Great Tales from English History, Book 2

by Robert Lacey

  At the end of the encounter the English casualties were minimal, no more than two hundred. By contrast, more than seven thousand French lay dead, though many of their nobility died in circumstances their descendants would not forget. Under the pressure of a surprise counterattack, Henry ordered the summary execution of several hundred French noblemen who had surrendered but had not been disarmed. He considered them a threat. But in France to this day, the Battle of Azincourt — as the French call it — is remembered for this shaming betrayal of the traditional rules of chivalry. Modern visitors to the area are told that the battle saw the death not just of thousands of men, but of ’un certain idéal de combat’ — a foretaste of modern mass warfare.

  For England, Agincourt has inspired quite a different national myth. London welcomed Henry home with drums, trumpets and tambourines and choirs of children dressed as angels. Flocks of birds were released into the air and gigantic carved effigies spelled out the meaning of the victory — a David defeating Goliath.

  ’We few, we happy few, we band of brothers’, were the words with which Shakespeare would later enshrine Agin-court’s model of bravery against the odds — the notion that the English actually do best when they are outnumbered. This phenomenon came to full flower in 1940 during the Battle of Britain, when Britain faced the might of Germany alone and Churchill spoke so movingly of the‘few’. To further fortify the bulldog spirit, the Ministry of Information financed the actor Laurence Olivier to film a Technicolor version of Agincourt as depicted in Shakespeare’s Henry V ’Dedicated to the Airborne Regiments’, read a screen title in medieval script as the opening credits began to roll.

  Henry V’s own patriotism was deeply infused with religion. Dreaming of England and France unified beneath God, he had crusader ambitions similar to those of Richard the Lionheart, the warrior king he so resembled in charisma and ferocity. Like the Lionheart, Henry could not keep away from battle and, like him, he was struck down, young and unnecessarily, by a hazard of the battlefield when besieging a minor castle in France. Gangrene claimed Richard. Henry was felled by dysentery, contracted at the siege of Meaux. His boiled and flesh-free bones were borne back to England in a coffin topped with his effigy — a death mask of his head, face and upper body that had been moulded in steamed leather.

  Just before he died Henry had called for charts of the harbours of Syria and Egypt, and was reading a history of the first Crusade. He was getting ready for his great expedition to Palestine. His wish to link England and France in this pious joint venture went beyond the simple jingoism of a modern soccer or rugby crowd. But one thing that modern fans might share with holy Henry is the two-fingered,‘Up yours’V-sign, directed derisively at the enemy. Possibly originating from the gesture presumed to have been made by fifteenth-century archers who wished to demonstrate that their bowstring fingers had not been cut off, it is known today as‘the Agincourt salute’.

  JOAN OF ARC, THE MAID OF ORLEANS

  1429

  JOAN OF ARC WAS THREE YEARS OLD WHEN Henry V won his famous victory in the mud of Azincourt. She was the daughter of a prosperous farmer whose solid stone-built house can still be seen in the village of Domremy, near the River Meuse in Lorraine, France’s eastern border country.

  Today the border is with Germany. In 1415, it was with the independent and ambitious Duchy of Burgundy, whose territory stretched down from the prosperous Low Countries towards Switzerland. Joan’s village was right in the path of the Burgundians when they came raiding, often in alliance with the English, as the two countries carved out conquests from the incompetently governed territories of France.

  Henry V’s famous victories, which continued after Agincourt, owed much to the weakness of France’s rulers. The French king Charles VI suffered from long periods of madness, when he would run howling like a wolf down the corridors of his palaces. One of his fantasies was to believe himself made of glass and to suspect anyone who came too near of trying to push him over and shatter him. His son Charles, who bore the title of Dauphin, had a phobia about entering houses, believing they would fall down on him (as one once did in the town of La Rochelle).

  The title of Dauphin, meaning literally‘dolphin’, is the French equivalent of Prince of Wales, a title relating to the heir to the throne. England’s heir had three feathers on his crest — the banner of France’s sported a playful dolphin. But in the early 1400s the shifty and hesitant Dauphin of France did no credit to the bright and intuitive animal whose name he bore. The Dauphin’s court was notorious throughout Europe for harbouring such undesirables as the paedophile Gilles de Rais — the model for the legendary Bluebeard — in whose castle were found the remains of more than fifty children.

  France degenerated into civil war. King and Dauphin were at loggerheads, and England reaped the benefit in 1420 when the unstable Charles VI disinherited his equally unbalanced son. On 20 May, in the Treaty of Troyes, the French king took the humiliating step of appointing England’s Henry V as‘regent and heir’ to his kingdom, marrying his daughter Catherine to the English warrior monarch. So five years after Agincourt, Henry V had within his grasp the glorious prospect of becoming the first ever King of both France and England — only to die just six weeks before his father-in-law, in August 1422, leaving his title to the long-dreamed-of double monarchy to his nine-month-old son.

  It was three years later that the thirteen-year-old Joan first heard God talking to her in her home village of Domremy

  And came this voice,’ she later remembered,‘about the hour of noon, in the summertime, in my father’s garden… I heard the voice on the right-hand side, towards the church, and rarely do I hear it without a brightness. This brightness comes from the same side as the voice is heard. It is usually a great light.’

  Anyone today who reported hearing voices would probably be sent to a psychiatrist and might well be diagnosed as schizophrenic. But Joan had no doubt who was talking to her. After I had thrice heard this voice, I knew that it was the voice of an angel. This voice has always guided me well and I have always understood it clearly.’

  The fascination of Joan’s story is that a teenage girl should have persuaded ever-widening circles of people to agree with her‘You are she,’ said her angel,’whom the King of Heaven has chosen to bring reparation to the kingdom.’

  It was just what a divided and demoralised France needed to hear. After months of badgering, Joan finally won an audience with the Dauphin, and she galvanised the normally melancholic prince, who was now technically Charles VII but had so far lacked the push to get himself crowned. Dressed in men’s clothes, Joan had been led into court as a freak show. But the Dauphin was inspired. After hearing her, recalled one eyewitness, the would-be king‘appeared radiant’. He sent the girl to be cross-examined by a commission of learned clerics, and she confronted them with the same self-confidence.

  ’Do you believe in God?’ asked one theologian.

  ’Yes,’ she retorted,’better than you.’

  The practical proof of Joan’s divine mandate came in the spring of 1429 when, aged seventeen, she joined the French army at the town of Orleans, which the English had been besieging for six months. Her timing was perfect — the English, weakened by illness, had been deserted by their Burgundian allies. Within ten days of Joan’s arrival they had retreated.

  What the English saw as a strategic withdrawal on their part, their opponents interpreted as a glorious victory inspired by ’La Pucelle —‘the Maid’, as the French now called her. Joan symbolised the purity that France had lost and was longing to regain. Her virginity was a curious source of pride to her fellow-soldiers, among whom she dressed and undressed with a remarkable lack of inhibition. Several later testified that they had seen her breasts‘which were beautiful’, but found, to their surprise, that their‘carnal desires’ were not aroused by the prospect.

  Joan’s voices had told her to dress as a soldier of God, and her appearance in a specially made suit of armour created a stirring image around which h
er legend could flourish. As her authority grew, she demanded that France’s soldiers should give up swearing, go to church and refrain from looting or harassing the civilians through whose towns and villages they passed.

  Volunteers stepped forward in their hundreds, inspired by the idea of joining an army with a saint at its head, while the demoralised English, once so confident that God was on their side, also began to believe the legend. When Joan was captured by Burgundian forces in May 1430, both the Burgundians and the English‘were much more excited than if they had captured five hundred fighting men’, wrote the French chronicler de Monstrelet.‘They had never been so afraid of any captain or commander in war.’

  The English promptly set up a church tribunal where Joan was condemned as a witch — her habit of wearing men’s clothes was taken as particular proof of her damnation. If the Dauphin had exerted himself he might have negotiated her ransom, as was normal with high-profile prisoners-of-war. But he did nothing to help save the girl who had saved him. On 30 May 1431 Joan of Arc was led out into the marketplace in Rouen by English soldiers, tied to a stake and burned to death. She was nineteen years old.

  ’We are all ruined,’ said one English witness,‘for a good and holy person was burned.’

  Over the centuries England has chosen to remember the Hundred Years War for its great victories like Crecy and Agincourt: but, thanks to Joan of Arc, the bloody 116-year enterprise actually ended, for the English, in miserable defeat. According to one account, a white dove was seen in the sky at the moment of the Maid’s death, and the French took this to symbolise God’s blessing. They felt inspired to campaign with even more righteous certainty, and by 1453 all that survived of England’s once great French empire was the walled port of Calais.

  Joan of Arc’s scarcely credible adventure remains eternally compelling. The simplicity and purity of her faith have inspired writers and dramatists over the centuries — particularly in times when it has become fashionable not to believe in God.

  A‘PROMPTER FOR LITTLE ONES’

  1440

  THE LONG LISTS OF LATIN WORDS IN GEOFFREY of Lynn’s Promptorium Parvulorum would offer tedious reading for modern fans of Harry Potter, but his‘Prompter for Little Ones’ has a good claim to being England’s first child-friendly book.

  Geoffrey was a friar from the Norfolk town known today as King’s Lynn, and his‘Prompter’ reads like the work of a kindly schoolmaster. It was a dictionary which set out the words that a good medieval pupil might be expected to know — many of them to do with religion. But defying the solemn tone, Geoffrey also listed the names of toys, games and children’s playground pastimes. We read of rag dolls, four different types of spinning top, a child’s bell; of games of shuttlecock, tennis and leapfrog, three running and chasing games, and games to be played on a swing or seesaw (which Geoffrey calls a‘totter’, or‘merry totter’).

  All this gives us a rare glimpse into childhood in the Middle Ages. Medieval books were for grown-ups — most chronicles tell us of war and arguments over religion. But Geoffrey of Lynn takes us into the world of children, and shows us something of their preoccupations and imaginings.

  In recent times this picture has been made real for us thanks to the chirps and bleepings of the modern metal detector. The Thames Mud Larks, named after the Victorian children who used to scavenge flotsam from the banks of the river, are a group of enthusiasts who scour the mudflats of the Thames at low tide. During London’s construction boom of the 1980s they were also to be seen raking over the city’s building sites, and what they came up with was an extraordinary treasure trove — large numbers of ancient toys.

  One Mud Lark, Tony Pilson, retrieved hundreds of tiny pewter playthings dating back as early as AD 1250 — miniature jugs, pans, other kitchen and cooking utensils and even bird-cages. He and his fellow-searchers turned up just about everything you would need to equip a doll’s house — along with small metal soldiers that included a knight in armour. Mounted on horseback, the little figure had been cast from a mould, so he must originally have been produced in bulk.

  When we look at portraits of children in the Middle Ages, they usually stare out at us with formal and stern expressions. But in the pages of Geoffrey’s‘Prompter for Little Ones’ and in the modern discoveries of the Mud Larks, we find evidence of so much infant fun and laughter. And since all these toys were made by adults, and must, for the most part, have been purchased and given as presents by parents and other fond relations, we can presume that medieval grown-ups recognised and cherished the magic world of childhood.

  HOUSE OF LANCASTER: THE TWO REIGNS OF HENRY VI

  1422-61, 1470-1

  HENRY VI WAS THE YOUNGEST EVER KING of England, succeeding his warrior father Henry V at the age of just nine months. When the little boy attended his first opening of Parliament, aged only three, it was hardly surprising that he‘shrieked and cried and sprang’, as one report described.

  The problem was that in the course of his fifty troubled years, this king never really grew up. Henry VI went from first to second childhood, according to one modern historian,‘without the usual interval’.

  This is unfair. Henry was a kindly and pious man who financed the building of two gems of English architecture — the soaring Perpendicular chapel of Eton College across the Thames from Windsor, and the chapel of King’s College, Cambridge. He also ran a court of some magnificence, to which his naivety brought a charming touch. The‘Royal Book’ of court etiquette describes Henry and his French wife Margaret of Anjou waking up early one New Year’s morning to receive their presents — then staying in bed to enjoy them.

  But Henry showed a disastrous lack of interest in the kingly pursuits of chivalry and war. Faced with the need to command the English army in Normandy at the age of eighteen, three years after he had taken over personal control of government from his father’s old councillors, his response was to send a cousin in his place. Henry felt he had quite enough to do supervising the foundation of Eton College. It was not surprising he developed a reputation for nambypambiness. Riding one day through the Cripplegate in London’s city walls, he was shocked to see a decaying section of a human body impaled on a stake above the archway — and was horrified when informed it was the severed quarter of a man who had been‘false to the King’s majesty’.‘Take it away!’ he cried.‘I will not have any Christian man so cruelly handled for my sake!’

  Unfortunately for Henry, respect for human rights simply did not feature in the job description of a medieval king. Toughness was required. In the absence of a police force or army, a ruler depended on his network of nobles to ensure law and order, and if people lost confidence in the power of the Crown, it was to their local lord that they looked. They wore their lord’s livery and badge — and it was these rival badges that would later give the conflicts of this period its famous name.

  A memorable scene in Shakespeare’s play Henry VI, Part 1 depicts the nobility of England in a garden selecting roses, red or white, to signify their loyalty to the House of York or the House of Lancaster. It did not happen — Shakespeare invented the episode.’The Wars of the Roses’, the romantic title we use today for the succession of battles and dynastic changes that took place in England between 1453 and 1487, was also a later invention, coined by the nineteenth-century romantic novelist Sir Walter Scott. The Yorkists may have sported a rose on occasion, but there is no evidence that the Lancastrians ever did — at the Battle of Barnet in 1471, they started fighting each other because they did not recognise their own liveries. To judge from the profusion of badges and banners that were actually borne into battle during these years, men were fighting the wars of the swans, dogs, boars, bears, lions, stars, suns and daisies.

  The struggle for power, money and land, however, certainly revolved around York and Lancaster, the two rival houses that developed from the numerous descendants of King Edward III (you can see the complications in the family tree on p.x). The Lancastrians traced their loyalties back to John of G
aunt, Duke of Lancaster, while the Yorkists rallied round the descendants of Gaunt’s younger brother Edmund, Duke of York. Shakespeare dated the trouble from the moment that Gaunt’s son Henry Bolingbroke deposed his cousin Richard II. But York and Lancaster would have stuck together under a firm and decisive king — and if Henry V had lived longer he would certainly have passed on a stronger throne. Even the bumbling Henry VI might have avoided trouble if, after years of diminishing mental competence, he had not finally gone mad.

  According to one account, in August 1453 the King had‘a sudden fright’ that sent him into a sort of coma, a sad echo of his grandfather, Charles VI — the French king who had howled like a wolf and imagined he was made of glass. After sixteen months Henry staged a recovery, but his breakdown had been the trigger for civil disorder, and in the confused sequence of intrigue and conflict that followed he was a helpless cipher. In February 1461 he was reported to have spent the second Battle of St Albans laughing and singing manically to himself, with no apparent awareness of the mayhem in full swing around him. It was hardly a surprise when, later that year, he was deposed, to be replaced by the handsome, strapping young Yorkist candidate, Edward IV (see p. 42).

  In this change of regime the key figure was the mightiest of England’s over-mighty subjects — Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, who fought under the badge of the Bear and Ragged Staff. With no claim to the throne, but controlling vast estates with the ability to raise armies, the earl has gone down in history as’Warwick the Kingmaker’.‘They have two rulers,’ remarked a French observer of the English in these years,’Warwick, and another whose name I have forgotten.’