Blood Cries Afar (22 page)

In the clarity afforded by a bright sun, the soldiers could distinctly make out the opposing lines: the men, the horses, the gleaming weapons and armour and the rich colours of numerous banners. Philip of France, in a pre-battle oration that combined nationalism and religion, exhorted his troops to fight together and at the same time. Behind him could be faintly heard the chant of his chaplain, William the Breton, leading another household clerk in prayers for France’s triumph: ‘Blessed be my Lord who leads my hand into battle’ (Psalm 143) and ‘Lord, the king will rejoice in your strength’ (Psalm 20). Late in the afternoon, the full battle commenced.
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It was Guérin who had opened hostilities on his flank. His early correct assessment of the enemy’s intentions had been crucial in granting the French the time they needed to draw up their forces. Now his judgement was once again critical. He realised that the more time passed the more allied soldiers would be drawn up on the battlefield, thereby outnumbering the French. He needed to take advantage of the allies’ lack of organisation as they attempted to deploy troops arriving on the battlefield from their column of march. He had already efficiently arranged the French in battle order, ensuring that their line had spread out wide enough to avoid being outflanked and so that all the troops could fight simultaneously. Taking advice from St Pol, Guérin launched a cavalry charge of 150 mounted sergeants from Soissons. The purpose of this light cavalry change was to disrupt the opposing Flemish formation, softening and loosening it up for a charge by heavy cavalry. The Flemish absorbed the attack comfortably, inflicting severe damage on the French: the brunt of the casualties was felt amongst the unarmoured horses; only two sergeants were killed in the charge. The Flemish knights waited for their moment to counter-attack: William the Breton claims that they considered it beneath their dignity to engage with mounted men-at-arms; it was probably also equally true that they were disciplined enough to refrain from breaking ranks too early, something that Guérin had hoped for. With so many horses lost the men of Soissons had to fight on foot or retreat. Two Flemish knights, Walter of Ghistelle and Baldwin Buridan, then led a charge against the Champanois heavy cavalry, escalating the conflict. After the clash of the first shock had broken the lances of the knights, swords were drawn and wielded. Amongst the division from Champagne, Pierre de Rémy and his men distinguished themselves by capturing the two Flems who had led the charge. Another Flem, Eustace of Machalen, cried out, ‘Death to the French!’, foolishly drawing attention to himself: some French soldiers grabbed hold of him, ripped off his helmet and struck him dead with a knife thrust beneath the ventrail.

The next divisions to commit themselves to the battle were those of Gaucher de St Pol and Count Ferrand of Flanders. Ferrand’s move into the fray forced back the knights of Pierre de Rémy in its diagonal drive to King Philip’s position, but a charge by St Pol, a follow-up to the Soissons’ first attempt, cut deep into the enemy’s ranks. In fact the sheer impetus of this charge by St Pol’s elite knights took them straight through Ferrand’s ranks and they could then, having brought their mounts about, attack from the rear. Much of Ferrand’s force became surrounded when confronted by a further onslaught from the Viscount of Melun and his men. These charges inflicted heavy losses among the Flemish infantry, many of whom were hemmed in by warhorses and their riders, with blows raining down on them. The knights on both sides were not so easily dispatched: their armour afforded great protection even when unhorsed from their high, mounted battle platforms (horses were a primary target) they were not easily killed. The French then launched a third wave of cavalry, led by Count Jean de Beaumont, Mathieu de Montmorency, Duke Eudes of Burgandy, Viscount Adam de Melun and the Count of Sancerre. The Duke, a corpulent 50-year-old (like Philip) fell to the ground when his horse was killed beneath him. This was a moment of danger for the French: if the Duke were taken prisoner there might be a collapse in morale at a critical stage. In the Anonymous of Béthune’s slightly different version, Arnulf of Oudernaarde came to blows with the Duke and attempted to kill him by forcing his dagger through the helmet’s eye-hole. Immediately the Duke was surrounded by his men, probably his household bodyguard; these protected him while another horse was brought up for him to remount. When back in the saddle, he was urged to leave the fray for some rest, but he refused: he plunged back into the fight to avenge himself for the dishonour of being unhorsed.

The Duke was not the only knight on the French side to find himself in trouble. Michael de Harnes was pierced by a lance between his hauberk and his thigh which pinned him to his saddle and his horse as both lay on the ground; he was rescued by his comrades who placed him on another horse. Michael’s commander, Hugh de Malevine, also had his horse slain (by Walter of Ghistelle before his capture), and like many other knights that day he had to fight on foot, but ‘with no less skill’. Meanwhile the Count of St Pol and some of his men had withdrawn from the press: exhaustion in battle, especially when covered in armour in blazing heat, sapped the strength and endurance of even the fittest warriors. While regaining his breath, he caught sight of one of his knights surrounded by Flemish troops. He replaced his helmet and rode to the beleaguered knight’s assistance. Charging with his head bent low over his horse’s neck he broke into the throng of enemy troops (and, given the nature of a full blown mêlée, no doubt forced aside some of his own infantry in the process). He then stood up in his stirrups and struck down with his sword from the mobile platform of his
destrier
, carving a way out for his companion. St Pol was repeatedly struck by the lances and pikes of the Flems, but neither he nor his horse was brought down. He returned to his knights, regrouped them and led them back into the thick of the action. St Pol’s bellicosity proved too much for the Duke of Brabant: never fully committed to the imperial cause, he fled the field.

The encounter between the French right wing and the allied left wing raged to and fro for up to three hours before the balance tilted fully against the Flemish. Count Ferrand had lost his horse and was fighting on foot, but he was slowed down by serious wounds and exhaustion: he had been in the action continuously and was by now ‘half-dead’. Hugh and Jean de Mareuil fought their way to the Count, but Ferrand was forced to surrender to save his life as he was no longer able to physically defend himself. His capture was a turning point: with their leader taken prisoner and their ranks severely depleted, the Flemish surrendered, fled or were killed.

The confusion and reality of the battle are not easy to convey, but William the Breton gives an excellent contemporary eyewitness and informed depiction of its true nature in this scene from Bouvines:

… From both sides the combatants engage with each other over the whole plain in a mêlée so thick that those who are striking and those who are being struck are so close together that they can hardly find the space or opportunity to stretch out their arms in order to deliver more vigorous blows. The vestments of silk attached over the armour so that every knight can be recognised by his signs have been slashed and ripped into a thousand shreds by the maces, swords and lances that beat upon his armour to break it, so that hardly anyone could distinguish his friend from his enemy. Someone is lying on his back on the ground, his legs in the air; another falls suddenly on his side; a third is thrown head first, his eyes and mouth filling with sand. Here a cavalryman, there a footsoldier voluntarily surrender themselves to irons, fearing to be struck dead more than to live vanquished. You could see horses lying here and there across the field, breathing their last, others with entrails bursting from their stomachs; others felled from having been hamstrung; and still others wandered here and there without their masters, freely offering themselves to whomsoever wished to ride them. There was hardly anywhere that one did not find a body stretched out or a horse dying.

With perhaps as many as 169 knights killed (some ten per cent), Bouvines was indeed a bloody battle by the standards of the day.
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The central divisions had by this time experienced the same vicious realities of battle. The infantry of the French communes – from Beauvais, Compiègne, Corbie and Arras – arrived on the battlefield only just before Otto’s battalions advanced on Philip. These French footsoldiers had not been able to answer the recall at Bouvines with the same swiftness of the cavalry, and they had been in the van of the column on its march to Lille. When they saw Philip’s fleur-de-lis standard, carried by Galon de Montigny, they drew themselves up in front of the King’s household knights. Hardly had they done so when Otto’s troops were upon them. These communal levies were unable to withstand the allies’ charge and the Emperor’s knights crashed through the King’s battalion. Seeing the imminent danger to the King, William des Barres led the household knights in a counter-thrust as Gui Mauvoisin, Stephen Longchamp, Henry Count of Bar and others rushed to protect the king. Unbeknown to the French at this time, the allied commanders had sworn an oath to target Philip in the battle. While the knights of either side were engaged, German footsoldiers penetrated further through the lines of the communal infantry and household knights to reach King Philip himself. Armed with their pikes and billhooks they reached out for Philip on his horse. One hook from a pole-arm secured itself in Philip’s chainmail between his head and chest, and the King of France was brought head first to the ground.

If any episode from the pages of medieval history should dispel the myth of the insignificance of infantry in warfare, this is it: common footsoldiers had unhorsed a French king and were now poised to kill him. The killing of the enemy’s commander, especially when he was the greatest power in the land, usually presaged the end of the battle: Harold’s death at Hastings in 1066, Richard III’s at Bosworth in 1485 and Pedro II of Aragon’s at Muret in 1213 (still fresh in the minds of the combatants at Bouvines) were all decisive moments in those battles. Now the Capetian monarch was faced with the same fate. Philip managed to drag himself to his feet with the billhook, wrenched from its owner’s grasp, still hanging from his neck. But the German soldiers continued to set about him. French trumpets sounded the alarm warning of the King’s peril; Galon de Montigny frantically waved the national banner as an urgent message of the danger facing the monarch, and hence the whole French army. In one of the battle’s many acts of bravery, the distress signal was immediately acted upon by the household knight Pierre Tristan who dismounted and put himself between his King and his assailants, holding them off while Philip mounted Pierre’s horse ‘with surprising agility’ and escaped to relative safety while Pierre was killed by the infantry. The Capetian King had been saved by the sacrifice of a gallant knight who had reached him in time and by the efficacy of medieval (and particularly royal) armour.
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The battle now raged more fiercely than ever. Stephen Longchamp, another household knight, was killed immediately in front of the King, the victim of a new type of weapon: a slim dagger with three sharp edges which could slide through weak points in a suit of armour. This is how Longchamp died, pierced through his eye to the brain by a thrust through his helmet’s eye-hole – the most common method of dispatching a well-protected knight.
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With Philip remounted, and all his German attackers slain, the French centre-division began a concerted counter-attack against the imperial battalions, gradually pushing them back. The intensity of the fighting took on an almost poetic character to spectators. This was a battle of epic proportions, the contest of a generation, which saw both armies unleash all their mighty force in the ultimate drama of violence. As William the Breton wrote of this stage of the battle: ‘Thus began the marvellous fray, the slaying and slaughtering of men and horses by both sides, as all were fighting with wondrous virtue.’ Broadswords, clubs, lances, maces, spears, bows, crossbows, daggers, pikes, axes, falchions, billhooks, slings and bare hands were all utilised in the combat, each taking its toll.

The pendulum had swung the other way and the fight was now taken to Otto. The Emperor in turn found himself threatened with mortal danger. French knights began cutting their way through to him; by this stage many knights would not regroup for any further charges and had dispensed with their lances in favour of swords and close-quarter weapons. Roger of Wendover depicts the Emperor bravely wielding his single-edged sword (probably a falchion) like a billhook and in this manner he kept the French at bay. But Pierre Mauvoison, ‘more powerful in arms than he was wise in the ways of the world’, managed to grab Otto’s bridle in an attempt to lead his horse out of the mêlée and the Emperor into captivity – a prize that would have earned him great renown and fortune. But Otto’s bodyguard had formed a tight formation around their lord and Pierre was thwarted. Gérard La Truie also managed to reach the Emperor; he unsheathed his knife and stabbed him full in the chest, but the weapon was unable to pierce the chainmail. Gerard swung his knife again and missed, instead plunging his weapon deep into the eye of Otto’s warhorse which had reared its head just at the critical moment. The horse convulsed with death-throes but managed to lurch away, carrying its rider out of immediate danger before falling down dead, throwing Otto into the dust and leaving him vulnerable and exposed, the moment of maximum danger for a knight. Bernard von Ostemale rode up to his master, promptly dismounted, and bravely offered him his own horse, knowing that in doing so he faced almost certain capture or death. Otto, equally promptly, jumped on Bernard’s horse. But he was not out of harm’s way yet. Guillame des Barres, the Barrois, renowned Seneschal of France, was doggedly pursuing the Emperor as he attempted to make his escape to a safer position during the battle’s most heated phase. Des Barres managed to grab Otto by the neck, but could neither pull him from the saddle nor wrench off his helmet to cut his throat before the imperial bodyguard fell on him. Count William of Frise, Gerard von Randeradt, Otto von Tecklenburg and some Saxons had broken away from Otto’s now retreating contingent to deal with des Barres and save the Emperor. They killed his horse, bringing des Barres down and compelling him to fight on foot. He was not to be taken easily.
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He fought ‘like a raging lion’, his dagger in one hand and his sword in the other, his shield presumably lost. He had to stand fighting alone for some time as he had pushed far ahead of his companions. Some, such as Gautier de Nemours (‘The Young’), Guillame de Garlande and Barthélemy de Roye, had stressed the need to guard the King some distance back, lest he be exposed to the enemy once more. (In the
Philippidos
, William the Breton contradicts his prose account: in verse he unconvincingly portrays Philip as leading the surge to reach Otto.) Des Barres was at the point of succumbing when Thomas de St Valéry led a successful charge of cavalry and infantry through to him, forcing off the German knights and providing him with a horse and rescue.