Henry V as Warlord (23 page)

Lucifer, emperor of the deep Acheron, king of Hell, duke of Erebus and Chaos, prince of the Shadows, marquis of Barathrum and Pluto, count of Gehenna, master, regent, guardian and governor of all devils in Hell and of those mortal men alive in the world who prefer to oppose the will and commandment of our adversary Jesus Christ, to our dearest and well-loved lieutenant and proctor-general in the West, John of Burgundy.
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Yet the duke was even more frightened of Henry than he was of the Armagnacs.

The king resumed the offensive. Very early on the morning of 31 July the Earl of Huntingdon and the Captal de Buch rode to Pontoise through the darkness. It had a garrison of 1,200 men under Marshal de l’Isle Adam and was considered sufficiently safe to be visited frequently by Charles VI’s court. In the gloom the captal’s troops stole up to the town ditch through vineyards just outside and hid there, waiting for a signal that Huntingdon’s men were in position. At 4.00 a.m. they scaled the walls with ladders and, despite a fierce response by the garrison, so damaged a gate that Huntingdon was able to gallop straight in. The town was then sacked horribly, its citizens losing everything they possessed – not to mention the atrocities to which their women were subjected. The English ‘gained great riches for it was full of wealth’ says Monstrelet. On hearing the news Henry had a
Te Deum
sung at Mantes. He rode in a week later, writing exultantly to the mayor and aldermen of London that its capture surpassed any previous gain. Not only had he taken a vast military depot stocked with arms and provisions valued at two million crowns but he now possessed an advance base on the River Oise from which to threaten Paris, a mere twelve miles away. Even if his communications might be dangerously extended and he was alarmingly far from his main bases, he had shown the Burgundians that he was in earnest when he threatened their duke at Meulan.

Today Pontoise is part of the Paris conurbation but when one visits it one can still see why it was of such vital importance in 1419. On a mighty bluff (near the modern railway station) the citadel’s ramparts were only 150 yards from the bank of the River Oise, so that gunners and archers could shoot down on to this crucial waterway up which even now barges bring food to Parisians. Moreover the Oise is sufficiently narrow to be easily blocked by a bridge of boats or a boom. An English garrison could not only stop supplies going up the river but could also raid Paris without warning.

The fear inspired by the English is vividly attested by the Bourgeois of Paris, an anonymous chronicler who lived at the French capital throughout these grim years. He was probably a canon of Nôtre Dame. He tells us that about ten o’clock in the morning on the feast of St Germain

twenty or thirty people entered Paris through the Saint-Denis Gate, in a state of terror like persons who had just escaped death, which indeed was true enough: some of them being wounded while others were faint with fear, cold and hunger, and all looked more dead than alive. Stopped at the gate and asked why they were in such a sad condition, they began to weep, saying, ‘We are from Pontoise, which for sure was captured by the English this morning; they killed everyone who crossed their path; and we count ourselves very lucky to have escaped from them, for no Saracens ever harmed Christians so sorely.’ As they were speaking the gatekeepers saw a huge crowd approaching, men, women and children, some wounded, others stripped of their clothes; one of the men there had come to seek shelter with two babies in a basket under his arm; many of the women were bareheaded, while others were only in their bodices or their shifts… three or four hundred people lay about, bemoaning their sufferings, the loss of goods and friends, since very few among them had not lost a relation or a comrade at Pontoise. And when they thought of those who were in the hands of those cruel tyrants the English their anguish was such they could scarcely bear it, being weak from lack of food and drink. Some pregnant women gave birth during their flight, dying shortly after. Nobody had a heart hard enough to contemplate their misery without shedding tears. They continued to arrive throughout the following week from Pontoise and the district around, reaching Paris in a daze like a great flock of sheep.
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The Bourgeois goes on to tell us that after capturing Pontoise the English terrorized all the area around Paris but did not assault the city. They contented themselves with ‘pillaging, killing, robbing, taking prisoners whom they would free only when a ransom had been paid’. He continues, ‘In those days the only news one heard was about the ravages of the English in France every day; they took towns and castles, spread ruin throughout the entire realm, sending everything, loot and prisoners, back to England.’
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‘Booty was one of the chief military objectives, and no one, peasant or townsman, clerk or knight, was immune from loss at the hands of enemy raiders,’ says McFarlane. ‘Civilians were as fair game as combatants … Clearly the plunder of France was no small matter; and equally clearly the English got far more than they gave. Fighting most of the time on alien soil, they could and did strip it of everything in the line of march.’
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A particularly vile practice was the kidnapping of boys and girls, to be sent across the Channel and sold as indentured servants.

The English of all classes, and no doubt the Welsh too, must have been staggered by the wealth of French cities and towns and by the fertility of French farmland. London was only half the size of Paris (which had a population of perhaps as many as 200,000) while no English city could rival Rouen. Much of England was still sheep country and had no grain lands like the
plat pays
. Vines were unknown (save for a few rare monastic vineyards producing thin and eccentric beverages). The sheer amount of wine in France – in those days produced even in the region around Paris – astonished the English troops, who frequently drank themselves into a stupor, to the fury of Henry and his commanders. This was truly a promised land for looters. At first there can have been little trouble in persuading men to stay and settle.

It should not be forgotten that Henry’s conquests in north-western France included part of Maine. Using Alençon as a base, his troops occupied a block of territory which stretched as far south as Beaumont-le-Vicomte and even a little further – there were constant raids down towards Angers. These southern conquests were extremely insecure, the strongholds constantly changed hands. As early as 1417 the English had attacked the great château of Lassay (between Mayenne and Alençon), severely damaging it; in 1422, presumably in response to raids, the dauphinists demolished it, to stop the English from using it as a base. The dauphinists walled the small town of Ste Suzanne a little further south, huddled beneath an already grim twelfth-century castle on a high cliff, creating something very like a Gascon
bastide
(or fortified frontier town). The menace of Henry’s invasion was transforming the landscape of north-western France. Villages, monasteries and even churches were fortified against the English.

The king also encouraged his captains to raid deep into enemy territory over the understandably ill-defined frontier. Just what this involved may be glimpsed from an often quoted minute to the Royal Council by one of his minor commanders, a veteran of the Agincourt campaign, who later became one of the most famous soldiers of the Hundred Years War – Sir John Fastolf. Although written thirteen years after Henry’s death it accurately describes a type of operation launched all too often by his men. In Fastolf’s opinion the most effective way of dealing with the French was to send small raiding parties of 750 lances into their territory from June to November ‘burning and destroying all they pass, both houses, corn, vines and all trees that bearen fruit for man’s sustenance’ while all livestock ‘that may not be driven off … be destroyed’. The object, Sir John explains bluntly, was to drive the enemies thereby to an extreme famine. No doubt he was doing no more than echo Vegetius, but this can scarcely have been of much comfort to the farmers in the path of such raids – if they managed to escape with their lives.
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It is known from the accounts of the Treasurer-General of Normandy, William Alyngton, that money was spent on spying. The captain of Calais had agents – the ancestors of MI6 – to warn him of any threats to the isolated city, and Henry employed these to discover French objectives and troop dispositions in Picardy. It is likely that every garrison captain made similar use of spies, whether on the frontier to report on enemy troop movements or inland to ferret out conspiracies. We even know of an English couple called Mr and Mrs Piket, who in 1420 had to leave Angers hurriedly for La Rochelle when the dauphin sent men to arrest them – they had been gathering information for Sir John Assheton, the
bailli
of the Cotentin.

Duke John was deeply alarmed by the failure of the negotiations at Meulan in June and the realization that the English king was not to be bought off. He was probably even more frightened by the man himself. Although scarcely an idealist, the duke saw that the only chance of saving France was a military alliance between Burgundians and Armagnacs, or at least between Burgundians and dauphinists; if he could dominate the weak and colourless young heir to the throne, he might be able to wean him away from his hardline Armagnac friends. Accordingly, a treaty between the duke and the dauphin was signed at Pouilly-le-Fort on 11 July 1419. In it both stated that they would resist ‘the damnable aggressions of the English, our ancient enemies’ which were exposing the entire kingdom of France ‘to the most cruel tyranny, perhaps even to total ruin’. The Parisians went wild with joy, dancing in their city’s streets where they set up tables to feast in celebration. They were justified in rejoicing – the new alliance was France’s last hope.

During the first half of July Duke John had had three meetings with the Dauphin Charles which had been without incident. Fear of the English king made the duke forget about the enmity of the irreconcilable Armagnacs who constituted the bulk of the future Charles VII’s entourage – men thirsting to avenge their foully murdered leader and comrades. John was still more shaken when Henry captured Pontoise. The situation was growing desperate, and the treaty of Pouilly-le-Fort had not brought military co-operation against the English any closer. He seems to have decided that at all costs he must see the sixteen-year-old dauphin again and impress upon him the urgency of the crisis.

On 10 September the two Valois kinsmen met by appointment for a further discussion. The rendezvous was some forty miles from Paris, on the fortified bridge of Montereau over the Seine where the Yonne flows into it. Barricades had been erected at both ends of the bridge with a wooden pen in the middle in which, each escorted by ten chosen advisers, they could meet safely without any fear of an army of the other’s supporters rushing forward to seize them. The duke’s worst nightmare was to come true; it was a cunningly planned Armagnac plot to trap and ‘execute’ him. No one will ever discover what exactly took place. What is known is that after Duke John had knelt on one knee before the dauphin, who raised him to his feet, there was a short conversation between them, then a sudden mêlée and John lay dead. A plausible reconstruction is that someone, probably Tanneguy du Chastel – a redoubtable Breton thug and former henchman of Louis of Orleans – had suddenly struck the duke in the face with a small battleaxe, cutting off part of his chin and knocking him down; and as he lay on the ground someone else pulled up his armour to thrust a sword into his belly, finishing him off. He was not killed in self-defence, as the Armagnacs afterwards claimed. Almost certainly the dauphin was implicated; he never punished anyone for the crime and in later years heaped honours on Tanneguy who undoubtedly had a hand in the killing. A Carthusian monk, showing the duke’s skull to François I in the sixteenth century, commented succinctly that the English entered France through the hole in Duke John’s head.
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The Armagnacs, the one faction committed unequivocally to Charles VI’s son, had not merely done themselves terrible damage in French public esteem but had very nearly ruined their patron’s cause. There was no chance now of any
rapprochement
with the Burgundians. The real losers were France and the French people, left at the invaders’ mercy. The Bourgeois, however much a committed Burgundian supporter he seems to have been, was justified in claiming that the Armagnacs had already brought much misery upon France as it was. ‘Normandy would still be French, the noble blood of France would never have been spilt nor the realm’s greatest lords carried off into exile, nor the battle lost nor so many good men killed on that dreadful day at Agincourt, where the king [of France] lost so many of truest and most loyal friends had it not been for the pride of that wretched name of Armagnac.’ The dauphin shared in the Armagnacs’ disgrace, since everyone knew that he was their puppet. Moreover, while the French continued to be divided the English were united in waging what for them was undoubtedly a national war.

On hearing the news of his father’s murder the new Duke of Burgundy, Philip ‘the Good’, took to his bed where he threw himself about, gnashing his teeth and rolling his eyes. This was probably more the effect of rage than of grief. (During all too many well attested paroxysms of anger he was said to turn blue in the face.) He had seen how Duke John had been repaid for his desire to save France and his sense of family loyalty, and could think of nothing but revenge. At a meeting held in Arras a month after the ‘bridge of Montereau’ the entire Burgundian faction – including its supporters in Paris – urged him to ally with Henry. A man of Flanders by upbringing, he knew very well how anxious his Flemish townsmen were to maintain good relations with their business friends in England. An English alliance would mean the acquisition of large chunks of northern France. In any case he had little alternative.