Agincourt (32 page)

The news that Henry was making preparations for his army to march towards Calais was already known as far afield as Boulogne on 6 October, but it was 11 October before the men of that town knew for certain that he had indeed left Harfleur and was heading for Blanche Taque. From the moment of its departure the progress of the English army was observed and the vital information relayed by couriers on horseback to Constable d’Albret and Marshal Boucicaut at Abbeville. It says much for their military leadership and organisation that the English would not take a single town or castle by surprise.

The English army was only two miles outside Harfleur when it came under attack for the first time. As it passed within half a mile of Montivilliers, Colard, sire de Villequier, and twenty-five crossbowmen launched an ambush. It was easily beaten off, but not without casualties: Geoffrey Blake was killed and an esquire, two archers and three cordwainers (leather-workers) were captured.
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From Montivilliers, the English made their way northwards and slightly eastwards across the Caux plateau towards the town of Fécamp on the Norman coast. This was not the most direct route, but, in the absence of maps and in hostile country, the coastline was the best possible visual guide to enable them to get to Calais and they would stay within a couple of miles of it for as long as possible.

Fécamp, like Montivilliers, was a small town dominated then, as now, by a huge eleventh-century abbey church with the distinctive squat and square Norman tower at its centre. Both had strong links with the English monarchy and with Henry V’s own claims to the duchy of Normandy. William the Conqueror’s father had rebuilt the abbey of Montivilliers after its destruction by the Vikings and had installed his sister as abbess: the Conqueror himself had celebrated his victory at the battle of Hastings in the abbey church at Fécamp. According to at least one chronicler, Henry had expressed a great desire “to see those lands, whereof he ought to be Lord” and he was now about to get his wish.
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The energetic David, sire de Rambures, had anticipated Henry’s descent on Fécamp and got there before him. Five years earlier, the town had been the victim of an English sea-raid in which some four hundred houses were burnt and half the population driven out. Perhaps as a result of this attack, the castle was in a state of disrepair, so de Rambures placed military necessity before piety and put a large garrison into the famous abbey: the church, with its rough-hewn exterior walls and great flying buttresses, surrounded by the high walls and towers of the monastery, was just as defensible as any military fortification. And the abbot of Fécamp was likely to have been sympathetic, since he was the brother of Jean, sire d’Estouteville, who had led the defence of Harfleur with Raoul de Gaucourt; in September he had made his own preparations for an English offensive by drawing up an inventory of all the abbey’s goods. His efforts were in vain, for Henry V had no intention of engaging in either a siege or an assault. When he made his appearance before the town on 9 October, he merely skirted round it and continued on the road eastwards towards Dieppe. Once again, however, the French garrison was able to pick off a few English stragglers, capturing a man-at-arms, William Bramshulf, and two archers, Edward Legh and John de Rede.
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On Friday 11 October the English arrived on the outskirts of Dieppe. They had now travelled some fifty-five miles in three days, and were almost exactly on target for achieving their goal of reaching Calais within eight days. Only five weeks earlier, Master Jean de Bordiu had reported to his native Aquitaine that Dieppe was the next major town on the king’s list, scheduled for conquest after the fall of Harfleur.
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Now, however, Henry gave the place a wide berth and headed inland along the south bank of the river Arques to find a crossing. Four miles away, in the shadow of a spectacular twelfth-century fortress that commanded the length and breadth of the wide valley at the confluence of the tributary rivers Béthune and Varenne, lay the small town of Arques and its bridges. The garrison here had taken the precaution of barricading the narrow bridges, but had not actually destroyed them, so they were still usable.

The presence of such a powerful castle was an indication of the strategic importance of the place and should have deterred any attack. Yet Henry, an experienced soldier and master tactician, had no qualms about forcing a passage under the nose of the garrison. He knew that, although the castle itself was virtually impregnable, the town was its weak point. Unlike the great merchant towns of Normandy and Picardy—Harfleur, Dieppe, Abbeville, Amiens, Péronne, Boulogne—Arques had neither walls nor ramparts to defend itself. If the castle garrison was outnumbered or outmanoeuvred, it could retreat behind the safety of its curtain walls or into its keep: though room might be found for the civilian population, their property was at the mercy of marauders.

It was absolutely necessary that the army should cross the river, so this time Henry V did not shirk a conflict. He ordered his men to take up their battle positions in full view of the castle and made himself conspicuous by appearing in the front ranks. (His banners and coat of arms blazoned across his chest would have marked him out, even if he had not been wearing his helm with its crown.) The garrison made a half-hearted attempt at defiance, lobbing a few gun-stones to prevent him coming any closer, but without inflicting any damage. The news of what had happened to Harfleur had already spread right across the duchy of Normandy and the garrison at Arques had no wish to become martyrs to the king of England’s cause. When he sent a deputation to its defenders, threatening to burn the town and the surrounding countryside if they did not permit him free passage, they gave up all pretence of resistance and quickly came to terms. That same day, they handed over the hostages and the bread and wine for his troops which he had demanded as the price of sparing the locality, removed the tree trunks barricading the bridges and the entrance to the town, and allowed the king and his army to pass through to the other side without any impediment.
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What happened at Arques was to become the pattern for the remainder of Henry’s campaign. He would carefully avoid the major walled towns, but the presence of a castle, no matter how intimidating or well garrisoned, would not deflect him from his planned route.

On 12 October, having spent the night in the fields near Arques, the English recommenced their journey up the coast, making their way towards Eu, “the last town in Normandy.” As their scouts approached, some of the garrison sallied out to meet them. What followed was a chivalric encounter worthy of the pages of Froissart. Among the Frenchmen was “a very valiant man-at-arms,” the appropriately named Lancelot Pières, who was anxious to demonstrate his prowess against the invaders. He therefore couched his lance under his arm as a sign of challenge, which was accepted by one of the English knights or esquires, who responded by doing the same. The two men charged towards each other, but before Pières could get his blow in, he was himself hit in the stomach with the steel blade of his opponent’s lance, which slid between the plates of his armour. Knowing that he was mortally wounded, he did not flinch, but revenged his own death by killing his opponent. Those who were witnesses to this deadly joust of war observed that the two men had clashed with such force that their lances had passed right through each other’s body. This exploit won Lancelot Pières a small place in the annals of French chivalry, though his equally deserving opponent died anonymously, and therefore, on his terms, in vain. After this individual encounter, the English scouts succeeded in driving the rest of those involved in the sortie back into the town, inflicting further deaths and injuries, but also incurring some wounds themselves.
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Fighting a scouting party was one thing, but when the massed ranks of the main body of the English army advanced towards Eu, the garrison prudently decided to remain behind its great walls. After his success at Arques, Henry determined to try the same tactic again. As his men settled down for the night in the neighbouring towns and villages, he sent messengers to Eu, demanding specified quantities of food and wine in return for not laying waste to the entire district. This had the desired effect. Hostages were handed over, bread and wine were rapidly produced and the troops in the garrison sat on their hands as the English prepared to move off the next day.
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So far, the march to Calais had proceeded exactly according to plan. Although the French chroniclers rehearsed the customary chorus that the English had wantonly burnt and destroyed everything in their path
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(as would have happened on a traditional
chevauchée
), this was patently not the case. The mere threat had been sufficient to bring the indigenous population to heel. The French had behaved as they always did when faced with an English
chevauchée
, retreating behind their fortifications and offering the line of least resistance, in order to get the enemy to move on and out of their neighbourhood as rapidly as possible.

But of course this was no ordinary
chevauchée
. Its objective was to provoke a pitched battle, and some of the prisoners who had been taken along the way now reported that a great French army was poised to fight within the next two days. “But there were different opinions amongst us as to when battle would be joined,” the chaplain commented. Some thought that the Armagnac leaders would not dare to leave Rouen and march against them, for fear that the duke of Burgundy would seize the opportunity either to attack them from behind or to return in triumph to Paris. Others believed that whatever their differences in the past, the dukes of Burgundy and Orléans would unite in the face of the English challenge.
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Although the Peace of Arras had been agreed between the Armagnacs and Burgundians in September 1414, and had been formally concluded and celebrated in Paris in February 1415, John the Fearless had not been happy with its terms. Though it was supposed to offer an amnesty to all involved in the partisan fighting, a royal ordinance of 2 February had unilaterally excluded five hundred of his own Parisian supporters, the Cabochiens, who had been exiled from Paris in 1413. When the duke learnt that his own ambassadors had accepted this, he was furious and reprimanded them severely. The Armagnacs in the dauphin’s entourage “are only trying by all the means that they can think of and imagine to bring about the total destruction of us and of ours,” he raged; “we inform you that the things that have been done are and will be displeasing to us . . . and we do not want you to proceed with them in any way whatsoever. And if, which God forbid, [the dauphin] . . . remains and persists absolutely in this purpose and there is no possibility of another arrangement honourable for us and ours, we would like you to depart and take leave of him.”
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While the other French princes and their partisans up and down the country took their oaths to abide by the terms of the treaty, the duke of Burgundy remained aloof, insisting that the five hundred Cabochiens should be included in the general amnesty before he would swear himself. It was not until 30 July, only a few days before the English invasion began, that he finally submitted. Even then, he did so conditionally, having a formal document drawn up in secret by papal notaries in which it was stated that his oath was dependent on the dauphin pardoning all his supporters, including the Cabochiens. In the letters he sent to the dauphin, recording his oath, he also included a clause implying that he would only regard it as valid if the Armagnac princes implemented their part of the treaty.
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Throughout August, while the English besieged Harfleur, the duke and the dauphin were locked in a dispute about the wording of the oath. The dauphin demanded that it should be unconditional; the duke insisted that all his supporters should be pardoned. The deadlock might have remained unresolved, had it not been for the presence of Henry V and his army in Normandy. The Armagnacs already had their suspicions that the duke was in league with the invaders, but they could not afford to drive him openly into the arms of the English. On 31 August the dauphin finally gave way and issued a royal amnesty to all but forty-five of the Cabochiens. The duke responded by reissuing his letters in September, with the offending contingency clause removed. Nevertheless, he continued to press for the pardon to be extended to the last forty-five throughout the autumn—and also continued to harbour the exiles in his own lands. To outward appearances, the Peace of Arras had at last been formally ratified by all parties, but no one who knew anything of the duke believed that he was fully committed to it.
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And of course there were persistent rumours that John the Fearless was in league with the English. Although the offensive and defensive alliance he had suggested to Henry V the previous summer had not come to anything, it seems likely that the duke had indeed made a secret pact with the king that he would not resist an English invasion of France. As we have seen, English envoys were allowed to recruit ships for the campaign in Holland and Zeeland, areas that were within the Burgundian sphere of influence.
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Contingents of English mercenaries, said to be archers, were present in the Burgundian garrisons of both Soissons and Arras when they were besieged by the Armagnacs in 1414. With typical medieval xenophobia, the English archers at Soissons were accused of betraying the town to the Armagnacs by opening one of the gates, and forty of them were later hanged, though this was more likely to be because they were English and mercenaries, rather than for any betrayal, real or imagined.
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In addition to this circumstantial evidence, there is no doubt that the duke of Burgundy was in contact with the English throughout the summer and autumn of 1415. In July Burgundian ambassadors spent sixteen days in England, negotiating an alliance at the very time when the final embassy of the Armagnac archbishop of Bourges failed to secure peace: members of his party observed a herald in the Burgundian livery among the crowds at Winchester as they left. (Another Burgundian herald, the future chronicler Jean le Févre, was to accompany the English army throughout the Agincourt campaign.) On 10 August, the day before the invasion fleet sailed, in what must have been one of his last acts before leaving, Henry appointed Master Philip Morgan, a highly skilled lawyer, to make final arrangements for an alliance with the duke. Morgan left London on 19 August and did not return until 19 December; the exchequer accounts refer to him as an “ambassador on secret business to the duke of Burgundy” and he was evidently successful for “letters of peace with the duke of Burgundy sealed with his own seal” were deposited in the exchequer on 10 October, fifteen days before Agincourt.
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