1415: Henry V's Year of Glory

by Mortimer, Ian

  *

  In his castle at Louvain this evening, at about eight o’clock, Duke Anthony of Brabant received the letter that the dukes of Bourbon and Alençon and the other lords had written to him on the 19th. The messenger must have ridden hard – the distance he had covered was about one hundred miles. If the duke of Brabant was going to respond in time to join a battle scheduled to take place before the 26th, he had no time to lose.

  His response is very interesting. John the Fearless might have promised Henry that he would not hinder him in his war, but such an anti-French strategy did not affect his brothers’ loyalty. The youngest of the three brothers, the count of Nevers, had already taken the field. Now Anthony followed his lead. He ordered his secretaries to write letters to all his vassals requiring them to be in arms at Cambrai as soon as possible. And he sent an esquire to the city of Antwerp this same evening with similar orders.85

  Tuesday 22nd

  Duke Anthony went to the council chamber in the town of Louvain this morning. He asked the town council to give him men-at-arms, archers and crossbowmen to fight against the English. There was not much time; only a few men could be mustered before he departed for Cambrai, where he would gather his vassals.

  *

  Henry’s passage across the River Ancre may have been at Ancre itself, from which he would have marched in a direct line northwest through Forceville to Acheux, where the army camped tonight. Alternatively he may have crossed at Miraumont, and then turned westwards to Forceville. The latter route would explain why Gilles le Bouvier’s chronicle states that Henry turned away from the road towards Aubigny, where the French had told him they would fight him on Thursday. Other chronicles seem to support this view.86 But why might Henry have changed course at this point, if he was so determined to fight the French?

  One possible answer is food. Henry was not negotiating with any towns north of the Somme for safe passage; his men were simply grabbing what they could from the villages through which they passed. But the only reason to suppose that the villages on the way to Aubigny were very poorly provisioned is that the French had already looted them (French chroniclers repeatedly note that the French did more damage in looting than the English). Another explanation is fear. Not necessarily Henry’s own – but that of his men, certainly. Even many years afterwards, the chroniclers’ accounts reflect the terror of the English at this stage. They were marching straight to where they knew a larger French army was waiting for them, on ground that the French had chosen. One day’s rest had not been enough to refresh them. It would have been irresponsible of Henry to force his men along a road through villages where they could find no food on their way to what they believed would be a fatal battle. Accordingly he turned away, so he could reassure his commanders and his men that, if there was to be a battle, he would choose the site.

  Once this point is realised, it becomes apparent that, even if we are wrong in supposing that Henry crossed at Miraumont and changed direction, and that really he crossed at Ancre, the same argument applies. If he rode constantly northwest after passing Péronne, then he had simply decided not to follow the French to Aubigny at an earlier point – when he saw the mud churned up by their horses’ hooves and cart wheels. In order to keep his men’s spirits up, he had to be seen to be taking the initiative himself, and not simply leading them despondently to their deaths at Aubigny.

  Did Henry still hope to fight a battle? It is clear that the decision to march to Calais from Harfleur was originally his, and that he fully expected to fight a pitched battle on the way. But it is equally clear that he did not imagine being one hundred miles from Calais after two weeks. The failure to cross the Somme had cost him dearly, for now he was leading a starving, weak and dispirited army. His refusal to follow in the path of the French army to a designated battlefield does seem to suggest that the collective decision-making of the king and council had turned away from actively seeking an engagement. We have seen how the English refused to tackle the French in battle at Blanchetaque; now this deviation seems to indicate that the English were deliberately trying to avoid the French by moving as fast as they could along an alternative route to Calais, not stopping to parley with any towns for food. The question is thus a difficult one to answer; and the truth is that there were differing opinions within the English camp. Even if Henry personally still hoped to engage the enemy, very few of his council and his army shared that hope. And not even Henry was prepared to fight the French on ground that the French themselves had chosen.

  Wednesday 23rd

  Over the last two days Henry had kept the army moving at fifteen miles per day – almost as fast as he had been travelling when first setting out from Harfleur towards Blanchetaque. Now he pressed on harder than ever, making them go at least twenty miles. The troops rode or marched in their weary state in a straight line from Acheux to Thièvres. Here they crossed the River Authie, and then passed the next small river, the Grouche, between the walled town of Doullens and the castle of Lucheux. The main army encamped at Bonnières and the villages to the south of Frévent, while the duke of York pushed on to Frévent itself.87 There he led his men against the French men-at-arms in the town; and having put them to flight, set about repairing the broken bridge there, ready for the following morning.

  *

  The French army had probably marched from Péronne towards Aubigny after hearing back from the heralds on the 20th. It would have appeared to them best to arrive first, to choose their positions and rest, before doing battle. At some point their scouts must have reported that the English had turned away from Aubigny and were heading fast on the northwest road. On hearing this, the French commanders, knowing Henry’s men were tired and malnourished, probably imagined that Henry had decided to try to outmanoeuvre them and get to Calais without a fight. In order to bring the English to battle by the 26th, they had to position themselves between the English and the road to Calais. And they had to do so quickly.

  Turning away from the road to Aubigny, the French made their way to St Pol on the River Ternoise. From there it was an easy march along the north bank of the river to cut off the English at Blangy. A letter was sent to the town of Mons (by which route the duke of Brabant was riding) declaring to the townsmen that the battle would take place on the 25th.

  Thursday 24th

  The English crossed the River Canche this morning and proceeded directly northwards, towards Blangy, where they could cross the River Ternoise. The duke of York and the whole of the vanguard was ahead, clearing a way for the English army. The French were in the same area. Advance English troops regularly came under attack from squadrons of French men-at-arms. Seven Lancashire archers were captured in one engagement.88 It was becoming clear that both sides were racing to the Ternoise, and if the French stopped them crossing, there would be a battle – with no safe retreat for the English. There was no time to go looking for food. Although most of the troops had not eaten properly for several days, and were growing weaker all the time, their hopes of survival rested on speed, and avoiding a pitched battle with the better-fed, better-equipped and more numerous French men-at-arms.

  Henry himself was nervous, distracted. Along the route to Blangy he was told that his herbergers had identified a place in a particular village where he could eat and briefly rest. But he continued, ignorant of where the town was. When informed that he had ridden a mile and half past it, he refused to go back, explaining he was in his cote-armour and it would not do for him to turn up at a village when dressed for war. He could have added that he did not have time. So he rode on, taking the main battle of the army with him, and ordered the duke of York to lead the vanguard further ahead.89

  When the duke of York came to the hill overlooking Blangy, he saw French troops desperately trying to destroy the bridge. Immediately he attacked, and fought the men-at-arms there, killing some and taking others prisoner. Having secured the bridge, he sent scouts up the hill on the far side. One returned ‘with a worried face and anxious gasping breath,
and announced to the duke that a great countless multitude was approaching’.90 Another account states that the scout who first spotted the French

  being astonished at the size of the French army, returned to the duke with a trembling heart, as fast as his horse would carry him. Almost out of breath he said ‘be prepared quickly for battle, for you are about to fight against such a huge host that it cannot be numbered’.91

  Soon other scouts returned, and confirmed this sighting. The duke reported the locations to the king.

  It was twelve miles to Blangy-sur-Ternoise, so the valley must have come in Henry’s sight about noon or a little later. The author of the Gesta notes that the main battle caught their first sight of the enemy here: they were emerging further up the valley, to the right. The English crossed the Ternoise and climbed rapidly up the hill on the far side. And when they reached the brow of the hill, they were suddenly confronted by the French army.

  In describing the moment, the author of the Gesta uses the words ‘grim-looking’ to describe the French. It was not their expressions to which he was referring; he could not see their faces. ‘Their numbers were so great as not even to be comparable with ours … filling a very broad field like a swarm of countless locusts,’ he later wrote.92 It was a sentiment echoed by every writer on the English side, and very probably every man in Henry’s army.

  This brings us to a most important question. As the army ascended the hill from Blangy to Maisoncelle, and looked for the first time across the field of Agincourt, what did they really see? How many men were there this afternoon? Were the English truly outnumbered thirty-to-one as the author of the Gesta relates? Or six-to-one, as Jean de Waurin claimed? Or three-to-one, as reported by the French chronicler Le Fèvre, who was actually in the English army at the time. Or ‘three or four-to-one’, as the French monk of St Denis stated? Or did the French outnumber the English just three-to-two, as the chronicle written by a Parisian cleric said?

  As shown in Appendix Four, the actual ratio of Frenchmen to Englishmen at the battle cannot have been more than two to one. Indeed, it was probably slightly less than that: the English army of between eight and nine thousand fighting men found themselves facing between twelve and fifteen thousand Frenchmen. There simply is no evidence to support a larger French army. Those who have opted to maintain the vast disparity mentioned in chronicles like the Gesta have done so largely because of national pride and tradition, not because of a body of supporting evidence. On the other hand, those who have sought to correct such views have themselves failed to answer a crucial question arising from their revisionism: why were the English astonished as they climbed the hill above Blangy and saw the French army? Or, to put it another way, why do so many chronicles on both sides agree that the French hugely outnumbered the English?

  The most likely answer – which has not been put forward before – lies in the different make-up of the two armies and the numbers of their respective non-combatants. English companies had thirty archers to every ten men-at-arms, and thus only ten pages: an extra 25% non-combatants. In the French army, for every thirty archers there were sixty men-at-arms, and thus sixty pages: an extra 66% non-combatants. Whereas the English had about 1,500 pages, the French had between eight and ten thousand. In addition, all the men-at-arms on both sides would have had spare horses, and the easiest and safest way to move these was to allow the pages to ride them. From a distance of three or four miles, it would have been very difficult to distinguish between the men-at-arms and the pages. So when the French looked at the English army they saw no more than eleven thousand men in total (eight to nine thousand fighting men, plus the pages and support staff). But when the English looked at the French army, they saw at least eighteen thousand mounted men – not including the four or five thousand archers and crossbowmen, and the extra infantry raised from the locality. If there were ten thousand men-at-arms, as the Burgundian chroniclers and Gilles le Bouvier suggest, then the English probably really did see an army about three times the size of their own fighting force.

  From the point of view of the French, another factor has to be considered – the prejudice against low-status archers. French archers had won no major battles, and had contributed very little to French military prestige over the centuries. Crossbowmen employed in French wars were often mercenaries; and the French saw their archers as relatively insignificant. Also, crossbows were slow and weak in battle; it is unlikely that many Frenchmen knew how destructive a coordinated mass of English longbows could be – the most that any of them had faced in living memory was the thousand or so archers at St-Cloud in 1411. For the English, on the other hand, the archers were crucial. So, while eight thousand English soldiers came to terms with the prospect of fighting what appeared to be an army of 24,000 or more Frenchmen (three-to-one), the French saw that their own men-at-arms outnumbered the English men-at-arms six-to-one. The contemporary chronicler Edmond de Dyntner adopted this form of reckoning: ‘there were ten French nobles against one English,’ he stated, slightly exaggerating.93 The social prejudices of the French military elite, in addition to variations in the two kingdoms’ military traditions, meant that both sides thought the French army outnumbered the English heavily, whether three-to-one, or six-to-one.

  The feeling the English had of being outnumbered three-to-one was exacerbated by the fact that they could not see the whole of the French force. They knew the size of their own army, of course, having marched in three battles and camped together for the last three weeks. But for them, the whole of the surrounding area might have been populated with French troops. The villages could not be presumed to be unoccupied; a large number of scouts had attacked French troops at villages and river crossings. The very character of the medieval landscape meant that coppices, barns and houses obscured the forces of the defending army.

  On top of this, both sides would have been aware that not all the French troops had yet arrived. It seems the count of Nevers was not actually with the French army at this stage.94 It is possible that his men-at-arms had delayed at Corbie, and had been the cavalry whom the English had seen at Péronne on the 19th. Certainly his brother, the duke of Brabant, was still hurrying to the army, staying at Lens this evening, thirty miles away. The duke of Brittany was still at Amiens, although he had sent ahead his brother the count of Richemont with some of his men. The duke of Anjou’s six hundred men-at-arms also had not yet arrived, being led by the seigneur de Longny. The commander of the Parisian garrison, Tanneguy du Chastel, who was also in the battle plan, was also absent. Even the newly appointed overall commander of the French forces, the duke of Orléans, was not yet with the army. For the already-outnumbered English the prospect of becoming more heavily outnumbered on the following day can only have demoralised them further.

  *

  Henry’s reaction to the news that a huge army lay ahead of him was to set spurs to his horse and ride ahead to join the duke of York. Having seen the French army for himself, he returned to the main battle and ‘very calmly and quite heedless of danger, he gave encouragement to his army and drew them up in battles and wings, as if they were to fight immediately’.95

  The troops began to make their confessions. They knelt and prayed.

  According to some reports, it was at this juncture that Sir Walter Hungerford said to Henry that he wished they had another ten thousand of the finest archers in England. According to the Gesta Henry replied,

  that is a foolish way to talk because, by the God in Heaven upon whose grace I have relied and in whom is my firm hope of victory, even if I could I would not have one man more than I do. For these men with me are God’s people, whom He deigns to let me have at this time. Do you not believe that the Almighty, with these his humble few, is able to overcome the opposing arrogance of the French who boast of their great number, and their own strength?96

  Another source has Henry replying less lyrically to a request by Hungerford for just one thousand more archers:

  Thus, foolish one, do you tempt God
with evil? My hope does not wish for one man more. Victory is not seen to be given on the basis of numbers. God is all-powerful. My cause is put into His hands. Here he pressed us down with disease. Being merciful, He will not let us be killed by these enemies. Let pious prayers be offered to Him.97

  Did such a conversation take place? Other chroniclers do mention it – but in very similar words. All the accounts might have been based on a story circulating in the wake of the Gesta. The authors were writing with the benefit of hindsight, and keen to expand on the religious virtues of the king. But even if the story is true, and verbatim, it was not wholly original. It has several precedents in biblical speeches attributed to Judas Maccabeus, the Old Testament king to whom Edward III had been compared, and with whom Henry’s father had associated himself.98 For example, in 1 Maccabees 3: 16–19, one reads:

  When he reached the city of Beth-Horon, Judas went out to meet him with a few men; but when they saw the army coming against them, they said to Judas: how can we, few as we are, fight against such a mighty host as this? Besides we are weak today from fasting; but Judas said: it is easy for many to be overcome by a few; in the sight of Heaven there is no difference between deliverance by many or a few; for victory in war does not depend upon the size of the army but on the strength that comes from Heaven.

  Other speeches are to be found in the various chronicles for the evening – but these too are of uncertain veracity, and written with the benefit of hindsight. Henry supposedly made a speech in which he declared that he would rather die than be taken by the enemy. He might have done, he might not. Similarly, some French chronicles state that Henry sent heralds to the French asking that the battle be put off until the following day. As not all the French had arrived, such a plan suited them well.99 If Henry did seek a short truce, he did not trust the answer. He kept his troops drawn up in battle formation until sunset, and for much of that time he made them kneel and pray.100 Only when it was clear that there would be no pitched battle did he tell them to take shelter for the night in the houses, gardens and orchards of Maisoncelle.