The Ill-Made Knight

by Christian Cameron

  The Earl of Oxford ordered his archers forward to the edge of the firm ground. We wouldn’t be taken by surprise again – armoured men on foot can be fast, but not as fast as horsemen. Our archers formed neater ranks, and boys and camp servants brought up more sheaves of arrows as we began to loose them into the flank of the French advance.

  The French flinched away.

  The Earl turned to me. ‘Judas!’ he said. ‘Go to the Prince and tell me what he desires. Tell him how we fare here.’

  I nodded. I was by my horse. Richard was nowhere to be seen, and all the Earl’s noble squires were, as it proved, struggling to come up from the baggage.

  I rode back along the base of the ridge to keep clear of the French, then up the hill, into the Forest of Noailles at the back of our army, and along our ridge to the middle of our line, where I could see the Prince’s banner. The ride only took me as long as it takes to read a Gospel reading, maybe a little longer, but when I left the Earl, the French were far away, suffering under our shafts, and by the time I reached the standard . . .

  The fighting had started.

  What I hadn’t known, because I was with the Earl, was that at the top of the ridge, the whole face of the English army was protected by a trio of hedges, with two great gaps. The gaps were about forty men wide.

  The whole of the Battle of Poitiers was played out in those gaps.

  Only about a hundred men at a time could fight. It was like some kind of terrible tourney, because a thousand English men-at-arms duelled eight times their number of French men-at-arms, but both sides were able to rotate men out of the line. The fighting was fierce and protracted in a way I’ve seldom seen.

  In fact, I’ll say that I think the hand-to-hand fight at Poitiers was the worst I ever saw. The French sent their very best, and the English wouldn’t give a foot.

  When I rode to the standard, the Dauphin’s division had crashed into Salisbury’s at the right-hand gap, and the fighting sounded like a riot, with pots and pans as participants. The French roared, ‘St Denis!’ and the English roared, ‘George and England!’

  The Prince stood by his banner with his war horse. Around him stood Chandos and the Captal and twenty other commanders and great lords. They were watching.

  Chandos spotted me and called, ‘Messenger from Oxford, my lord.’

  I slid from my horse and knelt. ‘The Earl of Oxford sends his respectful greetings, my lord. We are behind the right flank of the French advance, holding the line of the marsh. We have defeated one party and captured the Marshal d’Audreham. The Earl desires to hear what my lord wishes.’

  The Prince smiled at me. ‘That was nicely put. Have you fought?’

  ‘Yes, my Prince.’ Now that made me glow.

  He smiled. Then he started walking. He walked to the hedge, and archers got out of his way. Fifty knights followed him.

  The archers had hacked an opening in the hedge too narrow to crawl through, and the other side of the hedge was crawling with Frenchmen, but it gave a view, like the crenellation on a castle curtain wall. The hedges themselves were twice the height of a man, and as thick as a road is wide.

  He looked out over the swarm of French knights who filled the hillside, though in no particular order.

  ‘Where is the Earl of Oxford?’ the Prince asked me.

  I pointed down the ride and well off to the left. ‘My Prince, you can just see the leftmost tail of our division – the light-armed men and some Welsh – see?

  The Welsh were men of Cheshire, in green and white parti-colour that blended into the marsh reeds all too well.

  ‘Par dieu – that far? So the French are behind us, too?’ he said.

  The Captal leaned in to us. ‘The hill is nearly round, n’est pas? So of course the Earl is almost behind us, and yet on the flank of the French.’

  The Prince nodded. ‘Anything the Earl can do to prick the flank of the French assault will help relieve the pressure on Salisbury and Warwick,’ he said. ‘Go with God, boy.’

  To be sure, I sat my horse for three long breaths, watching the shocking havoc of the two mêlées at the gaps. Blood actually flew – it rose like a hideous mist off the stour.

  Then I rode down the ridge and through the marsh, back to the Earl.

  By the time I returned – perhaps half an hour after I’d left – our archers were utterly spent of shafts. Let me be frank, they had hit many men, and every hit from a heavy arrow wears a man, saps his courage, reminds him of his mortality and the weight of his sins. But the archers hadn’t slain more than two or three hundred, for all the weight of their shafts had darkened the sun.

  On the other hand, the whole French right wing had flinched, perhaps unconsciously, away from us. And as the morning wore into afternoon, the archers who had no place to loose their shafts up on the ridge – blocked by the hedge or by the mêlées – came in twenties and hundreds down to us on the flank, pouring their murderous barbs on the flank of the French again, galling them like spur rowels and pushing them a little further. And as our archers gained this ground, so the Earl moved his banner forward, so that by the time the sun was high in the sky, the Earl’s banner was more than a hundred paces clear of the marsh. The result – I had no idea of this at the time, but I understand it now – was to take almost all the pressure off Warwick’s men.

  In the centre, the flower of the English knighthood stood chest to chest with the French chivalry. Neither side gave. From our newest position, I could see it all, and they were all intermixed, a great, writhing steel millipede.

  About that time, Burghersh released the last reserves of arrows. Our archers were spread along the whole line of the Moisson, as far as the marsh protruded into the French lines, and there was no particular order. Our men would go forward to within range of the French and launch two or three shafts with great care, and return, discussing their shots. It was like watching a village archery contest. The French had all their archers – mostly crossbowmen – with their last division under the King of France’s hand, and they didn’t loose a shaft at us.

  But when we received about a hundred sheaves of arrows, just at nones, Master Peter gathered his men and gave them ten arrows apiece. He had a brief exchange with the Earl, and the Earl sent me for the rest of the squires, who were busy watering horses. With the squires and all the men-at-arms, we had perhaps a hundred armoured men.

  With the best of the archers, we were perhaps 300, arrayed as we used to say ‘en haye’, like a plow, with the cutting edge, the men-at-arms in the centre, and the archers on either flank. We went forward boldly, the Earl with his standard, carried now by John Hawkwood, who had a bandage on his head.

  The Earl halted us less than a hundred paces from the flank of the French main battle, and the archers didn’t loose at random. Instead, for the first time, they loosed in great volleys to the orders of the master archers, so that all the shafts fell together. The range was short.

  ‘Nock!’ called Master Peter.

  ‘Draw!’

  ‘Loose!’

  You could hear the bodkins strike.

  Men screamed.

  ‘Nock!’ roared Peter.

  ‘Draw!’

  ‘Loose!’

  The Dauphin’s division was broken in two volleys. It was like watching a herd of horses panic, or a flock of sheep – first a few men died, then others began to shuffle back – then the next flight struck and more men fell, and there was screaming everywhere, and then Master Peter called ‘Nock’, like the Archangel Gabriel’s trumpet, and they knew the wrath was coming upon them again.

  Flesh can only take so much, even nobly armoured flesh.

  In Italy, they say the Dauphin was the first to run. I was there.

  It’s true.

  I’m not sure what to think of him. He was my age, wearing the best armour on the field, surrounded by superb knights, men of true worth and high reputation. At that point in the fight, I had faced four or five men for perhaps ten minutes, and to be fair, the Dauphin s
tood in the stour for almost two hours. I have no idea how much fighting he did.

  But I’ll tell you this for nothing. I don’t know one English man-at-arms, nor one Gascon, even a lying bastard like the Bourc Camus, who claims to have swaggered swords with the Dauphin. Maybe his father’s men hurried him out of danger when we moved against their flank. Or perhaps he’s the cowardly bastard everyone says he is. But he was the first to go. I saw him. Golden lilies powdering a field azure.

  When he edged out of the mêlée, many knights came with him, and more followed, and suddenly, all the Frenchmen on the left, facing Warwick, were retreating. After more than an hour of stalemate, they fell back down the hill in surly disorder – not a rout, just a retreat. They still outnumbered us, and the Count of Anjou – we saw his banner – gathered half a thousand men and came at us on the flank.

  The archers emptied their quivers and we fell back, all the way to the marsh. The archers scampered away from the French knights, who must have been exhausted. But not too exhausted to have a go at the Earl.

  Anjou himself ran at our line, and the men-at-arms with him charged us hard. We’d been backpedalling, and we had to halt about fifty paces from the protection of the marsh, or be cut down running.

  I was in the second rank, about five men from the Earl. I used my new sword over my cousin’s head. He fought with a sword and buckler, and I used my longsword as a spear, with my left hand halfway along the blade, thrusting over his shoulder or under his right armpit. I don’t think I killed anyone, but neither was I hit, nor was Sir Edward. We held, and held – Christ, how did they do this for an hour? Then Edward knocked a man flat with a backhanded blow, and the man waved weakly and cried, ‘Me rendre!’

  Fair enough. The Earl pushed forward, but Anjou had pulled back and was reforming his conroy – his company. I pushed forward past my cousin, who was accepting the surrender and ransom of his noble adversary. There was a knot of Frenchmen still fighting – one had hacked the Earl’s banner pole in half. Hawkwood put his pommel in the man’s face – almost no one had a visor in those days – and the man fell back.

  I cut hard with my new sword. The second man was just turning to face me, and my first cut – a rising cut – knocked his sword aside, and my descending cut was very strong. Strong and, by luck, perfect. He had a quilted linen aventail, and my blade went past his guard, through his aventail and beheaded him.

  Blood gouted from his neck.

  Men around me cheered.

  And the other Frenchman fell to his knees and made himself my prisoner.

  Friends, I think I laughed aloud. Grown men thumped me on the back.

  Anjou’s company backed away.

  Once again, I thought the battle was over.

  And once again, I was wrong.

  At the top of the Cardinal’s ridge – well, that’s what I called it all day – we saw the lilies of France and the flaming red silk of the Oriflamme. Even while I received a guerdon – my first – a token of my captive’s surrender, the King started down the ridge towards us. He had about 3,000 men, the cream of his army. His men were fresh, and they walked quickly down the hill.

  Our archers loosed their next-to-last shafts at point-blank range, and knocked over a few men.

  Warwick’s archers, and Salisbury’s, loosed whatever they had left. But archers, even master archers, tire, and we were nearly out of arrows. The density of the French meant they’d trampled the ground into which we’d shot all day, and when some of the younger men, like Monk John, ran forward to retrieve shafts, they came back with very few, because the rest were broken.

  The French King’s Italian crossbowmen went up the hill first. About 200 of them broke off to face us under their master archer. I heard his voice yelling orders, and they wheeled off like old Romans. They were good.

  Unfortunately, you cannot move forward with a pavise and a spanned crossbow. So having faced off against us, they had to halt and span. I think they thought our veterans were shot dry.

  Master Peter was a canny devil. Every one of his archers had three shafts under his right foot, where they couldn’t be seen.

  They loosed them.

  Just like that, the Italians were gone. They ran. The English shafts punched right through their great pavises. I saw it happen in Italy, too, and it broke their morale. I doubt we killed ten of them, because they had good armour, but as soon as they took hits, they ran. They were mercenaries, not patriots.

  And, thank God, we didn’t have to stand their return volley.

  Then the King’s division was past us, walking quickly up the hill, with ten great banners and the Oriflamme in the centre. From where I stood, I could see de Charny’s arms – at this distance, his arms appeared to be three red dots on gleaming white.

  The greatest knight in the world.

  I was watching when the royal messenger came to the Earl. I didn’t hear a word through my helmet, but I knew what he was asking. He was asking that the Earl send every man-at-arms who could walk to the top of the hill, to try and hold the King of France and the best knight in the world. Sir Edward was already trotting, in full armour, up the hill, going the long way round Warwick’s archers.

  He was my hero – and my knight. What could I do but follow?

  By the sweet saviour, I was tired. There is a special fatigue – some of you will know it – when some parts hurt, and other parts are so far gone that it seems they might just refuse their service to the rest of the body. I had no leg armour, and still my left thigh muscles were exhausted. I was more hobbling than running. Sir Edward drew ahead of me as he reached Warwick’s men, and then he turned in behind them and I lost him.

  The King reached the top of the hill, and his division slammed into the Prince. Even as I hobbled along, I saw the centre of the English line stagger back from the hedge for the first time, losing five paces in as many breaths of air. Fresh, expert fighters in the very best armour money could buy, facing tired men who had braved two attacks that day, and who were usually none too well armoured to start with.

  I started to run, and be damned to my left leg. John Hawkwood caught me up and I was determined not to let an old man like him pass me. Other men-at-arms from Oxford and Warwick’s division pounded along with us – about sixty men-at-arms in all, and only three or four belted knights among us, I swear.

  The English centre gave another step or two. A handful of French knights spilled around the edge of the mêlée and began hacking at the end of the English line. All the English men-at-arms who could stand were committed in the centre, and the French still outnumbered us – even with their third line alone.

  But they didn’t outnumber our archers.

  John Hawkwood started calling, ‘On me! On me!’ as he ran. Perhaps he meant to raise the spirits of the men fighting, but to the archers of Warwick’s division, with no foes in front of them, his call meant something different.

  Friends, in the main, archers don’t go toe-to-toe with men-at-arms. There are excellent reasons, and the greatest is that no good archer wears iron gauntlets or arm armour – you cannot wear an arm harness and shoot a bow well. Yet in a mêlée, your hands and arms are the likeliest to draw a blow – even a sloppy, amateurish blow.

  But—

  But this was for everything. All of us knew it. Every Englishman – and every Welshman, Irishman, Scotsman, Gascon and man of Artois and Brittany – in our army knew that we’d stopped two French attacks, and that if we stopped this one . . .

  Well. If we didn’t, we’d lose and be dead.

  The archers began to cheer, ‘God and St George!’

  George and England.

  George and England!

  Par dieu, gentles, I can still hear it – because when 6,000 men pick up a cheer, it is loud. It is a weapon of its own. It grew louder, and men broke ranks and charged into the flanks of the French line or ran down the hill to envelop them. It wasn’t planned.

  It was devastating.

  Even then, the French knights we
re, in fact, the best fighters in the world. And I was far enough behind to watch what happened to one group of archers who separated themselves from the pack and ran behind the French line. Then Marshal Clermont, with perhaps five other knights, turned on them like lions on hyenas, and they died. I knew Clermont by his arms – trust me, war was a business to me even then, and where other boys spent the summer learning Latin verbs or how to plough, I knew which coat of arms was worth a ransom, and who was the most dangerous to face, and Clermont scored well in both lines.

  His sword was like a living thing. He stepped out, cut, and an English archer folded over his spilling guts. He blocked a second cut from another man, stepped in under it and rammed his pommel into the man’s unguarded face. Then he stepped through him, rotating his sword so that he cut the man’s throat and thrust from low into the guts of the third – so hard that he batted the man’s buckler aside.

  That’s why archers don’t fight knights.

  I followed Sir Thomas, then, and he ran to the Prince’s banner in the centre. As I ran up, utterly winded, my left leg afire with pain and exhaustion, the Prince was pointing off to the right with a gauntleted hand, and he was grinning. At his hip, mounted, was the Captal de Buch – a young man, but another famous fighter, and a Gascon. Even as I stopped and tried not to heave my guts out in front of the flower of English chivalry, the Captal slammed his visor down and raised his sword. There was a cheer. He had about fifty men-at-arms and another hundred mounted archers – the kind of archers who wear leg armour and ride heavy horses. They rode off to the right in a cloud of late summer dust and a rumble of hooves.

  The English line gave another few feet.

  I straightened up, and there was the Prince, smiling at Sir Edward and John Hawkwood and another Gascon, Seguin de Badefol, who was later the captain paramount of all the mercenary companies in France, but that day was just another penniless Gascon adventurer – he had a dozen men-at-arms with him, in bad armour. I fit right in with them.