41Le Févre, i, p. 245 and n. 1. Certain manuscripts of this chronicle also add the banner of the Virgin Mary; this is also implied in GHQ, pp. 66-7, which refers to the army being under the protection of “the Glorious Virgin and the Blessed George.” See also above, pp. 235, 240. (back to text)
42Le Févre, i, p. 253. Sir John Holland was allowed to use his standard as earl of Huntingdon, even though he was not yet fully restored to the earldom. See below, p. 344. (back to text)
43Pizan, BDAC, pp. 152-3. (back to text)
44Le Févre, i, pp. 245-6, 251. Curry, p. 158, wrongly translates this as “victory over your enemies” instead of “our enemies,” a subtle but important difference of emphasis. Medieval archers, unlike modern ones, used only two fingers to draw their bows. Sir James Douglas (d. 1330), Robert the Bruce’s lieutenant, was reputed to cut off the right hand or put out the right eye of any captured enemy archer, but it had been standard practice for centuries simply to execute them. See Strickland and Hardy, pp. 181, 79. After the English victory at Agincourt, the archers are said to have taunted the defeated French by sticking their two bowstring fingers up at them, a gesture which is still used vulgarly in England today to express contempt. (back to text)
45Bouvier, pp. 67-8; Elmham, “Liber Metricus,” p. 118; Capgrave, p. 132; Baye, Journal, pp. 224-5; W&W, i, pp. 135-6, 136 n. 1; ii, p. 125 n. 6. An investigation into the escape was ordered on 26 October 1415: CPR, p. 410. De Heilly had previously been captured fighting for the Scots at Homildon Hill (1402) but had been ransomed and released: Wylie, History of England under Henry IV, i, p. 293; ii, p. 61. (back to text)
46First English Life, pp. 57-8. (back to text)
47Le Févre, i, p. 251; St-Denys, v, p. 554; Basin, Histoire de Charles VII, i, p. 41. W&W, ii, pp. 132-3 place this parley the night before the battle and take the French accounts at face value. (back to text)
48Le Févre, i, p. 251. (back to text)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: “FELAS, LETS GO!”
1Bennett, “The Development of Battle Tactics in the Hundred Years War,” p. 11. See also Jean de Bueil, Le Jouvencel, ed. by Léon Lecestre (Société de l’Histoire de France, Paris, 1889), ii, p. 63, where de Bueil applies this dictum to Agincourt. (back to text)
2Le Févre, i, pp. 252-3; Bacquet, p. 93. (back to text)
3GHQ, p. 82; St-Denys, v, p. 558. (back to text)
4GHQ, pp. 85-7. (back to text)
5Curry, p. 72; Brut, ii, p. 555. (back to text)
6For Erpingham’s career, see Curry, “Sir Thomas Erpingham: A Life in Arms,” in Curry, Agincourt 1415, pp. 53-77. (back to text)
7Brut, ii, pp. 378, 555, 596; le Févre, i, p. 253; An English Chronicle of the Reigns of Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, and Henry VI. Written Before the Year 1471, ed. by Rev. John Silvester Davies, Camden Society, 64 (1856), p. 41; Allmand, Henry V, p. 91 n. 17. (back to text)
8Guillaume Gruel, Chronique d’Arthur de Richemont, Connétable de France, Duc de Bretagne (1393-1458), ed. by Achille le Vavasseur (Société de l’Histoire de France, Paris, 1890), p. 17; St-Denys, v, p. 560; Bouvier, pp. 70-1. (back to text)
9Waurin, i, p. 213; GHQ, pp. 86-7. (back to text)
10Waurin, i, pp. 206, 213; Monstrelet, iii, p. 255. (back to text)
11The word is variously given as “nesciecque,” “nestrotque” and “nestroque” in French sources; it has been translated as “I do not know what” (that is, that Monstrelet, the reporter, did not know what Erpingham said), “Knee! Stretch!,” the option favoured by W&W, ii, p. 156, and taken to be a command to the archers to shoot because they bent their knees when they did so, or, my own preferred option, “Now strike!,” which seems the most logical command. Erpingham’s Norfolk accent clearly confounded his auditors. See Monstrelet, iii, p. 106 and n. 1; Waurin, i, p. 212; le Févre, i, p. 253; W&W, ii, p. 156 n. 6. All three chroniclers have Erpingham give his signal before the English moved to their new position, so it may have been a general order to advance rather than a command to fire. (back to text)
12St-Denys, v, p. 560; GHQ, pp. 86-7; Gruel, Chronique d’Arthur de Richemont, p. 17; Alain Bouchart, Grandes Croniques de Bretaigne, ed. by Marie-Louise Auger and Gustave Jeanneau (Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, 1986), ii, p. 253; “Chronique de Normandie de l’an 1414 à 1422,” in Henrici Quinti, Angliae Regis, Gesta, p. 219. (back to text)
13Bouvier, p. 70 and n. 3; Monstrelet, iii, pp. 116, 118 n. 5. (back to text)
14Le Févre, i, pp. 198-9, 248, 309, 323, 330; Monstrelet, iii, p. 128. It is possible that Guillaume was the father, rather than the brother, of Hector and Philippe de Saveuses. Neither Hector nor Philippe took any further part in the battle after the death of their brother and, immediately afterwards, they were among those personally summoned to join the army that the duke of Burgundy was preparing for his march on Paris. Both men took a leading role in John the Fearless’s attempts to seize the city and in its eventual capture in 1418. (back to text)
15Le Févre, i, pp. 205-6, 42. At Montendre in Aquitaine in 1402, de Brabant had also taken part in a combat of seven Frenchmen against seven English, celebrated in three ballads by Christine de Pizan: Bouvier, pp. 9-10 and 9 nn. 1 and 2. (back to text)
16Ibid., p. 21 and n. 3. (back to text)
17Ibid., p. 124 and n. 3. Katherine, Pierre de Giac’s widow, was the daughter and heiress of Jean, sire de l’Île Bouchard, who was killed at Agincourt; her second husband, Hugues de Chalon, count of Tonnerre (Pierre de Giac was her third), was killed fighting against the English at the battle of Verneuil in 1424. (back to text)
18Ferry de Mailly was a Burgundian and close associate of the de Saveuses brothers: le Févre, i, pp. 248, 271, 275-6, 297, 327; Monstrelet, iii, p. 128. (back to text)
19But see below, p. 293. (back to text)
20Bouvier, p. 70. The fact that so many of them did escape capture or death appears to contradict the monk’s claim that it was their men who turned tail and fled, abandoning their leaders to their fate: St-Denys, v, p. 560. (back to text)
21Monstrelet, iii, p. 105; le Févre, i, pp. 250-1. (back to text)
22GHQ, pp. 86-7; W&W, ii, p. 159 n. 4. In Beamont, Annals of the Lords of Warrington, i, p. 244, he is called Roger Hart. (back to text)
23Le Févre, i, p. 154. (back to text)
24David Nicolle, French Armies of the Hundred Years War (Osprey, Oxford, 2000, repr. 2002), pp. 18, 21; The Beauchamp Pageant, p. 65. (back to text)
25GHQ, p. 89. The “iron furnace” is a biblical reference (Deuteronomy 4.20) to Egypt and the slavery of the Israelites there. (back to text)
26Ibid., pp. 88-9; le Févre, i, p. 256. (back to text)
27GHQ, pp. 89, 91. (back to text)
28Ibid., pp. 90-1. Suffocation in similar circumstances was the main cause of death among the Scots at the battle of Dupplin Moor (1332) against the English. As at Agincourt, the losses were almost entirely on one side and the dead “fell in a remarkable way in a great heap.” See Strickland and Hardy, pp. 184-5, 266. (back to text)
29Le Févre, i, pp. 249-50. Jehan de Croy, a leading Burgundian and grand butler of France, and his sons, Jehan and Archembaut, were all killed at Agincourt: Bacquet, pp. 77-8. (back to text)
30GHQ, p. 98; Curry, p. 62; St-Denys, v, pp. 570, 572; Monstrelet, iii, pp. 119-20. Both the acts of striking off part of Henry’s crown and wounding the duke of Gloucester, as well as killing the duke of York, were later falsely attributed to Jean, duke of Alençon. One of Charles d’Orléans’ closest friends, the thirty-year-old Alençon had been created a duke on 1 January 1415, in recognition of his services against the duke of Burgundy. Like Orléans, he had been one of the most eager to fight the English, throwing caution to the winds and himself into the combat with such ardour that his men were not able to keep up with him and he was struck down. According to later legend, he was killed by Henry’s bodyguard as he was in the very act of surrendering himself to the king. By one of those terrible ironies s
o often created by the complexities of medieval intermarriage, he was distantly related to the king, his mother-in-law, Joan of Navarre, being Henry V’s stepmother. As W&W, ii, pp. 165-6, point out, Alençon’s own family chroniclers did not attribute such feats of valour to him, but French pride demanded the creation of a suitable hero. (back to text)
31Beamont, Annals of the Lords of Warrington, p. 246; Gruel, Chronique d’Arthur de Richemont, p. 18; Waurin, i, pp. 217-18; le Févre, i, p. 260. A French knight, Jean Valentin, was wounded trying to come to the aid of Charles d’Orléans: Belleval, Azincourt, p. 335. (back to text)
32GHQ, pp. 90-3. (back to text)
33Pizan, BDAC, pp. 169-70. (back to text)
34GHQ, pp. 91-3. (back to text)
35Le Févre, i, p. 258. (back to text)
36Seward, Henry V as Warlord, p. 80, suggests that there were perhaps as many as three thousand. (back to text)
37Ghillebert de Lannoy, Oeuvres de Ghillebert de Lannoy: Voyageur, Diplomate et Moraliste, ed. by Ch. Potvin and J.-C. Houzeau (P. and J. Lefever, Louvain, 1878), pp. xii-xiv. (back to text)
38Ibid., pp. 49-50. (back to text)
39See, for example, W&W, ii, p. 172 and n. 11; Curry, p. 472. (back to text)
40The Portuguese similarly executed their prisoners at the battle of Aljubarotta (1385) when threatened by a Castilian rally. See Strickland and Hardy, p. 254. (back to text)
41St-Denys, v, p. 564; Lannoy, Oeuvres, p. 50. Ghillebert de Lannoy’s claim that it was the duke of Brabant’s arrival which prompted the killing of the prisoners is supported by at least two other chroniclers from opposite sides of the French political divide, but others are equally adamant that there was a genuine rally behind the lines. The fact that this was attributed in some sources to the leadership of Clignet de Brabant suggests that this might be where the confusion arose, as it was cries of “Brabant! Brabant!” which first alerted the English to the new danger and this war-cry was equally applicable to the duke and Clignet. The chaplain (GHQ, p. 91) is in no doubt about what he saw and heard: “a shout went up that the enemy’s mounted rearguard (in incomparable number and still fresh) were re-establishing their position and line of battle in order to launch an attack on us, few and weary as we were.” See also Basin, Histoire de Charles VII, p. 45; “Le Livre des Trahisons de France envers la Maison de Bourgogne,” in Chroniques Relatives à l’Histoire de la Belgique sous la Domination des Ducs de Bourgogne, ed. by M. le baron Kervyn de Lettenhove (Académie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Bruxelles, 1870), ii, p. 129. (back to text)
42Serge Boffa, “Antoine de Bourgogne et le Contingent Brabançon à la Bataille d’Azincourt (1415),” Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, 72 (1994), pp. 259-62; Curry, pp. 172-3; Bacquet, pp. 93, 103. (back to text)
43See, for example, St-Denys, v, p. 564; Pierre de Fenin, Mémoires de Pierre Fenin, ed. by Mlle Dupont (Société de l’Histoire de France, Paris, 1837), p. 64. (back to text)
44Le Févre, i, p. 258. How the English archers obtained a new supply of arrows to carry out this bombardment is not explained, but it was standard practice to collect spent arrows from the battlefield during lulls in the fighting: see above, p. 379 n. 8. (back to text)
45Monstrelet, iii, p. 109; Waurin, i, pp. 215-16; le Févre, i, p. 257; Fenin, Mémoires, pp. 64-5; Bacquet, pp. 93-4. (back to text)
46See above, p. 262. (back to text)
47GHQ, p. 85; Foedera, ix, pp. 356-7. (back to text)
48Ibid.; Bacquet, p. 94; Fenin, Mémoires, pp. 64-5; Monstrelet, iii, pp. 109-10. (back to text)
49Curry, p. 72; le Févre, i, pp. 267-8. (back to text)
50Monstrelet, iii, p. 111. W&W, ii, p. 178, misunderstand the reason for Montjoie’s presence, believing him to be an English prisoner. (back to text)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE ROLL OF THE DEAD
1St Albans, p. 96; GHQ, pp. 95-7; Morosini, Chronique, ii, p. 85. Morosini actually lists twenty-seven dead barons, but his names are garbled and, in some cases, demonstrably wrong. The table in Curry, p. 12, should be treated with caution, as it does not distinguish between numbers of armigerous dead and overall figures that include commoners. (back to text)
2Le Févre, i, p. 258. The same number is given by Waurin, i, p. 217, but the two chronicles are interdependent and heavily reliant on Monstrelet, iii, p. 110, who gives six hundred dead, which is still probably too high a total, but which suggests that their sixteen hundred is a manuscript misreading for his lower figure. (back to text)
3McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights, p. 67. (back to text)
4ODNB; Foedera, ix, p. 309. (back to text)
5Ibid., ix, pp. 307-9; Marks and Williamson (eds), Gothic Art for England 1400-1547, p. 439 no. 327. (back to text)
6Edward, duke of York, The Master of Game by Edward, Second Duke of York, ed. by W. A. and F. Baillie-Grohman (Chatto and Windus, London, 1909), p. 1. See ibid., pp. 2-3, for his quotation from Chaucer’s The Twenty-Five Good Women. (back to text)
7Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk, Appx. iii, p. 266. (back to text)
8Edward, duke of York, The Master of Game, pp. 8-9, 11-12. (back to text)
9See, for instance, Seward, Henry V as Warlord, p. 79. W&W, ii, p. 187 n. 5, point out that the description of the duke as “a fatte man” originates with John Leland’s Itinerary, compiled in the 1530s and 1540s. (back to text)
10Harriss, “The King and his Magnates,” in HVPK, p. 41. (back to text)
11W&W, ii, p. 186 n. 5. He lost almost exactly half his horses too: see above, p. 410, n. 18. (back to text)
12See below, p. 307. (back to text)
13Wylie, “Notes on the Agincourt Roll,” p. 128. Thomas, Lord Camoys, for example, who led the English left wing, lost none of the twenty-six men-at-arms and fifty-five archers who accompanied him into battle. John Holland, the future earl of Huntingdon, lost only four archers (plus one who died afterwards at Calais) and one man-at-arms out of a combined company of eighty: ibid., pp. 128-9, 134. (back to text)
14W&W, ii, p. 185 n. 3, 188 n. 4; Beamont, Annals of the Lords of Warrington, i, pp. 244-5; Abstracts of Inquisitions Post Mortem, p. 116; Wylie, “Notes on the Agincourt Roll,” p. 134 n. 1. Harington additionally lost from his personal retinue the archer Roger Hunt, who was killed by a gun in the battle: see above, p. 284. Another leader of a contingent of fifty Lancashire archers, Sir William Botiller, also died at Harfleur, leaving his men leaderless, but their fate is not recorded: see above, p. 204. (back to text)
15The only other named man-at-arms killed at Agincourt, apart from those mentioned in the text, is Sir John Skidmore, who had indented to serve himself, with three men-at-arms and twelve archers: Usk, p. 126, is the only source to mention that he was killed in the battle. For his retinue, see MS E101/45/5, TNA; Nicolas, p. 384. (back to text)
16ODNB; St Albans, pp. 61, 67. (back to text)
17W&W, ii, pp. 188-9, 188 n. 7, 189 n. 4, 218; Wylie, “Notes on the Agincourt Roll,” p. 135. Vaughan’s funeral effigy, wearing his Lancastrian SS collar, is in the chancel of Bredwardine church, near Hereford. Watkin Lloyd took only one mounted archer with him, which I take to be the meaning of Jeuan Ferour “cum equo cum Watkin Lloyd,” not that Lloyd was Ferour’s groom, one of the alternatives suggested by Hardy, “The Longbow,” p. 163. (back to text)
18Bouchart, Grandes Croniques de Bretaigne, ii, p. 254. (back to text)
19Ibid., iii, pp. 112-13, 113 n. 1, 119-20; le Févre, i, p. 265. W&W, ii, p. 182, add the count of Dammartin, but see below, p. 311. (back to text)
20Monstrelet, iii, p. 118. The corruption of Monstrelet’s text makes it impossible to give a definitive figure, as family names are sometimes given with titles and sometimes without, making it difficult to identify them as one or two people. (back to text)
21W&W, ii, p. 222, suggest this was a Burgundian institution, but see Barber, The Knight and Chivalry, pp. 137-8. (back to text)
22W&W, ii, p. 22
2; St-Denys, v, p. 572; Bacquet, p. 105. His nephew, Charles de Montaigu, sire de Marcoussis, was also killed in the battle: St Denys, v, p. 572. (back to text)
23See, for example, Monstrelet, iii, pp. 114-18, 117 nn. 3 and 7, 118 n. 5; le Févre, i, p. 267. (back to text)
24Nicolas, p. 375. (back to text)
25Monstrelet, iii, pp. 113-15, 117; Bacquet, pp. 76-81. (back to text)
26Monstrelet, iii, pp. 113, 116, 114; Bourgeois, p. 79; http:// gilles. mailet. free. fr/ histoire/recit/recit_duche_et_comte_de bourgogn.htm; http:// membres. lycos.fr/valsoleil/hellandes/histoire_du_fief_de_hellande.htm. For the bailli of Evreux, Pierre de Hellenvillier, see below, p. 312. Robin de Hellande, the bailli of Rouen, was captured but died of his wounds on 15 December 1415: see below, p. 343. (back to text)
27Bacquet, pp. 76-8, 80; www.defense.gouv.fr/gendarmerie/lexique/ aafcbcbefbf. htm; www.ville-auchydeshesdin.fr/default_zone/fr/html/ page-77. html. (back to text)
28See below, p. 356. (back to text)
29Monstrelet, iii, p. 112; Bouvier, p. 20 n. 3; St-Denys, v, p. 572. (back to text)
30Bouvier, pp. 68-9 and 68 nn. 4 and 5; Baye, Journal, ii, p. 224 and n. 1. (back to text)
31St-Denys, v, p. 570; le Févre, i, p. 242. (back to text)
32Monstrelet, iii, p. 118 n. 5; www2.ac-lille.fr/fjoliot-calonne/calonnort/ historiqueCalonne.htm; le Févre, i, 266; http://perso.wanadoo.fr/ jean-claude. colrat/enigmes.htm; Liste. (back to text)
33Monstrelet, iii, pp. 118 n. 5, 120 and n. 2; Liste; http:// jarnou. free.fr/ degribauval.htm. (back to text)
34Liste; http://jarnou.free.fr/site078.htm; http://pascale.olivaux.free.fr/ Histoire/Pages/Picardie.htm; Monstrelet, iii, p. 113. (back to text)
35http://jeulin.chez.tiscali.fr/Normandie/Mesnieres/histoire/MesnBois.htm; Baye, Journal, i, pp. 95 n. 1, 98. (back to text)
36On 6 December 1415, “Theobaldus Chauntemarle,” a prisoner, and two servants, were among a group of Frenchmen given safe-conducts to return to France to negotiate their ransoms. Perhaps he was unsuccessful and had to return to England, or died before he set off: Foedera, ix, p. 323. (back to text)
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