to the government for the expenses of warfare during the period of two years 1422–1423 when parliament made financial difficulties allowed Bedford to make his campaigns in Normandy leading to Verneuil. Beaufort proved invaluable to the work of the king’s council and the minority government, to the extent that he was re-appointed to the post of chancellor of England in July 1424, where he tried to ‘balance the welfare of the king and the realm with the ambitions of the Duke of Gloucester.’50
Gloucester sent a message to the newly-elected mayor of London, one John Coventry, a mercer, on 29 October 1425 to gather a force of armed men to protect London Bridge from the menace of men-at-arms and archers gathered in Southwark by Bishop Beaufort from Lancashire and Cheshire and from the garrison at Windsor Castle, along with a mob of lawyers’ apprentices. Gloucester was popular in London for his support of the merchants there against the Flemings who were present to facilitate the cloth trade. They, of course, owed allegiance to the Duke of Burgundy, who was also the count of Flanders. Beaufort was not popular among the citizens because he had recently had some of them arrested. The presence of household servants from Windsor with Beaufort was worrying to Gloucester because he feared that it was part of a plot to take the boy-king from nearby Eltham to Windsor, the better to influence and educate him as his great-uncle might wish. The mayor did as Gloucester asked. The bishop’s men were kept at a distance, and the Londoners restrained from attacking Southwark.
Gloucester was exasperated by developments that had taken place in London while he was away in Hainault and Brabant. Bishop Beaufort, the chancellor of England, had been alarmed by anonymous threats to the Flemings posted up in the city and suburbs on 13 February 1425 and even nailed to Beaufort’s own door, which led him to make Richard Woodville custodian of the Tower of London on 26 February. It was then that he had made the arrests on charges of treason among the Londoners, charges made by someone alleged to have been paid by him, while it was also claimed that he was favouring the interests of the Flemings against theirs. This animosity had led to a demonstration against Beaufort at a wharf not far up-river from his lodgings at Southwark including threats to throw the bishop/chancellor himself in the river. Reports were brought to Bedford in Normandy and he in turn was anxious, especially as he was trying to repair relations with Philip of Burgundy, still smarting under Gloucester’s attack on his cousin Brabant as well as the offence offered to his Flemish traders.
Richard Woodville seemed the ideal candidate for the task of restoring stability: he had served in Normandy under Henry V, been captain of Caen and elsewhere, and treasurer-general for Bedford in the province. When Gloucester returned from Brabant, intending to take lodgings in the Tower by virtue of his office as protector and defender of the realm, Woodville would not let him in, a decision which Beaufort supported. ‘These annoyances … brought to flash-point the fierce animosity that existed between Beaufort and Gloucester.’51 The Londoners saw him as a fellow-citizen, with his residence in the city at Baynard’s Castle, and they manned the embankment in his cause in case Beaufort’s men should attack him. When Gloucester tried to make Woodville set free a prisoner he was interested in (Friar Randolph, imprisoned since 1419 for implication in necromancy and witchcraft), he, Woodville, consulted Beaufort, and Beaufort, considering Gloucester to be setting himself up against the regency council, supported Woodville’s refusal to let Gloucester reside in the Tower without a warrant from that same council.
Despite having been out of England for the last six months, Gloucester considered that Beaufort was attempting to keep him away from Henry VI, also without any authorisation from the council. Gloucester had never been allowed to be the king’s guardian, which rankled with him, but nor had Beaufort – as we saw earlier, the regency council was a collectivity to prevent the king being influenced by his uncles or great-uncle – who was being accused of lodging in Southwark to be closer to Eltham as a stage in a move toward securing his protection by having the king under his control. Gloucester returned to England in April 1425, and the violence in London in October occurred when these tensions burst out into the open.
Archbishop Chichele of Canterbury did all he could to contain the ‘extremes of resentment’ between the disputants, along with the Earl of Stafford and the Portuguese Duke of Coimbra who was Gloucester’s cousin, then a guest in the bishop of London’s palace. It was Beaufort who took an initiative drastic enough to lead to the suppression of the dispute: he wrote urgently to Bedford, who was the only one with sufficient authority to impose a solution. He concluded the letter with, ‘For your wisdom knows well that the prosperity of France stands in the welfare of England.’52 At least he had his eye on the dual monarchy, which Gloucester seemed to be ignoring in his egocentric behaviour. Bedford left Normandy in the care of Salisbury and Suffolk and was in England, accompanied by Anne of Burgundy, in January 1426 when he issued writs for a parliament to be held at a distance from turbulent London in Leicester which opened on 18 February.
Delays in opening the business of the parliament were the result of the refusal of Gloucester to attend a meeting of the king and the great council at St. Albans, as they were on their way to Leicester, and again at Northampton. He was sent a ‘peremptory royal letter’53 on 18 February to make sure that he was present at Leicester for the parliament itself. Gloucester would have been protector and royal lieutenant in parliament had Bedford not been summoned by Beaufort, and his proper pride (the name that used to be given to self-respect) made it difficult for him to submit himself to judgement by parliament. The commons sent a delegation to Bedford to emphasise the dangers inherent in such a dispute between magnates and the urgency of resolving it by bargaining for a compromise. Bedford reacted positively, and on 7 March Gloucester and Bedford agreed to submit their dispute to a panel of arbitrators and adhere to its decision. This panel was headed by Archbishop Chichele, and included four bishops (one of whom, Stafford of Bath and Wells, was the treasurer), and four lords (one of whom was the keeper of the privy seal): virtually all of the regency council without the two protagonists in the dispute.
The Duke of Gloucester and the bishop of Winchester were required to forgive and forget their actions against each other made before 7 March 1426. Gloucester must be a good lord to the bishop, and the bishop would undertake to serve him as he should. They would forgive each others’ followers for their past actions also. Beaufort had to swear an oath of loyalty in the presence of the king and Bedford and the lords and commons, and this was embodied in an act of parliament. Gloucester was required to do no more than accept Beaufort’s declaration of good will towards him. Bedford accepted that his uncle Beaufort had exceeded his responsibilities and accepted that, once he had returned to Normandy, Gloucester would once again be protector of England and his dignity as such must be preserved.
So, a few days later, Beaufort resigned the chancellorship, which was transferred to Archbishop Kemp of York. Bedford made new appointments to offices of state avoiding members of Beaufort’s retinue and, on 14 May, Beaufort himself was given leave to go on pilgrimage, ‘probably to Rome’.54 This tempestuous assembly was known as the ‘Parliament of Bats’ because the members were ordered to leave weapons of any kind at their lodgings and they secretly carried bats with them. When this in turn was noticed and forbidden, they carried large stones in their capacious sleeves so as not to go unarmed.
Bedford had to act against other rivalries during his stay in England. One of them concerned Lord Talbot (the future commander of the force that would re-take Bordeaux from France in 1452 and lose it again at Castillon in 1453) and the Earl of Ormond. He also took steps to raise known Lancastrian supporters to higher status: Norfolk and Cambridge were elevated from earls to dukes, and sufficient rewards were given to men who had distinguished themselves in France in the form of knighthoods. It was also decided to elevate the five-year-old king’s own position in knighting him as well, and having him dub as knights the heirs of magnates – and other magnates themselves – as well as military commanders who had served Bedford. Sir Richard Woodville was one of these.55
Once Bedford was back in France, new ordinances assured that the whole regency council would be engaged in decisions, so as not to allow magnates to enter into disputes damaging to the kingdom’s interests. Gloucester truculently commented that when his brother had gone, he would govern as seemed good to him, but he soon backed down.56 As for Beaufort, he was allowed to receive the cardinal’s hat which Henry V had refused him, fearing that he would favour the pope’s interests above those of England at the time of the Agincourt campaign. Bedford himself invested him with it in St. Mary’s church in Calais on 25 March 1427, a week after his return to France.57
During Bedford’s absence, most of the action had been directed against the Duke of Brittany after his Treaty of Saumur with Charles VII, in response to which the English had made a formal declaration of war in January 1426. Sir Thomas Rampston (fifteen years later prominent in the Bordelais) as Suffolk’s lieutenant, had attacked as far as Rennes, which subdued the duke. The duke made a truce which turned into an alliance signed on 8 September 1427. He became Henry VI’s liege man in life and limb.
But this coin had its reverse side. The future count of Dunois, then known as the Bastard of Orleans, and La Hire had defeated Suffolk and Warwick at Montargis, where they had been besieging the Armagnacs. The earls had to abandon their artillery and baggage. John Talbot was made governor of Anjou and Maine, and he would make good the losses and impress his adversaries.
Talbot was now one of the richest men in England, having married the Earl of Warwick’s elder daughter. He was a Knight of the Garter, and was an expert in speed and surprise, skills learned in Wales and Ireland. He had come to France after Agincourt, and returned with Bedford in March 1427 for what was supposed to be a six-month contract. He began his campaign in early 1428 by a punitive raid at Laval. Le Mans had been lost to La Hire, but Talbot began a siege of the castle in which the English garrison had remained when the town surrendered. Talbot’s rapid advance from Alençon led to a violent exchange with La Hire’s troops in which the English garrison joined. The prisoners taken were so many that a special court of chivalry had to be set up under Lord Scales to decide about ransoms, which led to judgements in the Paris Parlement, and one of the cases concerned Talbot himself. After that, Talbot, because of his punishments meted out to those who had earlier betrayed the town to La Hire, became known to both sides in the conflict as ‘the English Achilles’. Bedford valued this ‘soldier’s soldier’, endowed him with lands, and often called him to his council in Paris.58