“Did you hear what that prince of pasta pedlars said? It should be us snatching French fops from their beds and making a fortune not a bunch of Byzantine bandits,” he said bitterly but no one was listening because Lannoy had given the signal for the rest of his army to enter the deer park. In spite of the sappers’ best efforts, the igels still had to break formation to pass through the breaches and it took another thirty minutes for the thousands of men to assemble on the other side of the wall.
The landsknechts reformed their squares at the northern edge of a boggy heath that stretched all the way to Pavia three miles to the south. This broad expanse of open grassland was roughly half a mile wide and bordered to the east and west by thick woods. The road that linked the Porta Pescarina with the Castel Mirabello and the Torretta gate ran through the centre of this heath and disappeared into a bank of fog rising off the marshes. The thick mist muffled sound but there was no mistaking the crack of gunfire that indicated that de Vasto’s attack on the hunting lodge had begun.
As Lannoy’s plan required, the imperial army now split into two columns. The bulk of the cavalry, followed by Bourbon and Pescara’s igels, galloped away to attack the French camp at the Porta Repentina and were soon hidden from sight as they disappeared into the trees at the western edge of the heath. Meanwhile, Frundsberg’s and Sittich’s 8,000 German landsknechts and Spanish ginetes marched east, to attack Flourance’s Swiss at the Porta Levrieri, and Thomas could only curse as they set off in the one direction that led him away from Richard de la Pole and the Black Band.
To add to his frustration, The Devil’s Band had been placed in the rear of Frundsberg’s igel and despite his promise to his men Thomas was beginning to worry that they’d not be given the chance to draw their swords let alone win fame and glory. His fears grew when the din of battle drifting across the heath suddenly changed, the crack of ordered volleys gave way to sporadic gunshots and the disembodied shouts of men fighting at close quarters became the shrill screams of women.
The new noises coming from the direction of the hunting lodge could only mean that de Vasto’s men had captured the French baggage train and any sutler or whore who refused to surrender their wealth was being shot in cold blood. The sound of the Neapolitan victory reminded Quintana that the profits from their bordello still lay buried beneath the tent they’d abandoned two months ago so he left his place in the ranks and ran to speak to Bos and Prometheus.
“Do you hear that? That’s the sound of people stealing our money!” Quintana groaned.
“It sounds to me like the souls of the damned being tortured on the other side of the abyss,” said Prometheus.
“That could be us lying dead in the mud of Mirabello, truly the wages of sin is death,” added Bos.
“So long as those thieving Neapolitan bastards don’t get their hands our gold I don’t care how they’re paid,” muttered Quintana but before he could suggest they abandoned the battle, at least temporarily, to dig up their money Thomas ordered them back into line. Still grumbling, Quintana hurried back to his rotten and as he disappeared into the ranks Frundsberg ordered his igel to prepare for an attack.
Whilst the Spanish cavalry galloped away to guard the imperial column’s flanks, Frundsberg’s and Sittich’s well drilled landsknechts clattered to a stop. For a moment there was silence then the siren sounds of drums and fifes came floating out of the fog. As the strange, ethereal music grew louder, Frundsberg’s ordered both squares’ doppelsöldners to advance and form a skirmish line thirty yards in front of each igels’ spines. Brandishing two-handed swords, halberds and arquebuses, the landsknechts’ forlorn hope ran forward and as they prepared to greet the Swiss with a storm of hot iron and cold steel, a ghostly forest of pikes began to take shape at the edge of the mist.
In his dreams Richard de la Pole heard the call to arms but before he was properly awake, his page was shaking him.
“An attack, My Lord, there’s word from the north gate the imperial army has breached the wall and is marching towards us. There is even talk that the Castle Mirabello has been captured and every man and woman in the baggage train slaughtered!” The boy stammered nervously.
“Murderous cowards, what sort of knave kills unarmed pedlars and helpless women? Well don’t just stand there like a moonfaced poltroon, get me dressed,” growled the White Rose sleepily.
Whilst the boy fetched his master’s armour from its wooden stand in the far corner of the tent, de la Pole rose from his cot and began pulling on his braies and hose. Like King Francis, the Yorkist prince insisted on wearing a full harness of expensive, though outdated, fluted armour as a badge of his rank and though his page worked feverishly to buckle the cowters, pauldrons, vambraces and other metal plates around his body, the complicated task took some minutes to complete.
“Hurry up you sluggard, you’re as slow as a sinner’s progress through purgatory!” De la Pole bawled but his impatience only made matters worse. In his haste, the boy’s fingers struggled to match straps with buckles and his master was only partially encased in steel when Georg Langenmantel and Hans Nagel arrived with more news. The Black Band’s senior captain was more concerned about missing his breakfast than the enemy attack but Nagel was deathly white and he was shaking with fear.
“What’s the matter trumpet player, you look like a corpse raised from the grave?” De la Pole snapped as his page began to fit greaves and cuisses around his master’s legs.
“My Lord, the enemy is everywhere!” Nagel whimpered but Langenmantel dismissed his fear.
“There’s no reason to panic there is a general attack but Flourance’s Swiss have two imperial pike squares pinned down by the Porta Levrieri and though a gang of Neapolitan cutthroats has seized our baggage park at Mirabello the king, praise God, wasn’t there. Francis is alive and thirsting for battle so he’s ordered all his knights and gendarmes to attack the two igels advancing towards us,” said the captain.
“Then come Georg, we mustn’t keep His Majesty waiting!” De la Pole cried and he snatched his helmet, an old fashioned armet with a bulbous visor and three purple plumes, from his page’s outstretched hands.
“Wait My Lord, there’s one more thing. A new banner has been in the imperial ranks, it shows a dancing devil and the rumour is that the men who follow this fähnlein are led by an English sorcerer who survived his own hanging,” said Nagel, who knew nothing of Thomas’ recent challenge to meet the White Rose in single combat. De la Pole however was unsurprised by the news.
“So the fiend has failed to heed my advice to go home and play battledore. Very well, if God means me to kill him, I shall but I won’t stain noble steel with his foul blood. Only iron can kill a witch and I have just the thing!” De la Pole snarled and he went to the rack of weapons on the far side of his tent. With a grunt of satisfaction, he selected a lethal looking raven’s beak war hammer, with a flat crushing face on one side of its iron head and a vicious curved spike on the other. After trying a few practice strokes he tied the weapon’s long wooden handle to his sword belt with a leather thong and strode towards his tent’s entrance.
“But My Lord! What about me? Remember it was I who unmasked the English necromancer’s treachery and if he finds me here, he’ll kill me,” Nagel pleaded. With a snort of contempt Langmantel de la Pole told the spy he’d be quite safe in the French camp with the rest of the whores and left the tent but de la Pole was a little more sympathetic to the musician’s concerns.
“Calm yourself, Master Nagel, besides myself and the Black Band there are more than 3,000 fully armed knights between you and Thomas Devisltone so stay here and polish your trumpet, you’ll be needing it to celebrate our victory!” de la Pole laughed and he followed his captain outside.
Nagel watched them go and felt a strange sense of foreboding. He was roughly the same age as his master but he began to wonder if he’d lived too long to play the game of crowns that Richard de la Pole enjoyed so much. It took less than a minute for the trumpet player to decide it w
as high time he left the White Rose’s service and, pausing only to fetch his belongs, which were pitifully few, he made his way to the Porta Repentina. The deer park’s western gate was deserted, as every man in the French camp had rushed to join their king preparing to repel the imperial attack, so no one saw the little trumpet player disappear into the misty Lombard dawn.
Despite the weight of steel around his limbs, the White Rose mounted his waiting horse with graceful ease before snatching his lance from his varlet and galloping away to lead the Black Band into battle. His men had already formed into a square and when they saw the sunburst pennant of the House of York flying from their colonel’s lance, they cheered as loudly as if the war had already been won. In reply, the White Rose pointed towards the sunrise and addressed his men.
“Today two suns rise over Pavia, the sun in the heavens and the sun of York! Now we march to fight filthy landsknechts and they say that the treacherous English sorcerer that neither the Graoully of Metz or the demon Frundsberg could kill is among them but let’s see how this son of Satan fares against our good, honest steel!” De la Pole cried and he gave the signal to advance. Drums beat, fifes played and the men of the Black Band took a pace forward. Soon the 4,000 men under de la Pole’s command were marching in perfect step towards the four lines of French cavalry that had already formed up in the open ground half a mile to the east of their camp.
Immediately in front of the French horsemen were six hundred yards of boggy grass and beyond that was the woodland that lay between the Porta Repentina and the breach in the deer park wall. Mounted on their richly caparisoned chargers, and wearing full suits of armour covered by surcoats emblazoned with ancient coats of arms, the 3,000 French knights and mounted men-at arms looked as if they were parading for a coronation but as the noble lords waited patiently for an enemy to fight, men on foot carrying blood red banners began to appear at the edge of the trees. These flag bearers were quickly joined by groups of two-handed swordsmen, halberdiers and arquebusiers all wearing white feathers in their broad brimmed hats.
A quarter of a mile away, de la Pole watched the imperial foot soldiers emerge from the wood and realised these men must be the forlorn hope from Pescara and Bourbon’s pike squares, sent to pin down the French until the main body of their igels arrived, but for the moment neither side could attack the other. The imperial arquebuses didn’t have the range to reach their enemy and even doppelsöldners wouldn’t be so foolish as to challenge a force of armoured horsemen in the open. Equally, it would be madness for the French knights to charge handgunners as old-fashioned armour and aristocratic escutcheons offered little protection against arquebus balls.
Having satisfied himself that the French horsemen were in no immediate danger, de la Pole glanced to his right and saw the captain of a French gun battery guarding the road from the Porta Repentina to the Castel Mirabello had also spotted the enemy and had quickly turned several of his lighter pieces to face the wood. Without warning, a dozen French sakers and falconets fired a volley of shots and though the imperials promptly retreated into the trees, the cypresses and cedars of the wood could not stop solid spheres of iron.
Some balls struck the trees squarely, shattering the bark and heartwood into clouds of lethal splinters. Other shots ricocheted off the trunks and ripped into the huddles of men sheltering from the murderous barrage. The wood had now become a death trap for the imperials and de la Pole breathed a sigh of relief. The quick thinking of the French gun captain had stopped the advance in its tracks, now he could send the Black Band’s own skirmishers into the wood and mop up what was left of the demoralised landsknechts.
The White Rose smiled at the thought of the glorious slaughter to come and was about to give the order for his men to attack when a fanfare of trumpets caused him look to the north. To his astonishment, several thousand horsemen, carrying the banners of the Count of Lannoy, had suddenly appeared at the far end of the wood and were forming up in three lines at right angles to the trees. Lesser men would’ve turned and fled but this was the moment for which the French king had been waiting. Despite taking the French by surprise, Francis knew that the lightly armoured Spanish and Italian horsemen, who wore little more than a helmet and breastplate, would be no match for his fully armoured knights and gendarmes.
Barely able to conceal his eagerness for battle, Francis ordered his knights to drive the imperial cavalry from the field and like a flock of starlings the mass of French horsemen began to metamorphose into new lines that blocked Lannoy’s advance. For a minute the two ranks of horsemen did nothing but stare at each other across a quarter of a mile of gently undulating grass but then more trumpets sounded and the French lines lurched forward. Horses whinnied as they felt their rider’s spurs prick their flanks but they obediently increased their speed from a walk to a trot and as their canter became a gallop, Lannoy ordered his own men to charge.
Now the dawn became filled with a pandemonium of trumpet calls, thundering horses’ hooves and shouted battle cries as the two bodies of horsemen hurtled towards each other. Brightly coloured surcoats and banners streamed in the wind and the first rays of sunlight glinted off steel helmets, swords and spear points. At last moment, the riders lowered their lances and those on foot could only watch in awe as the two armies of centaurs crashed into each other with a noise that sounded like a thousand doors splintering under a thousand battering rams.
Just as Francis had predicted, the lighter Spanish lances shattered on the thick French armour whilst the sheer weight of metal behind their opponents’ charge knocked the imperial riders off their horses as easily as small boys with sticks knocked the heads off flowers. Within seconds, hundreds of Spanish and Italian horsemen had been skewered on French lances or had broken their necks as they were bludgeoned from their saddles. Those who survived the initial charge found their razor sharp Toledo blades were easily turned by the French noblemen’s armour or shattered by their enemies’ heavier longswords. The butchery was brutal but short and after just five minutes of savage hand-to-hand combat the surviving imperial horsemen turned their mounts and fled.
It was a splendid victory and all that remained was for de la Pole to clear the wood of imperial survivors but, before he could give the order, the imperial igels under Bourbon and Pescara appeared at the far end of the wood. The front rank of each Spanish pike square was bristling with arquebuses so Francis’ knights suddenly found themselves facing a firing squad and not even their own artillery could save them. The French cannon that had bombarded the wood at the start of the battle were forced to remain silent, as the gun captains couldn’t open fire without hitting their king.
Unhindered by the presence of friendly troops in their own field of fire, the imperial arquebusiers touched their matches to their handguns. There was a roar of exploding powder and a storm of lead smashed into the bewildered French cavalry. Scores of noble dukes and marquises were toppled backwards out of their saddles or thrown forward as their mounts were shot from under them. In the same instant, the imperial forlorn hope sheltering in the woods emerged from the trees and fell upon the dismounted noblemen. Before the fallen knights could recover, the Spanish and Italian footsoldiers had pinned them to the ground and fired handguns into the visors of their archaic helmets or thrust cheap stilettoes between the plates of their expensive armour.
Yet Bourbon and Pescara didn’t have things all their own way. In their haste to plug the gap left by Lannoy’s routed cavalry, the imperial squares had become disorganised and many of the surviving French knights managed to penetrate the Spanish pike blocks. Once amongst the pikemen, those on horseback had the advantage and they wrought terrible vengeance on their despised enemies. The French knights’ longswords were the perfect weapon for slicing through the skulls of men on foot but the Spanish pikemen’s long spears and short katzbalger swords were of little use when fighting armoured horsemen at close quarters.
The French king and his Scottish guardsmen found themselves in the middle of this
bloody slaughter, and so long as his royal banner continued to fly above the melee Francis might yet carry the day, but half a mile to the south Richard de la Pole could see that the French knights were outnumbered and in grave danger of being surrounded. The Black Band was now the only force that could prevent the king’s encirclement but Francis’ reckless charge had taken the French knights a long way from de la Pole’s pike square and it would be least fifteen minutes before he and his men could join the fight.
There was also a danger that, if the Black Band moved north, imperial reinforcements would emerge from the woods to their right and attack them in the flank or rear but de la Pole didn’t hesitate. If his men could rescue Francis, they’d turn disaster into triumph and the French king would be forever in his debt. The White Rose could almost feel the hand of destiny on his shoulder as he ordered his drummers to sound the advance but, wary that Frundsberg and Sittich’s 8,000 Germans were still at large somewhere in the deer park, he ordered his men to keep their unwieldy defensive formation.
Slowly, like a great ship under sail, the Black Band’s pike square turned north and marched off to help a pretender to the throne of England save a King of France from certain death or capture.
23
BAD WAR
Richard de la Pole was right to be cautious. On the other side of the wood, the pike squares that he feared so much had been fighting Flourance’s Swiss for almost an hour and in that time Frundsberg’s and Sittich’s landsknechts had inflicted terrible punishment on their detested rivals. Minute by minute, yard by bloody yard, the imperials had forced the Swiss to retreat leaving hundreds of dead and dying men in their wake. It was only a matter of time before Flourance’s dwindling numbers of reisläufer finally broke but The Devil’s Band had yet to draw their swords or fire a shot.
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