Agincourt (29 page)

Henry V’s challenge was not an empty gesture, but a deadly serious undertaking. If he could prove his claims to France in single combat, instead of with an army, then he would save lives on both sides. If the dauphin had accepted the challenge, there is no question but that Henry would have fought in person—and won. If he did not, then Henry could still circulate copies of his challenge to all his friends and potential allies as proof of his wish to be reasonable and of his determination to avoid bloodshed at all costs.
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Once again, Henry had demonstrated his mastery of the art of propaganda, wrongfooting the dauphin and claiming the moral high ground. The sin in prolonging the war would fall upon the dauphin’s head and his reputation would be tainted with the charge of personal cowardice.

On 27 September de Gaucourt set off to deliver the letter of challenge to the dauphin, who was still lingering at Vernon, some twenty-eight miles south of Rouen and approximately sixty-eight miles upriver from Harfleur. He was accompanied on this mission by William Bruges, Guyenne king of arms, which begs the question why de Gaucourt was sent at all. Delivering a challenge was one of the principal duties of a herald. Bruges was highly experienced and had no need of any escort or assistance. That de Gaucourt was forced to accompany him can only be attributable to Henry’s desire to confront the dauphin with the consequences of his own inaction. He would hear at first hand and from one of his own loyal lieutenants—now an English prisoner—that Harfleur was in enemy hands. Henry may also have hoped that de Gaucourt would be able to persuade the dauphin to accept the challenge, or at least to make some conciliatory gesture to buy himself peace.
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De Gaucourt and Guyenne were kept waiting for an interview with the dauphin, and neither of them had returned to Harfleur by the time the eight days Henry had set as the limit for a response had elapsed. (By contrast, de Hacqueville had managed to get to and from Vernon within three days.)
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The challenge placed the dauphin in a dilemma. He had no intention of accepting it, but he could not turn it down without appearing a coward. Unable to commit himself to either of these courses, he hid his head in the sand and left the challenge unanswered.
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One can imagine that a knight as committed to the chivalric ideal as de Gaucourt would be unimpressed by this demonstration of the dauphin’s singular lack of courtly qualities. It must have been humiliating to compare the shortcomings of his own leader with the exemplary behaviour of Henry V.

Having delivered his message, de Gaucourt was at least spared the necessity of taking back the dauphin’s reply. Prohibited from taking any further part in military action against his captors, there was nothing else he could do except retreat to his sickbed until he was required to surrender himself at Calais. For him, the war was over.

Henry, in the meantime, had not been idle as he waited at Harfleur for the dauphin’s reply. On the day of the formal surrender, as we have seen, he had written to the mayor and aldermen of London to inform them that, “by the good diligence of our faithful lieges at this time in our company, and the strength and position of our cannon, and other our ordnance,” he had succeeded in bringing about the town’s capitulation. The expulsion of its inhabitants had prepared the way for its repopulation with English settlers, the intention being to create a second Calais. On 5 October proclamations were made in London and other large towns throughout England, offering free houses and special privileges to any of the king’s subjects who were prepared to take up residence in Harfleur. The objective was to find merchants, victuallers and tradesmen, so that the town could become both self-reliant and part of the trading nexus linking London with the continent through Calais and Bayonne. Among those who were granted property in the town were the king’s clerk Master Jean de Bordiu, who was presented to the parish church of Harfleur, and Richard Bokelond, a London merchant, who was given an inn in the town called “the Peacock” as a reward for assisting the king during the siege with two of his ships.
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Urgent orders were also given to reprovision the town. On 4 October a messenger was sent “with the greatest speed” bearing a commission under the king’s great seal to the constable of Dover Castle and the warden of the Cinque Ports, which ordered them to go in person to all the neighbouring ports on the south coast of England “where fishermen commonly reside and dwell, and strongly enjoin and command all and singular the fishermen . . . without delay to proceed to the town of Harfleu [
sic
] with their boats and other vessels, and with their nets, tackle, and other things, necessary to fish upon the Norman coast, near the town aforesaid, for support of the King’s army there.” Two days later John Fysshere of Henley was ordered to take supplies of wheat to Harfleur at the king’s cost, and six days after that John Laweney, a London grocer, was similarly ordered to send “provisions, arms and necessary stuff.” To ensure that stocks remained plentiful, orders were issued prohibiting anyone in England from “taking over any wheat or grain to any foreign parts except the towns of Calais or Harflewe in Normandy without the special command of the king.” Those shipping supplies to Calais and Harfleur were also compelled to provide proof of delivery, so that they could not fraudulently divert their cargoes elsewhere.
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Reginald Curteys, the former supplier of Calais who, earlier in the year, had been entrusted with the task of hiring ships in Holland and Zeeland for the invasion, was appointed as the official victualler of Harfleur, and stocking the garrison and town thereafter became his responsibility. After their enforced weeks of military service, many of the ships that had served to carry troops and supplies during the siege were now free to return to their original purpose. Two of the king’s own vessels, the
Katherine de la Tour
, which had sailed with the fleet, and the newly commissioned
Holy Ghost
, which had not been ready in time for the invasion, were kept busy plying the cross-Channel trade, bringing beer and wine to the garrison.
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The biggest problem facing Henry at this point was not so much supplies as men. Dysentery continued to make huge inroads into his army, greatly reducing the numbers of those fit to fight. Even after the siege had ended, his men were still dying at an alarming rate and many more were incapacitated by sickness. Their presence in the army being both a hindrance and an unwarranted drain on precious resources, Henry took the decision to send them home. This in itself was a major logistical problem. There were literally thousands of sick and dying. Each retinue captain was therefore required to muster his men and certify the names of those who were unable to continue in active service to the king and his clerks. The sick were then separated out from those who were still fit and well, and given the royal licence to return home. Some of the ships that had blockaded Harfleur from the sea were entrusted with the task of transporting these men back to England, and the evacuation began within a week of the town’s surrender. The English chaplain estimated that some five thousand of Henry’s men were invalided home from Harfleur. Though he was usually well informed about such things, this figure may be an exaggeration. Lists of the sick who received licence to return home have survived, but they are incomplete. Even so, they record 1693 individual names, including three of the king’s young earls, Thomas, earl of Arundel, John Mowbray, the earl marshal, and Edmund, earl of March.
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Arundel was one of the king’s closest associates, having served him in peace and war for the previous ten years, and been treasurer of England since Henry’s accession. He was now mortally sick and, although he returned to England on 28 September, he never recovered. He died at home at Arundel Castle on 13 October, his thirty-fourth birthday. (As he died childless, his great estates, which had made him one of the richest men in the country, were divided between his three sisters and his title passed to his second cousin.) Mowbray and March were more fortunate. Both recovered, the former with the aid of numerous remedies for the pestilence, the flux and vomiting, purchased at great expense from a London grocer.
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Arundel cannot have been the only man to have died in England of dysentery contracted during the siege, but it is impossible to discover the fate of the vast majority of the rest, particularly those of low rank. Once their names had appeared on their licences to return home, they disappeared into oblivion as far as records are concerned.

It is equally difficult to establish how many died of the disease at Harfleur. In addition to Richard Courtenay, bishop of Norwich, and Michael, earl of Suffolk, the names of at least eight knights who brought their own retinues are known: William Beaumond from Devonshire, Roger Trumpington from Cambridgeshire, Edward Burnell from Norfolk, John Marland from Somerset, John Southworth, Hugh Standish and William Botiller from Lancashire and John Phelip from Worcestershire.
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Sir John Phelip, too, had been a close associate of the king. He had been a member of Henry’s household when he was prince of Wales and was one of the select few chosen to be made a Knight of the Bath at his coronation in 1413. He had taken a leading role in the earl of Arundel’s expedition to France in 1411 and was in the Anglo-Burgundian force that defeated the Armagnacs at St Cloud; for the Agincourt campaign he had brought a substantial retinue of thirty men-at-arms and ninety foot archers. Phelip, who was a nephew of Sir Thomas Erpingham, the steward of the king’s household, was married to Alice Chaucer, the only child of Thomas and granddaughter of the poet, though she was only eleven years old when she was widowed. Phelip himself was thirty-one when he died. His body was taken back to England and interred at Kidderminster under the proud, if ungainly, Latin epitaph: “Henry V loved this man as a friend; John was bold and strong and fought well at Harfleur.”
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Few names of the less eminent victims of dysentery have survived—and these only because their deaths were recorded on the muster rolls so that the exchequer did not have to continue paying their wages. The exchequer clerks attempted to make a distinction between those who “died” of the disease and those who were “killed” as a result of enemy action, though it is unclear how reliable their efforts were; combined with the incomplete nature of the records themselves, this makes it difficult to reach any firm conclusions as to how many died. Monstrelet hazarded a guess at two thousand, a figure that was taken up and repeated as fact by other chroniclers. This may be accurate. If modern rates of mortality among untreated victims of dysentery are taken as a guide, it is likely that Henry lost between 10 and 20 per cent of his army, which translates as something in the region of 1200-2400 men. Whatever the actual numbers, the chroniclers on both sides of the conflict were all united in one belief: more men died from disease at Harfleur than from the fighting throughout the campaign.
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Occasionally we get a glimpse of the scale of the loss in terms of death and sickness to individual companies. Arundel’s retinue, as one might expect, given the contagious nature of the disease, was badly hit. Out of a total of 100 men-at-arms, two died at Harfleur and twelve (or possibly eighteen) were invalided home; of the original 300 archers who also accompanied him, thirteen died and a further sixty-nine were sent home sick, together with three of his minstrels. In other words, almost exactly a quarter of his retinue were casualties of the siege. Mowbray’s company was even harder hit: death and sickness reduced it by almost a third. Of the fifty men-at-arms he brought with him, three died during the siege and thirteen, including the earl himself, were sent home ill; of his 150 archers, as many as forty-seven were invalided back to England. Similarly, John, Lord Harington, who had brought a retinue of thirty men-at-arms and ninety archers, had to return home sick from Harfleur himself on 5 October, together with ten of his men-at-arms and twenty of his archers. The effect on smaller retinues was equally devastating. Sir Ralph Shirley also lost a third of his men: he had originally mustered only six men-at-arms and eighteen archers; three of the former, including himself, and six of the latter were invalided home. Sir Rowland Lenthalle, a Herefordshire knight, brought a retinue of twelve men-at-arms, of whom two died at Harfleur and three more were sent home sick; his thirty-six archers fared much better, with only two of them dying during the siege. Thomas Chaucer, as we have seen, brought twelve men-at-arms and thirty-seven archers; two of the former died of dysentery at Harfleur and Chaucer himself was invalided home, but all of his archers survived unscathed. Dysentery was not, as one might have expected, a disease that always afflicted the lowest ranks hardest.
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If such figures can be taken as a general trend—and there must have been retinues that suffered both more and less—then we can assume that, in total, the king lost between a quarter and a third of his men to dysentery as a result of the siege. There were other casualties, including, of course, those who were killed in action, and those like Nicholas Seymour, brother of the lord of Castle Cary, who was captured at Harfleur and was still believed to be alive and a prisoner in France at the end of December. Additionally, as the chaplain pointed out, there were those who, to the king’s great indignation, “out of sheer cowardice, leaving or rather deserting their king in the field, had stealthily slipped away to England beforehand.”
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The need to garrison Harfleur was a further drain on manpower. Having gained the town at such cost, it was critically important that it should stay in English hands. It was therefore necessary to ensure that it was adequately manned to prevent its recapture the moment the main English army departed. Henry decided that the earl of Dorset should have a force of 300 men-at-arms and 900 archers to safeguard its defences—a garrison that was almost two and a half times the size of that at Calais. How the men were chosen is not known, but it is likely that it was on a volunteer basis. This is suggested by the fact that, rather than simply assigning certain whole retinues to the task, which would probably have been the simplest method, men were drawn, apparently indiscriminately in terms of numbers, from a variety of different companies: Michael de la Pole, whose father died during the siege, provided two men-at-arms and five archers, and Thomas, Lord Camoys, a single man-at-arms, for example, while eight of the fifty Lancashire archers brought by Sir Richard Kyghley were also selected.
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A muster roll for the winter of 1415-16 reveals that the 300 men-at-arms included four barons, the lords Hastings, Grey, Bourchier and Clinton, and twenty-two knights (Sir Thomas Erpingham and Sir John Fastolf among them). This was an unusually high proportion of senior members of the nobility, reflecting the importance Henry attached to keeping the town, but also providing the earl of Dorset with a ready-made council of experienced and reliable soldiers and administrators in the event of an emergency. For some of them, this appointment proved to be a turning point in their careers. Fastolf, for example, saw the focus of his activity shift from England to France. Within a few months he had acquired the life grant of a manor and lordship near Harfleur that had belonged to Guy Malet, sire de Graville, and his profits of war would be so great that he was able to spend the next thirty years investing £460 annually (over $305,900 at today’s values) in the purchase of lands in England and France.
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