Agincourt (28 page)

For the next few days an eerie silence reigned over Harfleur; the deadly hail of missiles had ceased, the cannon were silent, the catapults still. Even now, however, there could be no real relaxation for de Gaucourt and his men. According to the terms of the truce, they could not fight and they could not repair their shattered fortifications, but they had to prepare themselves for the possibility of further military action. They may have tried to snatch some rest, but how could they sleep when their fate stood on a knife’s edge? Would the blood-red oriflamme suddenly appear on the horizon, heralding the approach of a relieving army? Would there be battle? Or would they have to face the shame of surrender, imprisonment in a foreign country, even execution?

The man who carried all the hopes of Harfleur with him made his way as swiftly as he could to Vernon, where the dauphin was still in residence. There de Haccqueville made an emotional plea for aid, with the added poignancy that, this time, there was no doubt as to the fate that awaited Harfleur. The dauphin’s response was brief and to the point. The king’s army was not yet fully assembled and it was not ready to give such help so quickly. And so de Hacqueville had to return, empty-handed and with a heavy heart, to tell de Gaucourt that his mission had failed and that the gallant defence of Harfleur had all been in vain.
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The sense of shock and shame that the surrender of Harfleur to the English inspired throughout France was so great that those who knew nothing of the circumstances were quick to blame and condemn de Gaucourt and his men for their failure to preserve the town. Only the monk of St Denis sprang to their defence, with an impassioned and sympathetic paean of praise. It ought to be remembered how often they repeatedly made daring sorties against the enemy, and how with their utmost strength they drove back every attempt to gain entry into the town through underground mines dug out in secret. Without any doubt, these men were worthy of the highest praise for their endurance of every adversity: even as the roofs of the buildings were crashing in around them, they remained continuously in arms, sustained by the most meagre rations and spending their nights without sleep, so that they were prepared to repel any sudden assaults.
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At the appointed hour, one o’clock, on Sunday 22 September, Henry V seated himself on a throne draped with cloth of gold, under a pavilion of the same material, on the hillside above the Leure gate. A great number of his magnates and nobles, all clad in their richest finery, took their places around him, and at his right hand stood Sir Gilbert Umfraville, holding aloft the king’s great helm with its golden crown. A route, lined with armed soldiers to hold back the crowds of Englishmen gathered to watch the spectacle, had been marked out between the pavilion and the town gate for the representatives of Harfleur to make their approach to the king. On the hour, the gate opened and de Gaucourt emerged at the head of a small procession of between thirty and forty knights and leading burgesses. To add to their humiliation, they had been forced to leave their horses, weapons, armour and all their goods in the town, so they had to climb the hill on foot, clad only in their shirts and hose. According to Adam of Usk, they were also obliged to wear a hangman’s noose about their necks, the traditional symbol of the fact that their lives were now in the king’s hands.
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When they reached the royal throne—a process that must have taken some time, since the hillside was steep and many of them, including de Gaucourt himself, were seriously ill—they all fell on their knees and de Gaucourt presented the keys of the town to the king with these words: “Most victorious Prince, behold here the keyes of this Towne, which after our promise I yealde unto you with the Towne, my selfe, and my companie.” Henry did not deign to touch the keys himself, but ordered John Mowbray, the earl marshal, to take them. He then addressed de Gaucourt, promising him that “although he and his company had, in God’s despite and contrary to all justice, retained against him a town which, being a noble portion of his inheritance, belonged to him, nevertheless, because they had submitted themselves to his mercy, even though tardily, they should not depart entirely without mercy, although he said he might wish to modify this after careful consideration.” The king then ordered that de Gaucourt’s party and the hostages who had been handed over earlier as guarantors for the truce should be taken to his tents, where all sixty-six were to be fed “with some magnificence,” before being distributed as prisoners among his men.
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Immediately after de Gaucourt had formally surrendered the keys of Harfleur, his standard and those of his companions and of France, which had flown over the gates of the town throughout the siege, were taken down. In their place, the standards of St George and of the king were raised, no doubt to the cheers of the watching English army. Henry then handed over the keys to the earl of Dorset, whom he had appointed warden and captain of Harfleur.

As was so often the case with Henry V, everything about the formal surrender of Harfleur was designed to achieve a particular purpose. The ritual humiliation of his French prisoners—denied even the ordinary trappings of their rank as they were forced to take the long walk through the victorious army—was intended to serve as an example to any other town or garrison that dared to resist him. The splendid spectacle of the king, enthroned in majesty on high and surrounded by the chivalry of his realm, reinforced the message of his speech. He had enforced his just claims by the sword and had won Harfleur because his cause was righteous; the French had lost it because they had acted contrary to God’s will and to justice. Even his offer of leniency, hedged about as it was by the suggestion that it might be withdrawn “after careful consideration,” was a powerful demonstration that mercy could not be expected, but was the prerogative of the king alone to grant.

It had not originally been Henry’s intention to enter Harfleur himself. He had expected to be able to continue in the field and carry his campaign further into France, but the unexpected duration of the siege and the epidemic of dysentery sweeping through his army forced him to rethink his decision. It was typical of the man that, after all the regal pomp and splendour of the ceremonial around the surrender, he now chose to forgo the customary triumphal entry into the conquered town. The day after the formal surrender, he rode as far as the gates, dismounted, removed his shoes and, like a penitent or pilgrim, made his way barefoot to the ruined parish church of St Martin, where he gave devout thanks to God for his victory.
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Having toured the town and seen at first hand the devastation that his bombardments had caused, Henry turned his attention to the civilian population. All those in holy orders were allowed to go free and unmolested. Those burgesses who were prepared to swear an oath of allegiance to him were allowed to keep their possessions, though, like the French inhabitants of Calais, they were not permitted to retain ownership of any residential or commercial property within Harfleur or their rights as citizens to self-government, tax exemptions and trading privileges. The town’s charters and the title deeds of its inhabitants were all publicly burnt in the marketplace as a symbolic demonstration of the introduction of the new regime. Those of the richer burgesses who would not accept the king’s terms, of whom there were at least 221, were imprisoned until they paid their ransoms, some of them subsequently being sent to Calais to await transportation to England.

The poorer inhabitants and those who were sick, together with the women and children of every rank, were all expelled from the town. Though this might seem an excessively harsh measure, contemporaries accustomed to the brutality of medieval warfare regarded it as unexpectedly lenient. Each one was given a small sum of money to purchase food on the journey and, “taking pity on their sex,” the women were allowed to take as much of their property as they could carry. Some two thousand people were expelled from Harfleur in this way, “amid much lamentation, grief, and tears for the loss of their customary although unlawful habitation.” Aware that they were vulnerable to the depredations of his own troops, Henry provided an armed guard to escort them beyond the limits of his army to Lillebonne, fourteen miles away, where Marshal Boucicaut was waiting to send them by boat down the Seine to the safety of Rouen. “And thus, by the true judgement of God,” the chaplain noted, “they were proved sojourners where they had thought themselves inhabitants.”
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Henry was equally merciful to those who least expected it. Around 260 French men-at-arms had survived the siege, many of them gentlemen of noble Norman or Picard families, whose ransoms would be of considerable value. Instead of committing them to prison or sending them to England, Henry released them on parole. The reasons for this act of clemency were both pragmatic and humanitarian. “As the greater part of us were extremely sick,” de Gaucourt later recalled, “the King of England granted us indulgence, upon our swearing, promising, and sealing an obligation that we would all find our way to Calais, and appear before him on the approaching day of St Martin.” It was a calculated risk to release them, but with so many of Henry’s own troops about to be invalided home, he could not spare the men to look after such a large number of diseased prisoners. He needed as many able-bodied men as possible to defend Harfleur against any attempt to retake it. Alternatively, if he took the prisoners with him to Calais, they would be a major encumbrance, slowing him down and requiring constant guard and medical attention. On 27 September, after five days in custody, and having sworn to abide by the conditions set down in writing by the king’s negotiators, including the fact that they were to surrender themselves as his prisoners at Calais on or by 11 November, they were allowed to return home.
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The king had not yet finished with Raoul de Gaucourt, however, who had one more task to perform before he, too, obtained his temporary release. As the former captain of the captured town, he was required to carry a message from Henry V to his master, the dauphin. The message was a challenge to fight a single combat that would decide the future of France. Written as a letter under the privy seal, from “our town of Harfleur,” the challenge opened with the words, “Henry, by the grace of God, king of France and of England, and lord of Ireland, to the high and powerful prince, the dauphin of Guienne, our cousin, eldest son of the most powerful prince, our cousin and adversary of France.” Out of reverence to God and to avoid the effusion of human blood, Henry went on, he had many times and in many ways sought to obtain peace. And considering also that the result of our wars is the death of men, the destruction of countryside, the lamentation of women and children, and so many evils generally, that every good Christian ought to grieve for it and take compassion, especially we whom this matter touches most nearly, and ought to make every effort and diligently seek to find all the ways that man can devise to avoid these said evils and disadvantages, so that we gain the favour of God and the praise of the world. As Charles VI, to whom the challenge ought to have been sent, was not capable of answering it, Henry proposed to the dauphin that the quarrel should be put to a trial by battle “between our person and yours.” Whoever won would have the crown of France on the death of Charles VI. A verbal message must have accompanied this letter, for the dauphin was informed that Henry would wait for an answer at Harfleur for eight days, after which time the offer would lapse.
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Henry’s challenge has been much derided by historians as bombastic, ridiculous, frivolous and obsolete. In fact, it was none of these things. Trial by battle had an ancient and venerable tradition: for centuries it had been part of the judicial process in cases where neither side in a dispute could offer evidential proof to allow a jury or court to decide their case. When it was one man’s word against another’s, then the only way to settle the quarrel was to offer it for divine judgement. God would not permit an injustice to be perpetrated, the argument went, so the victory would fall to whichever party had right on his side—the reason why trial by battle was also known in medieval times as the
judicium dei
, or the judgement of God, a concept that had particular appeal for a king as deeply pious and absolutely convinced of the justice of his cause as Henry V. Henry’s own family had a long history of involvement in judicial combats. His great-grandfathers Edward III and Henry, duke of Lancaster, had both issued and received challenges to settle the wars in France by this method. His great-uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester, was responsible, as constable of England, for drawing up the standard set of rules governing such combats. His own father, when duke of Hereford, had been on the brink of fighting a judicial duel against Thomas Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, in 1398, when Richard II forbade it and banished him from the realm.
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Though the practice became increasingly rare, the right to trial by battle was not legally abolished in England until 1819.

Because the trial by battle was fought within lists and under strict rules, it has often been confused with tournaments and jousts, which explains why some historians have been so contemptuous of Henry V’s challenge to the dauphin. Challenges to perform feats of arms, such as those which passed between the seneschal of Hainault and Sir John Cornewaille, were highly regarded in chivalric circles because mere participation bestowed honour on those involved, whatever the outcome. Even if these were fought
à outrance
, with the ordinary weapons and armour of war, the objective was not to kill the opponent, only to prove one’s own courage and skill. Trial by battle, on the other hand, was emphatically not a chivalric game: it was a legally binding judgement. A defeated participant, if he was not killed in the course of the combat, could be removed from the lists and executed as a convicted criminal. Those who took part in judicial duels did so reluctantly and because their reputation had been impugned; failure meant death but also dishonour.