On the morning of 19 October, a force of mounted men-at-arms, followed by a contingent of archers, crossed the fords with no opposition. After dismounting and handing their horses over to holders, they formed a bridgehead on the eastern bank to prevent any interference with the crossing. At about 1300 hours, the army began to cross, the baggage and non-combatants by one ford and the soldiers by the other. One French source claims that the soldiers made a raft from window-frames taken from nearby houses, presumably to ferry across kit rather than men. By an hour before last light, perhaps around 1630 hours, the whole army was across, carrying their stakes and other impedimenta, whereupon they dispersed in the moonlight into billets in nearby villages on the right bank. French cavalry patrols that arrived as the crossing was going on wisely did not interfere, although they would have reported the location of the English army to their superiors.
The French army in the Péronne area was already enormous and growing larger by the day as more contingents trickled in. Many internal quarrels had been temporarily laid aside in the face of the greater threat from the English, but, large though the army was, there were major weaknesses, not least in the command structure. As the king, Charles VI, could not be present, being made of glass, and the dauphin was persuaded to stay in Rouen, the Constable, Charles d’Albret, and the Marshal, Jean Boucicault, were nominally in command as the senior military officers of France. While divided command is never a good idea, it might have worked were it not for the presence of the king’s uncle, the duke of Bourbon, the king’s brother, the duke of Orléans, and senior magnates such as the dukes of Alençon and Brittany and the duke of Burgundy’s younger brothers, the duke of Brabant and the count of Nevers, along with a host of lesser nobility, none of whom considered themselves to be under the command of anyone and all of whom had to be consulted and pandered to. What all were agreed upon was that the impertinent English must be stamped upon decisively, and, on 20 October, three French heralds appeared demanding that King Henry state a time and place for a battle. The king replied that he intended to march to Calais, that he was not hiding in hedgerows, and that, if the French wanted a battle, they could easily find him. The heralds were given a handful of gold coins and sent on their way. On 21 October, the English army was past Péronne and, traversing the area over which their descendants would fight 501 years later at the first Battle of the Somme, crossed the River Ancre, a tributary of the Somme, at Miraumont. The French made no attempt to stop them, presumably because they were now unsure where exactly the English were and in any case were concentrating on finding a blocking position on the road to Calais.
On 22 October, Henry’s army struggled on, heading west across the valley that would be the scene of the Newfoundland Regiment’s disastrous attack on 1 July 1916, through Forceville, Acheux and Beauquesne, then north over the River Authie at Orville and the River Grouche at Lucheux, before halting at Bonnières, with the vanguard under the duke of York two miles ahead at Frévent. The duke, Edward of Langley, the son of Edward III’s youngest son, was forty-two in 1415 and had a reputation for political intrigue (his brother, Richard, earl of Cambridge, had been a ringleader of the Southampton Plot earlier in the year and beheaded for it), but he was a competent and experienced soldier and was on good terms with the king, who addressed him as ‘cousin’. By now, everyone was wet, hungry and exhausted, and nearly all had some form of dysentery. Some sources suggest that, rather than constantly having to undo and drop and pull up their trousers, some men took them off altogether and tied them round their waists. As riding a horse without trousers is an uncomfortable experience, this is probably dramatic licence. The rations carried from Harfleur had long been consumed, and those obtained or sequestered on the way had run out, so the men were reduced to eating horseflesh from baggage-animals no longer required once their load was exhausted, and nuts scavenged from the woods and hedges. One chronicler bemoans that for the lower ranks there was only water to drink – not as precious as it sounds in an age and a country where most water was contaminated and ale was the healthier refreshment.
On 23 October, the army was at Blangy, another twelve miles nearer Calais, and it was there that they crossed the River of Swords, the Ternoise, another tributary of the Somme, and caught sight of the enemy army. As the English soldiers struggled across the stream of the Ternoise, they saw, drawn up on a ridge a mile in front of them, line after line, battle after battle of mounted knights, armour glinting in the weak sunlight and banners fluttering in such numbers as they had never seen or imagined.
Exact numbers are hard to establish: the English chroniclers underestimate the size of the English army and exaggerate that of the French and the French reporters do the reverse, for very obvious reasons. The Scotichronicon puts the size of the French army at 200,000, Thomas of Walsingham says 140,000, and the author of the Gesta, who was there, says that the English were outnumbered by thirty to one, which would mean around 180,000 Frenchmen. All these estimates are plainly ridiculous, and, while apart from the writer of the Gesta the English reporters were not there, men who were there and who were spoken to by later chroniclers certainly thought that the French numbers were far greater than they actually were. While clerks and churchmen can be forgiven for being unable to assess numbers accurately, professional soldiers have to be able to make a reasonable estimate of what they might be up against, otherwise they are likely to either refuse battle when they should offer it, or offer it when they should refuse. The most credible theory to explain the overestimation by English commanders on 23 October is given by Ian Mortimer,43 who points out that in the French army the proportion of men-at-arms to crossbowmen and archers was much greater than it was in the English forces, and that every man-at-arms had at least one page, esquire or a servant; so, if these supporters were riding their masters’ spare horses, then from a distance of a mile or so they would have been indistinguishable from combatants. Whatever the true figure, it is undeniable that the English were greatly outnumbered: certainly by two to one and perhaps by three to one – not as bad as thirty to one, but a daunting prospect nonetheless.
On seeing the French forming up in what looked like battle array, Henry ordered the English to do likewise, but, after the armies had stared at each other for an hour or so, the French withdrew. The English followed them as far as the hamlet of Maisoncelle, two miles further on, while patrols reported that the French had taken up a blocking position across the Calais road at Agincourt, a mile to the north-west.90 It was now obvious to all that there would be a battle the next day. The only way to avoid it would be for Henry to humble himself and relinquish his claims to the French throne and to English France – which he could not possibly do without forfeiting the loyalty of his subjects, in England and in France. He had already released the prisoners taken along the way from Harfleur, and, while this was dressed up as a concession, it was really a way of getting rid of useless mouths who had to be fed and guarded, and that was as far as he was prepared to go. Henry’s men had left a trail of vomit and diarrhoea all across northern France; they were starving, sick and wet; their clothes were in rags; and they were hugely outnumbered by an enemy operating in its own land. But these were vicious, hard, professional soldiers. They had trounced the Scots, the Welsh, northern rebels and the French time and time again, and they had a leader in whom they had absolute confidence and who had absolute confidence in himself. They would fight on the morrow and they would win, as they always had, and, if any man thought that they were taking on an impossible task, then he kept that opinion strictly to himself. As Sir David ap Llewellyn of Breconshire was reputed to have said, looking at the enemy ranks: ‘There are enough to be killed, enough to be taken and enough to run away.’ For the men-at-arms, the presence of so many French nobles – easily identified by the badges and crests on banners, shields and surcoats – meant increased prospects of riches from ransoms, while for the archers there was a more personal motive. It may not be true that any captured archer had the index and second fi
nger of his right hand cut off to prevent him from drawing a bow again, but archers certainly believed that would be their fate if taken prisoner.91
Shakespeare has King Henry going round his men during the night in disguise, in order to properly assess morale. This is surely nonsense. In a small army which he had personally led since leaving England in August, the king would have known perfectly well what state morale was in, and he had enough confidence in his subordinate commanders to know that they would tell him the truth and not what they thought he wanted to hear. Indeed, when sometime during the night Sir Walter Hungerford,92 a thirty-seven-year-old who combined military command with diplomatic responsibilities, the speakership of the House of Commons and chancellorship of the duchy of Lancaster, opined that what they really needed was another 10,000 good English archers, Henry replied that he was perfectly content with what he had and would not accept another man if he was offered him – clearly not true, but again, it sounded good.
In the lines of the French army, spirits were high. Unlike their English counterparts, who were sleeping in ditches and under bushes, there was no shortage of tents and warm comfortable billets in the farms and houses round about. Men threw dice to see who would have the most important prisoners, including the English king himself, and the complete silence from the English lines (in fact on the king’s orders) made the commanders at one stage worry that their quarry had somehow slipped away and evaded them. Patrols confirmed that the English were still there, and it was presumed they were so quiet because they were terrified of what would happen to them in the morning.
All night long it rained, and the English army slept, or tried to sleep, in a rough battle formation. In truth, there was no risk of their being surprised by a night attack – the French high command was simply not capable of organizing it, and in any case would have regarded it as dishonourable: there was far more glory to be gained in daylight, when all could see the deeds of valour that would surely be performed. A modern army would stand to – that is, form up ready for battle in all respects – at first light, but that was not the way of medieval warfare, where breakfast (meagre in the case of the English) had to be taken, final orders given and some encouraging rhetoric promulgated. At around mid-morning of Friday 25, October 1415, St Crispin’s Day, King Henry ordered his army to fall in in its three battles, across a field recently sown with winter wheat.
The army was too small to have a battle in reserve, so the three divisions lined up abreast, with the duke of York commanding the right, the king the centre, and Thomas, Baron Camoys the left. Camoys, married to Henry Hotspur’s widow, was perhaps an odd choice as a divisional commander: he was sixty-five years old in 1415 and had little experience of command in the field, and his personal retinue was only twenty-four men-at-arms and sixty-nine archers. But he was a member of the king’s council, had served on numerous royal commissions, and was known as a good organizer and administrator. Sixty-five was, of course, old for field soldiering, but not as old as is often claimed. While male life expectancy in England at this time was around thirty-five years, this is a misleading statistic, made so by a very high rate of infant mortality – death in childbirth or when very young. A member of the English aristocracy, if he survived to the age of twenty-one, could, assuming he escaped the plague and was not killed in battle, expect to live until the age of sixty-nine.44 The king had anyway no intention of getting involved in a battle of manoeuvre and Camoys’ main responsibility would be to ensure that his men stood – and that they would surely do.
Assuming that casualties and desertions along the way from Harfleur had been made up by reinforcements from England, then the men-at-arms, once lined up, probably in four ranks, would have covered a frontage of 250 yards or so. The 2,500 archers on each wing, probably in ten ranks, would between them have added another 500 yards, thus the whole army from left to right would have taken up a minimum of 750 yards. Henry now ordered the archers to plant their stakes, which were in two rows (possibly more), driven into the ground at an angle so that the point was at the height of a horse’s brisket and staggered so that a charging horse getting in between two stakes of the front row would run into one in the second. If the stakes were a yard apart, this would indicate a total of 1,000 stakes, implying that one in five archers carried a stake. This formation ensured that a cavalry charge would be funnelled away from the archers and towards the English centre, where it would come up against infantry in line and be seen off. The baggage-wagons were probably in Maisoncelle, with the horses picketed nearby.
The army was now in battle array. We do not know what King Henry actually said to them, although the words Shakespeare later put in his mouth must rank as one of the most evocative speeches in the English language:
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered –
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here;
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s Day.
Of course, the practical difficulties of addressing 6,000 men spread out over a distance of half a mile without a public address system are considerable, even allowing for the fact that medieval orators were accustomed to addressing and being heard by huge crowds.93 The likelihood is that whatever Henry said was repeated by officers stationed along the front, as was the practice in British armies of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, or that he simply cantered down the line repeating a few encouraging words – ‘Good luck, and do your best’ – as might any modern commander.
King Henry’s plan was the tried-and-tested English tactic: find a favourable piece of ground and wait for the enemy to attack. When it was clear that the enemy was not going to attack, or not just yet, Henry ordered the banners to advance – that is, the signal to be given for the army to move forward. The decision to move was doubtless influenced by the English flanks being unprotected and thus vulnerable to a French encircling movement. It is unlikely the French would have been capable of carrying out such a manoeuvre, but they could very well have despatched cavalry to work its way round behind the English line. So the archers uprooted their stakes and the whole army began to move forward in line across the muddy open fields. When all three divisions and their flanking archers had covered around half a mile or so, they were able to anchor their flanks on two woods: the wood of Tramecourt on the right and that of Agincourt on the left.94 This move was, of course, risky, as a more competent enemy might have launched an attack to catch the English on the move. Henry was confident, however, that, given the distance from the French line, there would be ample time for his army to halt and take up the defensive, although an archer trudging through the mud with his stake over his shoulder and wondering whether his very tatty hat was keeping his bowstring dry may have felt rather less convinced.
Three hundred yards from the French line, the English army halted, realigned its formation and planted its stakes, watched by the enemy host. The size of the French army was such that there was not room for the usual formation of two battles forward and one back in reserve, and the three formations were one behind the other. They had learned something from previous defeats by the English: the front battle, of around 5,000 men-at-arms, was formed up dismounted, with the 5,000 men of the second battle behind the first and similarly on its feet, while the men of the third battle at the rear, another 5,000 or so, remained mounted. Other mounted men were stationed on each wing, perhaps 200 or so in each detachment. Missile support consisted of mercenary crossbowmen and some archers, most placed on the wings in the English fashion but some spread along the front. The standard French military establishment had two men-at-arms for every crossbowman or archer, which would i
ndicate the presence of 7,000 crossbowmen, far more than were actually present. However, in the event, they played no part in the battle, so we need not detain ourselves overmuch in estimating their numbers.
There was certainly a French plan. The battle would open with an attack by the dismounted French vanguard, which would occupy the attention of the English infantry, whereupon the French heavy cavalry on the wings would circle round and take the archers in flank. Once the archers had been driven off, then numbers would tell and the English would be slaughtered, probably without the French even calling upon the second and third battles, although the mounted third battle might be used to pursue the fleeing remnants of Henry’s army. It was a perfectly sound plan, but in hindsight it was not the best plan that the French could have made. They, after all, could afford to wait and Henry could not, so, if the French had simply remained on the defensive, then Henry would have had to either attack them, to his disadvantage, or starve. Even better, the French could easily have placed themselves between the two woods, instead of allowing the English to anchor their flanks by doing so.
A Great and Glorious Adventure Page 27
