10

AGINCOURT

Charles VI came to the French throne in 1380, at the age of 11. As early as 1382, according to Froissart, he was enthusiastic at the prospect of war, declaring that ‘I do not want anything other than to arm myself. I have never been armed, and if I want to reign with honour and glory, I need to learn the art of arms.’¹ His personal rule began in 1388. He seemed to be all that was required of a king. Good-looking, he was of above average height though not too tall, and ‘his nose was neither too long nor too short’.² He was a fine horseman and had considerable skill in the use of weapons; he was a good archer and could throw a javelin. An affable man, he entered into conversation with ease.

Yet Charles had major problems. On a hot day in 1392 he was riding near Le Mans with his companions. Startled when a page dropped his lance, in a frenzy Charles drew his sword, and attacked his brother, the Duke of Orléans. Eventually the king was subdued. His eyes rolled, he could not speak, nor could he recognize his companions. This was the first attack of a long series of illnesses in which the king lost his mind. He was unable to recognize anyone, claiming his name was George; there was no possible treatment for his many delusions. For five months he refused to change his clothes or to take baths, with the result that he was covered in lice, which burrowed deep into his flesh. The most plausible diagnosis is that Charles suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. For France, the king’s condition was a disaster, leading as it did to bitter infighting between the dukes of Orléans and Burgundy. The feud would leave France divided for over 40 years. It provided the English under their new Lancastrian dynasty with fresh opportunities for intervention. English ambitions in France, however, were but one element in a highly complex situation.

Fig. 13: Charles VI and his queen, Isabeau of Bavaria

BURGUNDY AND ORLÉANS

The rivalry between the houses of Burgundy and Orléans was disastrous for France. Philip, duke of Burgundy, was Charles VI’s uncle. Through marriage to the daughter of the Count of Flanders, he acquired lands on a huge scale when his father-in-law died in 1384. He gained not only Flanders, but also Brabant and Artois in the Low Countries, and the Franche-Comté of Burgundy (held of the Empire). On Philip’s death in 1404 he was succeeded by his son, John the Fearless, so called for his bravery at the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396. For the Burgundian rulers, the commercial links of the Low Countries across the North Sea meant that peace with England made far more sense than war.

Louis, Charles VI’s younger brother, became Duke of Orléans in 1392. Marriage to a daughter of Gian Galeazzo Visconti of Milan brought him wealth. His estates were dispersed across all of France, not concentrated so as to provide a single power-base. He did much to increase his landholdings, and his acquisition of rights over the duchy of Luxembourg in 1402 was a direct challenge to Burgundian power in the Low Countries. Eloquent, cultivated and pious, Louis was at the same time a gambler and something of a libertine.

There was no easy resolution of the rivalry between the dukes of Orléans and Burgundy. Assassination offered a horrific solution, and in 1407 Orléans was murdered in Paris, an act for which the Duke of Burgundy accepted responsibility. Two years later he was pardoned by the king, and with the support of the queen, Isabeau of Bavaria, he seized power in France. His rivals were a powerful group, headed by the new Duke of Orléans, which included the dukes of Berry and Bourbon, the counts of Armagnac and Alençon, and Charles d’Albret. Orléans was married to a daughter of the Count of Armagnac; the faction was soon termed the Armagnacs. There was real hatred between Armagnacs and Burgundians. Seeking support, the Armagnacs turned to England under Henry IV, and a formal alliance was agreed at Bourges in 1412. The Burgundians led Charles VI to the siege of Bourges, which featured two great bombards, called Griete and Griele. The siege ended with negotiations; the keys were handed over to the king. Peace, of a sort, was re-established, and the Armagnac treaty with England was renounced. Yet the civil war soon reopened. In 1414 Soissons was taken by the Armagnacs, and sacked with full brutality. ‘It was said that the Saracens had never done worse than what those in the army did as result of the evil counsel of those around the king.’³

WAR UNDER HENRY IV

Given the heated political atmosphere in Paris, it is hardly surprising that the war with the English was not pursued with great vigour when it reopened following the fall of Richard II in 1399 and the advent of the new Lancastrian monarchy. Most of the action took place in the south-west. The English hold on Gascony was much reduced from what it had been under Edward III, amounting to the cities of Bordeaux and Bayonne, their hinterlands and a strip of land linking the two. Beyond that, there were fortresses held by routier captains with a loose allegiance to the English. Yet for many Gascons, English rule seemed preferable to French. This puzzled the scholar Jean de Montreuil, who considered that the Gascons ‘through ignorance, thought things were otherwise than they were, and were guided by error and false information to the opposite of the truth’.⁴ In 1405 the English suffered major losses. Bordeaux itself came under siege, and a large number of English-held fortresses fell. By 1406 the English position in Gascony was on the verge of total collapse. The Duke of Orléans led a substantial Armagnac army to besiege Bourg and Blaye; if they fell there was little hope for Bordeaux. However, the siege of Bourg proved difficult. It had been unwise to attempt the operation in winter. A fleet bringing supplies to the army failed to force its way through. The besiegers suffered badly from the cold, disease and lack of supplies, and in January 1407 the siege was abandoned. Henry IV had provided little by way of assistance to the Gascons, yet the duchy had survived.⁵ Meanwhile, in the north, the Duke of Burgundy’s attempt to lay siege to Calais was abandoned. Truces followed; France was in no state to conduct an effective war.

There were small-scale attempts by the French and their Castilian allies on the English coast in these years, but these did not create the level of panic that those of the 1370s had done. In 1404 a French fleet reached Falmouth, and prepared to fire the town. The local peasantry rallied; the French crossbowmen drove them back, but only one man was killed. He had charged on horseback, and had his head chopped off by a Spanish fighter. Then, ‘his horse carried him, headless, 120 paces, before his trunk fell to the ground’.⁶ In the following year, Castilian galleys had no more success. A skirmish with the locals took place at Portland, and there was an inconclusive engagement at Poole, after which ‘the arrows lay so thick upon the ground that no man could walk without treading on arrows in such numbers that they picked them up in handfuls’. Under the impression that they had reached London, when in fact they were outside Southampton, the Castilians turned their galleys towards the Norman coast and safety.⁷

Henry IV displayed military ambition very early in his reign, though a two-week-long invasion of Scotland in 1400 achieved little. While the king and his son were dealing with Owain Glyndŵr’s rebellion in Wales, in 1402 Henry Percy, known as Hotspur, crushed a Scottish invasion of Northumberland at Humbleton Hill, near Wooler. In a further disaster for the Scots, shortly before his father Robert III died in 1406, the young heir to the Scottish throne, James, was captured at sea, on his way to safety in France. He remained in English hands until 1424, and this ended the prospect of direct conflict between England and Scotland. Many Scots, however, went to France to fight the English, particularly after 1415.

It was not until 1411 that the English once again sent an expedition to northern France. The earls of Arundel and Warwick led a small army from Calais in support of the Duke of Burgundy. The English archers proved their worth in fighting around Paris, but the expedition as a whole achieved little. That autumn saw English policies reversed. The Prince of Wales had been dominant since early in 1410, and it had been he who favoured the Burgundian cause in France. Now, late in 1411, the king reasserted himself. In the following year, Armagnac ambassadors offered to restore all of Aquitaine to the English. The Prince of Wales was bitterly opposed to abandoning support for Burgundy, and therefore command of a new expedition, in support of the Armagnacs, was given to his younger brother, Thomas duke of Clarence. He led a chevauchée from Saint-Vaast-la-Hogue to the Loire valley in 1412. No fighting took place, but Clarence demanded an impressive 150,000 écus as a condition for leading his troops back to England.

HARFLEUR

Henry V came to the throne in 1413. He had military experience, for he had fought the Percies at Shrewsbury in 1403, and had led forces to put down the Glyndŵr rebellion in Wales. An arrow in the face at Shrewsbury, removed with a special surgical instrument, left him with the scar of a veteran soldier. Like many heirs to the throne, he had been at loggerheads with his father. A cultured man, his deeply-felt piety was thoroughly orthodox. He encouraged the use of the English language in government, an indication of the importance of his nationality to him. Records show that he took an active interest in the details of administration, checking accounts and responding to complaints put before him. He did not transform government, but he did his best to ensure that it operated in the best interests of his subjects.

Diplomatic efforts to achieve a lasting peace between England and France came to nothing. Henry V envisaged marrying Charles VI’s daughter Catherine, and obtaining a territorial settlement which would see him hold Aquitaine, Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Touraine, Poitou and Ponthieu, and more besides, in full sovereignty. He would abandon his claim to the French throne, and the French would pay what was still due from King John’s ransom. Unsurprisingly, the negotiations broke down. Discussions with the Burgundians were no more successful, for early in 1415 the Burgundians and Armagnacs came to terms. As diplomacy was not yielding the results Henry looked for, he turned to war. He faced a new leader in France, for in April, Louis the Dauphin, aged 18, took control of the government of a country which was still bitterly divided.

Indentures made with leading captains left the destination of the 1415 expedition open; the king would either campaign ‘in our duchy of Guyenne, or in our kingdom of France’.⁸ In the event, Henry took his army of some 10,000 men to Normandy, to besiege Harfleur. The port was important, for it commanded the Seine estuary, the route towards Rouen and onwards upstream to Paris. A letter from the chancellor of Gascony, written at Harfleur, explained that rather than entering the town after its capture, the king ‘intends to go to Montivilliers, and thence to Dieppe, afterwards to Rouen, and then to Paris’.⁹

The English lacked recent experience in siege warfare; the last town they had captured was Limoges in 1370, and the last large-scale successful siege that of Calais in 1346–7. Harfleur was well defended. However, the English had formidable siege weapons; the Monk of St Denis explained that ‘among them were some of extraordinary size, which cast enormous stones in the midst of thick smoke, with a horrible noise such that you would have thought they came from hell’s fury’.¹⁰ In all, about 7,500 gunstones were fired. The outworks were gradually weakened by the bombardment, and much damage was done to the houses within the town. It proved impractical to mine the walls, or to use movable wooden towers to make an assault, but after five weeks a final attack on the barbican persuaded the garrison that further resistance was futile. The French had made no attempt to save the town, perhaps persuaded that the English army was far larger than was the case. A captured Frenchman was released by the English on condition that he told Jean Fusoris, canon of Notre Dame in Paris (a notable maker of clocks and other instruments), ‘that the king of England had landed in France, and had taken land in front of Harfleur, which he was besieging accompanied by 50,000 men’.¹¹ He was also to say that they had 4,000 tons of flour and 4,000 tons of wine, and a dozen great siege guns.

In fact, the government had made surprisingly few efforts to ensure that the army was properly supplied with victuals. Bakers and brewers in Hampshire had prepared for the arrival of the troops ready for embarkation at Portsmouth, but responsibility for taking foodstuffs to France was laid firmly on the men themselves, who were instructed to have sufficient supplies for three months. Keeping a large army immobile for weeks at Harfleur was asking for trouble, particularly given the inevitable insanitary conditions of an encampment. Dysentery swept through the lines, affecting nobles and common soldiers alike. The records show that, because of the epidemic, 1,330 men were allowed to leave for England. Whether this was a true total is open to question; many were said to have ‘stealthily slipped away to England’ out of ‘sheer cowardice’.¹²

The siege ended with a negotiated surrender, followed by a magnificent ceremony. The king sat on his throne, decked with cloth of gold. His helmet, bearing his crown, was on his right, mounted on a staff. The French commander handed over the keys to the town. A feast followed, at which the hostages surrendered by the townspeople were entertained. A further formality followed, when Henry issued a challenge to the Dauphin, offering to settle the issue between their two countries by personal combat, and demanding a response within eight days. Arguments in the royal council followed. According to the account by Henry’s chaplain, the king proposed a march to Calais, but most of the councillors argued that this was far too dangerous. The French might ‘enclose them on every side like sheep in folds’.¹³

AGINCOURT

Henry’s purpose in marching to Calais is not clear. He was taking an extraordinary risk. It is all too easy to assume that the eventual outcome was what was originally intended, but for Anne Curry, ‘The idea that the march northwards was the result of his desire for battle is not credible.’ Clifford Rogers has argued the opposite case, suggesting that Henry ‘hoped for a general engagement’.¹⁴ The French, however, had not attempted battle during the siege of Harfleur, and it must have seemed unlikely that they would do so. Yet, as events were to show, the English army was prepared for battle. Further, the king was imbued with a strong religious sense of mission; as his chaplain put it, he was ‘relying entirely on divine help and the justice of his own cause’.¹⁵ There was, however, no rush to battle on Henry’s part, nor did he try to negotiate with the French as to where and when to fight.

The French intended to fight. Remarkably, a plan showing how the troops would be drawn up in order of battle survives. The veteran Marshal Boucicaut was primarily responsible for it; he had battle experience from Roosebeke in 1382 and Nicopolis in 1396. He had good information about the English army, noting that Henry might form his men into one single division. The plan set out the way in which a cavalry force ‘would attack the archers and break their power’.¹⁶ Another division would attack the English baggage train. In practice, the narrow terrain at Agincourt meant that the plan was not fully carried through. In particular, the French crossbowmen and archers were not placed in front of the two flanking wings of troops. However, the plan shows that the French were well prepared for the coming battle.

Henry did not have a large army. His chaplain estimated it at 900 men-at-arms and 5,000 archers. Anne Curry, using the records, has calculated that it totalled 8,680 men; Rogers prefers an estimate of about 6,000. Contemporaries would not have had access to the muster rolls available to the modern historian, but there are difficulties in working out the numbers. Records show that the Earl of Arundel’s retinue lost 87 men out of 400 through sickness, yet his accounts suggest that it was only six men-at-arms below strength on the campaign.¹⁷ Whether the army numbered around 6,000 or 8,500 is a nice point for historians to debate; what is important is that it was much smaller than the French host.

French numbers are even more difficult to calculate. Contemporary estimates varied wildly, as do those by historians. Curry has argued that the army totalled about 12,000 men. Given that plans at the end of August were to raise a host of 6,000 men-at-arms and 3,000 archers, this seems reasonable. Rogers, however, considers that the conventional estimate of around 24,000 men is acceptable. One problem is whether those termed gros varlets were combatants, or just support staff.¹⁸ The contemporary view was that the French substantially outnumbered the English, four to one being a common estimate. All that can be safely concluded is that the English were at a considerable numerical disadvantage. Not only was there a clear disparity in overall numbers between the two armies, but there was also an even greater difference in the count of men-at-arms, for the French had a much higher proportion of such men in their ranks than did the English.

The English march from Harfleur was difficult. Orders had been given that the men were to take supplies for eight days. This was totally inadequate, for all the bridges over the Somme were broken, and the army was forced upstream. It took a week and a half to reach a crossing point. The troops were hungry, and rumours were rife that the French were about to attack. The French then challenged Henry to battle, though without specifying when or where. Campaigns were frequently punctuated by such challenges; how genuinely they were intended is a difficult question. The army continued its march; the French were then spotted, in battle array, higher up a valley. They withdrew after a time, and the English spent the night waiting in silence. On the next day, 25 October, the French drew up their forces blocking the road to Calais, close to Agincourt. The vanguard was on foot, flanked by cavalry. The main body of men-at-arms was dismounted, while the rearguard was mounted. In contrast to the Battle of Crécy, on this occasion it was the French who chose the battle site.

The English knights and men-at-arms were in three side-by-side divisions. There has been much inconclusive argument over the way the archers were disposed. Were there formations of archers between the divisions, or were they all on the flanks? The chaplain’s account states that Henry interposed wedges of archers in each line. One French account has it that Henry told his troops that ‘our 12,000 archers will range themselves in a circle around us’. Another suggests that the archers were behind the main English formation, and yet another that they were on both flanks of the men-at-arms.¹⁹ Any answer to the problem needs to take into account the fact that the archers greatly outnumbered the men-at-arms; most diagrams of the battle suggest the opposite. The evidence is contradictory, but it seems likely that there were large formations of archers on each flank of the English army, and that there were also archers around, and intermingled among, the men-at-arms. There was one innovation in the archers’ equipment. They were provided with lead mallets, used to hammer in stakes to be cut on campaign. There was a possible precedent for this, as stakes for protection were used by the Turks in 1396 at Nicopolis when they defeated a crusading army, though whether the English commanders would have been aware of this is open to question.

The two armies stood still for some time, neither prepared to move. Some of the French ‘had gone off to get warm, others to walk and feed their horses, not believing that the English would be so bold as to attack them’.²⁰ They were quite mistaken, for the English eventually took the initiative. On Henry’s orders Thomas Erpingham, steward of the king’s household, threw his baton in the air, signalling that the archers should advance. There has been argument over how far they moved forward. It was surely very risky for the archers to lift their stakes, march through thick mud, and then replant the stakes. This would have left them open to attack from the French. One tempting answer is that the English advanced just a short distance. The implication of most of the sources, however, is that the English moved forward a considerable way, with much shouting. When the French cavalry charged towards them, many riders were driven back by the hail of arrows, their horses maddened and uncontrollable.

The French men-at-arms advanced on foot in three columns. By the time they reached the English lines they were exhausted from struggling through the mud. In the mêlée the English archers, unencumbered by armour, used their mallets and stakes to savage the French. The front was too narrow for French numbers to be of any advantage. Rather, their forces, crammed together, became an unmanageable crowd. When those in front were halted by the English, their comrades pushed forward from behind. This was not the behaviour of an army, but of a mob, crushing in on itself. Soon, great heaps of dead and dying men built up. It was horrific. It was not only the French who died in this mass; no less a man than the Duke of York was killed in the press of desperate men. It seems that about 90 of his following were either slain, or died later of their wounds.

The battle seemed won, but there was panic when it seemed that the French rearguard was about to attack. Henry gave orders that the prisoners who had been taken should be killed. Many were slain, and the French withdrew from the field of battle. Henry’s action has been much criticized, but contemporaries did not accuse him of acting contrary to the laws or conventions of war. Burgundian chroniclers provided a very different justification for the killing. It was the fault of ‘the wretched company of the French’ who had regrouped, threatening a renewal of the battle.²¹ Nor was Henry’s command wholly exceptional; the Battle of Aljubarrota was another where prisoners were slain.

Why were the English victorious? Contemporary explanations were, for the most part, simple. God had given the English victory: 25 October was the day of two obscure saints, Crispin and Crispinianus, and it may be that as the claimant to the French throne, Henry considered it sensible to attribute the victory to the intercession of French saints. He also acknowledged St John of Beverley, for 25 October was the day of his translation. For the English, the victory was a divine sentence on Henry’s claim to the French throne. For the French, it was a verdict on the evils that affected society. Sex was part of the explanation; as Henry had ‘not consented to burning, ravaging, violating nor raping girls and women’, the English troops had showed themselves to be more virtuous than the French, whose forces had shown no restraint prior to the battle.²² Arthur de Richemont, later Constable of France, provided a straightforward military explanation. Richemont himself was captured in the battle, and his biographer preserved his views. The battlefield was too narrow for so many to fight; the cavalry that should have attacked the wings of the English army were driven back by archery, and in retreating broke up the French lines, which could barely be reassembled before the English were on them.

The command structure of the English army was clear, that of the French was not. Henry V appointed the Duke of York to lead the vanguard. Henry himself led the central division, and Thomas, Lord Camoys, the rearguard. The choice of the latter is one of the mysteries of the campaign, for Camoys was elderly and had relatively little military experience. As for the French, neither the king nor the Dauphin were present; the young Duke of Orléans, the most senior noble at the battle, only arrived shortly before hostilities began. D’Albret and Boucicaut, as Constable and Marshal, had an important role in command, while there were many nobles, such as the Duke of Bourbon and the Duke of Alençon, in leading positions. ‘All the lords wanted to be in the first battle, so that each would have as much honour as another, as they could not agree to do anything else.’²³ Debate and discussion characterized the French leadership, as compared to the English army, in which one man provided determined direction.

The terrain was important in determining the outcome of the battle. The site of the battle was chosen by the French, presumably because the woods on either side made it simpler to block the English route to Calais. However, it also nullified the French advantage in numbers, for they were forced to fight on a relatively narrow front, probably of not much more than 750 yards. With rain-soaked fields newly ploughed, mud was a major problem. It made it impossible to use cavalry effectively, and it was exhausting for heavily armoured men-at-arms to struggle though.

Most explanations of the battle emphasize the importance of English archery. The French were better protected by armour from the hail of arrows than they had been in the days of Crécy, but English archery was highly effective in the early stages of the battle, particularly against the horses. If there were about 6,000 English archers, they would have had some 150,000 arrows to shoot. While arrows may not have killed many soldiers, they could cause disabling wounds. Letting fly a barrage was not the only importance of the archers. Men-at-arms were vulnerable to the nimble English archers in the appalling mêlée. Joints in the carapaces of armour were vulnerable to knives and daggers, while steel plate could not withstand crushing blows from the leaden mallets.

Questions about morale, courage and cowardice are not easy to answer. The English should have been despondent. They were exhausted and hungry after the march from Harfleur; the French had cleared the land before them, so that there were no food supplies to plunder. They were well aware that they were heavily outnumbered. Prior to the battle, Henry did his best to encourage them, riding along the lines on a small horse, making speeches as he went. One account has it that he told his men that ‘the French had boasted that if any English archers were captured they would cut off the three fingers of their right hand’, which can hardly have improved their mood.²⁴ There must have been a determination born of desperation in the English lines. The troops were also well disciplined, for this was an issue that Henry took very seriously. There was nothing particularly novel about the ordinances he issued at the start of the campaign, but the king was a strict disciplinarian, and he took their enforcement with a rare resolve.

Some of the senior French commanders, notably Boucicaut and d’Albret, were dubious about fighting. The general mood among the French, however, was enthusiastic, with much eagerness to be in the front line. That was where honour was to be won with great feats of arms. Individual acts of chivalrous bravery ended in disaster; one knight broke free from the rest of the cavalry. Riding ahead, he was promptly killed. The Duke of Brabant hastened into the battle, short of men and equipment. The moment he dismounted to fight, he was slain. Overconfidence among the French was quickly reversed. Many will not have fought at all, leaving the grim battlefield in fear for their lives. In his Livre des quatres dames, written soon after the defeat, the poet Alain Chartier condemned the coward at Agincourt ‘who was so led on by his own selfishness to flee from that place and to harm others, who made his bascinet shine and put on armour only to flee’.²⁵ For Ghillebert de Lannoy, taken prisoner at Agincourt, ‘If I was in a battle I would prefer to be found among the dead than listed with those who fled.’²⁶

THE PRISONERS

Not all the prisoners taken at Agincourt were killed on the battlefield. Those of political and financial value, among them the dukes of Orléans and Bourbon, the counts of Richemont and Vendôme and Marshal Boucicaut, were taken back to England. They were paraded through London in Henry’s triumphal procession. Whereas Boucicaut had been ransomed fairly quickly after his capture by Sultan Bayezid at Nicopolis, this time he was held in reasonably comfortable captivity until his death in 1421. Richemont agreed to support the English, and returned to Brittany in 1420. Bourbon remained a prisoner until his death in 1434. Vendôme was held prisoner until 1424, and Charles of Orléans was not freed until 1440. Holding the prisoners provided Henry with some political leverage, but it was hardly chivalric.

Fig. 14: An imaginative engraving showing Henry V and his standard-bearer, with a prisoner kneeling before him

The treatment of some lesser prisoners showed Henry’s vindictiveness. One group was kept in the Fleet prison, ‘living from alms waiting for the grace and pity of God and the king’, until they were finally released after the king’s death.²⁷ Others were more fortunate. Wounded in the knee and the head, Ghillebert de Lannoy was taken to a house with some others taken in the battle. When the order came to kill the prisoners, so as to save the trouble of cutting their throats one by one, the English set fire to the house. Ghillebert managed to crawl to safety. When the English returned, his captors sold him to John Cornewall. He was taken to England, and in 1416 was ransomed for 1,200 gold écus and a horse. Cornewall even gave him 20 nobles to buy the equipment he needed.²⁸

***

Like most battles, Agincourt was not decisive. It did not provide Henry with what he wanted in France, nor did it help to resolve the continuing rivalry of Burgundians and Armagnacs. Far from concluding the war, it led to its continuation. Henry supposed that his victory was a divine verdict on the justice of his cause, but it fell far short of delivering his aims in full. The next phase was the conquest of Normandy.