by Teresa Cole
The revolt was short-lived and its main effect was the opposite of what was intended. In defiance of his father-in-law, Louis threw his support behind the Armagnacs and summoned them to help regain control of Paris. For a brief period Charles VI regained his sanity, long enough to denounce the mob leaders and call for peace, and by August the Armagnacs and Dauphin together had largely recovered their position. Once again there was a changing of officials, with this time Burgundians being replaced by Armagnac supporters. As the Armagnacs marched in, and as rumours grew that he would be put on trial for the murder of Louis of Orleans, John the Fearless fled to the safety of Flanders.
At this point, in September 1413, the ambassadors of Henry V met for the first time with the representatives of Charles VI. As a preliminary diplomatic skirmish it set out the position of both sides, and, as might be expected, achieved nothing more. The English began with a lengthy lecture concerning the claim of Edward III to the French throne and the outstanding breaches of the Treaty of Brétigny. In return the French recited their Salic law as a bar to female inheritance and suggested that Edward himself had broken the treaty. It might be noted here that Henry was on dangerous ground if he was arguing for inheritance through the female line. If that was the case Edmund, Earl of March, would have a claim superior to his own to both the French and the English thrones. The point does not seem to have been taken at the time.
Following this meeting, French ambassadors, including the Constable of France, d’Albret, arrived in London in December to continue discussions. A truce was agreed that was to last for one year from February 1414, and unusually it was to involve not only England and France but all their allies as well. There had been a tussle about what language should be used for these meetings, with the English insisting on Latin – as if they could not understand French as well as the French. A compromise was reached that all conversations and treaties should be recorded in both Latin and French.
At this stage the French clearly believed Henry’s claim to the throne of France was merely an opening ploy and that he would be prepared to settle for much less. Consequently, with both sides declaring that they wanted only peace and the avoidance of bloodshed, it was agreed to continue negotiating. The marriage of Henry with Katherine, daughter of Charles VI (and younger sister of Richard’s bride Isabelle), was recognised by all as the best way of attaining this goal, and Henry, Lord Scrope, was dispatched to France to continue discussions with a view to arranging such a marriage. In the meantime Henry agreed he would not marry anyone else for a period of three months.
Back in France, John the Fearless was making another bid for power. Arriving outside Paris with an army, he claimed the Dauphin had sent for him to rescue him from the Armagnacs. Despite producing forged letters to back up his claim, no one believed him and the gates of Paris remained closed. After a fortnight he retreated to his stronghold at Arras.
Now, however, he had provoked a reaction. On 2 March 1414 France declared war on Burgundy. The army marched out led by the king (with or without his wits), bearing the ‘oriflamme’, the sacred war banner of France, and led also by the Dauphin who, perhaps in defiance of his father-in-law, bore a banner celebrating his mistress.
On the way to Arras the towns of Compiegne and Soissons were recovered from the Burgundians, the latter being sacked with such savagery that one chronicler declared that nothing done later by Henry V in his invasion came anywhere near the brutality shown on that occasion.
Arras itself was put under siege and both sides settled down to try the strength of the other. It may well have been that if either had been strong enough to prevail there would have been no further need to negotiate and offer incentives to Henry of England. As it was the siege ended in a stalemate, with the Peace of Arras, a truce putting an end to military activity, being agreed on 4 September.
In fact John the Fearless didn’t sign the treaty for nearly a year, and when he did the signing was so hedged about with verbiage as to be almost meaningless. In the meantime he had sent his own ambassadors to negotiate a separate treaty with Henry. He proposed an offensive and defensive alliance against all but the King of France, the Dauphin and the duke’s close family. Each would provide armed men for the other, and he would assist Henry to regain and extend English landholding in France. He also offered his daughter as a bride for the king.
As usual, Henry did not say yes and he did not say no. He did, however, send Henry, Lord Scrope, freshly returned from negotiating a marriage with one Katherine, to go and negotiate a marriage to another. The ambassadors were also authorised to ‘seek, obtain and receive the faith and liege homage’ of John the Fearless on behalf of himself and his heirs; in other words, they were to secure the full transfer of allegiance of Burgundy from the French king to the English. It is doubtful whether Henry expected to achieve this. It is not mentioned in official documents, and may have been unreliable even if promised. John of Burgundy had a track record of duplicity and weasel words, and this suggestion may even have been a test of his good faith. After the Peace of Arras, however, the urgency seemed to go out of this proposed alliance, and, though the talking continued, there was very little action for some time.
Separate negotiations were continuing with the French. An embassy sent to France in the summer of 1414 was prepared to offer a compromise. Instead of all of France, to prevent war and bloodshed Henry would settle for the old Angevin empire, with the addition of Flanders and Brittany (to which he had no claim at all), all in full sovereignty, and with the lordship of Provence thrown in. There was also the little matter of 1.6 million gold crowns still owing from the ransom of King John, and a further demand for a dowry of two million crowns to accompany Katherine. The French were prepared to offer some of Aquitaine (without mention of sovereignty) and a dowry of 600,000 crowns.
Throughout this time the demands and propaganda put forward by the English would seem, to an unbiased observer, hypocritical in the extreme. On the one hand Henry was clearly preparing for war – this was discussed in a council meeting as early as the spring of 1414 – while on the other hand he posed as a peacemaker, seeking only his just rights and inheritance, and prepared even to give up some of those to avoid bloodshed. His demands for both land and money were clearly preposterous to the French, and it is a sign of their weakness that they continued negotiating and still expected the proposed marriage to go ahead.
It is probable, too, that the famous ‘tennis balls’ story was another instance of English propaganda. In this tale, beloved of Shakespeare, the Dauphin was declared to have sent a gift of tennis balls to the English king as befitting his youth, and with a suggestion that he amuse himself playing with them rather than making war. Though appearing in some contemporary chronicles, it seems far more likely that this was only a rumour put about to illustrate the ‘derision’ with which the French were treating honest English claims. In fact the Dauphin, who was considerably younger than Henry, had enough on his plate at this time without going out of his way to pick a fight with the English king.
In November 1414 the suggestion of recovery of ancient rights by force was put to Parliament by the Chancellor, Bishop Henry Beaufort. Though not unwilling to raise taxes for such a cause, they suggested, as the council had before them, that diplomacy might be tried a little further first. Consequently another embassy was sent to Paris in February 1415, led this time by the bishops of Norwich and Durham, together with the king’s half-uncle Thomas Beaufort.
It achieved little beyond an extension of the truce to May of that year. The English conceded that they would reduce the dowry demand to one million crowns. The French offered land amounting to some two-thirds of the old province of Aquitaine and a dowry of 800,000 crowns. They were ‘unable to agree’.
In April 1415 Henry wrote two letters, variously addressed to ‘Charles, by the Grace of God our very dear cousin’ and ‘Charles, our cousin and adversary of France’. In each he referred to himself as ‘King of England and France’, portrayed himself as
being wickedly deprived of his rights while striving to avoid division and preserve the peace, and put the blame for rejecting that peace squarely on the shoulders of the French king. ‘We shall have to answer before God,’ he told him, ‘for that we retain by force which rightly belongs to another.’ ‘Think of eternity,’ he advised.
A few days after the second letter, and before any reply had been received, Henry proposed once again to his council that he should invade France in the summer, and this time the proposal was answered in the affirmative.
6
PREPARATIONS
1413–1415
It would not be overstating the situation to say that Henry V began preparing for war with France from the very moment of his accession. The scale of his preparations made it clear that he intended no mere chevauchée but a determined attempt on the throne itself, and such an attempt was going to involve the whole range of actions known to medieval warfare, from siege to full-scale battle.
Then as now, victory in war frequently went to the side that changed the rules first, and the English had been doing that to some effect over the preceding hundred years. The traditional method of battle, from the time of the Conquest onwards, had depended on the cavalry charge. Heavily armed – and later heavily armoured – men against an unmounted defensive line; it was all but unstoppable, and only a tightly packed formation of pikemen like the Scottish schiltron had any way of resisting such a charge.
Not only was this effective, but it was also seen as an honourable, chivalrous way of waging war. Only the nobility could afford the horses, armour and equipment required, and the knight on horseback was the very symbol of the times. Among western nations, at least, with all its courtesy and protocol warfare sometimes resembled a sport more than a serious business. Even if unfortunate enough to be captured, the noble could rely on being ransomed by his people, and death in battle was a rarity – at least for the upper levels of society.
In the early fifteenth century most countries still relied on such methods, indeed John the Fearless had acquired his nickname by leading a particularly reckless cavalry charge against the Turks at the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396. Impressive it may have been, but it lost the battle for his side, the charge being broken up by a line of stakes driven into the ground protecting packed infantry formations behind. Stakes, potholes and ditches were all methods of disrupting cavalry when the defending army had time to prepare the ground. The English, however, had found another way of dealing with such a charge.
Archery is, of course, almost as old as mankind. Most armies had contained some archers, usually armed with relatively light hunting bows. On the Continent the crossbow was well known, and in particular Genoese crossbowmen operating as mercenaries were often found with the French army in the early part of the Hundred Years War. The English contribution was in the development of what came to be called the longbow, a formidable weapon and in its day as devastating as in later centuries the machine gun would prove to be.
While a crossbow could fire a heavier missile, it was more cumbersome, more technical and more expensive to produce. It was also slow to load, the bowstring having to be wound back mechanically to the shooting position, or at very least the bow braced with a foot in a stirrup while the string was hauled back. As a result a firing rate of two or maybe three bolts a minute was usual. By contrast the longbow was lighter and cheaper to produce, and in skilled hands could put ten or a dozen arrows in the air in a minute. Simple mathematics tells us that a force of several thousand longbowmen could send a storm of some thirty thousand arrows a minute towards an enemy, ‘so thickly and evenly that they fell like snow’, and, willing or not, few cavalry charges could face down such a storm.
The drawback to the longbow was that it took years of practice to achieve such skill. From the time of Henry III, however, the law of England had required all adult males to keep a bow and practise. Later this became a more specific order, that all between the ages of sixteen and sixty must practise at the butts after Mass each Sunday and on holy days. Beginning with a shorter, lighter bow, the novice would gradually acquire the strength and skill to master the full-size war bow. This stood roughly six feet high when unstrung, and had a draw weight of around 150 pounds – about three times the weight of modern competition bows. As a result an arrow storm would have a range of something approaching 300 yards, while at closer distances the force would be sufficient to penetrate armour.
Prudent long-term planning meant that there was a steady supply of men able and willing to use the bow, both for defence at home and as a great reservoir to draw on for service overseas. It is not surprising to find, therefore, that archers made up roughly three-quarters of the army Henry V took to France.
The very day after his coronation Henry issued an order forbidding the export of bows, arrows and other arms to the Scots or to other enemies, and almost at once production of bows and arrows was increased.
A bow would be made from a single piece of wood, preferably yew. Although much romance attaches to the ‘English yew bow’, in fact the best yew was imported from Spain, where the climate and growing conditions favoured the production of long, straight staves from which a bow could be fashioned. With the more flexible sapwood on the outside, a thicker ‘belly’ in the centre of the bow tapered towards the ends, which were capped or ‘nocked’ with horn sheaths to hold the bowstring. When drawn the belly was compressed and the sapwood stretched, so that two forces propelled the arrow forward on the release of the string. The bow would be waxed or oiled to keep it flexible, and carried unstrung in a canvas bag to protect it from the weather. The bowstring of gut or hemp would be carried separately in a pouch, or frequently under the archer’s hat – hence ‘keep it under your hat’.
Each archer would be equipped with between sixty and seventy-two arrows of two main types, used for different purposes. For long-distance use, particularly against horses or lightly armoured men, a longer, lighter broadhead arrow would be used. Preferably made of a lighter wood such as poplar, the iron arrowhead would be flat with swept-back barbs. These made it harder to pull out an arrow that had lodged in flesh, and in fact wherever possible the arrow would be pushed through and out the other side as an easier option. As well as that, the spinning of the arrow in flight meant that the broadhead arrow carved a larger hole and was easily capable of causing a devastating wound to a charging horse.
For closer-range use the bodkin arrow was a little shorter and heavier, made of ash wood, and with a long, sharply pointed iron tip. The penetrating power of bodkins against mail had led to the introduction of more and more plate armour, but, particularly when tipped with beeswax, these arrows could at close range even penetrate steel plate.
Both types of arrow were fletched with goose feathers, whose natural curve made the arrow spin in flight. This and its slight oscillation through the air, gave it a force on delivery something like the action of a hammer drill.
Many thousands of arrows would be needed for Henry’s French campaign and the stockpiling began immediately. At the height of demand for goose feathers an order would go out demanding six feathers from every goose, and bowyers, fletchers and bowstring makers all found plenty of employment during the first two years of Henry’s reign.
Smiths and forgers of iron and steel were also in demand. In February 1414 more men were taken on at the Tower of London to speed this work, and not only the royal forges there but others up and down the country became increasingly busy turning out the weapons that would be needed.
The sword was the very symbol of knighthood, around three feet in length, double-edged and made of the finest available steel. Most combatants, even archers, would also carry a dagger, with a long, narrow blade suitable for striking through an opponent’s visor or between the joints of armour, or for slitting an unprotected throat.
Lances were also in demand. Some twelve feet long if used on horseback, and about half that for use on foot, they were made of ash and tipped with a point of iron or steel. The
upper part of the shaft would usually be reinforced by strips of metal to prevent the lethal tip being hacked off in battle. An increasingly popular variation was the poleaxe. Here the head of the pole was topped by a combination of two and sometimes three separate weapons: a long spike for stabbing, an axe head for chopping and a ridged or sometimes pronged hammerhead for breaking armour.
As well as these more or less conventional weapons, Henry had already proved himself a devotee of cannon, now beginning to appear in medieval warfare. These were made by heating and beating together strips of metal around a wooden core, and then binding the resulting tube with iron hoops. The core was then removed, leaving a barrel into which might be loaded a mass of small lead pellets or, more usually, a stone ball weighing anything from 500 to 800 pounds.
These cannon were the most awkward and cumbersome of weapons, both to move around and to fire. Reinforced carts were needed for their transportation and overland they could be expected to move only a few miles a day, although river or sea transport was quicker. To fire they had to be loaded onto a special wooden cradle, and a separate metal chamber containing packed gunpowder put in place, before a lighted fuse was applied through a touch hole. Even then the results were not guaranteed. A fault in the metal could cause the cannon itself to explode, killing the gunner concerned, as happened some half a century later to James II of Scotland. They were difficult to aim, wildly inaccurate and, since the barrel had to be cooled after each firing, capable of only two or at most three shots a day. Nevertheless, as Henry had proved at Aberystwyth and Harlech, they were capable of doing considerable damage to a castle wall during a siege, and for this reason an order went out in September 1414 to construct cannon for the French campaign.
