by Dan Davis
Stephen wanted to provide the funding because he claimed we would, eventually, recoup our investment many times over and also that it would buy favour from the Crown that would enable us to leverage even more influence. That is to say, it appealed to his ambition.
And I wanted to fight. If that meant loaning a king some of our massive wealth, so be it.
The King wanted a vast army of twenty thousand men and so he implemented a remarkable innovation. Compulsory military service. Every man in the kingdom was expected to serve based on his level of income. If you made five pounds a year then you would be expected to fight as an archer, with all the necessary equipment and ability that entailed. Men who earned ten pounds a year would fight as a hobelar, those fellows who formed a versatile light cavalry of sorts which we used for scouting and foraging and anything requiring rapid mobility. Those who were assessed as having an income of twenty-five pounds were required to serve as a man-at-arms, with proper weapons and armour and a horse, along with the necessary servants to support him on campaign.
The king required every man to serve not merely in defence of the realm against invasion but also if we were to fight on the Continent. Also, any man who claimed to be too old or ill to fight would have to provide a substitute or pay a fine instead of their service. It was a shrewd move on Edward’s part but in other years, before and since, he would have faced opposition. It was only the fact that so many of his lords were looking forward to the fight that he got away with little more than grumbling.
In spite of my considerable wealth and immortality, I was playing the part of a minor gentleman who was lucky enough to have been knighted during fighting overseas before returning to England as a young man.
As I had done a number of times already, I left England for twenty years and then posed as the son of the man I had formally been. A few older fellows here and there had given me hard stares before swearing that I was the spitting image of my father but I simply feigned ignorance. It was a simple enough thing to pull off successfully because who would truly suspect I was the very same man? It was hardly credible.
Very soon after my most recent return, I had moved immediately into supporting the young King Edward just as it appeared he was being usurped by the traitor Roger Mortimer, the new husband of the King’s mother.
When he was aged just seventeen, I had urged the powerless king to act before it was too late and together with a group of young lords we seized Mortimer in Nottingham and hanged the traitor a few weeks later. Edward subsequently favoured me considerably and I had fought for him in various ways ever since.
But, as we stood to prepare for battle outside the village of Crecy, that night had been sixteen years before and the time was drawing near for me to flee once more. My apparent youthfulness was remarked upon by men who were themselves beginning to feel the ravages of time in their aching limbs and the tightness of their clothes across the belly. It is merely a matter of eating beef every day and drinking good wine, I would say, but increasingly my words fell on deaf ears. Even the King was beginning to look at me askance, though for now he protected me against the detrimental effects of rumour by his continued favouring of me with tasks of a military nature.
For Edward, I had fought against the old enemy the Scots, in the Low Countries and in Brittany against the French and their allies. During the Battle of Sluys off the coast of Flanders, I had led my men across the bloody decks to take ship after ship, winning considerable glory and fame for myself and my men. In that great victory we slaughtered tens of thousands of Frenchmen but due to the weakness and untrustworthiness of our allies the Flemish, we could not take advantage of it and so the war foundered.
In Brittany, for many years, I took and defended towns and raided for supplies to provide for garrisons. The mortal men who survived that crucible with me became as hard as iron and it was those men who were with me at Crecy. Men-at-arms and archers who had learned to fight as a unit whether we were on our own or fighting with other companies in a more significant battle.
My men believed me to be blessed.
Or cursed.
Some said I was protected by an angel or by God Himself, while others whispered that I had done a deal with the Devil. But all had seen me recover from wounds that they swore would have killed King Arthur or Alexander and, whatever the cause, ultimately, they thought that I was blessed with that most precious of all soldierly traits. Luck. And they all loved to serve me because as every soldier knows, luck is contagious. And the regular plunder also helped.
And so I came back from Brittany to join the King’s army in Normandy for the invasion of France, bringing my small force of hardened veterans with me.
Edward had not, in fact, managed to bring an army of the size he had intended. The treacherous Scots were massing in the North and thousands of Englishmen had to be left behind to face them. Similarly, there was thought to be great risk of French attacks by sea on the southern English coast and so the King ensured that the men of the coastal towns stay where they were to resist. What is more, a diversionary force was sent to Flanders to distract the French and to drag them to their north-eastern border.
Our main force landed from 12th July 1346 and spread out into the countryside, only to discover that the villages, towns, manors and monasteries were abandoned; the people fleeing into the woods and marshes at our approach. Immediately after stepping ashore, King Edward, God bless him, proclaimed that, out of compassion for the fate of his people of France, none of us should molest any old man, woman or child, or rob any church or burn any building on pain of immediate death or horrific mutilation.
It was a fine sentiment and he even offered forty shillings to anyone who discovered men breaking the King’s orders, which proved that the King perceived the essentially mercenary nature of the common man.
Of course, every village, town, manor and monastery with twenty miles was burned to the ground on the first or second day but at least he tried. The fires were so widespread that on the first night in Normandy we lit up the sky so brightly that the reddish glow filling the horizon all around was enough to play dice by.
And so we continued. We rampaged across Normandy, heading always east with the coast on our left, sometimes so close we could smell it but other times ranging miles inland.
Those poor people. They would have been King Edward’s subjects, had their lords but sworn fealty to him as their rightful lord but I suppose they knew he could not protect them from King Philip. England was considered a poor and weak kingdom and France was the mightiest in Christendom. What is more, Normandy bordered the core of the Kingdom of France, whereas Brittany and Gascony were further removed. All the King of France had to do was lean from his palace window and reach out his arm to take Normandy. They were loyal to him and so we burned the duchy from one end to the other.
Before then, though, we had taken the city of Caen. It had to be taken because the garrison inside was big enough to cut our supply line and threaten our rear if we left them in there. What is more, it was immensely rich and somewhat vulnerably located.
Even before we landed, we knew where we were headed and it was within striking distance from the coast. Still, few of us expected the siege to be over quickly.
Caen was a vast city and even the men who had never seen it knew that it was one of the biggest in the whole country, not counting Paris of course.
“It is bigger even than London,” I had said to my men.
“It never is, sir,” said Black Walter, a man of astonishing ignorance and impudence who I liked to keep at my side because he was so good at killing my enemies, despite him being a mortal man.
“Wait until you see it,” I said.
The castle on the north side was formidable and they had high, thick walls around the city itself. Those walls, we saw when we approached, had been draped with colourful banners to display to us that it was defended by powerful and wealthy men. Atop the walls, standing shoulder to shoulder, were those who would defend their ho
mes with crossbows and rocks and, if it came to it, swords and spears and daggers. Inside, Caen was packed with magnificent homes and enormous churches with grand spires jutting up in every quarter and on either side of the city were two abbeys, both huge and fancy and with high walls that joined with the ones ringing the city.
“I stand corrected, sir,” Black Walter had said.
“This was William the Conqueror’s city, Walt. The bastard robbed Saxon England from top to bottom and spent all our gold enriching this city here.”
“Pardon me for asking, sir,” Walt said, “but ain’t you come from Normans yourself?”
In fact, I was descended by blood from Earl Robert de Ferrers and through him to a lord who had fought for the Normans at Hastings but I never revealed such things to mortals.
“My mother was as English as they come,” I said, which was true. “And my father’s line, well, that was all a long time ago. I am as English as you are, Walt.”
“If you say so, sir,” he said.
“But Walt’s a Welshman, sir,” Rob said, in a false whisper. It made the men laugh and Walt cursed the lot of them.
To the south of the city was a large island in the centre of two broad rivers that flowed around Caen. The island was filled with splendid houses and ornately carved churches and even had plenty of green, open spaces. All of our eyes were drawn towards it because it alone out of everything in sight was unprotected by walls. Of course, the rivers served as a moat of sorts but we knew from our approach how tidal the rivers were and also that such watercourses tended to be slow and shallow at low tide. Still, even if we took and looted that island, the rest of Caen would remain untouched.
I knew how it would play out. As I explained to my men, we would dig in, offer terms which they would refuse and we would fling rocks at the walls for months until it became clear no French army was coming to relieve them and then they would surrender.
I was proved wrong almost immediately.
On the very first day, before our vanguard even established themselves around the walls, groups of archers drifted closer and closer to the city. Some of them noticed that the inhabitants of the town were fleeing across the stone bridge that linked it to the wealthy island. The cannier ones saw that there was a steady stream of soldiers, too, pushing their way out of the city and into that island. It made no sense at all for the French to contest that island. All it was good for was plunder.
More and more of our archers stopped preparing camp and drifted closer to stare, confused, as the French soldiers barged through the denizens. After a while, our men began jeering and mocking them. And then, without any orders being given by anyone, groups of archers started an assault on the bridges, on the island and on the city that the Normans seemed to be abandoning. Archers waded through the river, and used barges and boats, to approach the island and bridges, and other Englishmen hacked their way into the city and assaulted the bridge to the island from the rear.
“Have you ever seen anything like this before?” I asked Thomas, looking down on the madness from afar.
“An impregnable city being abandoned for no reason?” he replied. “One could argue Baghdad ninety years ago but…”
“Come now, that is hardly the same thing,” I said.
“Indeed, it is not,” he allowed. “And I can only think that God has driven the Normans mad.”
It was hard to argue with that. My immortal knight John and his immortal squire Hugh, both former Templars, charged in amongst the heaviest of the fighting, leading Rob Hawthorn and my archers deeper into the fray. Black Walter begged me to give him leave to join in.
“Old Tommy here can watch your back all right, sir,” Walt said, in a pleading tone. “Almost good as I can, sir.”
I laughed, because Old Tommy was the affectionate name my company had awarded to Sir Thomas the former high-ranking Templar who was about a hundred and fifty years old and who had fought in more battles and killed more men than anyone alive, other than me.
“Go on then, Walt. But if you get killed, do not come to me complaining of it.”
Despite not being a straightforward assault, for the enemy fought hard, it was one of the unlikeliest victories I have ever witnessed, or even heard about. For days after Caen was plundered from basements to belfries, I saw many a man laughing and shaking his head in wonder.
After that, it was all marching and plunder, marching on a broad front and going always east and north and east again. Following the coast.
“We are heading to Paris,” some fools would say. “We shall make Paris into England.”
“We are heading to a port on the coast,” the wiser would answer.
“But where?”
No one knew.
We were practically unchallenged the entire way until we reached the River Seine. We wanted to cross at the city of Rouen but the bridge had been destroyed by the canny French. There was talk of taking the town but Paris and King Philip were so close that it would have been foolhardy to dig in for a siege. What we feared as much as anything was being cut off from the coast. If we could reach the coast, we could reach our ships and then we were as good as back in England, or so we felt.
We headed upstream for another place to cross but after doing nothing for weeks the French finally made some tactical decisions. Every bridge or ford was destroyed or defended. Some we contested but, as Edward feared committing to any one place and being trapped, we were always driven back.
And then we were so close to Paris that those who stood in the right place or climbed trees or spires could see it on the horizon and everyone else could smell it when the wind blew the stench in our direction. So close to Paris that when we burned the hunting lodges and mansions of great nobles everywhere about, the smoke billowed into the sky and announced that we were so close that we could be at the gates if we so wished. No doubt the Parisians panicked, as they are a people prone to hysteria. And yet still King Philip did not attack us.
We knew from reports that he had been raising an army for weeks but where was it?
In the meantime, we brought more havoc to the country as our army, spread out for miles in a number of groups, probed the river until we reached the town of Poissy. The garrison had fled after wrecking their bridge but our men repaired the span and we were across.
Only to find ourselves now trapped by the River Somme.
Again, all bridges were destroyed or guarded and suddenly we felt the noose tightening. The word was that Philip’s army had taken so long to assemble because it was so vast. An army created for a single purpose; to crush the English and grind us into dust once and for all.
My men began to feel the ravages of the march. They grew hungry and tired. Bone-tired from never getting enough rest. Their feet were in a bad way. The horses were suffering. We ran out of meat and the men grumbled that the dried peas sat heavy in their guts.
“Be grateful that you have boiled peas,” I upbraided them. “You lucky bastards ate onions yesterday. You should be on your knees thanking God for those onions.”
My weak jests were always tolerated and perhaps even appreciated but it grew increasingly difficult to keep their spirits raised.
“We will thank God, sir,” cried John so that all in our company could hear. “We will thank Him when we scythe through the French knights like they are sheaths of wheat and take their stinking spiced sausages for ourselves.”
They cheered that, at least, even though John was almost a Frenchman himself. My men were common as muck but they knew John first as a man who had risked his own life for all of them in battles past. I thumped John on his armoured shoulder as I made off, grateful as ever for his God-given charm.
Still, our army as a whole seemed to contract and shrink and the rambunctiousness of the march became pensiveness and men’s eyes drooped and shadowed. Soon, we were cornered by the Somme and I had to lead my men in the crossing of a ford at low tide. Our archers drove the waiting enemy away from the water’s edge and when I waded ashore with
Thomas and John at my side, we carved our way into the French and held them as more English men-at-arms and archers crossed.
It was hard fought for a while but then the French fled and our entire army, including all our scores of wagons and thousands of horses, made it across in a single tide which may just have been the most remarkable moment of the whole campaign.
For a day or so we stayed on the river because the French army had come up and thousands upon thousands of them stared across at us from the other side. They could have forded the river, for they had the numbers on us, and we waited for them to attack.
In the end, they quietly went away again. My men shouted their thanks for the day of rest across the river at the retreating French, to much laughter. In truth, our army was still exhausted and low on supplies.
We marched on, hoping to drive on through and join with the Flemish.
But it was not to be.
King Philip had finally acted decisively to pin us in place with his numbers and so Edward found an excellent position to defend.
The ridge between the villages of Crecy and Wadicourt, with a slope at our front and to the flanks and woods behind.
“This will do very nicely,” I had said to Thomas from atop the hill after the King had made his decision.
He shook his head. “It is unseemly to be so cheerful when so many Christians will likely die in this valley.”
“I have known you too long, sir,” I replied, “and watched you too often rejoice in the blood you have spilled to believe that your disapproval runs deep.”
Thomas spluttered in protest. It was his French blood that made him so melancholic but that was understandable considering we were going to be fighting his countrymen. Having said that, John and Hugh did not appear overly concerned that morning as John went amongst my men to jokingly berate them for their lax standards. I watched from afar how the squire Hugh followed closely at John’s side, all the while gazing at him in adoration.
