Bowmen of England

by Donald Featherstone

  Sir John Smythe, a military writer of the sixteenth century, wrote: ‘… frequently heard French Captains and gentlemen report that they did think the English archers used to poison their arrow-heads; because of great numbers of the French nation that many times had been wounded or hurt with arrows, very few had escaped with their lives, by reason that their wounds did so impostume that they could not be cured. In such concerts they did greatly err, because, in truth, these imposthumations proceeded of nothing else but the rust of the arrow-heads remaining rankling in their wounds; and therefore by the experience of our ancient enemies, not only the great but the small wounds of our arrows have been always found more dangerous and hard to be cured, than the fire of any shot unpoisoned. Besides all which, it is to be noted that horses in the field, being wounded or but slightly hurt with arrows, do presently fall yerking, flinging and leaping as if they were mad, through the great pain that upon every motion they do feel in their flesh, veins and sinews, by the shaking of the arrows with their barbed heads hanging in them. In such sort, as be it in squadron or troop, they do disorder one another, and never leave until they have cast their masters.’

  A considered surgical opinion of today gives it that a man shot with an arrow in mediaeval warfare died almost inevitably; even by modern standards of surgery, the extraction of a barbed arrow is a delicate and possibly fatal operation. The book of ‘Messire Ambroise Paré, Concilleur et Premier Chirugeon du Roi Francois Paré’ (1515 – 47), who followed the armies of that monarch, treats extensively of the wounds peculiar to military men, especially those inflicted by arrows. In order that his professional brethren might more fully comprehend the method of cure, the precautions to be adopted, the incisions they might venture upon, and the use of the necessary instruments, he has delineated these, as well as many different kinds of arrows in use in his time, and particularly the form of their heads, a proper acquaintance with which has a great bearing on the treatment of their wounds. Among the arrows he has introduced, some had the head inserted into the stele (wooden shaft of the arrow), others had the stele itself entering the head. In either case, the point remained behind in the wound and rendered it extremely dangerous. Paré does not pretend to give the forms of every arrow used in his age, but only those which he himself had at various times extracted. Paré thus describes his mode of removing an arrow from the fleshy parts of the body:

  ‘Si le fer estoit barblé ainsi, qui souvent est les flèches Angloises, et estoit à l’endroit d’un os, ou inséré dedans, ce qui souvient advient au profond de muscles de la cuisse, de bras, de jambes, ou d’autres parties de-quelles y auroit grande distance, lors ne le convient pousser, mais plutôt dilater la playe, en évitant les nerfs et grands vaisseaux, ainsi que fait le bon et expert chirurgien anatomique. Aussi faut appliquer un dilatatoire, cavé en sa partie intérieure, et faire en sorte, que Ton puisse prende les deux ailes du fer, puis avec le bee de Grüe le tenir ferme, et tirer les trois ensemble.’

  ‘If the iron was thus barbed which is often the case with English arrows, and was situated in or near a bone, which often happens, in the depth of the muscles of the thigh, arms or legs or other parts which would be far removed, you must not push but rather dilate the wound, avoiding the nerves and vessels, as does the good and expert anatomical surgeon. Also one must apply a dilator [retractor?] to hold the wound open; do it in such a way that you can take the two wings of the barb with pinchers [forceps?]. Keep it firm and pull or draw the three together.’

  Paré apparently underwent much suffering and personal inconvenience and was unable to confine his practice wholly within professional bounds. Speaking of a ‘Sergeant of Chas-tellat’ – one of his patients – he says: ‘I performed towards him the office of physician, surgeon, apothecary and cook, dressing his dinner as well as his wounds until the time he was completely cured.’ The doctor adds: ‘Le Dieu le guerrisse toujours,’ so that we may infer that his patient’s gratitude, for these accumulated benefits, did not evaporate with the causes which had elicited them.

  A day such as Agincourt might have been expected to break the French love of obsolete tactics, to have changed their fanatical methods of horsemen or dismounted knights trying to break an English force by frontal attack, only to be driven back in utter rout by English archers. But the day of enlightenment had yet to dawn and more bloody defeats were to follow. Henry had gone, dying of dysentery in 1422; the English were now led by the Regent, John, Duke of Bedford. His chief lieutenant was the Earl of Salisbury, other English leaders being the Earl of Suffolk, Lord Scales, Sir John Fastolf and John, Lord Talbot. The French were now employing Scottish troops in their efforts to defeat the English invaders; a complete army of 6,500, under the Earl of Douglas, had landed in France during April of 1424 and were serving with the French, who were also raising mercenaries in Lombardy and elsewhere.

  Early in 1424, the town of Ivry, thirty miles west of Paris, had been recaptured by the French in a sudden raid; in June, Bedford sent the Earl of Suffolk to retake the town. This was done without a lot of trouble but the garrison shut themselves up in the castle, and, on July 5th, agreed to surrender on August 14th if they had not been relieved by that date. The thoughts of both sides now turned constantly in the direction of Ivry; the one wishing to relieve, the other to secure the castle and bring the French to battle. But wishes were not good enough, certainly not enough to prevent Bedford from joining Suffolk before the castle on the 13th of August, a move which caused the garrison, as promised, to march out and surrender on the following day.

  But the French had mounted a relieving force, who directed their steps towards Verneuil on the Arve when they discovered that the cross of St. George was flying over the walls of Ivry. Verneuil was an old walled town with a small English garrison, unable to stand long against the large French army that came against it. It is reported that they gained possession of the place by sending heralds to declare that the English had been defeated, parading Scots troops tied to horses’ tails to represent English prisoners before the walls of the old town. On hearing this, Bedford mustered all his available troops and marched towards the town. He had under his command some 8,000 or 9,000 men, or about half the numbers of the combined French and Scottish forces.

  The English marched ten miles from Damville, emerging from the forest on to the plain of Verneuil to see the French drawn up in front of them, on the crest of a gentle slope. The Scots occupied the right of the position and the French the left; each division nominally in three lines but soon to become merged into one. The Earl of Buchan, Constable of France, had marched the force to this forming-up place; then he had resigned command to his father-in-law, the Earl of Douglas. As at Agincourt, the army was largely dismounted, except for the wings. On the right was a body of about 900 Lombard crossbowmen, all on horseback, and in armour; the left wing was covered by 1,000 mounted men-at-arms, completely mailed with lance, battle-axe and barbed horses. There were also some militia, peasant levies, in the ranks – raw, untrained, ill-armed troops.

  The English marched down into the dip and up the very gentle slope towards the French, halting just outside missile range, where Bedford deployed his army parallel to, and on the same frontage as, the enemy. He closely followed his brother Henry’s formation at Agincourt in that everyone was dismounted, the front was in two divisions, one commanded by himself and the other by Salisbury. The centre of each division was occupied by men-at-arms and the archers were positioned on the flanks of both divisions. There was also a reserve, consisting of about 2,000 archers, used as a baggage-guard, in a leaguer about three-quarters of a mile to the rear.

  So, at about four o’clock on the afternoon of the 17th of August 1424 the two armies began slowly to advance towards each other. Bedford gave the traditional signal:

  ‘Avaunt, banners!’

  After kneeling down and reverently kissing the ground, the troops responded:

  ‘St. George! Bedford!’

  It was a great shout and, as always, it stru
ck alarm in the French hearts.

  As usual, each archer carried his double-pointed stake which he attempted to plant in the ground at about 250 yards’ distance from the enemy. But the ground was hard so that the stakes would not plant easily and much time was wasted in trying to force them into the sunbaked earth; more time was consumed in passing the stakes forward from hand to hand until they reached the front rank. Before the hedge of stakes was half completed, the left-flank body of French mailed horse charged the archers and smashed through their ranks, forcing a passage over and through the half-erected stakes. The survivors of the ridden-down archers gathered together, forming a close-knit body for mutual protection, but the horsemen did not delay to deal with them, surging on towards the baggage-leaguer.

  Bedford’s men-at-arms moved steadily forward, although their right flank had been exposed, to come into close contact with the French men-at-arms of Comte d’Aumale’s division with whom they clashed in fierce combat. It was claimed by men who had fought at both places that the hour-long struggle that took place at this point was fiercer than Agincourt; the English, outnumbered two to one, gradually forced their opponents back. Bedford was prominent in this mêlée, wielding his two-handed axe vigorously all around him, having dismounted from the bay charger that had carried him to the battle.

  Salisbury’s division encountered an even stiffer resistance from the Scots, who resolutely battled with sword, mace and battle-axe in the closest conflict for more than an hour, refusing to be dismayed even when their French allies on their left broke and fled from the field. The mounted Lombard cross-bowmen on the right flank of the French army, driven wide by the fire of Salisbury’s flank archers, rode around the English left and attacked the baggage-leaguer. The baggage-guard being fiercely engaged with the French mailed cavalry of the other wing, the Lombards were at first completely successful, cutting down the poorly armed pages and varlets who tried valiantly to defend themselves and their wagons. Then the archers, who had completely routed the French mailed cavalry, came rushing across to fight off the Lombards, who, in their turn, were driven helter-skelter from the field. Having amazingly disposed of both bodies of cavalry, the exhilarated English archers sought fresh fields to conquer; they saw the battle still raging on the left front and determined to take a hand in it. Forming up, they wheeled in a headlong charge into the exposed right flank of the sorely tried Scottish division, uttering their fearsome shout as they came.

  Under this new blow, the Scots reeled; but more was to come. Bedford’s men-at-arms, having exhaustedly pursued the fleeing French men-at-arms as far as the town ditch, were now re-formed and doggedly, if wearily, trudged their heavily armoured way back into the fight – no mean feat in the heat of a summer’s day. They struck into the rear of the Scots, who were now being hacked relentlessly down until hardly a man remained. In fact, the Scottish army ceased to exist. In addition to at least fifty Scottish gentlemen of rank who died, there fell the Constable of France, Buchan; his father-in-law, the venerable Earl of Douglas, who had already lost an eye at Homildon Hill; Hop-Pringle of Swailholm, Sir Robert Stewart, Sir John Swinton, Sir Alexander Home, two Sir James Douglases and Sir Walter Lindsay. The French lost most of their leaders who stayed and fought when deserted by the rank-and-file – Aumale, the commander, Narbonne, Ventadour, Tonnerre, the Lords Graville and Rambouillet and many knights from Languedoc and Dauphine. Five thousand men, at least, fell; most of them Scots. Many were wounded, among them the Due d’Alençon and the Marshal Lafayette, who became two of the few prisoners taken on this bloody day. The English loss was also heavy, but the figure of 1,000 casualties was worthwhile, for this ‘Second Agincourt’ left the French disheartened, dispersed and without leaders.

  The war dragged on, with the English continuing their victorious way. In 1428 John, Duke of Bedford, the Regent, was still in command and committed the army to lay siege to Orléans; an affair largely consisting of desultory artillery fire, interspersed with occasional sorties and sallies, it dragged wearily on through the winter. Early in February, with Lent approaching and a staple diet of fish required, it was decided to send from Paris a big convoy of salted herrings to the besiegers. Under the command of Sir John Fastolf, a name made familiar, under another spelling, by Shakespeare, the convoy was made up of about 300 wagons, with an escort of 1,000 mounted archers in addition to wagoners and grooms.

  News of this convoy reached the French; the Comte de Clermont marched north-east to intercept it on the Orléans road. He had under his command about 3,000 men, including a contingent of Scots under Sir John Stewart of Darnley, who was Constable of the Scots in France; also present were the lances of the Comte de Dunois. Clermont also had with him a large number of small-calibre cannon.

  The convoy spent the night of the 11th of February in the small village of Rouvray, being on the point of resuming their march next morning when patrols came in with news of the approaching French force. Old soldier Fastolf immediately realised that his cumbersome wagons in their three-mile-long convoy were impossible to protect adequately with his small force, particularly against superior numbers of mounted enemy. About a mile outside the village the road ran along the top of a small ridge, giving an unimpeded view in all directions. Here Fastolf hastily formed his wagons into a protective leaguer, very similar to those formed centuries later by Western pioneers against the attacks of Indians.

  Clermont came up with the convoy at seven in the morning, first appearing on the south-west skyline in a glittering of armour and a forest of lance-points. He was surprised to find himself confronted with this novel hedgehog inside which the English had retired. But, in spite of being some 450 years earlier, Clermont had something that the Indians did not possess – he had artillery! Cleverly he fitted his tactics to suit the situation; instead of making a direct attack on the leaguer, he ordered an artillery bombardment. To this attack the English had no reply and were forced to sit tight and take it; casualties mounted and herrings spilled on the road from split barrels. It seemed as though, for the first time in military history, guns alone were going to bring victory in the field, ushering in a new era of a vastness beyond fifteenth-century man’s comprehension.

  However, the march of progress was to be thwarted by the characteristic impetuosity of the Scottish contingent, eager to avenge the day of Verneuil. Their leader, Stewart of Darnley, contrary to Clermont’s orders, dismounted his men, who advanced prematurely and impulsively to attack the barricade with sword and battle-axe, suffering greatly from the hail of English arrows that greeted their advance. Seeing that the Scots were wavering, Clermont was forced to support them by an attack of mounted men-at-arms, only to see it break down on the archers’ pointed stakes, just as similar attacks had done so often in the past. Both Scots and French turned and retreated back to their starting-point, heads bowed against the showers of arrows that saw them off. Clermont resigned himself to resuming the artillery bombardment.

  But it was not to be; Fastolf saw that the time had come for the counter-attack. Mounting his men, he sent two columns of cavalry pouring from the twin openings in the leaguer, to fall upon the already shaken enemy. The conflict was short but sharp, and the Franco-Scottish force were soon routed and fleeing from the field, leaving Stewart of Darnley and one of his sons dead, Dunois wounded and ‘six score of great lords and 500 men there fell’.

  The battle ended, the villagers came out and regaled themselves on the salted herrings that lay in the road around the splintered barrels – to them it was not the Battle of Rouvray but the Day of the Herrings! It was not really a battle, but a small affair in which the English proved, as they had done in the greater fields of the past, that they were superior to the French in more ways than one. Not the least of these was the fact that the archers, the ordinary soldiers, were respected by the lords and knights who led them into battle. It was a very different situation from that prevailing in France, where the nobles arrogated to themselves alone the honour of bearing arms, despising the common
soldier so that even in the fifteenth century French infantry were composed of the most wretched class of people. This was illustrated in the manner in which they were charged and ridden down by their own lords and commanders on those occasions when some distinguished act had aroused jealousy or scorn. The French foot soldier had reason to feel that for him to exhibit any true military qualities was simply to imperil his own life.

  Part IV

  The Tide Begins to Turn

  Chapter 19

  Patay – 1429; and Formigny – 1450

  The second quarter of the fifteenth century found France, for the first time perhaps, really facing up to the fact that the old, chivalrous methods of warfare paid no dividends; that some effective innovation had to be discovered to combat the English system. Through bitter necessity and hard experience, the professional officers of France – Xaintrailles, La Hire and Dunois, for example – stumbled upon a method of minimising the superiority of the English archers. It was so simple that it had probably been considered and discarded many times; in short, when the English were found drawn up in a good defensive position, the French refused to attack. For the first time the French admitted to themselves that there was little or no chance of beating an English army in such a position, then likewise there was no point in thrusting forward large bodies of troops as a target to be riddled with English arrows. The French commanders knew that the longbow had the ability to keep heavier-armed men at a distance – therein lay its superiority; but once the cavalry or men-at-arms got among the archers and their supporting men-at-arms, weight of numbers might well decide the resulting mêlée – and the French could usually put more men into the field.

  With this enlightenment came some French victories; the usual tactical causes of the English defeats lay in the French attacking them when they were on the march, in camp or in towns where it was impossible quickly to form an order of battle on ground specifically chosen for its defensive qualities. This tendency towards a reversal in the almost monotonous run of English victories inevitably led to a noticeable shedding of the old confidence born of persistent success over men using futile tactics. There was a little more caution displayed, initiative became stifled and plans could not be made with the former certainty of success. Both commanders and men in the English armies were too experienced and professional in their outlook for this new situation to drop their morale to too low a level; but they were perturbed, almost indignant. Naturally, with success and the knowledge that the English were not quite so sure of themselves, the French confidence swelled up enormously and they began to seek, and win, conflicts where they were able, in a sudden onslaught, to hit the English before they could form up defensively.