Agincourt (23 page)

The mortifying failure of the French to offer even a token resistance seemed inexplicable, even to their compatriots. An invasion had been expected since the failure to agree terms during Bishop Courtenay’s embassy to Paris. In April 1415 a great council of the realm had been called, which had decided that, due to Charles VI’s incapacity, the eighteen-year-old dauphin, Louis de Guienne, should be appointed captain-general with authority to organise resistance. Men-at-arms throughout France were to be put on alert so that they were ready to resist the English, garrisons in towns and castles near the sea were to be reinforced and money was to be made available for war. As a result of these decisions, Robin de Hellande, the
bailli
of Rouen, was one of many royal officials who received orders to prepare against an English landing. The Caux region, including Harfleur, fell within his bailiwick, and the defences erected along the shore at Sainte Adresse were his responsibility, whether or not they had been built directly under his personal supervision.
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After the return to Paris of the archbishop of Bourges and his fellow ambassadors from their abortive mission to Winchester, preparations had been stepped up another gear. On 28 July Charles d’Albret, the constable of France, and Marshal Boucicaut were appointed king’s lieutenant and captain-general respectively, and dispatched to Normandy, each at the head of an army fifteen hundred strong. Not knowing where the English would strike, they had divided their forces, d’Albret setting up his headquarters at Honfleur, the greatest fortified town on the southern shore of the Seine estuary, and Boucicault at Caudebec, a town some twenty-five miles away as the crow flies on the north bank of the Seine, which guarded the first river crossing. Between them, they were within striking distance of most of Normandy. The defence of Ponthieu and Artois was delegated by d’Albret to a nobleman of that region, David, sire de Rambures, who was also a councillor and chamberlain of Charles VI, captain of Boulogne and master of the crossbowmen of France.
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It was fishermen from Boulogne who first raised the alarm that the English fleet had set sail and was heading for France. The town officials promptly sent a messenger, Jacques Rolequin “the younger,” to forewarn other likely targets on the coast, the town of Etaples, at the mouth of the river Canche, and le Crotoy and St Valery, the twin guardians on either shore of the bay of the Somme. On his return, Rolequin did not have time to draw breath before being posted further afield, this time to Abbeville, Dieppe and Honfleur, with the latest news that the fleet had now entered the Seine. Though it took him a lengthy ten days to complete this second mission, it is clear that other messengers were also plying the roads with news of the progress of the English invasion.
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As a result of this network of communication, all the coastal towns of the region were in a state of constant alert and prepared for attack.

This explains the evident effort that had gone into building the physical defences at Chef-de-Caux, but it does not explain why they were unmanned. It is possible that there had been so many false alarms that the locals did not expect a genuine one, but even so the landing would have been observed. The monks at the priory of Graville, perched high on an eminence above the bay, had a bird’s-eye view of the entire operation and cannot have failed to send messengers over the hill to Harfleur. (The square Norman tower and the soaring walls of Graville’s abbey church of Sainte Honorine would also have made it an obvious landmark from the sea.) Even Constable d’Albret, on the opposite shore at Honfleur, must have seen the fleet at anchor and realised what was happening. Why, then, did no one attempt to resist the landing? The simple answer is that it was impractical. It would have taken the constable’s army the best part of two days to get to Sainte Adresse by land, by which time it would be too late. The only chance of fighting off the invasion would have been as the disembarkation began—and at that point it would have been all too easy for Henry to divert his fleet elsewhere, including Honfleur, which was only some five miles away across the bay. The little garrison of Harfleur could have taken a stand but, in doing so, it would have had to abandon the defence of the town, leaving it vulnerable to attack from those still on board ship in the bay. From a purely pragmatic military point of view, it was better to retreat behind the walls of the great fortified towns, which could only fall to a lengthy siege, than to risk everything in open combat.

Despite the fact that this sort of defensive strategy had been standard policy throughout the Hundred Years War, there were, inevitably, rumours of treason. The monk of St Denis, a contemporary chronicler of these events, claimed that the local inhabitants would undoubtedly have risen to the occasion, as they had done many times before, if they had not believed that the noblemen of the area, who had rallied to the standard of Constable d’Albret, would do the job for them. “I ought to say, without embarrassment, because it is the truth,” the monk wrote, “that the constable compromised himself on this occasion in the eyes of wise and thoughtful men.” At a later council of war, the bastard brother of the duke of Bourbon, “a man in the springtime of early youth, but bold and rash in character,” dared to say what many others thought, and accused d’Albret of treason in failing to prevent the landing. It was said that, as a member of the diplomatic embassy to England earlier that year, the constable had promised Henry V that he would not oppose him and, therefore, although he was not far away when the English descended, this was the reason for his inaction. Worse still, he was accused of having, in the French king’s name, ordered the local men-at-arms who came to him seeking leadership to return to their homes and not to resist the invasion. The story was patently untrue—d’Albret had not been on a diplomatic mission to England since 1413—but even his advocates could only offer the lame excuse that he had given these orders because he underestimated the strength of the English army.
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The truth was that it was impossible for him to guard the entire length of the Channel coast and, having expected the invasion to take place on the southern shore of the Seine, d’Albret was in the wrong place when it came and too far away to rectify his mistake. This error, right at the beginning of the campaign, would have terrible consequences, seriously compromising both his authority and his ability to persuade the other army leaders to any future course of action.

By Saturday 17 August, Henry had completed the disembarkation of his troops and supplies without incident. According to one source, when the king himself came ashore, shortly after dawn on the first day, he fell on his knees and prayed that God would give him justice against his enemies. As was customary on such occasions, he took the opportunity to bestow knighthoods on several esquires, including Sir John Cornewaille’s brother-in-arms, William Porter, and Thomas Geney and John Calthorpe, who were both in the retinue of Sir Thomas Erpingham, the steward of the king’s household. The king himself took up residence at the ancient priory of Graville, on the hillside overlooking the landing site, from which vantage point he could watch the progress of the disembarkation. His brothers found quarters nearby, but the rest of the army had to find lodgings where they could, in the “hamlets, closes, and orchards” on the steep slopes of the little valley behind the shore.
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After the long wait in Southampton and the days of close confinement on board ship, there was inevitably a strong temptation to run riot and, especially, to loot the farms and houses in the vicinity. Several places had already been burnt before Henry reined in his troops by issuing a set of ordinances that were to be the code of conduct for the campaign. The ordinances have not survived, but were neatly summarised by Henry’s chaplain. On pain of death there was to be no more arson; churches, sacred buildings and their property were to be preserved intact; and finally, “no one should lay hands upon a woman or on a priest or servant of a church, unless he happened to be armed, offered violence, or attacked anyone.”
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The issuing of ordinances of this kind was a customary practice, dating back at least to Edward III’s reign. They were a vital means of controlling an army, especially one raised by indenture. Every army raised by this method was effectively a new creation, so it was essential to reissue new ordinances each time an indentured group was gathered together. By the fifteenth century there was a standard format: the ordinances Richard II issued at Durham in 1385, on his way to invade Scotland, were substantially the same as those Henry V himself would draw up at the siege of Mantes in July 1419, or those proclaimed by the earl of Leicester for his soldiers in the Low Countries in 1584. The ordinances always opened with the statement “that all manner of persons, of what nation, estate or condition they be, shall be obedient to our lord the king, to his constable and marshal, under penalty of everything they can forfeit in body or goods.” In addition to the clauses mentioned by our chronicler, the English chaplain, a whole series of clauses dealt with internal army discipline, insisting that every man should remain in the company to which he belonged and wear the badge of his captain; everyone in the army, regardless of rank, was also to wear “a large sign of the arms of St George before, and another behind upon peril that if he be hurt or slain in default thereof, he who shall hurt or slay him shall suffer no penalty for it.” (The obverse of this was that if an enemy was captured wearing the St George’s cross, his life was forfeit.) Unauthorised battle-cries, such as “montez” (to horse) or “havoc” (break ranks and seize booty, hence Shakespeare’s famous line, “Cry, ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war”), were prohibited by threat of summary execution, since they could shatter discipline and imperil the whole army.
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All gains of war were to be divided three ways, one-third going to the king, one to the captain, and one to the captor. This was to hold good even if the captor was a person serving without pay in the army. The precise etiquette of taking a prisoner was also laid down: a captor should take his prisoner’s parole (an admission of surrender and oath not to escape) and with it a tangible piece of evidence, such as a glove or bascinet, as pledge and proof. The captor was then under a duty to protect his prisoner’s life; if he left him alone and undefended, another captor could take him and was then entitled to his ransom. Finally, every prisoner had to be presented as soon as possible to the captor’s captain, who then had to pass him on to his superiors for interrogation. Once this had taken place, the prisoner’s safekeeping was again entrusted to the captor and his captain, though he could not be released, even to seek money for his ransom, without a written pass, authorising his departure and providing him with the king’s protection against arrest or harm. This could only be obtained from Henry himself, or the constable or marshal acting in his name, and it was to be observed on pain of death. All disputes between individuals or companies were to be dealt with by the constable or marshal, as were all breaches of the ordinances.
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There was nothing new in the ordinances of 1415, but, as Henry V had demonstrated so often before, he was able to take a customary practice and give it new life and vigour by effective enforcement. The unusual discipline of the English army was something even its enemies commended. The monk of St Denis reported that the English regarded it as an almost unpardonable crime to have prostitutes in their camp and behaved more considerately towards the French than vice versa; they observed the rules of military discipline strictly, he noted, and obeyed the orders of their king to the letter. This discipline unquestionably derived from Henry himself. To maintain his claim that his invasion was a just one, he needed to ensure that his soldiers observed the customary laws of war. This was not simply altruism of the sort advocated by Christine de Pizan, who had declared that it was “dangerous in time of war for an army to be more driven by greed for pillage than by the intention to preserve the righteousness of their cause or the honour of chivalry or to gain praise.” It was also a pragmatic recognition that a disciplined army was stronger and more efficient, while a local populace that was not maltreated would be less likely to respond with violence or sabotage.
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Henry’s ordinances can be seen working in practice, albeit slowly and creakily, in the case of one of the first French prisoners to fall into English hands. Raoul le Gay, a twenty-eight-year-old priest, was captured on 16 August, while the disembarkation was still taking place. Le Gay was trying to follow his employer, a rich burgess, who lived in the suburbs of Harfleur and had fled to Rouen on learning of the English landing, when he was captured by a group of seven scouts or foragers, who spoke no French and evidently thought they had caught a spy. They deprived him of his tunic, knife and purse, tied his hands behind his back and demanded a ransom of one hundred francs, which he could not pay. After a couple of days, he was taken before their superior officer, an elderly knight, who asked him the name of the commander at Harfleur, which he claimed not to know, and then lost interest in him. His plight was noticed by a young Englishman, who spoke to him in Latin, suggesting that he probably realised that le Gay was a priest, despite the fact that he was dressed in secular clothing and wore a cap hiding his tonsure. He ordered him to be taken before the earl of Dorset, who questioned him in French and detained him for a further seven days.

On the tenth day of his captivity, he was brought before Henry V, who, alone among all his officers, enquired whether this priest had been captured in arms. Having discovered that he had not and that his capture was therefore in contravention of the ordinances, Henry still did not let him go, suggesting that he too thought le Gay was a spy. The priest was therefore handed into the custody of Richard Courtenay, bishop of Norwich, who offered to release him on condition that he carried a letter to none other than the astrologer Jean Fusoris in Paris. The letter was highly compromising, referring in what was obviously code to certain “pumpkins, melons, almonds and other fruits,” which Fusoris was to obtain from the prior of the Celestines in Paris, and send back to Courtenay, who would pay him for them. Fusoris was told that in his reply he was not to mention his own or Courtenay’s name, for the matter was a secret from everyone except Henry, “who is most discreet, as you know.” Le Gay was also entrusted with a verbal message, to tell Fusoris that the king of England had landed with fifty thousand men, four thousand barrels of wheat, four thousand casks of wine, twelve large guns and sufficient material to sustain a six-month siege of Harfleur. He was to ask Fusoris whether Charles VI was in one of his mad phases and would oppose the English, if the dauphin, the duke of Burgundy or any other lords would be with him, and, if so, with how many men.