Agincourt (42 page)

On this particular occasion we have a third eyewitness who sheds a rather more chilling light on the killings. Ghillebert de Lannoy’s military career had begun in 1399, when he had taken part in a French raid on the Isle of Wight, followed by another in 1400 on Falmouth. From 1403 to 1408 he had been in the service of Jehan Werchin, the seneschal of Hainault, accompanying him on crusade to the east, to a tournament in Valencia and to war against the Moors in Spain. Though he had fought in the duke of Burgundy’s campaigns of 1408 and 1412, he had also rejoined the Spanish campaign, and fought in the Prussian crusades, where, after being seriously wounded at the siege of Massow, he received the order of knighthood. He had just returned from a period of captivity in England, where he had been imprisoned while on a pilgrimage to the throne of St Patrick, and had obtained his release by paying a ransom to which the duke of Burgundy contributed.
³⁷

It was now his misfortune to be captured a second time. Though he has nothing whatsoever to say about the battle—which he calls the battle of “Rousseauville”—he records that he was wounded in the knee and in the head and lay with the dead until he was found by those seeking prisoners, captured and held under guard for a short time, before being taken to a nearby house with ten or twelve other prisoners, “all of them helpless.” When the cry went up that everyone should kill their prisoners, “to have it done as quickly as possible, fire was tossed into the house where we were helpless. But, by the grace of God, I dragged myself outside and away from the flames on all fours. . . .” Unable to go any further, he was recaptured yet again when the English returned, and, recognised by his coat of arms as being of value, was sold to that canny collector of ransoms Sir John Cornewaille.
³⁸

Ghillebert de Lannoy does not divulge the fate of his fellow-internees, though one assumes they perished in the flames. The casual brutality of his account has a far more authentic ring to it than those of either the chaplain or le Févre de St Remy and it would have been a faster and more efficient method of disposing of large numbers of prisoners. Even so, one must doubt how many could have been killed by this means, since not all prisoners had been removed from the field, and some must have been slaughtered where they stood, as the other eyewitnesses testify. Yet to claim, as some modern historians have done,
³⁹
that this mass execution was the reason why so many French nobles perished at Agincourt ignores the fact that victory could not have been achieved by such a small army without extraordinarily high levels of casualties among their opponents during the course of the battle, as indeed contemporary chroniclers so graphically describe taking place. The decision to kill the prisoners was undeniably ruthless. Yet if Henry had spared them and they had launched a second front, the outcome of the day would have been very different and Henry himself would be accused of destroying his own men through faint-heartedness or misplaced charity. Significantly, not one of his contemporaries, even among the French, criticised his decision.
⁴⁰

Was there any real need to kill the prisoners at all? Some historians, following the monk of St Denis, have claimed that there was no genuine threat of a renewed French attack, and that the whole terrible episode was based on a panicked response to a false alarm. Ghillebert de Lannoy, on the other hand, thought a rally by Antoine, duke of Brabant, prompted the order.
⁴¹
This is a possibility, as the duke arrived on the battlefield very late in the day. Like his older brother John the Fearless, Antoine had not joined the other French princes for the muster at Rouen. Instead, he had held aloof until the English crossed the Somme and it became clear that battle was imminent. At that point his loyalty to his country proved stronger than his loyalty to his brother. On 23 October he began a headlong dash across his duchy, posting from Brussels by day and night at such a pace that not all his men could keep up with him. By the morning of 25 October, he was at Pernes, midway between Béthune and St Pol, hearing mass before resuming his journey. Just as the host was being elevated, he was brought news that the battle would take place before midday. With some fifteen miles still to go, he and his household leapt on their horses and rode like furies to Agincourt, arriving to find the battle already in progress. In his haste, the duke had not had time to put on his full armour or his surcoat bearing his coat of arms. He therefore borrowed the armour of his chamberlain, and tearing two pennons bearing his arms off his trumpets, he put one round his neck as a makeshift blazon and the other on a lance to serve as his banner. He then plunged into the battle, followed by his men, and was promptly cut down and slain, his unorthodox coat of arms having failed to protect him.
⁴²

Throughout it all, the French mounted rearguard had apparently stood idly by. Contemporary chroniclers blamed this on the absence of their commanders, who had left them to join those fighting on foot, so that there was no one to lead them into battle or give them the order to advance.
⁴³
In fairness, it has to be said that there was little that they could have done. Their intended role had been to pursue and cut down the English as they fled, after the cavalry, vanguard and main body of the army had broken their lines. When this did not happen, they could not intervene effectively because their route to the enemy was blocked by their own men-at-arms. It was not until their own forces had been massacred or retreated in confusion that any sort of cavalry attack was possible—and by then it was a forlorn hope.

Those in charge of the rearguard, the counts of Dammartin and Fauquembergue and the sire de Laurois, had struggled to keep their men together and in order once it became clear that the battle was going against them. Although they were unable to prevent many of them fleeing, they now, finally, rallied a significant number and, with banners and ensigns flying, they made as if to mount a charge. Whether or not they were joined by Clignet de Brabant himself, this motley band of French, Bretons, Gascons and Poitevins united in one last brave effort to save the honour of France. It was doomed to failure. Like those before them, they were met with a hail of arrows and fell with their comrades on the field. All their leaders, except the count of Dammartin and Clignet de Brabant, were killed. The nobility and self-sacrifice they had shown earned them nothing but contempt from their compatriots, who laid the blame for Henry’s order to kill the prisoners squarely at the door of “this cursed company of Frenchmen.”
⁴⁴

The finger of blame was also pointed at a third group of people. In the final stages of the battle, while the English were occupied elsewhere, the alarm was raised that they were being attacked from the rear. Had this been true the English would have been caught between two fronts and in mortal danger, again giving sufficient reason to order the killing of the prisoners. In fact, though there was indeed an attack, it was not upon the army itself, but upon the baggage train. Contemporary chroniclers accused local men of carrying out the robbery and suggest that it was a spur of the moment affair, prompted by the rich pickings available. Three Burgundians, Ysembart d’Azincourt, Robinet de Bournonville and Rifflart de Plamasse, accompanied by a small number of men-at-arms and about six hundred peasants or “people of low estate” from the Hesdin area, were said to be responsible.
⁴⁵

It is possible that this was part of the official French battle plan. An attack on “the varlets and their carts” behind English lines had been envisaged in Marshal Boucicaut’s earlier plan and a company of several hundred mounted men, under the command of Louis de Bourdon, had been appointed to carry it out.
⁴⁶
On the day of battle, de Bourdon was reassigned to more important duties, but this does not necessarily mean that the idea was abandoned, especially as there was no shortage of men in the French ranks. What more natural than that the task should be given to local men, who knew the lie of the land intimately and could secretly work their way around the English lines?

The English chaplain, however, suggests that it was an altogether more opportunistic affair, with plunder as its sole objective. He was best placed to know, since he was himself in the baggage train, and had noted that “French pillagers were watching it from almost every side, intending to make an attack upon it immediately they saw both armies engage.” According to him, the attack occurred not in the final stages of the battle but as soon as the fighting began and while the baggage train was still being brought up from its original position in and around Maisoncelle. The pillagers “fell upon the tail end of it, where, owing to the negligence of the royal servants, the king’s baggage was.” This seems a more likely scenario, especially as John Hargrove, a servant of the king’s pantry, later received a royal pardon for losing the king’s plate and jewels at Agincourt.
⁴⁷

Whenever the raid took place, it was successful beyond the dreams of the perpetrators. They acquired £219 16s in cash, jewels (including a gem-studded gold cross worth more than £2166 and a piece of the True Cross), the king’s crown, his state sword and the seals of the English chancery. The sword, which rapidly acquired the reputation of having once belonged to King Arthur, was later presented by Ysembart d’Azincourt and Robinet de Bournonville to Philippe, count of Charolais, in the hope that it might persuade him to intercede for them if their theft incurred any repercussions. It was a fruitless gesture. Once the rumour had gained ground that it was their actions which had prompted the killing of the French prisoners, Philippe was forced to give up the sword to his father, John the Fearless, who had the two men arrested and imprisoned. If nothing else, they were convenient scapegoats and punishing them would appease not only the outcry in France but the duke of Burgundy’s English ally.
⁴⁸

Back on the battlefield, it soon became clear that the attempt to rally the French had failed. With their leaders dead and the king of England advancing menacingly towards them, the last remnants of the rearguard realised that further resistance was futile. Those who still had their horses gave themselves up to flight, abandoning those on foot to their fate and the possession of the field to the English. Though it was obvious that victory was his, Henry had one last formality to observe. Before the battle began, he had ordered that his heralds “should diligently attend only to their own duties” and should not take up arms themselves. As le Févre de St Remy explains, the English heralds had then joined their French counterparts to watch the course of the combat together.
⁴⁹
By reason of their office, they stood above partisan loyalties and were there as impartial international observers. As if they were attending a joust or tournament, it was their role to record valiant deeds and, ultimately, to award the palm of victory.

It was for this reason that Henry V now summoned them to his presence. He formally requested Montjoie king of arms, the senior herald of France, to tell him whether the victory had fallen to the king of England or to the king of France. In acknowledging that God had indeed given victory to Henry, Montjoie was thus forced to admit that the king of England had won his trial by battle and that he had proved that his cause was just. Afterwards, Henry asked him the name of the castle that stood close to the battlefield and was informed that it was called Azincourt. “And because, said the king, all battles ought to bear the name of the nearest fortress, village or town to the place where they were fought, this battle will now and for ever be known as the battle of Azincourt.”
⁵⁰

PART III

THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE ROLL OF THE DEAD

The sheer scale of the French defeat was genuinely humbling, even frightening. Thousands of Frenchmen lay dead on the field of Agincourt. The exact number is impossible to gauge because contemporary chronicle sources vary wildly and there are no comprehensive official administrative records to draw upon. Thomas Walsingham, for instance, gives the very precise figure of 3069 knights and esquires, plus almost a hundred barons, but admits that the number of common people was not counted by the heralds. The chaplain counted ninety-eight men above the rank of banneret, “whose names are set down in a volume of record,” which was probably the same source used by Walsingham. He also says that the French lost a further fifteen hundred and more knights “according to their own estimate,” and between four and five thousand other gentlemen, “almost the whole nobility among the soldiery of France.” On the other hand, the Venetian Antonio Morosini, quoting a letter written at Paris on 30 October, five days after the battle, when no one yet knew for sure what the losses had been, lists (inaccurately) the names of twenty-six barons killed and thirteen taken prisoner, and puts the final number of dead at between ten and twelve thousand, though it is not clear whether this includes commoners.
¹

What is beyond dispute is not so much the precise magnitude of the French losses, but the fact that the corresponding figures for the English dead were, by any standard, infinitesimally small. Only two magnates lost their lives: Edward, duke of York, and Michael de la Pole, the young earl of Suffolk, whose father had died of dysentery at Harfleur a few weeks earlier. Most chroniclers suggest that somewhere in the region of thirty others were killed, together with some four or five gentlemen, of whom only two are usually named, Sir Richard Kyghley and Daffyd ap Llewelyn. These figures are, as we shall see, a serious underestimate of the true total, though it seems unlikely that the real number was as high as the 1600 “men of all ranks” cited by le Févre,
²
if only because this would have been over a quarter of the entire English army and not even the most ardent propagandist could have claimed that such a loss was insignificant.