John at first achieved striking success. His welcome in La Rochelle was cordial, not only because it was an ‘English’ town that depended for its prosperity on English trade but because the magnates of Poitou had become alarmed at the growing power of France and were willing to set one ruler against another so as to regain their old independence; French chroniclers cynically said that treachery was in the lifeblood of the Poitevins - ‘affection will no more hold a Poitevin than chains will bind a Protean’ was William the Breton’s gloss.73 Despite criticism for Fabian tactics - remaining so near to the La Rochelle seaboard for so long - the truth was that John could not advance against Philip until he was sure of the loyalty of all the Poitevin magnates along the proposed line of march; for this reason, if no other, it seems absurd to credit John with a ‘grand strategy’ of cutting through France from south-west to north-east to join his Flemish allies. The fact that a local lord held the castle of Milecu, a few miles from La Rochelle, against him was hardly an auspicious omen; John had to reduce this stronghold before going any farther.74 John’s itinerary can be followed in sketchy outline, though not all the details are clear: Mervant (20 February); Niort (25 February); the siege of Milecu (2-4 March); Angoulême (15 March); Saint-Junien (17 March); Aixe (18 March); La Souterraine (23 March); and thence through the Limousin again to the Charente, passing through Limoges and Angoulême.75 In April he marched into Gascony as far as La Réole to reassure himself that his southern flank was secure. His boasts in dispatches to England - ‘immediately on our arrival 26 castles and fortified places were restored to us’76 was belied by the reality on the ground.
Yet Poitou could not be made solid pro-John territory simply by marches and countermarches. In May John brought diplomacy into play by trying to placate the hostile Lusignans, even offering his daughter Joan in marriage to Hugh of La Marche (Hugh of Lusignan). But when the powerful clan continued to drag its collective feet, John decided on stronger measures. He quickly took Geoffrey of Lusignan’s castle of Mervant, then moved against the stronger fortress of Voucant, where Geoffrey and two of his sons had barricaded themselves. A three-day assault by trebuchets brought Geoffrey to heel; he and his sons surrendered themselves to the English king’s mercy.77 John’s thrust against the Lusignans finally brought the French into the field against him, for Geoffrey’s third and most easterly castle at Montcontour, the toughest nut to crack of the trio, was suddenly reported to be under siege from Louis, Philip Augustus’s son. On 25 May John made rendezvous with the three Lusignans (Geoffrey and his brothers the counts of La Marche and Eu) at Parthenay, where John confirmed the marriage contract of Hugh with his daughter Joan, stressing what a great favour this was, as Philip Augustus, playing his usual diplomatic games, had tried to spike the proposal by offering his son as a husband for Joan instead.78 A plethora of Poitevin barons attended and witnessed the marriage contract at Parthenay (like so many of these proposed dynastic marriages it was fated never to take place), indicating that John’s campaign had been successful so far. Heartened by this showing, he decided to attempt the recapture of Anjou, lost to Philip in 1204-05.
This was the crucial moment when, if operations on the two allied fronts really had been coordinated, John might have been able to score a glittering victory. Even though Philip could raise an army estimated at some 20,000 in all (including 3,000 knights),79 he would still have been stretched thin if the army of the north under Salisbury, Ferrand and Otto IV had been ready to invade France the instant John struck north into Anjou. As it was, Philip had to divide his army to deal with the dual threat; he faced north, leaving his son Louis to confront John in the south. It was a supremely perilous moment for France, for if the allies were victorious in the north the momentum of victory would almost certainly sweep John back across Normandy and possibly even into Paris itself. It was therefore in a jaunty mood that John struck north-west across the Loire on 1 June, having first feinted in the direction of Louis’s army.80 He captured Ancennis (on the Anjou-Britanny border) easily, feinted again, this time towards Angers, before doubling back and besieging the seaport of Nantes - a far more convenient base for operations against Britanny and Normandy than La Rochelle. The garrison at Nantes sortied against John but they and the citizen levies were badly defeated on the bridge outside the city. John took several important prisoners, among than Philip Augustus’s cousin Peter of Dreux, count of Britanny. This victory seems to have struck terror into the burghers of Anjou’s capital Angers, for they immediately opened their gates to John’s Anglo-Poitevin army; on 17 June he entered the erstwhile capital of the Angevin empire in triumph.81
The triumph was soured by Philip Augustus’s Anjou seneschal William des Roches, who still defiantly held the castle of Roche-aux-Moines, a few miles from Angers. Instead of ignoring this and working round it, or because he thought it too great a threat to the Nantes-Angers road, John proceeded to waste two weeks on a futile siege of this stronghold. While he was so engaged, word came in that Prince Louis, hitherto as elusive as a phantom, had at last put in an appearance and was marching to the relief of the fortress, probably as a result of direct orders from his father.82 From the reports of his scouts John learned that he had a clear numerical advantage over Louis; he was keen to offer battle and the headstrong Louis, when this challenge was officially made, was just as keen to accept.83 But now at last John discovered just what his conquest of Poitou was worth, for the Poitevins flatly refused to risk themselves and their fortunes in pitched battle. The ringleader of the Poitevin opposition was that habitual trimmer and turncoat Aimeri of Thouars, who mocked and ridiculed John’s pretensions as a warrior. Raging, fuming but impotent, John had no choice but to return in humiliation all the way back to La Rochelle; faced with the treachery of the Poitevins and with all his old paranoid fears revived, it was the first place where he felt genuinely safe. There was no disguising the fact that his ‘retreat’ was more like a panic-stricken rout; in the general shambles he abandoned siege engines, tents, baggage and materiel. Louis pursued the English as far as Thouars, causing the demoralised Anglo-Poitevins to sustain further losses through drowning when crossing the Loire.84
John had already dispatched so many boasts to England about his glittering military triumphs that he was in a quandary about how to ‘spin’ the latest debacle. It is hard not to have grudging admiration for the effrontery with which he presented the ruin of his entire campaign. After licking his wounds for a week in La Rochelle, he summoned up the energy to indite the following pack of lies, beneath whose surface, however, it was possible for the discerning to perceive the king’s true plight:
The King to the earls, barons, knights and all his lieges in England, greetings. Know that we are safe and well and that everything, by the grace of God, is prosperous and happy with us. We return manifold thanks to those of you who have sent us your knights to serve in the preservation and recovery of our rights, and we earnestly entreat those of you who have not crossed with us to come to us without delay, being assiduous for our honour, to help in the recovery of our territory (save for those who in the opinion of our reverend fathers the lords Peter bishop of Winchester, our justiciar, and of Master Richard Marsh and William Brewer, should stay in England), doing so much in this matter that we are bound in perpetual thanks to you. Assuredly, if any of you should have understood that we bore him ill-will, he can have it rectified by coming here.85
Three weeks after John’s return to La Rochelle, the allied army in the north at last got under way in its offensive against Philip Augustus. Otto, starting from Aachen, had taken an unconscionable time getting into the field, finally taking a route to Flanders through Maastricht, Nivelles (near modern Brussels) and Valenciennes in Hainault, where he met his confrères: Salisbury, the counts of Flanders and Boulogne and other notables, including the dukes of Brabant and Limburg, the lord of Mechelin and Hugh, count of Boves.86 There is no way of knowing the exact strength of the allied army, partly because medieval chroniclers routinely exaggerated nu
mbers, but an ‘educated guess’ would put it around the 9,000-10,000 mark (at least 1,500 knights and 7,500 foot). Numerically the allied force had the advantage over Philip Augustus’s Frenchmen, who may have numbered only 7,500 - roughly the same number of knights but only some 6,000 infantry. But Philip’s military reforms, albeit partial, had made his army a more professional force, and his urban battalions were a particular innovation.87 The sources are somewhat confused, for some speak of the French as having 2,000 knights and 2,000 other warriors. Roughly speaking, though, the French had the edge in cavalry and the allies in infantry.88 Motivation on both sides was high, for Philip, menaced on two fronts, was fighting to save France while for Otto this was the last chance to regain the imperial throne.
Philip had several other advantages: by the time the allied army made its move, he knew he was secure on the southern front and could concentrate all his energies against Otto, and he enjoyed the secret services of the duke of Brabant, a spy at the very heart of allied decision-making. On the other hand, the much-touted idea that he harboured a military genius in the shape of bishop Guérin de Glapion has recently run into strong criticism as an absurd exaggeration.89 Philip’s initial strategy was to march into Flanders and cut off the Anglo-Poitevin force under William, earl of Salisbury whose subsidies were the sinews of war, but he was too late; by the time he marched, Salisbury and the Flemish lords had already met Otto. Then he attempted to take the enemy by surprise from the north, but when the allies marched south the two armies ended up passing each other in the night, both now with extended lines of communication in danger of being cut. On the evening of 26 July, learning that the enemy was at Mortagne, and there was no suitable ground near there for giving battle, Philip held a council of war at which it was decided to retreat at least as far as Lille, about twenty miles away. From Tournai Philip turned back west towards Lille, Douai and Cambrai, trying to stretch the allies on the rack, hoping that either the ramshackle alliance would disintegrate through personality clashes or that John’s subsidies would run dry.90 When Otto’s scouts brought him this news, the foolish ex-emperor thought it indicated a panic retreat like John’s from La Roche-aux-Moines and set off in pursuit. Absurdly overconfident he told his men in a rousing battle speech that the allied knights outnumbered their French counterparts three to one. Only Renaud de Dammartin, by far the best military mind in the allied camp, urged caution, but for this he was roundly berated by Hugh, comte de Boves, who accused him of cowardice.91
Philip’s army, marching with carts over flat land and in fine weather, set a blistering pace of about four miles an hour. Confident that a Christian enemy would not attack on a Sunday, Philip ordered his men to cross the River Marque at the bridge by the village of Bouvines, and settled down to a picnic lunch on the far side, with the rear column of his force still strung out over about two miles to the east of the bridge. Otto, though, was equally confident he could cut the enemy off before they reached the bridge and marched his men at the double; yet by the time he made contact with the French most were already on the other side of the river. As the imperial troops began rushing into the fields on the eastern side of the Bouvines bridge ‘like a plague of locusts’,92 a running fight developed with the French rearguard, which was forced to turn around and beat off attacks from Otto’s vanguard. Bishop Guérin de Glapion, bringing up the rearguard and half-blinded by the whorls of dust thrown up by the onrushing Germans, realised Otto meant business when he saw Otto’s banner of the golden eagle and dragon being unfurled.93 He quickly sent word to Philip, who at once grasped the gravity of the situation. With commendable presence of mind, he ordered his army to traipse back across the bridge and form battle stations with the river at their back. With amazing rapidity the French took up position. Philip just had time for a short speech of exhortation, pointing out that the enemy were largely excommunicate heathens; why else would they choose to fight a battle on a Sunday?94
Philip seized the initiative by taking his cavalry back across the bridge to aid the hard-pressed viscount of Melun in the rearguard.95 In some ways this was the critical action in the entire battle, for if Philip had not maintained presence of mind, a massacre of the French might have ensued. More and more horsemen appeared, including Guérin who, prohibited by canon law from shedding blood, neatly solved that conundrum by going into battle wielding a mace. Philip drew up his forces in three divisions. On the right were the men of the rearguard who were already battle-scarred, grouped around bishop Guérin and the duke of Burgundy, supported by the levies of the great French counts: Beaumont, Montmorency, St-Pol, Melun and Sancerre. The king himself commanded the centre and clustered around him most of the crack corps, including his household knights and redoubtable warriors like William de Barres, famous from the Third Crusade.96 On his left he placed his kinfolk, the lords of Dreux, including the bishop of Beauvais, and the counts of Dreux, Ponthieu and Auxerre. Opposite him, commanding the allied centre was Otto, still fuming that his scouts had told him Philip was in full retreat, in company with the dukes of Brabant, Louvain and Limburg; on his left were Ferrand and the count of Holland and on the right most of the men with a true martial reputation, as for example Salisbury, renowned for his physical strength and Hugh de Boves, infamous for his cruelty.97 With the numerical disadvantage, Philip was forced to weaken his left by extending it to prevent outflanking, but otherwise his ground was well chosen: his right was protected by marshy ground - particularly boggy this Sunday afternoon as the wet winter and spring of 1214 had exacerbated the basic wetland problem (the Rivers Escaut, Scarpe, Deule and Marque all drained here) - and in front of him was a mile-wide plateau suitable for cavalry charges. His men fought with their backs to the river, which meant there was no escape route in case of defeat; to reinforce the point Philip destroyed the Bouvines bridge once his men had crossed back over.98 Finally, and not unimportantly, the allies were forced to fight with the sun in their eyes.
A lesser commander might have thrown all the cavalry at the enemy before they were properly formed up, but Philip could see the danger that his horse might be sucked into a melee beyond infantry protection and then cut down piecemeal. Guérin used the cavalry initially to harass the enemy as if deployed off the road and onto the battlefield in a confused and time-consuming manoeuvre but this move was checked by Flemish cavalry screening the situation. It may have been as late as three in the afternoon when the first real clashes took place. The battle began more as a gigantic joust, with knights on either side performing heroically if inconsequentially. First the French sent forward their non-knightly cavalry force, which the Flemings beat back with ease.99 Bishop Guérin next tried to group the French knights together for a charge but this was beaten off by the Flemish horsemen, who responded by issuing individual man-to-man challenges to the French, as though to imply that a massed cavalry charge was against the laws of chivalry.100 French grandees named as performing doughtily in these actions were the count of Beaumont, Duke Odo of Burgundy, the viscount of Melun, Matthew of Montmorency and the count of St-Pol, who claimed to be utterly exhausted by his efforts; his enemies whispered that he was secretly in Otto’s pay.101 This stage of the battle petered out when the leader of the Flemish horse was killed in such an encounter. Meanwhile Philip was greatly encouraged when his men seemed to be having the upper hand in the weakest sector, the French left. Already the French were acting more as a coordinated force and the imperial army as a number of separate contingents. 102
Seeing the allies making little progress, Otto ignored his obvious option - outflanking the French left - and ordered his cavalry to charge at Philip’s standard, sending his infantry forward at a run to take care of the French foot. The fighting was bloody and furious, with the infantry using long slender knives to try to pierce the knights’ armour; an unlucky Frenchman, Stephen of Longchamp, died when such a knife thrust through the eyehole of his helmet and pierced his brain. Eustace of Melenghin, a Flemish knight, was another killed in this way. French infantrymen surr
ounded him. One man grabbed his head, holding it between his arm and chest, pulled off his helmet and exposed him to the thrusts of his comrade, who knifed him under the chin. These tactics were initially successful, and the imperial infantry had the upper hand in the slugging match on the ground but Philip cleverly withdrew his horse in face of the initial impact, regrouped, then launched them in a counter-attack. 103 The climax of this stage of the battle came when a large force of German infantry, armed with spears, iron hooks and long curved knives, crashed into Philip’s division grouped around the royal golden fleur-de-lis standard. Furious fighting followed, during which Philip was unhorsed and would have been killed had an enemy lance not been absorbed by his heavy armour. One of his knights, Peter Tristan, jumped off his horse and covered the king with his body until more and more French knights arrived, slaughtering the lightly armoured German foot. Gradually the French forced the Germans back, but not without taking heavy casualties. Losses among the French knights were especially severe as the enemy continued to use their long thin three-bladed knives designed to slice through gaps in armour.104 The sanguinary mayhem in the centre was effectively ended when the bishop of Beauvais, seeing the French left unexpectedly free to manoeuvre, ordered it to roll back the supporting action from the allied right. The Germans had almost succeeded in breaking the French cavalry and they failed only because their attacks were uncoordinated. One scholar indeed suggests that the action around Philip’s standard was a battle within a battle, that this encounter took place at the southern end of the battlefield while a general melee was being fought to the north.105
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