1415: Henry V's Year of Glory

by Mortimer, Ian

  Henry chose to deploy his heavy guns from the outset. Having cleared the last buildings from the suburbs, the great iron-bound cannon blasted stones of 400–500lbs at the defences. Although there was a large number of cannon in the English arsenal in England, Henry had brought no more than a dozen with him, and perhaps fewer.70 These monsters weighed up to two tons and could only fire at a very slow rate; but when they did fire, and struck the target, the effect was devastating. One stone hitting a castle tower could easily bring the whole edifice crashing down. Henry’s father had been at the cutting edge of gunnery technology, designing cannon himself, and deploying them with great effectiveness in his sieges. At Warkworth in 1405 he had forced the defenders to surrender after one of his great guns had fired seven times; shortly afterwards at Berwick he had demolished the external walls of the castle with small cannon and then, with a single shot from one of his great guns, had blown apart one of the towers, after which the defenders surrendered.71 This was the technology that Henry himself now proposed to use to reduce the town of Harfleur, and show that a siege that took Edward III eleven months could be accomplished by his men in a few days.

  Henry did not just bring up his guns. He built deep ditches and earth ramparts around them, to defend the gunners and other men shooting at the walls. In front of each cannon he positioned a screen made of heavy planks of wood; these were hinged at their midpoint on each side, so that when the top was tilted back, the lower part allowed the cannon to blast a stone towards the selected target. Similar defences were placed directly opposite the strongest barbican, to allow a round-the-clock watch to be stationed there, in case the enemy should attack from it. Those digging the protective ditch around this defence continued excavating day after day, thereby making a trench that almost reached the water in front of the Porte Leure.72 And then the gunners – twenty-five of them, including four master gunners, with fifty assistants – were instructed to destroy the town walls, to destroy the barbicans, and to fire indiscriminately into the centre of the town, to kill the inhabitants and to demoralise the enemy.73

  Meanwhile Henry sent a messenger to the duke of Brittany to make sure that their truce still held good.74 As he knew, it was all very well having alliances with subjects of the king of France before the fighting started; whether they would actually support him with men and arms now they could see their services would be required was a totally different issue. Henry had obviously given similar instructions to his brother and the chancellor before leaving England, as the duke of Bedford was set to publish (on the 20th, tomorrow) the truce with the duke of Brittany at Dartmouth, Plymouth and Exeter. When that was done, the embassy led by John Hovingham and Simon Flete would leave London, with powers to renegotiate a new alliance with the duke of Brittany. They would remain there, reminding the duke of his diplomatic obligations, until Henry had left France.75

  *

  Raoul le Gay had been kept at Santivic for the last two days. This morning he was brought to the king’s camp at Graville where his guards told him to sit on the ground. There they left him, without food or drink, until midday. While Henry was with his council deciding on how to blast a hole in the side of Harfleur, a young Englishman came up to Raoul and spoke to him in Latin. Raoul told him he was hungry and thirsty, and the Englishman relayed the message to the guards. The guards helped him up and took him into the precincts of the priory. Here he met several English lords who, noticing his tonsure, asked him in French if he was a priest. When he said yes, he was, they asked him where were the English soldiers who had captured him, for in arresting him they had clearly contravened one of Henry’s most important ordinances. But Raoul did not know.

  The young Englishman who had first spoken to him in Latin was then given instructions from the king to send Raoul to Thomas Beaufort, the constable of the army, who was lodged nearby. On arrival at Beaufort’s camp, the earl himself questioned Raoul in French. When he was done, he told him to sit down on a millstone and not to stir. There he was left until nightfall, still without food or drink. Only then, when the stars were appearing, did one of Beaufort’s men give him a piece of bread and some ale, and find him somewhere to sleep. Things could still be tough for a priest in English custody, despite Henry’s ordinances forbidding the arrest of unarmed priests.

  *

  In Paris, the dauphin and the government started sending out letters to the regions announcing that the English had landed, and summoning forces and appealing for money. The earliest extant such letter was despatched to Verdun.76

  *

  In London, in St Paul’s Cathedral, the trial of John Claydon resumed. Archbishop Chichele presided, supported by Bishop Clifford of London, Bishop Catterick of Lichfield and the king’s confessor, Stephen Patrington, bishop of St David’s. The general examiner of the province of Canterbury opened proceedings, and called on the doctors of law and divinity to give their evidence. They named the book by John Grime as the notorious The Lantern of Light and proceeded to read sections from it and to condemn them as heresy. Fifteen particular passages were singled out, and read aloud, and condemned. And then the book was solemnly burned in a fire prepared for the purpose. After John Claydon’s confession had once more been read out, he was told formally that the archbishop judged that he had lapsed into his former heresy, and, with the assent of the three bishops and all the doctors of law and divinity present, he decreed that Claydon be handed over to the secular authorities for capital punishment.

  It fell to the mayor, Thomas Falconer, to write to the king informing him that he proposed to carry out the sentence of burning Claydon to death.

  Tuesday 20th

  It was full moon. Henry had ordered that the bombardment of the town should continue day and night. For the people of Harfleur the sound of a stone whistling through the air and striking a building with tremendous force, sending it crumbling into the street, was becoming a normality. The screams of those men, women and children injured in the constant bombardment were no doubt just as demoralising as the missiles themselves.

  Henry was taking advantage of the extra moonlight to keep the bombardment going. He himself stayed up at night – ‘he did not allow his eyelids to close in sleep’, as one chronicler put it – going through the camp and seeing that his men were prepared and organised, visiting the sentries, checking the positions of his guns and siege engines.

  It is not known for certain who was now in control within Harfleur. It is possible that Raoul de Gaucourt had taken over as captain of the town. Alternatively he may have simply taken charge of the defences, so d’Estouteville was still the man giving the orders.77 Either way, probably both men also stayed up, inspecting the defences by moonlight and ordering the masons to repair the walls – while outside the walls Henry encouraged his men to fire their cannon again.

  Thursday 22nd

  The mayor of London, Thomas Falconer, wrote to the king about John Claydon:

  Forasmuch as the Almighty King and the Lord of Heaven, who lately taught your hands to fight, and has guided your feet to the battle, has now during your absence, placed in our hands certain persons who not only were enemies of Him and of your dignity but also, in so far as they might be, were subverters of the whole of your realm: men commonly known as Lollards, who have laboured for a long time for the subversion of the whole Catholic faith and of Holy Church, the lessening of public worship and the destruction of your realm, as also the perpetration of very many other enormities horrible to hear; the same persons, in accordance with the requirements of the law, we have caused to be delivered by indenture unto the Reverend Commissaries of the Reverend Father in Christ, Lord Richard, by Divine permission, the Lord Bishop of London. Whereupon one John Claydon by name, the arch-parent of this heretical depravity, was by the most Reverend Father in Christ and Lord Henry, by Divine permission, the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all your realm, and other bishops, his brethren, as well as very many professors of Holy Scripture and doctors of law, in accordance with the canonica
l sanctions, by sentence in this behalf lawfully pronounced, as being a person relapsed into heresy, which before had been by him abjured, left in the hands of the secular court; for the execution of whose body and the entire destruction of all such enemies, with all diligence, to the utmost of our power we shall be assisting …78

  The sentence was pushed before Henry with no expectation that he would intervene to try to stop the killing, as he had done with John Badby in 1410. Those days of clemency had long since given way to a rigid application of the ultimate penalty. In order to create a horror of religious deviation Falconer’s letter linked the Lollard cause to treason. Claydon was portrayed as ‘an enemy of Him and of your dignity’ and ‘a subverter of the whole of your realm’ seeking ‘the destruction of your realm’. This was all blatantly untrue. Claydon was just a conscientious man who felt bound to follow his conscience in religious matters over and above the institution of the Church. Once again we can see how heresy and treason were being linked, amplifying the heretical nature of treason and the treasonable nature of heresy.

  This is why Mayor Falconer did not expect a messenger to come galloping back from the coast with orders to stop the burning.

  Friday 23rd

  By this stage Harfleur was completely cut off. Yet the commanders within had managed to get a message out to Charles d’Albret, then at Rouen, saying their land routes were in enemy hands and that the only hope of reaching the town was by boat; they asked for more supplies. D’Albret commissioned a galley and sent it out today.79 If the oarsmen managed to find their way between the English ships in the Seine and into Harfleur, then it would have been the last contact the people of Harfleur had with the outside world.

  Saturday 24th

  The formal reply to the letter that Henry had written ‘on the coast’ at Southampton was drawn up and sealed in Paris.

  The blessing of peace, beloved of God and nature, to which after the example of our Lord Jesus Christ, which He left to his disciples and gave to us as a legacy, we have always sought and desired by every means in our power, and which for the honour of God, we desire most earnestly to procure, for the advantages that attend it, and to avoid the effusion of human blood, and the innumerable evils produced by war. As this we believe is manifest and clear to you, your council and others, you have occasioned us great surprise, and not without cause, after such great overtures and other points discussed between your people and ours, with a firm intention of establishing peace, to the great sin of your party. And as we never did refuse justice, nor shall we, if it please God, to all who may demand it of us; as it is lawful for every prince in his just quarrel to defend himself, and to oppose force by force; and as none of your predecessors ever had any right, and you still less, to make the demands contained in certain of your letters, presented to us by Chester your herald, nor to give us any trouble, it is our intention with the assistance of the Lord, in whom we have singular trust, and especially from the justice of our cause, and also with the aid of our good relations, friends, allies and subjects, to resist you in a way that shall be to the honour and glory of us and of our kingdom, and to the confusion, loss and dishonour of you and your party.

  With respect to the marriage of which you write at the end of your letter, it does not appear that the means that you have adopted to make a request or demand, and especially of affinity or marriage, is proper, honourable, or usual in such a case; and therefore we will not write to you upon any other matter at present but send you this letter in answer to that which you wrote us by the said Chester.80

  It was entirely understandable – and the ‘great surprise’ of the attack was probably genuine in the sense that, when negotiations for peace had been in progress in 1414, an invasion on this scale could not have been anticipated. The French government, like the French people, could not see what they had done to warrant such an attack.

  *

  Troops were now gathering to defend the north of France, and to guard against the anticipated march on Paris. Jean de Werchin, seneschal of Hainault, marched into Amiens today with 120 men-at-arms and sixty archers. The count of Vendôme either had or was raising a company of three hundred men-at-arms and 150 archers. The duke of Berry was raising a thousand men-at-arms and five hundred archers. As can be seen from these figures, whereas most English companies had thirty longbowmen to every ten men-at-arms, the pattern for the French was to have five archers (mostly crossbowmen) for every ten men-at-arms. Thus the resisting force was very different in its composition from the attacking one. Each French man-at-arms would have had a page, like his English equivalent, and there would have been a number of grooms and servants too, and these men also needed to be fed and watered.

  Although these forces by themselves could do nothing to stop the English from attacking Harfleur, they could impede the progress of the foraging parties by restricting their movements. According to Monstrelet, Boucicaut, Clignant de Brabant and the seneschal of Hainault were all in the field, harassing the English along with Charles d’Albret. They prevented them from taking any other towns in the region, despite the widespread incursions of the English foragers.81

  Sunday 25th

  The siege had now been underway for a week, and the siege engines and cannon had continued bombarding the town, day and night. The author of the Gesta remarked that

  within a few days, when by the violence and fury of the stones the barbican was in the process of being largely demolished, the walls and towers from which the enemy had discharged their offensives were rendered defenceless with their ramparts destroyed; and truly fine buildings, almost as far as the middle of the town, were either totally demolished or threatened with inevitable collapse or, at least, their framework falling apart.82

  For Henry, this was now becoming a problem. He wanted to take Harfleur and hold it; but if the inhabitants and soldiers under Raoul de Gaucourt held out until the town was destroyed, he would not be able to defend it against the French counter-attack, whenever that might come. Then he would find himself defending nothing but a pile of rubble, and trapped against the coast. The truth was that his strategy of taking the town quickly was likely to leave the town in ruins long before the inhabitants’ food supplies ran out. The effect on his nerve and the nerves of his fellow councillors cannot be known; but it would be foolish to suppose that the situation was anything but deeply worrying.

  The destruction of the town was not Henry’s only concern. Raoul de Gaucourt was rallying the defenders to fight with crossbows, guns, catapults, and siege engines of their own. From the barbican outside the Porte Leure they shot and fired at the attackers, and also from behind screens erected in the openings of shattered walls and broken towers. In addition, by night, when it was difficult for the archers to pick off the defenders, they started to rebuild the damaged walls and the barbican, re-laying the stones and placing large tubs filled with earth, dung, sand and stones. Walls teetering or collapsing they shored up in a similar way, using bundles of faggots set solid with clay, earth and dung. They also lay clay, dung and earth over the streets and lanes to soak up the impact of crashing stones and masonry, so that projectiles would not bounce off the hard ground into buildings but would get swallowed up in the mud.

  For Henry the obvious next step was a full-scale assault on the walls with scaling ladders, or through the breaches he had made. Overcoming the defenders in this way would preserve what remained of the defences. But his first attempts to overwhelm the walls proved futile. The defenders had filled jars with a compound made from sulphur and quicklime to throw in the eyes of the men who attacked. They had also gathered barrels of inflammable powders, oils and fat; if any siege equipment came close – such as a wooden tower to launch an onslaught on the walls – then they set light to the barrels and poured them over the wooden apparatus. The author of the Gesta remarked that ‘people under siege could not have resisted our attacks more sagaciously, or with greater security to themselves, than they did’.83

  *

  Raoul
le Gay had languished in Thomas Beaufort’s camp for a whole week now. In that time he had been practically famished; no one wanted to waste good food on a Frenchman. His predicament was that he had been taken illegally and yet no one wanted to let him go, given how much he had seen of the English quarters. He continually asked to be released but this request was denied. In the end he was taken before the king. Henry demanded to know whether he had been taken in arms – in which case his imprisonment did not contravene Henry’s military ordinances. Raoul protested that he had not. Henry seems to have paid little attention otherwise to the man but ordered that he be taken to Bishop Courtenay’s tent, which was close to the king’s pavilion, and quartered there.84

  Wednesday 28th

  The French council sent out letters summoning forces to assemble at Rouen. The actual form of the summons was a semonce des nobles, to be proclaimed in Normandy and the surrounding areas. This stated that, although the king of France had sent envoys to England in the hope of avoiding the bloodshed and inconvenience of war, the English had invaded and laid siege to Harfleur. So the king had directed the dauphin as lieutenant to gather an army at Rouen. All the nobles and men-at-arms of the region, and all the archers and crossbowmen, were to gather there as soon as possible. As they journeyed, men were to wear a white cross – in contrast to the English red one – and were under strict instructions not to pillage any places through which they passed, nor to stay anywhere longer than one night. All those attending would receive protection for six months from any legal cases in the courts against them, and they would be paid. King Charles himself would join the army soon, in order to raise the siege and lead his subjects in the fight against the English, in the eyes of God.85