1415: Henry V's Year of Glory (64 page)

As they made their way along the river, looking for a crossing nearer Abbeville, the scouts reported that all the bridges had been be broken by the constable and marshal of France.
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So they proceeded until that
night, cold, hungry and weary, they came to the villages of Mareuil and Bailleul-en-Vimeu, where they camped.
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*

In London, the mayor Thomas Falconer had come to the end of his eventful year in office. At the Guildhall, accompanied by many aldermen in their robes as well as the recorder and the two sheriffs of the city and ‘an immense number of the commonalty’, he presided over the election of his successor. This was Nicholas Wotton, a member of the Drapers Company. He would be sworn in on 28 October.
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*

At Arundel Castle, the earl of Arundel died.
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It was a sad end, considering his extraordinary career. After his father’s execution in 1397 he had been treated as a servant and regularly humiliated by his guardian, John Holland, duke of Exeter. Locked up in Reigate Castle, he escaped – although still only seventeen – and managed to get to the continent where he joined his uncle, the archbishop of Canterbury, in exile. Together they went to meet Henry’s father in Paris, and joined with him in his attempt to wrest the throne from Richard II. Thomas was thus the very first Lancastrian supporter, and had remained loyal to the dynasty thereafter – taking part in putting down the Epiphany Rising in 1400, fighting alongside Prince Henry in Wales after Glendower’s revolt, and taking action against Archbishop Scrope in 1405. By 1407 he was the prince’s principal retainer, and served on the prince’s council during the regency of 1409–11. He was sent by the prince to fight for John the Fearless at St-Cloud in 1411, and proved himself efficient in battle. As his will shows, he shared the prince’s devotion to the Holy Trinity and to the cult of St John of Bridlington; and very soon after Henry’s accession he was loaded with titles and honours: warden of the Cinque Ports, constable of Dover Castle and, most important of all, treasurer of England. Apart from Henry’s uncles and brothers, only Richard Beauchamp, the late Richard Courtenay, and the duke of York were as close to the king. Thomas now became the second of that number to die as a result of Henry’s will to fight a war in France.

Monday 14th

The bridge at Pont Rémy was Henry’s next target, about four miles east-north-east of his camp. Seeing a large number of men drawn up on the opposite bank, he believed battle to be imminent, and dubbed a number of knights. Among these were Lord Ferrers of Groby, Ralph Greystoke, Peter Tempest, Christopher Moresby, Thomas Pickering, William Hodelston, John Hosbalton, John Mortimer, James Ormonde and Philip and William Halle.
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Knighting men was a good way to inspire them to feats of valour in the forthcoming battle, as they would seek to win glory and prove themselves worthy. As he approached the bridge, however, he saw that it was broken. So too were the causeways leading to it. The river here had a broad marsh on either side – hence the causeways – so no bridge-building was possible, even though Henry had specifically brought carpenters who were experienced in the craft.

It was at this point that the hearts of the English fell. They had run out of food. They had no way forward, no way back, and there were thousands of French troops on all sides tracking their movements, and hoping to kill them. The head of the Somme lay sixty miles away. They had no option but to march inland, deep into hostile territory. To desert at this stage would be certain death for any Englishman; otherwise many men would have simply run away. The words that the author of the
Gesta
used to describe the plight of the English at this moment were clearly heartfelt:

At that time we thought of nothing else but that, after the eight days assigned for the march had expired and our provisions had run out, the enemy, who had craftily hastened on ahead and were laying waste the countryside in advance, would force us – who were already hungry – to suffer a really dire need of food. And at the head of the river, if God did not provide otherwise, they would with their great and countless host and the engines of war and devices available to them, overwhelm us, for we were few in number, fainting with a great weariness, and weak from a lack of food.

I, the author of this, and many others in the army, looked up in bitterness to Heaven, seeking the clemency of Providence, and called upon the Glorious Virgin and St George, under whose protection the most invincible crown of England has flourished from of old, to intercede between God and his people, that the Supreme Judge, who foresees all things, might take pity on the grief all England would feel at the price we would pay with our blood, and in His infinite mercy, deliver from the swords of the French our king and us his people, who have sought not war but peace, and bring us to the honour and glory of His name, in triumph to Calais. Without any other hope but this, we hastened on from there in the direction of the head of the river …
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What the author of the
Gesta
does not say at this point is that Henry’s high-minded intentions not to lay waste ‘his’ kingdom of France were starting to wear thin. It was all very well for him to declare that no burning, raping or killing should take place; but the men were now hungry, and the scouts were taking matters into their own hands. Henry may or may not have condoned their actions, but the English burned and looted as they marched to Airaines.
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Tuesday 15th

The Issue Rolls for this day record an interesting payment. It reads: ‘to Master Robert Benham sent to Calais with divers medicines ordered for the health of the king’s person and others in his army who went with him’.
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This obviously postdates the actual delivery of the medicines by some weeks; but it suggests that Henry had not escaped the siege of Harfleur totally unscathed. What he had been suffering from, and whether he was still afflicted, we can only guess. But the knowledge that he was ill, and had not yet reached Calais to benefit from the medicines in question, makes his leadership in the face of many adversities all the more striking.

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The dejected English army approached the city of Amiens. Two days earlier, in the same town, the orders for the defence of the Somme had been read out. Charles d’Albret had chosen to concentrate the bulk of his forces at Abbeville, in an attempt to trap Henry against the river. The people of Amiens had been ordered to send reinforcements – large numbers of crossbowmen and all their artillery. This
they had done, albeit very reluctantly, for it left them vulnerable. Now at Abbeville there were several thousand fighting men and twelve heavy cannon, more than two thousand cannon balls, and large stocks of saltpetre, sulphur, gunpowder, and various other machines of war.
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At Amiens there were no stockpiled munitions.

The people of Amiens were lucky. The English marched straight past, at a distance of about three miles. It is likely that the soldiers from Abbeville, who had been tracking them along the far bank, had bolstered the defences of the town. Also troops stationed upstream at Corbie and Péronne may have shifted to Amiens in response to the English advance. D’Albret’s plan was flexible enough to defend the inland towns. The dejected English had no option but to press on into the dangerous interior of France.

Wednesday 16th

At first Henry’s progress had been fast – sixteen or seventeen miles per day – as fast as one could reasonably go with ten thousand men and several hundred carts and wagons. But since the council meeting six miles short of Blanchetaque, that speed had fallen off. From that moment to the end of today the army had covered between ten and eleven miles per day.

There were several reasons for their slowness. The main one was that they were desperate to find a way across the river. Although the army was travelling along a line of hills nearby, frequent forays had to be made down to the water to investigate every bridge and every possible ford, and every potential site for a new temporary bridge. Of course, the bridges were all broken, and the fords guarded. No doubt the consequent frustration led to the burning and looting along the way – another delaying factor. They had to find food as well; their supplies of dried beef and walnuts had all long since gone, so they had to forage for everything they ate and drank. The weather did not help. It rained hard and was windy, and the nights were very cold.
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Riding or marching for hours in such miserable conditions must have been difficult, especially when the men were starving, weak, and frightened.

Boves was a town in the overlordship of the duke of Burgundy, being held for him by the count of Vaudémont, brother of the duke of
Lorraine. Although the count was with Boucicaut at the time, the question remained, would the townsmen fire on the English? Or would they hold to John the Fearless’s promise not to impede Henry in his quarrel with the king of France? It is perhaps significant that Thomas Elmham, writing three years later, notes that Henry ‘chose’ to stay at this town, perhaps seeing his reception by the garrison of the castle there as a test of John the Fearless’s loyalty. The garrison, situated on a well-defended rocky outcrop, fired no cannon, nor did they make a sortie and attack. Instead they negotiated with Henry for the safe passage of the army. They surrendered hostages, and under cover of night they sent out eight massive baskets of bread, each one carried by two men, to help sustain the army. Henry also asked the captain of the castle to look after two very sick knights in the army, directing the men in question to give up their horses as an advance payment of their ransoms.
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A number of low-status men, presumably archers, today broke into the vineyards and presses in the region around Boves, looking for wine. Not surprisingly they found it – in large quantities. When this was reported to Henry he was very angry. Some men asked why he had forbidden them to drink wine, asking to fill up their bottles with it, now they were here. Henry replied that

he was not troubled by the idea of bottles but that the problem was that many would have their stomachs as their bottles, and that was what bothered him, for he was worried they would get too drunk.
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No wine and no women. One does not imagine there was very much song either – apart from the pipes and drums of war. What with the lack of food and lack of comfort, campaigning with Henry V was a grim experience.

One man did get his reward today. Henry promised his esquire, William Hargrove, that when they returned to England he would make him the usher of the Order of the Garter, together with the house in Windsor Castle that went with the office, receiving the usual wages as his predecessor. This position carried the right to bear the black rod before the king and his heirs on feast days, and is today known after the symbol of the office: Black Rod.
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Thursday 17th

Henry left Boves this morning, making his way over the River Avre and setting out on the road towards Nesle. There was no saying where the next meal would come from. Nor when the rain would stop, and the wind let up. For his men, it was vital to keep going regardless of the soaked and stinking state of their clothes and bodies. The French were gathering all along the other bank of the Somme, moving from town to town, concentrating on potential crossing points. Today, as the English passed through the villages on the way to Nesle, the French made a sortie from Corbie and sent out a group of cavalry to attack the English archers passing the adjacent fields.

The sudden presence of cavalry at this point shows that a bridge or ford at Corbie – a walled town on the north side of the river – had not been destroyed. This in turn suggests that the English reluctance (or failure) to cross here was due to the numbers of French troops able to defend the place. The English archers responded swiftly to the sortie and put the men-at-arms to flight, taking two of them prisoner.
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But there was no attempt to cross.

This sudden cavalry attack seems to have warned Henry of the danger that a charge could break up his ranks of archers. With this in mind he gave instructions that every archer should cut himself a thick stake, six feet in length, sharpened at both ends. The idea was similar to that employed by the French at Blanchetaque, where stakes had been driven into the river bed to stop the English men-at-arms riding across. When the French horses tried to break the lines of archers, their horses would either be impaled or would take fright.
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A short while afterwards, as the army moved through the villages towards Nesle, looking for food, the cry went up that a gilt-copper pyx containing the Holy Eucharist had been stolen from a church. This was directly in contravention of the ordinances that Henry had proclaimed at the start of the march. It was also a very obvious affront to God – and, since Henry’s greatest source of inspiration was his confidence that God would favour him because ‘victory consists not in a multitude but with Him … who bestows victory upon whom He wills, whether they be many or few’, he had no option but to find the culprit and make an example of him. He stopped the army and ordered the captains to search all their men. An archer was found with the pyx
concealed in his sleeve. Henry ordered that it be returned to the church. He then had the man hanged from a tree in the sight of the rest of the army, before ordering them to continue on their way.
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