11

THE CONQUEST OF NORMANDY

The character of the war changed in the fifteenth century. Though there were significant battles after Agincourt, notably at Verneuil, Patay, Formigny and Castillon, siege warfare dominated what was increasingly a war of attrition. The age of the chevauchée was over. In part this was because the defence of Normandy, conquered by Henry V, created a new situation, and in part it was because the balance between attack and defence of towns and castles shifted with the development of gunpowder artillery. Further, English archers were no longer as invincible as they had been in the fourteenth century. Nor was the war often punctuated by chivalric incidents and interludes.

THE INVASION OF 1417

In 1416, diplomacy had achieved little, despite the efforts of the emperor Sigismund to broker a peace. Military activity was centred on Harfleur. In April 1416 the Earl of Dorset, captain of the town, wrote in some desperation to the king’s council. His men could not ‘long endure without provision of supplies and other things’, above all meat, grain and malt. Commissions had in fact been issued before the earl’s letter was received, for the collection of 1,000 quarters of wheat, the same amount of oats, 2,000 quarters of malt and 1,000 quarters of beans and peas had been ordered, along with 200 bacon pigs and 200 oxen.¹ In August an important naval battle took place, which saved Harfleur. An English fleet, of perhaps 200–300 ships, commanded by Bedford, engaged a smaller Franco-Genoese force in the Seine estuary. Fierce hand-to-hand fighting lasted for several hours. Two of the royal ships, the Holy Ghost and the Trinity Royal, suffered damage to rigging and sails. The English captured three large ships, and one was sunk.

In 1417 Henry sailed for Normandy with an army some 10,000 strong. His aim now was conquest. The strategy was entirely different from that of the chevauchées of the past, which had aimed to put pressure on the French and bring them to battle provided the conditions were right. Now, the aim was not to burn and destroy. Henry intended a war in which towns and castles would be captured and held by the English, and an entire province taken over and occupied.

Caen fell after just two weeks, stormed and brutally sacked by Henry’s troops. Many other places surrendered. The castle at Falaise held out against the English for over two months, until February 1418. Cherbourg fell in the following September after a five-month siege. The castle at Domfront, with its old Norman keep, held out for four months. Elsewhere, English commanders oversaw capitulations on a startling scale. The major operation, which began in August, was the siege of Rouen. A ditch and bank was constructed round the city, and the English prevented access from the river Seine. Food began to run out: the citizens ‘had no bread, or ale or wine, only water and vinegar to drink. And they had no meat or fish; they ate horses, dogs, mice, rats and cats.’² The city authorities turned the elderly and infirm out of the gates, so as to preserve supplies for a few more weeks. Henry’s attitude was merciless. He would not let them through the English lines, nor would he provide food for them. Only for Christmas Day did he relent. Finally, in January, Rouen surrendered. Hostages were handed over, and along with other terms, payment of a substantial fine was agreed.

The conquest of Normandy demonstrated Henry V’s mastery of the art of siege warfare. This was much more important in the long term than the dramatic victory at Agincourt. Armies faced major problems when confronted with stone walls. Castles and walled towns acted as ‘force multipliers’, enabling a small number of men to resist far larger forces. Henry may not have been responsible for any striking advances in the art of siege-craft, but efficient organization and carefully considered strategy brought the results he needed. As always, intelligence was important. For example, the captain of Calais was asked to send reliable men to the borders of Picardy and elsewhere ‘to spy and observe the intentions of our adversary and those of his party, especially what they intend to do and to proceed against us’.³

GUNS AND LOGISTICS

Henry fully appreciated the potential of gunpowder artillery. Royal letters show that he took an active personal interest in ensuring that artillery was available where it was required. He noted with some irritation that ‘We have understood that out great guns at Caen may not be brought down to the waterside to be shipped in the vessel we sent there for this’, and asked that the ship should instead be loaded with ‘as many gunstones of the greatest sort that lie on the wharf there’.⁴ An official, the clerk of ordnance, ensured effective provision of guns, powder and ammunition, with depots established at Caen and Rouen. At Falaise, the town surrendered through ‘terror of the guns’, and a bombardment ruined the castle.⁵ In addition, Henry and his commanders used a wide range of siege equipment and methods. Stone-throwing machines, such as trebuchets, were widely employed. Mining was often attempted, though with limited success. Wooden siege towers might be deployed. Where weapons failed, blockade succeeded.

Great efforts were made to ensure that there was a sufficient supply of bows and arrows. In a remarkable order of 1417, the sheriffs were ordered to take six wing-feathers from every goose in the land, while the use of ash for clogs was forbidden, as the wood was needed for arrows. By 1420 the crown was demanding the purchase of 400,000 arrows in England, while further supplies were being manufactured in Normandy.

Though the crown no longer took steps to collect foodstuffs as it had in the first half of the fourteenth century, measures were put in place to ensure that troops were properly supplied. English merchants were encouraged to take victuals to Normandy. In 1417 anyone shipping goods to Caen was excused payment of customs duties. In the following year the king asked the Londoners to organize shipping to go to Harfleur, laden with food and especially drink, and from there up the Seine to Rouen, the main distribution centre. As the conquest proceeded, careful arrangements were made to ensure that the English-held castles were properly supplied.

THE NAVY

Henry himself fought no naval battles, but he appreciated that the security of the sea was essential if he was to succeed in France. To transport his troops, he largely relied on the tested methods of arresting merchant ships and taking them into royal service. In addition, he built up a small fleet of royal ships. The maximum number of such vessels under Henry IV had been six, but when Henry V came to the throne, there were only two capable of going to sea. Six ships were swiftly acquired in 1413, soon followed by others. These were all bought, but a building programme also began in that year, with work on the Trinity Royal. Nine royal ships were in the fleet that sailed for Harfleur in 1415; Henry himself sailed on the Trinity Royal. By 1417 the royal ships numbered 32, including some that had been captured.

Henry’s ambitions for his fleet went beyond what was technologically possible. He clearly considered that, at least when it came to ships, size mattered. The Grace Dieu was laid down in 1416, and at 1,400 tons was probably the largest ship built in England before the seventeenth century. She was double the displacement of Henry VIII’s Mary Rose. Launched in 1418, she never left the Hamble estuary. Her simple two-masted rig was not sufficient for a ship of such size, and her clinker construction, with overlapping planks, was not ideal. Yet more ambitious was the ship that was begun at Bayonne, measuring 186 feet from bow to stern, with a beam of 46 feet. However, a letter about the progress of the build remarked of the keel that ‘he is rotted, and must be changed’.⁶ Had this ship been completed, she would not have been exceeded in size by any British naval vessel until the launch of HMS Britannia in 1682.

SETTLEMENT, DIPLOMACY AND WAR

Conquest involved settlement. Henry V granted six Norman counties to his chief commanders in 1418–19, and many lesser soldiers were rewarded with grants of land in the duchy. The need to provide for the defence of Normandy explains why Henry made grants of land conditional upon the provision of military service. Feudal service was long outmoded both in England and France, but it made sense to ensure that those who received lands should contribute to the efforts that would be needed to defend them. English merchants were encouraged to settle in Harfleur and Caen. Some English clerics received canonries in Normandy. All this helped to create a vested interest in the English retention of Normandy.

Henry benefited from French collapse and disunity. The Dauphin had died in December 1415. The next of the king’s sons in line to the throne was Jean, whose marriage to a daughter of the Count of Hainault put him in the Burgundian camp, though the government remained in Armagnac hands. Jean, however, died in 1417; the next Dauphin was the future Charles VII. French government finances were at a very low ebb; one calculation is that receipts in 1418 were the equivalent of 17 tonnes of silver, in contrast to 88 tonnes around 1390. The currency was also heavily debased.⁷ In politics, the breach with Burgundy was disastrous. In 1418 Paris came under Burgundian control amid scenes of horrendous violence. The Count of Armagnac was brutally slain by the mob. The Dauphin, however, was saved, and in the following year it seemed that John, duke of Burgundy would be reconciled with him. With reluctance, the duke agreed to a meeting in September, on the bridge at Montereau. There he knelt before the future king. As he rose up, he was attacked by one of the Dauphin’s men with a sword. Another struck him with an axe. Whether his assassination was premeditated cannot be conclusively proven, but a good deal of evidence points to a plot in which the Dauphin himself was complicit. The murder of the Duke of Orléans in 1407 was avenged, but at an appalling cost to France.

The murder of the Duke of Burgundy led his successor, Philip, to support the English cause. An Anglo-Burgundian alliance was sealed in December 1419. Peace between England and France was agreed in the Treaty of Troyes in May 1420. Henry was to marry the French king’s daughter, Catherine. The Dauphin was to be disinherited, and Henry would act as regent in France. On Charles VI’s death, the French crown would pass to Henry or his heir. This put the English position in France on a new footing. No longer was it a matter of the claim to the throne through descent from Philip IV; the English accepted Charles VI as king of France, and the French accepted Henry V’s position as his heir. There was, of course, a problem. The Armagnacs did not accept the treaty. For them, the Dauphin remained the rightful heir. France south of the Loire, apart from English-held Gascony, largely supported his cause. He ruled what became known as the kingdom of Bourges. Even in England there was concern about the treaty, with worries expressed in parliament that ‘neither his said kingdom of England nor the people of the same, of whatever status or condition they might be, should at any time in the future be placed in subjection to or obedience to him, his heirs and successors, as king of France’.⁸

With the Treaty of Troyes, English interests expanded far beyond Normandy. A new stage of conquest began, with attacks on places held by troops loyal to the Dauphin. Melun, south-east of Paris, was a major obstacle. The siege began in July 1420. Bombards and trebuchets failed to reduce the place. A mine was met by a countermine; Henry V and the Duke of Burgundy themselves fought underground. Disease struck the besieging army; many of the Burgundians left. Eventually, in November, the defenders surrendered, hungry and exhausted. Many were taken off to imprisonment in Paris; Henry was not a man to be merciful.

Paris itself was in a dreadful state. The Armagnacs, by one account, were all around the city, ‘pillaging, robbing, setting fires, killing, and raping women, girls and nuns’.⁹ Food prices hit exorbitant levels. In December Henry V entered the city with his queen, along with Charles VI and Queen Isabeau, and the Duke of Burgundy. A court was held, in which the Dauphin was held guilty for the murder at Montereau and declared unfit to rule. When Henry left Paris, he appointed his brother Clarence to the captaincy of the city. The English occupation began.

A major setback for the English came in 1421, when Henry V’s brother, the Duke of Clarence, led a raid into territory held by the Dauphin’s supporters. At Baugé, not far from Angers, he was killed when he engaged a Franco-Scottish force, which included the earls of Buchan and Wigtown. The earls of Huntingdon and Somerset headed the list of notable prisoners; Huntingdon was released in 1426, for a ransom of about £13,000. Somerset was less fortunate, and was not freed until 1438, at a cost of £24,000. Yet catastrophic as it seemed at the time, Baugé was no more than a single reverse. The Dauphin marched towards Paris, only to be forced back when Henry V returned from a visit to England. The king then led a campaign which succeeded in capturing Dreux and a number of other places. He was as savage as ever: a group of 50 or 60 French skirmishers who had taken refuge in a castle were all drowned in revenge for the death of a single Englishman. The final siege was that of Meaux, which began in October 1421. The defenders held out for seven months, giving up the fight just as the English were about to deploy a huge wooden tower, floating on two large ships. Executions followed the surrender; Henry V was unmerciful. He was, however, fully entitled under the law of arms to act as he did, though one later comment on the death of the French commander (a man renowned for vicious cruelty) was that ‘it was not an honourable deed for such a valiant king as the king of England to have put to death such a brave man-at-arms and nobleman just because he had so loyally served his sovereign lord’.¹⁰ It is likely that it was at Meaux that Henry contracted the illness that would kill him; he died in August 1422.

HENRY V’S ACHIEVEMENT

Henry’s many successes testify to his abilities as a military leader. He was inspirational, and not just at Agincourt where he encouraged his men in the long night of worry before the battle. Keeping his forces together in the lengthy sieges of Rouen and of Meaux cannot have been easy, but he had the right qualities for leadership. Henry’s personal charisma must have been significant, but affection and admiration for the king were not the only elements. Discipline was an important key. Henry had no qualms about enforcing his will through executions. An austere man, his faith provided him with confidence in his intentions. He had a strategic grasp, displayed better in his later campaigns than on the Agincourt expedition. He was, of course, fortunate. Agincourt was a victory won against the odds, and one which saw the French desolated and discouraged. The assassination on the bridge at Montereau meant that rather than the neutrality which had been the most the English could expect from Burgundy, Henry had full Burgundian support in his final campaigns.

The Treaty of Troyes meant that the English claim to the French throne was radically transformed, with the recognition of Charles VI as king for his lifetime, and the French acknowledgement of Henry V as his heir. Paris itself was in English hands, and the Bastille had an English garrison, though the city officials were mostly Burgundian, and its defence largely the responsibility of the citizens. Nor did the English find the Parisians always welcoming. One night in 1424 two of them shouted at Jeanette Bardin, described as ‘an amorous woman’, who was asleep in her house. Not knowing them, and suspicious of their intentions, she blocked their entry. They tried to force their way in, but she retaliated by throwing stones at them, and hit one on the head. He died some days later.¹¹

CRAVANT AND VERNEUIL

Henry V’s death was shortly followed by that of Charles VI. Under the terms of the Treaty of Troyes, he was to be succeeded by the English king’s heir, the infant Henry VI. The Dauphin, Charles VII, was a far more plausible candidate for the throne. His decision in 1422 to establish a strong currency, after frequent debasements in the previous five years, was indicative of a new approach. There was, however, no sudden collapse of the English position. They had a very capable leader in Henry V’s brother, John duke of Bedford. In 1423 the Anglo-Burgundian forces triumphed at Cravant in Burgundy over a Franco-Scottish army. Careful arrangements were made in advance to ensure that the allies took an equal part and did not quarrel. These provide exceptional evidence of the advance planning that took place. There was to be a forward party of 60 English and 60 Burgundians. The men-at-arms were ordered to dismount; their pages were to take the horses well to the rear. As at Agincourt, the archers would have stakes for their protection. Once the army was drawn up for battle, no one was to leave their position under pain of death. Prisoners were not to be taken until the battle was won. The English, under the Earl of Salisbury, forced a crossing of the river Yonne with the aid of their archers. A barrage from 30 or more Burgundian guns, veuglaires brought from auxerre, slew many, as did the English arrows. A sortie by the besieged garrison caught the French from the rear. The Anglo-Burgundian army won the day; the Scots, cursing in bad French, suffered particularly badly from the defeat.

Fig. 15: John, duke of Bedford

The next year saw the English win a far greater victory at Verneuil, in Normandy. The English, who had a large force themselves, estimated that the French numbered 14,000. This may have included as many as 6,500 Scots. The initial trigger was the siege of the castle at Ivry. Agreement had been reached for its surrender, provided it was not relieved by 15 August. The French were too late, and responded by capturing nearby Verneuil-sur-Avre by trickery. Bedford then marched to confront the French army. Both sides sought battle, though by one account there was a dispute among the French commanders, with the younger nobles and the Scots eager to fight. The English spent the night in prayer; the chronicler Waurin commented sardonically that ‘by nature they are very devout, especially before drinking’.¹²

The Battle of Verneuil is hard to reconstruct; as so often, the sources do not tell a consistent story. The armies were drawn up in familiar fashion. The English divisions of dismounted men-at-arms were flanked by formations of archers, equipped with stakes. Some archers stood in front of the men-at-arms. The carts and horses were held in the rear. Some 2,000 archers protected this baggage train. The main French force was dismounted, but it was supported by cavalry units, one French, one Italian. The latter were particularly formidable, with horses as well as men fully armoured, and so far less vulnerable to English arrows than the cavalry troops of the past. One account suggests that the cavalry were positioned in front of the men on foot; others that they were on the flanks. Both armies advanced towards each other, the English with deliberation, the French and Scots too quickly, losing their breath. The cavalry charges were devastating, as the armoured horses forced their way right through the English formation. The baggage train came under attack, but the archers managed to drive the cavalry off. The French almost triumphed when part of the English line broke, many fleeing. Pardons issued later described how ‘varlets, pages and others of lax courage left the battle’ and spread rumours that the English had lost.¹³ The English then regrouped into a single body. The fight against the Scots was especially bitter. The mêlée continued, punctuated by the shouts for St George. Bedford was in the thick of it, swinging a great two-handed battleaxe. Eventually, the French began to flee. Bedford reported an impressive list of the dead, headed by the Earl of Douglas, his son, the Earl of Buchan, and five French counts. He noted that ‘there remained very few Scots who were not dead’.¹⁴ Much later, the chronicler Thomas Basin would consider that the defeat brought one clear advantage to the French, in that the country was rid of the Scots, with their intolerably contemptuous attitude towards their allies.¹⁵

The defeat at Verneuil transformed attitudes in the uncrowned Charles VII’s court. Those who had been bitterly opposed to Burgundy were removed, and replaced by men committed to coming to terms. Relations between England and Burgundy deteriorated. Humphrey duke of Gloucester, one of the king’s uncles, had married Jacqueline of Hainault, whose previous marriage to the unwordly Duke of Brabant had been annulled. Humphrey’s intervention in Hainault on behalf of his wife in 1424 was a clear threat to Burgundian ambitions in the Low Countries. Bedford intervened to halt his brother, but the damage was done, and a truce was established between Burgundy and France.

English success did not end with the Battle of Verneuil. In 1425 Le Mans fell. By 1428, Maine was fully under English control. The English had never before held so much of France, but their ambitions were not satisfied. Contrary to Bedford’s advice, the Earl of Salisbury began the siege of Orléans. This was overambitious. There were not enough troops to blockade the town effectively. Salisbury himself was killed soon after his arrival at Orléans, by a gun: ‘The shot from this canon struck him on the head, so that it took away half his jaw and removed one of his eyes.’¹⁶ Nevertheless, the siege continued. The English had one success, in February 1429, when a French attempt under the Bastard of Orléans to seize a large baggage convoy, largely containing salted herrings, was thwarted by John Fastolf, who drew up the wagons in a strong defensive circle, much as the Hussites did in their wars in Bohemia. Chaotic French cavalry attacks were met with a hail of arrows, and were broken on the English defences in what became known as the Battle of the Herrings.

***

The conquest of Normandy and the establishment of Anglo-Burgundian rule in Paris were remarkable achievements, which owed a great deal to the determination and drive of Henry V and his brother Bedford. It is conceivable that had he lived, Henry V might have made a success of the concept of a dual monarchy, in which England and France would be separate, under a single ruler. Without him, despite all Bedford’s efforts, it was never likely to work. However, the English successes were made possible only by the faction-fighting in the French court. Henry V did not have to face really formidable opposition. His achievements left the English vastly overextended in France. At Orléans they would soon receive an unexpected and unlikely setback.