1415: Henry V's Year of Glory

by Mortimer, Ian

  The gates, surmounted with the royal banner and the flag of St George, were thrown open to receive their new lord. The envoys and commissioners riding with Henry entered the town; but Henry dismounted right in front of the Porte Leure. He took off his shoes and socks and walked barefoot through the streets to the parish church of St Martin. Buildings on either side of the main street were smashed: timbers at odd angles, stone walls crumbled into the road. When he saw the church of St Martin, he could see for himself that his ordinances against damage to church property had not stopped his cannon wrecking it. The steeple and tower had collapsed, and the bells within had crashed to the ground.

  Henry walked around the town with his closest friends. After surveying the damage, he ordered all the women and children to be rounded up, and all the poor too. As for the men: those who were prepared to swear fealty to Henry as their liege lord could stay in Harfleur. Those who were not would be imprisoned and ransomed for as large a sum as they could pay. The clergy were also gathered together. They would learn their fate on the following day.

  According to Monstrelet, the two towers on either side of the water gate refused to surrender, holding out for a further ten days. This is unlikely – the English sources do not mention it – but it does suggest that there were disagreements within the town about whether or not to surrender.41 These too could have contributed to the vacillation of the night of the 17th, which saw the first serious discussions. Either way, the defenders had acquitted themselves with great honour. They certainly did not deserve to be blamed for the fall of the town, when the rest of France had failed to come to their aid.

  Tuesday 24th

  Where the women, children, priests and paupers who had been gathered spent the night is not known; presumably they had been lodged in secure barns, halls or other large buildings. Today they were greeted by armed guards and led through the gates of the town. Given 5 sous each to buy food, the women were told they were free to go wherever they wished, taking their clothes and as much as they could carry in their arms. There were said to be about two thousand of them, including their children. Many – fifteen hundred according to one source – were accompanied in a convoy by the English guards to Lillebonne, where they were handed over to Marshal Boucicaut and placed under his protection. Their menfolk, including their teenage sons, had to remain behind. One French chronicle notes that the women from Harfleur – whether those handed over to Boucicaut or those who went their own way – were systematically rounded up, robbed and raped by French soldiers. Other French chroniclers attest to how badly the French troops treated their own countrymen and women; however, it is possible that this story of pillage and rape was just another result of the culture of blame and incrimination that developed in France over the subsequent months.42

  Of course, all the English sources point to the expulsion of the women from Harfleur as an act of mercy by the king, as they considered he had every right to ‘enjoy’ or slaughter them all. Such an attitude overlooks the actual degree of misery that these people must have endured, and how little the people of Harfleur had done to deserve such treatment. For a full month they had suffered from a lack of sleep and food; they had lived in fear that the English siege engines would destroy their homes and families. Then, at the end, after a month of hellish torment, they were driven away from their homes and husbands and sons, losing all they owned. And it needs to be remembered that in medieval times, it was a far worse fate to be driven out of your hometown than it would be today. It did not just mean you lost your friends and family – you also lost those who would defend you physically and those who would defend your good name. For many of the women forced to walk to Lillebonne, life can hardly have seemed to have improved since the end of the siege. What lay before them was hardship, penury, alienation from their husbands, and the unknown. ‘It was pitiful to see and hear the sorrow of these poor people, thus driven away from their dwellings and property,’ wrote Monstrelet. The eyewitness who wrote the Gesta agreed, noting that the women left ‘amid much lamentation and grief, and tears for the loss of their customary habitation’.43

  Henry’s plan was to turn Harfleur into a military base. All the town records were burnt in the square, thereby removing any knowledge of who owned what.44 The houses needed to be repaired and then granted out to those who had followed Henry. Other Englishmen would follow in due course, invited to settle in the town. Burghers who did not swear loyalty were told they would be shipped across to England, where they might be ransomed, if they were lucky enough to have wealthy friends.45 Those who did swear fealty were allowed to remain in the town but they were not allowed to own property. Young men were conscripted into the defence of the town – though presumably this was just to serve as boys and pages.

  The first and main object was to make Harfleur defensible once more. As the boys would be of little use and even the men who swore fealty were bound to be of dubious loyalty, Henry needed to give the town a significant garrison. In this he had an important decision to make: did he make the town his headquarters for the winter, and keep his whole army there? Or should he leave a garrison there while he himself led the army through France, as he had planned and as Bordiu had stated in his letter of 3 September? The French king’s letter, requiring that siege engines be brought up to Rouen, clearly anticipated that Henry would remain there through the winter. Bordiu’s letter stating that Henry intended not to enter Harfleur but to remain in the field, suggests the plan was still to march through France, presumably to Calais. It was a tricky problem. If he remained in Harfleur he would be trapped, and he could expect no mercy from the French king. If he left the town then he would be compromising the security of both the town and the army, for Harfleur itself would require a large contingent of men to defend it, and so many men were ill with dysentery – perhaps as many as two thousand men were incapable of fighting – that he did not have enough men or supplies to stuff the town with defenders. If he wished to march on Rouen as he had announced, he would be taking an enormous risk, marching against the forces of a larger and richer kingdom, with no escape route.

  *

  John the Fearless had been at Argilly for over a month now. Four days ago, on the 20th, the ambassadors of the French government, led by the duke of Lorraine, had arrived. Their mission was to try to persuade John to send men to help the dauphin in his struggle against the English and, at the same time, to keep John away from Paris. With Paris in a heightened state of anxiety, and experiencing a particular cynicism with regard to the government, the appearance of John the Fearless in the city threatened to cause mayhem, if not an insurrection.

  Today the ambassadors were given three letters, one of which had been written by John the Fearless himself. Of course, the duke revelled in the chance to cause more upset in Paris, and saw the slight to himself in the earlier letters as being the perfect excuse to push the dauphin into a corner. John professed his deepest loyalty to the kingdom of France but complained bitterly about the request that he remain at home, and not come to the rescue of France in her hour of need. Was he not the dauphin’s father-in-law? Why had all the other lords of Northern France been summoned and he had not? It was nothing more than an attempt to belittle him, and to undermine his honour, which ‘he valued higher than everything else in the world’. Instead of the paltry five hundred men-at-arms he had been asked to send, he would attend in person with a far larger number, as it was his duty to save the kingdom in its current peril.46

  Another of the letters that went back with the duke of Lorraine was written by vassals of John the Fearless on behalf of their lord. They complained that John had not been given command of his own men. This was most unfitting; the men of Burgundy saw their prime loyalty being to the duke of Burgundy, not the king of France. The lords also supported the tenor of the duke’s own letter. How come the dauphin required so few troops? Why had there been such a delay in requesting them from the duke of Burgundy? Why had the duke himself been asked not to fight for the kingdom? Had no
t the seriousness of the English threat been registered by the government?

  For the envoys who had to carry these letters back to the dauphin, the menace of John the Fearless must have seemed as dangerous as that of Henry V. And although the duke’s own letter seemed to suggest he was wholeheartedly on the side of the French, they could not be sure he would not switch at the last moment and side with the English. They could not be certain that he would not simply take his soldiers and ride into Paris, betraying both the king of France and the king of England. The only thing they could be certain of was that no one could trust him.

  As it happened, John the Fearless had already started to gather his forces together. He might have spent four days arguing against the king’s order of 1 September to send more troops, but in fact he had issued orders to his marshals on 15 September to start gathering the men required.

  Wednesday 25th

  The losses to the English army did not end with the fall of Harfleur. In fact it seems likely that the majority of the casualties from the siege died after its capitulation. The end of September saw several prominent men expire. Today, Sir John Chidiock, Lord Fitzpayn, succumbed.47 His is just one of the many names that do not appear noted in the chronicles as casualties of Henry’s campaign; those writing such works had no wish to commemorate anything but the glory of Henry’s victories and the paucity of the English casualties. As a result, many men who gave their lives for Henry were simply ignored. References to their deaths made for uncomfortable reading.

  Thursday 26th

  As noted several times already, Henry repeatedly followed the pattern of Edward III’s Crécy campaign of 1346. Now he chose to enact another of Edward’s wartime measures: a challenge to a duel. Edward III had first offered to fight a duel with his rival King Philip of France – with the prize being the kingdom of France – in 1340.48 The idea was that the king could parade his courage and his Christian virtues – offering to fight alone to avoid shedding Christian blood – while at the same time being very sure that his rival would not actually meet him in battle. Today he issued a challenge to the dauphin, to be carried to him at Vernon by the English herald William Bruges and Raoul de Gaucourt.49

  Henry by the grace of God, king of England and of France, and lord of Ireland, to the high and puissant prince, the dauphin, our cousin, eldest son of the most puissant prince, our cousin and adversary of France. From the reverence of God and to avoid the effusion of human blood we have, in many times and in many ways, sought peace; and although we have not been able to obtain it, our desire to possess it increases more and more. And well considering that the effects of our wars are the deaths of men, destruction of countries, lamentations of women and children, and so many general evils that every good Christian must lament it and have pity, and us especially, whom this matter particularly concerns, we are minded to seek diligently all possible means to avoid the above-mentioned evils, and to acquire the approbation of God and the praise of the world.

  Whereas we have considered and reflected that, as it has pleased God to visit our said cousin your father with infirmity, in us and you lies the remedy. And so everyone may know that we do not prevent it, we offer to place our quarrel at the will of God between our person and yours. And if it should appear to you that you cannot accept this offer on account of the interest that you think our said cousin your father has in it, we declare that if you are willing to accept it and to do what we propose, it pleases us to permit that our said cousin shall enjoy that which he has at present for the term of his life, out of reverence for God and considering he [King Charles] is a sacred person, whatever it may please God to see happen between us and you, as it shall be agreed between his council, ours and yours. Thus, if God shall give us the victory, the crown of France with its appurtenances shall be immediately rendered to us as our right, without difficulty, after his decease; and that all the lords and estates of the kingdom of France shall be bound to accept this, as shall be agreed between us. For it is better for us, cousin, to decide this war forever between our two persons than to suffer the unbelievers by means of our quarrels to destroy Christianity, our mother the Holy Church to remain in division, and the people of God to destroy one another …50

  Here we see all the familiar arguments: that really all Henry wanted was peace, that he was simply doing God’s will, and that the unification of England and France was desirable in the eyes of God as it would help heal the schism in the Church. Perhaps the most interesting line it contains is the overt statement that Henry sought ‘the approbation of God and the praise of the world’, which seems a neat summing up of what truly motivated him.

  Bruges and de Gaucourt were told to inform the dauphin that Henry would wait for eight days at Harfleur for the reply. The implication was that he would not wait much longer than that before leaving. But then where would he go?

  *

  Sir William Butler of Warrington died today.51 He had been made a Knight of the Bath at Henry IV’s coronation, alongside Henry V’s three brothers. Thus, although he does not figure prominently in this book, he was a man whom the king had known for many years and whose loss would have mattered to him personally. Henry ordered that Sir William’s body should be dismembered and boiled, and sent home in the same ship that was carrying the bones of the earl of Suffolk. There was also the matter of who was going to take charge of his retinue. Butler had led a party of fifty Lancashire archers to Harfleur, in addition to his own retinue of four men-at-arms and twelve archers.52 His death was a strategic blow to Henry, as well as a personal loss.

  Friday 27th

  Another knight, Sir John Southworth, died today. Coming straight after the deaths of Sir John Chidiock and Sir William Butler, it causes us to ask how many Englishmen were sick at this point? And how many men had actually died or were dying?

  When Henry had landed on 14 August, he had had a minimum of 11,248 fighting men, of whom 2,266 were men-at-arms. In addition there were the servants, pages and support staff, resulting in at least 15,000 men with the king, excluding mariners. As shown in Appendix Three, the long-accepted method of assessing the proportion of sick men is based on the assumption that the whole army was equally infected, and all at the highest rate. This has normally been followed by historians in their keenness to justify the long-established figure of just 5,900 Englishmen at Agincourt, with the implication that the magnitude of the victory was as great as English legend and Henry V’s propaganda claims. A less nationalistic and more considered approach – using the lists of those invalided back to England – allows us to establish an accurate minimum of 1,693 for those sent home. Unfortunately these lists are incomplete, and we do not know how many names might be missing. However, as we know the army was divided into three battles – under the command of the king, Clarence and York – we can estimate casualty rates in all three areas where the English army was camped. This gives us a level of infection of about 17% across the whole army. The total number of men sent home was very probably between 1,693 and 2,550, of whom between 1,330 and 1,900 were fighting men, with the greatest concentration among the men situated in close proximity to the king.

  As for the number of deaths, there were actually very few deaths at Harfleur. One chronicler, Monstrelet, states that two thousand Englishmen died at Harfleur but it seems that, writing thirty years later, he confused two thousand ‘lost’ (i.e. invalided home) with two thousand dead. A close examination of the surviving accounts shows there is only evidence for thirty-seven English deaths, including those who died from attack as well as disease. Probably fewer than fifty Englishmen perished at Harfleur.

  *

  Raoul de Gaucourt was given leave to depart today, possibly in the company of William Bruges. But what was Henry to do with the other knights and men of honour who had surrendered at Harfleur?

  He decided to release them temporarily, after they had sworn an oath to present themselves at Calais at Martinmas (11 November). There they were to surrender themselves to the king himself or his li
eutenant, or a specially appointed deputy. Sixty knights (including de Gaucourt) and more than two hundred other gentlemen were thus released in the expectation that they would voluntarily give themselves up into custody in just over six weeks’ time.53 If a battle had already taken place, he told them, they were simply to pay their ransoms. If no battle had taken place, they were to submit themselves to imprisonment.

  *

  The people of Paris were in confusion. Some did not believe that Harfleur had yet fallen. Others thought that there must have been some betrayal – that it had been sold to the English. Others said that Henry had already admitted this publicly. And still more were in despair that the royal family was dealing with the war so badly. They bitterly resented the new taxation, and openly sang songs in praise of the duke of Burgundy.54

  Around this time a Frenchman called Colin de la Vallée, one of the Burgundian faction who had been exiled from Paris, wrote a letter to his wife telling her to meet him at a certain town on 20 October, and to bring with her twenty crowns, for John the Fearless was planning to be there by that time with a large army. Not having the money, she went to a friend to borrow it. Unfortunately she left the letter with the said friend, who was an Armagnac supporter. In no time at all the streets of Paris were seething with this news about an intended Burgundian rising. The gates were barricaded, and everyone in Paris was preparing for the city to be attacked – not by Henry V but by John the Fearless.

  Saturday 28th: the Feast of St Wenceslas

  St Wenceslas was the patron saint of Bohemia. At Sternberg today, fifty-four noblemen of ‘the famous marquesdom of Moravia’ in the kingdom of Bohemia put their seals to a savage attack on the council of Constance for the illegal burning of Jan Hus. They refused to accept that Hus had been anything other than a good man, or that the charges against him had been anything but false and malicious. ‘And being thus unmercifully condemned, you have slain him with a most shameful and cruel death, to the perpetual shame and infamy of our kingdom of Bohemia … in reproach and contempt of us.’55