One lord was exempted from this semonce des nobles: John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy. Perhaps his agreement with Henry V was suspected. Perhaps it was just too dangerous to the Armagnacs to allow the duke to ride at the head of an army across Normandy. Either way, it was a diplomatic gamble, for it gave a clear message that the duke was out of favour.
*
Bishop Courtenay attended Mass in his tent at about nine o’clock this morning. Afterwards he took Raoul le Gay and went to hear a religious service in the king’s chapel. Raoul was astonished to hear such beautiful music. One of the more incongruous images of the siege is Henry V listening to his choristers singing pious anthems while his cannon boomed out in the valley below, blasting at the walls of Harfleur day and night.
After the service, Courtenay spoke to Raoul about Jean Fusoris. He explained that Fusoris was a canon of Notre Dame in Paris, and a famous astronomer. If Raoul would carry a message to Fusoris, the bishop would set him free. Raoul had never been to Paris himself, and so he refused. But when Courtenay threatened to ship him back to England to be imprisoned, he accepted the mission. Courtenay would give him the letter to Fusoris tomorrow.
*
Down in the valley, the men of Harfleur were taking the fight to the English. As Henry tried new tactics to break their defences, so they devised new methods of defeating him. When Henry planned to fill in the ditches on both sides of the town with bundles of faggots ten feet long, the defenders simply got ready to pour burning oil into the same ditches and set light to the faggots and the men laying them. So Henry abandoned that plan. Instead he decided to try to fight his way into the town by having two mines built, to tunnel beneath the walls’ foundations and then bring them crashing down by setting light to the pit props. A ‘sow’ or protective shelter was built for each mine and digging started. Raoul de Gaucourt knew exactly how to tackle that threat. He ordered counter-mines to be dug, in which the besieged men dug towards the miners and fought for control of the mine, and then filled it in. Such measures were hard work and terrifying; it was a race in great heat, darkness and barely any air – conducted with the sole intention of breaking through and meeting a desperate, murderous enemy. On both occasions the defenders proved the better miners and managed to thwart the attackers, breaking through and bringing down their shaft before the walls could be pulled down. The sole English achievement as a result of the mines was that the watchmen guarding one of the mines saw an opportunity to attack the outer ditch on the king’s side, and managed to capture it. From there they could bring the siege engines a little closer to the walls, and use the ditch as protection while they attacked the defences.86
On the east side of the town, Thomas, duke of Clarence, was having his men-at-arms and archers dig ditches. Thomas had impressed everyone with the ferocity of his onslaughts on the walls; but he was in a very dangerous position. He was on the exposed side of the town – open to attack from companies of Frenchmen. His messengers had to run the gauntlet of crossing the flooded area north of the town in small boats in order to get to the king, and then get back. And having fewer men than Henry at his command, he was also prone to attacks from the town itself, from guns as well as crossbows and sallies of men-at-arms. Nevertheless he kept up the pressure, following Henry’s initiatives and keeping up the bombardment. Now his men were constructing a long defensive ditch in front of his own lines, copying the Harfleur townsmen’s own method of driving tree trunks into the ground, and heaping up earth from the ditch against them, to protect his men while they continued the assault.
Thursday 29th
In his tent near the king’s pavilion, Courtenay wrote his letter to Jean Fusoris. He wrote with his own hand, in Latin, and said how he recalled their previous conversations, and how a clerk who knew Fusoris had recently passed on news of him. He asked that Fusoris write back with news within the next eight or ten days but not to mention either of their names in the correspondence, as no one knew of it except the king, ‘who is very close, as you know’. He then sealed the letter and handed it to Raoul le Gay, together with a purse containing twenty half-nobles, which Raoul hid beneath his shirt. Another man in Courtenay’s service handed Raoul a letter to take to Paris, to a friend of his. Courtenay himself gave Raoul a small parchment list of fruit, pumpkins and other things he wanted from the prior of the Celestines in Paris, and promised to pay for them on delivery. He also told Raoul to tell Fusoris that Henry had landed with fifty thousand men, four thousand barrels of wheat, four thousand casks of wine, sufficient supplies for a six-month siege of Harfleur, and twelve large cannon. Probably all of this was exaggerated; he had fewer than a third as many men, and had only ordered food for three months. Besides, according to Monstrelet, many of his supplies had been damaged at sea.87 But the instruction fits with what we know about Courtenay’s relationship with Fusoris on previous occasions – he fed him misinformation in the hope that it would be passed on to the French court, while seeking intelligence of his own.88
There was one particular question that Courtenay did not put in writing but asked Raoul to put to Fusoris: whether the duke of Burgundy was responding to the call to arms. This seems to have been a genuine area of concern for the bishop. Despite the agreement between Henry and John the Fearless, the latter had proved duplicitous throughout his career, and still was not wholly trusted. Henry and Courtenay suspected he might break the terms of his agreement and fight on the French side simply because the enormity of fighting against his fellow French subjects on behalf of an English claimant to the throne was too great. As it happened John the Fearless was still at Argilly, where he had been since he himself had entertained the ambassadors of the duke of Brittany, who had arrived there on the 15th.89 John the Fearless’s ambassadors were no doubt discussing the implications of the English invasion with their Breton counterparts, and reviewing possible strategies. Courtenay would not have known this, of course, but the English council was very eager to know which way the two dukes with English treaties would choose to act.
Saturday 31st
Raoul le Gay had left Bishop Courtenay’s camp on the 29th with letters of safe conduct, so he could pass through the English lines. He had set out as intended in the direction of Paris. But later that night he turned back and made his way in the moonlight to Montivilliers. At sunrise, when the gates to the town opened, he passed into the town. The French guards demanded to know who he was and where he had come from. He said he had come from the English army, and showed them his English safe conduct. The guards tore it up, but they allowed him into the town. He wandered around until he found some friends of his, and went to a tavern and had a drink with them; but later, as he walked in front of the town hall, he was pointed out to the town officials as having come from the English camp with English letters of safe conduct. He was arrested and locked up in a chamber in the abbey.
Today Raoul was brought out of his prison and taken to the town hall. A French Benedictine monk, who had also been arrested by the English, detained and then released, recognised Raoul and said he was carrying a secret letter. Raoul admitted it, and, realising the gravity of his situation, declared that he had no intention of delivering it. But of course he had to produce the said letter. When the recipient was identified as Jean Fusoris, it seemed to the authorities that they had discovered one of Henry’s spies: a trusted astrologer, right in the heart of the city with access to the court. A message was despatched to Paris straightaway.90
*
In Paris the French king’s councillors were facing a crisis. The taxation they had levied on 14 March was not going to be sufficient to pay for an army strong enough to counter the English. They therefore decided they needed 24,000 livres tournois (about £4,000) as soon as possible. Of course this was unpopular; one writer in Paris described it as ‘the heaviest tax that had ever been seen in the whole age of man’. Many Parisians began to recall the duke of Orléans and his high taxes and lax morals, and saw the return of them both in the new taxation and the dauphin�
��s immoral lifestyle.91 As Pope Benedict had not yet been forced to resign, the French government set about obtaining permission from him to levy a tax for the war on all the clergy throughout France. And all this was to pay the expenses of an army of just six thousand men-at-arms and three thousand archers. The French government was having difficulty even raising a mediocre force to resist the English. There was a failure to recognise the gravity of the situation.92
One development in France’s favour did take place today. The five hundred Cabochien supporters of John the Fearless were granted an amnesty, in accordance with the conditions of John swearing to uphold the Peace of Arras. With this measure in place, the oath should have held firm. There should have been no doubt in French minds that John the Fearless would oppose the English, and the dauphin indeed issued a letter today declaring him a good and loyal subject.93 As for what John actually intended to do, no one knew. On the one hand, he was promising to support the dauphin. But on the other, the dauphin’s failure to include him among those who received the summons of the 28th, and another on 1 September, was an insult that he could use diplomatically to his advantage – to the point of refusing to fight.
*
At Harfleur the bombardment continued. The siege was now two weeks old, and still there were few signs that the inhabitants were prepared to give up. Some chronicles suggest that Raoul de Gaucourt had held negotiations with the English, offering to surrender the town; but these are equally likely to have been malicious rumours circulated in the wake of the defeat, when the various noble families in France all sought to blame each other for the failure to resist the English invasion. Just as likely to be true are the references to sorties from Harfleur, as the inhabitants sought to carry the fight to the English. What is certain is that a third mine was commenced about this time, in the hope of bringing the siege to a speedy end with no further destruction to the fabric of the town. It too was bound to fail, like the others. The approach to the centre of the town from the Porte Leure was now a broken mass of stone and timber; and yet still the inhabitants were determined to hold on. No matter what Henry threw at them, Raoul de Gaucourt and his fellow defenders held out. And they were in turn inflicting serious injuries on Henry’s men. Thomas Hostell, a man-at-arms in Sir John Lumley’s company, later recalled how at Harfleur he had been hit by a crossbow bolt, which had entered his head, destroying one eye and his cheek.94 Incredibly, he went on to fight at Agincourt.
One cannot fault Henry’s personal resolution in all this, nor that of his brother Thomas in commanding the second army on the eastern side of the town. The king continued to make nightly inspections of his lines, encouraging his men and making sure that watches were in place and the shift pattern for firing the guns was maintained.95 But several strategic miscalculations were now obvious. One has already been mentioned – that in order to bring about a swift end to the siege using guns, Henry was having to destroy the defences he hoped to gain. So he had miscalculated the determination of the townsmen. But another, worse problem was becoming apparent. His army was too big for its purpose. An army suitable for fighting a battle was far larger than the size of force one needed for a successful siege. He could not risk a full-scale attack as he would lose too many men whom he would need later to fight a French army. But all the men with him needed food. They needed wine and ale. They needed money, and they needed clean accommodation. And although that last aspect might seem a minor one, it was actually very important. For now another obstacle in Henry’s path emerged – not from the defenders but recognisable from the foetid hot air of the drying flooded valley north of the town, and the ever-present effluent of fifteen thousand men camped in a small area with no sanitary provision.
Dysentery.
September
Sunday 1st
EXPLANATIONS OF HOW and why people fell ill were confused in 1415. Sometimes astrological predictions were put forward for contagious diseases – planetary alignments leading to a miasma, or a polluted environment, which in turn led to pollutants entering the body through the pores of the skin and upsetting the balance of the four humours. Sometimes a miasma was associated with a particularly noxious smell. Alternatively diseases were attributed to God’s will: either as punishment for a sinful act – as in the diseases heaped upon Henry IV for ordering the judicial murder of the archbishop of York – or as a means of attaining redemption from such sins. In the latter case, God was supposed to have visited sufferings on people so that they might atone for their behaviour and, through dying an agonising death, repent by bearing it well and thereby enter Paradise.
In the case of dysentery, people realised that large camps of soldiers attracted diseases, and that men chose to assemble large armies, so therefore the astrological explanation did not apply. Obviously God’s will did apply, and it could be understood that, through disease, God sought to demonstrate to men that He did not approve of some sieges. In that sense, however much Henry claimed to be fighting a just war, and acting as an agent of God’s will, the appearance of dysentery in the camp could be seen as a sign that God did not, after all, approve of Henry’s war or his cause. Those who were loyal to Henry therefore looked for other explanations, and hit on other polluting factors. One contemporary chronicler, John Strecche, presumably writing on the basis of information sent back by combatants, pointed to the eating of unripe grapes and bad shellfish as the cause. Another writer, Thomas Walsingham, gave a vivid explanation for the causes of the stomach diseases and dysentery. He claimed
These deaths were caused by eating fruit, the cold nights, and the foetid smell from the bodies of different animals that they had killed throughout the English lines but which they had not covered with turf or soil, or had thrown into the waters of the river so they were forced to endure their decaying stench.1
Certainly the presence of rotting animals cannot have helped, especially considering it was an uncommonly hot summer.2 The sixteen-year-old Lord Fitzwalter, serving in the company of the duke of Clarence, became one of the first casualties of the siege, dying today.3
Another factor contributing to the hardship of the besiegers was that they were beginning to run short of food. Although Henry had ordered that each man bring sufficient food for three months, in reality supplies had only lasted three weeks. In London today one Richard Bokeland was ordered to provide two ships to convey victuals, including fish, to the army at Harfleur. And over the next two days 700 marks was assigned to Richard Whittington to repay him for his expenses in maintaining the siege of Harfleur, and two men from Henley were ordered to provide one hundred quarters of wheat for the king’s household at the siege.4
*
For those in the town, things were even harder. They had even less food, could not sleep for the fear and the noise of the incessant destruction, and water-borne diseases were beginning to spread within the town too. Knowing this, Henry sent a herald about this time to invite Raoul de Gaucourt and the other leaders in Harfleur to discuss terms. They came, under safe conduct, and met the king. Henry attempted with ‘sweet words’ to persuade them to surrender the town. He had his title to the throne of France repeated to them too, and his claim to the duchy of Normandy. But Henry had underestimated the townsmen’s resolve. De Gaucourt insisted that the king of France would not leave the town to fend for itself for long but would soon arrive with an army. So he refused Henry’s invitation. Instead of surrendering, he sent a messenger to the dauphin urging that he send an army as soon as possible to relieve the town.5
*
The dauphin left Paris this morning and journeyed to St Denis, the royal abbey just north of the city. Here he prayed for victory. He also sent out letters to the dukes of Orléans and Burgundy, and the count of Nevers (brother of John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy) requiring each of them to send five hundred men-at-arms and three hundred archers. John the Fearless was requested not to come in person but to send his son, Philip, count of Charolais, in his place. This was no doubt intended to avoid the risk of the duke le
ading an army that might suddenly turn and fight against the dauphin, on the side of the English. Nevertheless, John was bound to take offence.
Tuesday 3rd
Henry wrote a letter to the mayor and jurats of Bordeaux telling them that he and his company were in the best of health, for which ‘in all humility, we give thanks to our lord God the Almighty, hoping that by His grace, He will give us in pursuit of our right, the fulfilment of our desire and undertaking, to His pleasure, and for the honour and comfort of us and you …’ With God’s help, he said, the enemy would be less capable of doing harm to his Gascon subjects in future, alluding to the danger of Norman ships attacking the Gascon wine trade. He asked them to assist Sir John Tiptoft in guarding against any French assault in Gascony. As for himself, he stated he was in need of wine and other victuals, which he asked them to send straightaway, promising payment in full on delivery.6
At the same time, Dr Jean Bordiu, archdeacon of Médoc, who was with the king at Harfleur, wrote a more detailed letter to the Jurade. He noted that the king himself had just written, and gave much more detail regarding the real state of affairs at Harfleur. He stated that, although the fields were still providing the army with sufficient corn, they could not be expected to meet the future requirements of the army, especially as more men were coming from England ‘every day’. This alerts us to the fact that reinforcements were arriving – a fact that is supported by careful analysis of the accounts relating to some of the companies with Henry.7 Bordiu mentioned that Henry had asked for more wine to be sent; in this respect he specified that the king required between five hundred and seven hundred tuns. And he urged the townsmen to look to this with diligence, stating that Henry wished to come in person to Bordeaux before he returned to England.
1415: Henry V's Year of Glory Page 41