Despite this, he did not set out. He remained at Germolles for the next seven days. His vassals in Picardy, however, were responding to his summons. They were not joining the army at Rouen but the separate French army now gathering north of the Somme, under Boucicaut and d’Albret. The French king might have been mad and the dauphin inexperienced but Boucicaut and d’Albret knew what they were doing. The English would soon find themselves sandwiched between two armies – and forced to fight.
*
Other French magnates were riding to the aid of the French king. Today the old duke of Berry, the dauphin’s great uncle, arrived at Rouen, where he had mustered one thousand men-at-arms and five hundred archers.37 The king himself also arrived at Rouen today, accompanied by the dauphin. Other French lords were already there; so now the army had a direct chain of command. This was important, for it was being rumoured today that the duke of Clarence had landed at Calais with another large army.38 Which way were the French in Normandy to turn their attention? To Henry? To the defence of the towns? To the river crossings, to the Marches of Calais, or to the defence of Boulogne?
About this time, the newly gathered French royal family and the other members of the council drew up a battle plan, probably with the intention of stopping Henry at Blanchetaque. The vanguard was to be commanded by Boucicaut and Charles d’Albret. They would be followed by a second battle, under the duke of Alençon, the count of Eu, and other lords. On each wing of the army there would be a battle of foot soldiers, the one on the right commanded by the count of Richemont, and the one on the left by the count of Vendôme and Guichard Dauphin. David, seigneur de Rambures, would command a contingent of heavily armoured cavalry, with the mission to charge into and break up the ranks of English archers; and a separate squadron of several hundred mounted men-at-arms under Louis de Bosredon was given charge of attacking the English baggage.39 The anticipated army would be composed of the troops gathering at Rouen as well as those waiting beyond the Somme, gathering at Abbeville and Péronne.40 Wherever the English positioned themselves – whether their backs were against the Somme or elsewhere – the French were prepared to attack.
Sunday 13th: the Feast of St Edward the Confessor
The feast of St Edward the Confessor had special significance for the Lancastrian dynasty. Not only was it the feast of the principal English royal saint; Henry’s father had been sent into exile on this day in 1398 by his cousin Richard II. Exactly one year later he had been crowned king of England, in Richard’s place. As a result Henry IV had built a chapel in Canterbury Cathedral dedicated to St Edward the Confessor. Henry V had shown himself to be no less fond of the English king-saint than his father: one of the banners he was carrying now bore the arms of St Edward.
The English army must have set out for Blanchetaque shortly after packing up their tents, at first light. Already there had been worrying reports from prisoners taken along the way that there was a huge French army waiting to intercept the English at the ford.41 These reports received confirmation late this morning, when the army was still six miles away from the crossing point. According to Monstrelet, a Gascon gentleman serving in the company of Charles d’Albret was arrested. Waurin’s chronicle describes him as being mounted and armed; Monstrelet’s refers to him as a devil. As a Gascon it may be that he crossed the Somme and came to the English purposefully – out of a greater loyalty to Henry, as the duke of Aquitaine, than to his feudal lord (the d’Albret family having been once subjects of the English kings).
The man was taken before the duke of York, the leader of the vanguard, and questioned. He said that he had left Charles d’Albret at Abbeville. When asked about the ford at Blanchetaque, he told them it was very heavily guarded. Guichard Dauphin and Boucicaut were both there, with six thousand fighting men.42 If all this was true, it meant that the English were trapped between two armies: one under d’Albret and Boucicaut between Abbeville and Blanchetaque, and the ducal retinues gathering at Rouen.
The duke of York realised the significance of this information, and sent the Gascon to the king. There he was questioned again. Henry heard everything he had to say. Then he dismissed him, halted the advance, and called an immediate meeting of his council.
The meeting lasted two hours. We cannot know for certain what was said but it proved to be a turning point for Henry – a breaking point, even. Everything he had done all year had been carried out with the greatest resolution. There had been those who had said he should have cancelled the campaign when the earl of Cambridge’s plot had been revealed; he had ignored them and pressed on. The siege of Harfleur had hugely sapped the strength of his army, and there had been those who had said he should not have started on this march. Nevertheless he had ignored them and set out, determined to make his way to Calais. He was equally determined to meet the French in battle – even to the point of telling them exactly where he would be. And now he was being forced to acknowledge that he had been outmanoeuvred. His resolution to march on regardless, and to test his cause against God’s will, had only succeeded in endangering the tired and hungry survivors of the long siege. If at this point he tried to persuade his councillors otherwise, he failed to win them over. Their advice was that the army should find another crossing.
No doubt Henry had already sent scouts ahead to examine the conditions at the ford and they had probably come back with information that many French troops were stationed there. The number of six thousand men was probably not a huge exaggeration. If Boucicaut, d’Albret and the seigneur de Rambures had been joined by the duke of Alençon, as was likely, then there would have been at least four thousand fighting men north of the Somme.43 By now Henry may have learned that the three hundred men-at-arms who had left Calais to take control of the crossing had been annihilated by a Picard army.44 Henry’s strategy was falling apart. His council were sensible to put their faith in avoiding battle rather than deliberately seeking it.
It must have been a depressing meeting. It was not possible to advance by way of Blanchetaque. Retreat was out of the question. And if they marched inland, along the Somme, there was a good chance that the enemy troops north of the Somme and those gathering at Péronne would starve them in the field. It seemed that the French had indeed ‘enclosed them on every side like sheep in folds’, as several councillors had warned they would before they had set out. And the eight days’ rations were almost all used up – this was the seventh day of what was supposed to have been an eight-day march to Calais. The bread and wine the men had received at Arques and Eu had not gone far, and most men had been drinking unhealthy river water for the last week. Some of them were carrying festering wounds; others were still suffering from dysentery.
Henry probably considered advancing his men to the ford and trying to fight his way across. He knew that Edward III had done so in 1346 – and, on that occasion, as if by a miracle, the tide had come in after the last of the English were across and stopped the French from crossing. Surely God would work some similar miracle for him? But if he suggested this, the councillors would have countered that Edward’s army had fought a way across the Somme against no more than three thousand men. According to the Gascon informer, the ford was further defended now with sharpened stakes driven into the bed of the river, allowing the French crossbowmen to rip the English apart in midstream. Fighting against six thousand in these conditions, including crossbowmen, would be very difficult.
Thus it was, at this point, six miles short of the ford, that Henry abandoned his original plan. He ordered the army to head inland, following the banks of the Somme.
As they made their way along the river, looking for a crossing nearer Abbeville, the scouts reported that all the bridges had been be broken by the constable and marshal of France.45 So they proceeded until that night, cold, hungry and weary, they came to the villages of Mareuil and Bailleul-en-Vimeu, where they camped.46
*
In London, the mayor Thomas Falconer had come to the end of his eventful year in office. At the Guildhall,
accompanied by many aldermen in their robes as well as the recorder and the two sheriffs of the city and ‘an immense number of the commonalty’, he presided over the election of his successor. This was Nicholas Wotton, a member of the Drapers Company. He would be sworn in on 28 October.47
*
At Arundel Castle, the earl of Arundel died.48 It was a sad end, considering his extraordinary career. After his father’s execution in 1397 he had been treated as a servant and regularly humiliated by his guardian, John Holland, duke of Exeter. Locked up in Reigate Castle, he escaped – although still only seventeen – and managed to get to the continent where he joined his uncle, the archbishop of Canterbury, in exile. Together they went to meet Henry’s father in Paris, and joined with him in his attempt to wrest the throne from Richard II. Thomas was thus the very first Lancastrian supporter, and had remained loyal to the dynasty thereafter – taking part in putting down the Epiphany Rising in 1400, fighting alongside Prince Henry in Wales after Glendower’s revolt, and taking action against Archbishop Scrope in 1405. By 1407 he was the prince’s principal retainer, and served on the prince’s council during the regency of 1409–11. He was sent by the prince to fight for John the Fearless at St-Cloud in 1411, and proved himself efficient in battle. As his will shows, he shared the prince’s devotion to the Holy Trinity and to the cult of St John of Bridlington; and very soon after Henry’s accession he was loaded with titles and honours: warden of the Cinque Ports, constable of Dover Castle and, most important of all, treasurer of England. Apart from Henry’s uncles and brothers, only Richard Beauchamp, the late Richard Courtenay, and the duke of York were as close to the king. Thomas now became the second of that number to die as a result of Henry’s will to fight a war in France.
Monday 14th
The bridge at Pont Rémy was Henry’s next target, about four miles east-north-east of his camp. Seeing a large number of men drawn up on the opposite bank, he believed battle to be imminent, and dubbed a number of knights. Among these were Lord Ferrers of Groby, Ralph Greystoke, Peter Tempest, Christopher Moresby, Thomas Pickering, William Hodelston, John Hosbalton, John Mortimer, James Ormonde and Philip and William Halle.49 Knighting men was a good way to inspire them to feats of valour in the forthcoming battle, as they would seek to win glory and prove themselves worthy. As he approached the bridge, however, he saw that it was broken. So too were the causeways leading to it. The river here had a broad marsh on either side – hence the causeways – so no bridge-building was possible, even though Henry had specifically brought carpenters who were experienced in the craft.
It was at this point that the hearts of the English fell. They had run out of food. They had no way forward, no way back, and there were thousands of French troops on all sides tracking their movements, and hoping to kill them. The head of the Somme lay sixty miles away. They had no option but to march inland, deep into hostile territory. To desert at this stage would be certain death for any Englishman; otherwise many men would have simply run away. The words that the author of the Gesta used to describe the plight of the English at this moment were clearly heartfelt:
At that time we thought of nothing else but that, after the eight days assigned for the march had expired and our provisions had run out, the enemy, who had craftily hastened on ahead and were laying waste the countryside in advance, would force us – who were already hungry – to suffer a really dire need of food. And at the head of the river, if God did not provide otherwise, they would with their great and countless host and the engines of war and devices available to them, overwhelm us, for we were few in number, fainting with a great weariness, and weak from a lack of food.
I, the author of this, and many others in the army, looked up in bitterness to Heaven, seeking the clemency of Providence, and called upon the Glorious Virgin and St George, under whose protection the most invincible crown of England has flourished from of old, to intercede between God and his people, that the Supreme Judge, who foresees all things, might take pity on the grief all England would feel at the price we would pay with our blood, and in His infinite mercy, deliver from the swords of the French our king and us his people, who have sought not war but peace, and bring us to the honour and glory of His name, in triumph to Calais. Without any other hope but this, we hastened on from there in the direction of the head of the river …50
What the author of the Gesta does not say at this point is that Henry’s high-minded intentions not to lay waste ‘his’ kingdom of France were starting to wear thin. It was all very well for him to declare that no burning, raping or killing should take place; but the men were now hungry, and the scouts were taking matters into their own hands. Henry may or may not have condoned their actions, but the English burned and looted as they marched to Airaines.51
Tuesday 15th
The Issue Rolls for this day record an interesting payment. It reads: ‘to Master Robert Benham sent to Calais with divers medicines ordered for the health of the king’s person and others in his army who went with him’.52 This obviously postdates the actual delivery of the medicines by some weeks; but it suggests that Henry had not escaped the siege of Harfleur totally unscathed. What he had been suffering from, and whether he was still afflicted, we can only guess. But the knowledge that he was ill, and had not yet reached Calais to benefit from the medicines in question, makes his leadership in the face of many adversities all the more striking.
*
The dejected English army approached the city of Amiens. Two days earlier, in the same town, the orders for the defence of the Somme had been read out. Charles d’Albret had chosen to concentrate the bulk of his forces at Abbeville, in an attempt to trap Henry against the river. The people of Amiens had been ordered to send reinforcements – large numbers of crossbowmen and all their artillery. This they had done, albeit very reluctantly, for it left them vulnerable. Now at Abbeville there were several thousand fighting men and twelve heavy cannon, more than two thousand cannon balls, and large stocks of saltpetre, sulphur, gunpowder, and various other machines of war.53 At Amiens there were no stockpiled munitions.
The people of Amiens were lucky. The English marched straight past, at a distance of about three miles. It is likely that the soldiers from Abbeville, who had been tracking them along the far bank, had bolstered the defences of the town. Also troops stationed upstream at Corbie and Péronne may have shifted to Amiens in response to the English advance. D’Albret’s plan was flexible enough to defend the inland towns. The dejected English had no option but to press on into the dangerous interior of France.
Wednesday 16th
At first Henry’s progress had been fast – sixteen or seventeen miles per day – as fast as one could reasonably go with ten thousand men and several hundred carts and wagons. But since the council meeting six miles short of Blanchetaque, that speed had fallen off. From that moment to the end of today the army had covered between ten and eleven miles per day.
There were several reasons for their slowness. The main one was that they were desperate to find a way across the river. Although the army was travelling along a line of hills nearby, frequent forays had to be made down to the water to investigate every bridge and every possible ford, and every potential site for a new temporary bridge. Of course, the bridges were all broken, and the fords guarded. No doubt the consequent frustration led to the burning and looting along the way – another delaying factor. They had to find food as well; their supplies of dried beef and walnuts had all long since gone, so they had to forage for everything they ate and drank. The weather did not help. It rained hard and was windy, and the nights were very cold.54 Riding or marching for hours in such miserable conditions must have been difficult, especially when the men were starving, weak, and frightened.
Boves was a town in the overlordship of the duke of Burgundy, being held for him by the count of Vaudémont, brother of the duke of Lorraine. Although the count was with Boucicaut at the time, the question remained, would the townsmen fire on the English? Or would they ho
ld to John the Fearless’s promise not to impede Henry in his quarrel with the king of France? It is perhaps significant that Thomas Elmham, writing three years later, notes that Henry ‘chose’ to stay at this town, perhaps seeing his reception by the garrison of the castle there as a test of John the Fearless’s loyalty. The garrison, situated on a well-defended rocky outcrop, fired no cannon, nor did they make a sortie and attack. Instead they negotiated with Henry for the safe passage of the army. They surrendered hostages, and under cover of night they sent out eight massive baskets of bread, each one carried by two men, to help sustain the army. Henry also asked the captain of the castle to look after two very sick knights in the army, directing the men in question to give up their horses as an advance payment of their ransoms.55
A number of low-status men, presumably archers, today broke into the vineyards and presses in the region around Boves, looking for wine. Not surprisingly they found it – in large quantities. When this was reported to Henry he was very angry. Some men asked why he had forbidden them to drink wine, asking to fill up their bottles with it, now they were here. Henry replied that
he was not troubled by the idea of bottles but that the problem was that many would have their stomachs as their bottles, and that was what bothered him, for he was worried they would get too drunk.56
No wine and no women. One does not imagine there was very much song either – apart from the pipes and drums of war. What with the lack of food and lack of comfort, campaigning with Henry V was a grim experience.
One man did get his reward today. Henry promised his esquire, William Hargrove, that when they returned to England he would make him the usher of the Order of the Garter, together with the house in Windsor Castle that went with the office, receiving the usual wages as his predecessor. This position carried the right to bear the black rod before the king and his heirs on feast days, and is today known after the symbol of the office: Black Rod.57
1415: Henry V's Year of Glory Page 47