Louis: The French Prince Who Invaded England (26 page)

Roger of Wendover, more sensitive than many other chroniclers to the plight of ordinary people, tells us:

Baggage, silver vessels and various kinds of furniture and utensils all fell into their possession without opposition. Having then plundered the whole city to the last farthing, they next pillaged the churches throughout the city, and broke open the chests and store-rooms with axes and hammers, seizing on the gold and silver in them, clothes of all colours, women’s ornaments, gold rings, goblets and jewels.

Even the citizens themselves were not safe:

Many of the women of the city were drowned in the river, for, to avoid insult [i.e. rape by the victorious soldiers], they took to small boats with their children, their female servants, and household property … the boats were overloaded, and the women not knowing how to manage the boats, all perished.

According to the official accounts, the casualties of the battle were extremely low: only the count of Perche and a handful of other knights. However, we should remember that these narratives take no account of the losses among sergeants, other combatants and civilians, so the real number of those killed was certainly greater, to say nothing of those who were wounded or who lost their livelihoods. One of this latter group turned out to be Nicola de la Haye: in one of the most astonishing acts of ingratitude imaginable following her heroic defence, just four days after the battle she was removed by the regency council from her offices of sheriff of Lincoln and castellan of the castle, to be replaced by William Longsword, earl of Salisbury.

It would be too complex an operation to attempt to send the body of the count of Perche back to France, so he would have to be buried in the city where he fell. However, this caused some difficulty: like all Louis’s adherents he was excommunicate and so officially could not be interred in consecrated ground either in the cathedral graveyard or in any of the churches in Lincoln. But given his status – he was, after all, both a cousin of William Marshal and a relative of Henry – a compromise was reached and he was buried in the grounds of the hospital in Lincoln. The bodies of the common soldiers and civilians were hastily dealt with to avoid the dangers of contagion and disease. The surviving citizens were left to clear up and put their lives back together as best they could.

William Marshal rode straight to Nottingham to tell Henry and Guala of the victory in person; the survivors from among Louis’s forces who had managed to escape Lincoln fled southwards to apprise him of the news and to seek the security of his presence.

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On Thursday 25 May 1217 the walls of Dover were still standing; the key to England stubbornly refused to turn. But Louis was only two weeks into what he knew would be a long and arduous siege, so he was not impatient; there was plenty of time to wait in his well-ordered camp while he broke down the defences and the will of the garrison. But as he directed the day’s siege operations, a messenger arrived with the devastating news.

Louis’s reaction was unsurprising: he was ‘full of anger and rage once he heard how his men had been defeated so badly in Lincoln’, says the
History of William Marshal
, while William the Breton tells us that ‘chagrin, sadness and lamentation spread through the camp’ when the news arrived. It seemed that only Louis’s personal presence in a combat would guarantee victory and that his men could not manage without him; this was enough to make him furious and Roger of Wendover depicts him berating the survivors, telling them: ‘That it was owing to their flight that their companions had been made prisoners, because if they had remained to fight, they would perhaps have saved themselves as well as their companions from capture and death.’ The specific mention of death indicates that Louis was perhaps more upset by the loss of the young count of Perche than he would or could let on. He retired to think. He had lost his superior military position, so he needed to consider very carefully what he was going to do next. ‘Surrender’ does not appear to have been a word in his vocabulary, so he formulated plans to keep going and to make the best of the current position. The defeat at Lincoln had been a crushing blow but it was not a total disaster: he could still recover if he played his cards right. The key short-term decision was whether to stay at Dover, ever the thorn in his side, or whether to go back to London to ready it against the attack which would be the next logical move from the Henricians if they were bold enough.

But Louis was far-sighted enough to realise that Marshal and his party would be loath to mount an immediate attack on the capital; they needed time for their troops to recover, they needed to distribute and arrange for the imprisonment of their captives, and they needed to consolidate their position rather than overreaching themselves. So Louis elected to stay at Dover for another few days at least, in the anticipation of further reinforcements.

But once again he was to be disappointed in the support offered by others. The large force which Blanche was assembling was not yet ready, so what came across the Channel was a small fleet which was no match for the number of English ships still patrolling the Channel under Philip d’Albini; many were captured, and those that did manage to get through brought him a disappointing number of men: only eighteen knights and some sergeants and sailors. This was not enough. Louis wrote letters to his father and his wife asking them to send whatever they could muster as soon as they could manage it; he sent some of the ships back across to France with his messages and burned the rest so as not to let them fall into the hands of Hubert de Burgh, who would inevitably come out of his stronghold once Louis had gone to destroy or capture anything he could get his hands on. Then Louis set off for London.

Louis reached the capital in the first few days of June, where he was joined by some two hundred knights who had escaped the debacle at Lincoln. He took stock. The situation was, quite simply, that he did not have enough men to force a military solution at this stage. This was not helped by the fact that a large number of English barons and knights now deserted his cause (forswearing their oaths to him, as the Minstrel of Reims had depicted King Philip prophesying earlier) and went over to Henry, sensing a turn in Fortune’s wheel. But Louis was not beaten yet: if success could not be found through military means he would have to seek a political solution, negotiating and holding off his opponents until such time as more reinforcements should arrive. He could not return to France again in person as this would be taken as a final abandonment of his cause. Instead he would need to stay put and await developments across the Channel.

* * *

Since his accession Pope Honorius had not been idle. We have already seen how he sent representatives to King Philip in France, and now a high-profile Church delegation arrived in England. It was led by Simon de Maugastel, the archbishop of Tyre (one of the crusader states in the east), who was in Europe to drum up support for the Fifth Crusade and to attempt to instil some cohesion into the English, French and imperial efforts towards it. The continuing war in England was having a detrimental effect on his recruitment drive, and it was no secret that Honorius wanted Louis to lead the crusade in person, which he could not do while he was over the Channel and excommunicate. The pope no doubt hoped that the exalted rank of the archbishop, who was accompanied by the influential abbots of Clairvaux, Cîteaux and Pontigny, would carry sufficient weight; it was agreed that the delegation would mediate between the two sides.

A meeting was arranged for 12 June 1217, to be held between Brentford and Hounslow. Neither Louis nor William Marshal was there in person, but they each sent four representatives accompanied by twenty supporting knights. This was not unexpected: even though his subordinates had not coped too well in battle without him, Louis could rely on his learned advisers and lawyers to argue for the best arrangement possible, while having the fall-back plan that they could not agree to anything definitive in his absence, so they would have to consult him in person – thus creating more time and space in which to make an informed decision.

After a discussion between the men from both sides and the prelates, a draft treaty was drawn up which included many points of detail: steps towards peace; the potential withdrawal of Louis and of Alexander of Scotland, still engaged in local conflicts in the north; the reissuing of Magna Carta to satisfy the barons; and matters such as prisoners, ransoms and the lifting of excommunications. However, there was a sticking point. The papal legate Guala insisted that four of Louis’s advisers who were churchmen – Simon Langton, Elias of Dereham, Robert de St Germain and Gervase of Howbridge, the dean of St Paul’s in London – should be specifically excluded from the treaty. He could not forgive the first three for ignoring and indeed preaching against Louis’s sentence of excommunication, and the fourth for allowing their speeches to be given at his pulpit when Louis had first arrived in London. Their actions had been a challenge to his authority as the pope’s representative, as the implication had been that he was not entitled to pronounce the sentence himself without further authorisation from Rome. He was offended at the slight and he wanted retribution.

But just as these four men had stood by Louis in his hour of need, so he now supported them in theirs: he refused absolutely to accept the treaty on such terms. The lessons he had learned long ago on the importance of a brotherhood of companions were still with him, and he would not let them be punished for their loyalty to him; better war than dishonour. The archbishop of Tyre wrote to the pope to say that it was clear that ‘Louis would in no way make peace without them’. The talks collapsed and the Church delegation returned to France. The war for England would go on.

* * *

With the sides back on a war footing, Guala – possibly with little grasp of military logistics – was agitating for an all-out attack on London, but William Marshal and the other commanders were understandably less keen. The capital was fortified and was garrisoned by Louis’s seasoned troops; the citizens were also on his side, which would make any potential assault dangerous. The Henrician forces could undo all their good work at Lincoln if they ended up dashing themselves fruitlessly against the high walls. Instead Marshal and his companions adopted a more softly-softly approach, offering inducements in the form of lands and castles to any English barons siding with Louis who decided that now was the time to defect. A number of them came over to Henry, but the decision of one of them to do so was to have unintended and serious consequences.

Reginald de Braose had no cause to love the Plantagenets: his father, William, had been persecuted and hounded to his death by John, and his mother and elder brother had met an excruciating end from starvation at John’s order. But his father’s ruin had meant the loss of some family lands, so Reginald was swayed by Marshal’s offer of a pardon and the chance for pecuniary gain, and he decamped to swear allegiance to Henry. But Reginald was married to a lady named Gwladys Ddu; she was the daughter of Prince Llewelyn of Wales, a supporter of Louis (at least insofar as Louis’s aims matched his own) who was not impressed with his son-in-law’s actions. Llewelyn invaded Reginald’s lands, capturing Swansea Castle, seizing control of the area and making inroads towards William Marshal’s own territories in south Wales. Worried that the ground was being cut out from under his feet – an earl was an earl in name only and wielded no power if he had no lands – the regent left the London area and hurried to Wales; in his absence the question of a siege of the capital was dropped. Henry’s council retired to Gloucester, reissued Magna Carta once more and summoned an assembly at Oxford for 15 July 1217, later postponed to 22 July.

All of this gave Louis some breathing space to do what he did best: seize back the military initiative. Now that the peace talks had ceased – Louis also refusing the advances of the pope’s own confessor, who had been sent over to speak with him but who offered only the same terms which excluded the four churchmen – he was at liberty to restart his campaign. He had a strong base in London, in the Tower and surrounded by the city walls and citizens who supported him; he had the half of his army which had been with him at Dover, the escapees from Lincoln and the garrison he had left in London all along; and gradually he had those captured after Lincoln, as they were ransomed and found their way back to him.

Donning his armour once more, Louis and his men set out on a series of raids which would have the dual purpose of obtaining supplies and money for his cause and of reminding friend and foe alike of who was really in charge. Peter de Dreux made a foray which brought back much plunder, including ‘great gains for the lesser men’, according to the
History of the Dukes
; Adam the viscount of Melun (now recovered from his disgrace over the burned ship) evaded Henrician forces still stationed around London to launch a successful raid on Bury St Edmunds before taking captured booty back to London.

* * *

Meanwhile, in France, Blanche’s efforts at recruitment had matured, and she was now ready to send over a large fleet, which she saw off personally from Calais on 20 August 1217. It was led by the high-ranking nobleman Robert de Courtenay, a descendant of King Louis VI and therefore a distant relative of Louis. But, alas, the fickle Channel weather proved a problem once more, and the ships were close to Dover when they were blown almost all the way back to France by a storm. They turned again as soon as they could, but it was the night of 23/24 August by the time they approached English shores once more, and the delay gave the Henrician forces extra time in which to prepare.