Agincourt (39 page)
Every single Englishman, including the king himself, was to fight on foot. All their horses, the baggage, the pages of the knights and squires who were too young to fight, and those who were too sick to raise a weapon in their own defence, were sent behind the lines and committed to the safekeeping of one gentleman, commanding a company of ten men-at-arms and twenty archers.
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Everyone else who was capable of wielding a bow or a sword was deployed according to the battle plan that the king had devised. Unlike the French force, where there were said to be so many banners that some of them had to be taken down and put away because they were causing an obstruction, the English ones were few and could be easily identified. The king’s own bodyguard boasted the four banners that had flown on his flagship as he invaded France: his personal arms and those of St George, Edward the Confessor and the Trinity.
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Scattered among the thin line of men-at-arms could also be seen the banners of Henry’s brother Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, their uncle Edward, duke of York, the earls of March, Huntingdon, Oxford and Suffolk, and those of Sir Gilbert Umfraville, Sir John Roos and Sir John Cornewaille. The archers, now outnumbering their own men-at-arms by five to one, had taken up their positions on the wings and between the battles, hammering their stakes into the muddy ground with leaden mallets that were to prove almost as deadly weapons as their bows.
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As he had done on the previous afternoon when battle was expected, Henry rode up and down his lines, exhorting and encouraging his men to do their best. He did not shrink from addressing the disquiet that some of them must have felt about the justice of the cause in which they were offering their lives, because he knew that this was not simply a moral difficulty, but one that went to the heart of each man’s personal hope of eternal salvation. The laws of war stated that “if the quarrel is unjust, he that exposes himself in it condemns his soul; and if he dies in such a state, he will go the way of perdition.”
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Henry had come to France to recover his rightful inheritance, he reminded them, and his cause and quarrel were good and just. In that quarrel they could therefore fight with a clear conscience and in the certainty of salvation. Then he appealed directly to their sense of patriotism. They should remember that they had been born in the realm of England, where their fathers and mothers, wives and children, were living and waiting for them. For their sakes, they ought to do their best to return covered in glory and praise. The kings of England had inflicted many great defeats on the French in the past; today, every man should play his part in defending the king’s person and the honour of the crown of England. Finally, he told them that the French had boasted that they would cut off two fingers from the right hand of every English archer, so that none of them would ever draw a longbow again. This was a pardonable untruth. Henry’s men knew as well as he did that the French would simply kill anyone not wearing the coat of arms that identified the bearer as being of noble birth and therefore able to afford a ransom. The archers therefore faced certain death if they were defeated. The threat of being mutilated, however, and in a way which implicitly recognised the importance of the archer’s skill, was an insult not to be borne. The very idea was enough to inflame the righteous indignation of the troops, and Henry’s inspirational speech had the desired effect. A great cry went up from the ranks, “Sire, we pray to God that He may grant you long life and victory over our enemies!”
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There was now one last thing Henry had to do if he was to keep his own conscience clear and maintain his reputation for justice in the eyes of the world. He had to make one last effort to avoid battle. He therefore sent heralds to demand a parley and appointed several trusted envoys to meet the French representatives in the centre of the battlefield, in full view of the opposing forces. Though we do not know the names of the Englishmen involved, those of the French have been recorded and, apart from Guichard Dauphin, the grand-master of the king’s household, they were a distinctly provocative choice. Each one had a personal reason to seek vengeance against the English in battle. Colart d’Estouteville, sire de Torcy, for example, was brother to Jean, the defender of Harfleur, who was on parole as the king of England’s prisoner. Jean Malet, sire de Graville, also had a personal grudge against Henry V: he had lost lands round Harfleur worth five hundred livres due to the English invasion and occupation.
The most controversial choice, however, was Jacques de Créquy, sire de Heilly, marshal of Guienne, the only Burgundian in this group of Armagnacs. It was not his political allegiance that made him so contentious but the fact that he was an English prisoner who had broken his parole. In the summer of 1413 the earl of Dorset, who was then Henry’s lieutenant in Aquitaine, had embarked on an aggressive campaign of reconquest over the northern borders of the duchy. As marshal of Guienne, de Heilly had been sent from Paris at the head of a small army “to fall upon the English and drive them out of the country.” Instead, he was ambushed, his men were slaughtered and he himself was one of those captured and sent back to England as the earl’s prisoner. When news of the fall of Harfleur reached him, he could no longer bear his enforced captivity and, with a group of other prisoners, succeeded in breaking out of Wisbech Castle, where he was being held, and escaped back to France.
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While de Heilly had indeed broken his chivalric oath, he had done it for patriotic reasons and he now used this opportunity to attempt to clear the slur on his reputation. “Noble Kinge, it hath often been shewed unto me, and also to others of our realme, that I should fly from you shamefully and otherwise then a knight shoulde doe,” he is alleged to have said to Henry, “which report I am here readie to prove untrue. And if there be any man of your host brave enough to reproach me with it, lett him prepare him to a single battaile. And I shall prove it upon him before thy Majestie, that wrongefullie that report hath been imagined and furnished of me.” This demand was given short shrift by the king, who had more important things on his mind than watching a single combat to redeem de Heilly’s honour. “No battaile shall be here foughten at this time for this cause,” he replied, sternly ordering de Heilly to return to his company and prepare for real battle. “And we trust in God,” he added, “that like as you havinge no regard to the order of honour of knighthood, escaped from us, so this day ye shall either be taken and brought to us againe, or else by the sworde you shall finish your life.”
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As Jean le Févre freely admitted, apart from the airing of de Heilly’s personal grievance, no one knew what the English and French negotiators discussed or what offers were made. The French chroniclers would later claim that Henry had realised that he was hopelessly outnumbered and could not win the battle, so he therefore offered to give back Harfleur (Calais, too, according to some sources), free all his prisoners and pay damages, if only he were to be allowed a free passage home with his men.
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This flies in the face of common sense. Henry would hardly have come so far only to give up more than he had gained, simply to escape with his life; his absolute and unshakeable belief in his cause would not have allowed him to do it. Le Févre’s own version is more plausible, even though he freely admits it was based on hearsay.
The French offered, as I have heard said, that if he would renounce his pretended title to the crown of France, and never take it up again, and return the town of Harfleur which he had recently captured, the king [Charles VI] would be content to allow him to keep Aquitaine and that which he held from the ancient conquest of Picardy [Calais]. The king of England, or his people, replied that, if the king of France would give up to him the duchy of Aquitaine and five named cities which belonged to, and ought to be part of, the duchy, together with the county of Ponthieu and Madam Catherine, the daughter of the king of France, in marriage . . . and 800,000
écus
for her jewels and clothing, he would be content to renounce his title to the crown of France and return the town of Harfleur.
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Whatever offers were really made, and by whichever side, the negotiations were brief and were rejected by both parties. All the formalities required by the law of arms and the demands of justice had now been met. Only one recourse was left. There would indeed be a trial by battle, not one between de Heilly and his accuser, nor even one between Henry V and the dauphin, but one between the assembled might of the two greatest military nations in Europe. Their disputed claims were about to be put to the judgement of God.
“FELAS, LETS GO!”
And then there was stalemate. “Everywhere and on all occasions that foot soldiers march against their enemy face to face,” the military textbooks stated, “those who march lose and those who remain standing still and holding firm win.”
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So each side waited in vain for the other to make the first move. Neither did. As the minutes ticked by and turned into hours, it became a test of nerve and discipline. Who would crack first?
The contrast between the appearance of the two armies could not have been starker. On one side stood row upon numberless row of motionless French men-at-arms, clad from head to foot in burnished armour, armed with swords and lances shortened for fighting on foot, and with brightly coloured pennons and banners waving over their heads. Behind them and on the wings were those crossbowmen and archers whose services had been retained, together with the guns, catapults and other engines of war which had been brought from nearby towns, all waiting to discharge their shots on the enemy. The only movement was at the rear of the army, where the restive horses were literally chafing at the bit in the cold and damp of the late autumn morning and had to be exercised by the mounted men-at-arms and their valets. Well fed, well armed, secure in their superior numbers, this was an army brimming with confidence and eager to crush the tantalisingly small force that had had the temerity to invade France and capture one of its finest towns.
On the other side were the English, an equally fearsome sight, but for different reasons. These were trapped and desperate men, who knew that only a miracle could save them from death, and were therefore determined to sell themselves dearly. For almost three weeks they had marched across hostile enemy territory, their supplies of food and drink dwindling away to nothing, unable to wash or shave, their armour tarnished and their surcoats and banners grimy and tattered by the constant exposure to the elements. Some, it was said, were even barefoot, having completely worn out their shoes during the trek. Stomachs and bowels, already churning with dysentery and starvation, were now turned to water by fear. Many of the archers were reduced to cutting off their soiled breeches and undergarments in an attempt to allow nature to take its course more easily—an option not available to the men-at-arms, encased in their padded steel plate armour. Grim though the sight of them must have been, the smell was probably worse.
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In the end, it was the nerve of the English that broke first. After perhaps several hours of this motionless confrontation, Henry realised that the French were not going to make the first assault, as he had expected, and that they would continue to stand astride his route for as long as it took: they did not need to attack because fear and starvation would do their work in destroying his army for them. Indeed, one of the arguments put forward in the royal council at Rouen when deciding what battle plan to adopt had been that the mere sight of so many French princes in the front ranks of the army would be sufficient to strike such terror into the hearts of the English that they would simply run away. This was clearly what the French were still expecting to happen.
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Aware that the longer the impasse continued, the more his men’s morale would ebb away, Henry decided that he would have to tear up the rule-book and make the first move. He ordered the baggage, the horses, the royal chaplains and all those who had been left behind in and around Maisoncelle to move forward to the rear of the army, so that they would not be left isolated and at risk of pillagers when the fighting began. Once most of the baggage train had taken up their new position, all the priests in the army were now commanded to employ themselves in prayer on its behalf: “then, indeed, and for as long as the conflict lasted,” wrote our timorous chaplain, in perhaps one of the most evocative and human moments of the entire campaign, I, who am now writing this and was then sitting on a horse among the baggage at the rear of the battle, and the other priests present did humble our souls before God and . . . said in our hearts: “Remember us, O Lord, our enemies are gathered together and boast themselves in their excellence. Destroy their strength and scatter them, that they may understand, because there is none other that fighteth for us but only Thou, our God.” And also, in fear and trembling, with our eyes raised to heaven we cried out that God would have compassion upon us and upon the crown of England . . .
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With the words of his priests ringing in his ears, the king gave the order for the army to prepare to advance. Every man, regardless of rank, now knelt at his command, kissed the ground and took a morsel of the earth from beneath his feet and placed it in his mouth. This extraordinary ritual was conducted with all the solemnity of a genuine Church sacrament. It combined elements of both the Last Supper and its commemoration, the Eucharist, in which the Christian receives the bread in remembrance that Christ the Redeemer died for him, but also of the committal words of the burial service, “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” Physical death and spiritual salvation were thus represented in the single act.
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The vitally important command of the archers had been given to one of the most experienced of all Henry’s military officers, the steward of the royal household, Sir Thomas Erpingham, a fifty-eight-year-old Norfolk gentleman who had begun his own military career at the age of eleven, serving with the Black Prince in Aquitaine. In 1380, at the age of twenty-three and already a knight, he had become a retainer of John of Gaunt, fighting for the rest of the decade in French and Spanish campaigns to establish Gaunt’s claim to the crown of Castile and León. He had accompanied Gaunt’s son, the future Henry IV, on crusade in Prussia in 1390-1 and again, in 1393, on crusade to the Holy Land. In 1398-9 he had shared Henry’s exile and played a significant part in his triumphant return by commanding the ambush that captured Richard II, whom he then kept a prisoner in the Tower. As a reward for organising Richard’s deposition, he was made constable of Dover and warden of the Cinque Ports, carried Henry’s sword before him at the coronation and, in 1401, was made a Knight of the Garter. Henry V had appointed him his household steward on his accession and made him a witness to his will, as well as entrusting him with the negotiations for the surrender of Harfleur.
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