By now, the English were expert at siege-craft, even if they would much rather not get tied down in doing it. The king’s army surrounded the city with the siege lines divided into sectors, seven on the northern side of the river and one on the south, each commanded by a senior officer. Four main redoubts were dug and connected by trenches, and the English engineers threw a pontoon bridge across the river downstream. All routes in and out were cut off and the bombardment began. Le Boutellier was confident that, even if he could not be relieved by river, an army from Paris would surely move across country to his aid. Unfortunately for him, nobody in Paris was in the slightest bit interested in his plight, or, if they were, they were unable to do anything about it. In 1417, Dauphin Jean had died, to be replaced by another, as yet unprepossessing, brother Charles. There was still no strong single central authority, and, in 1418, the Burgundians had managed to spark off a popular uprising in Paris that threw out the Armagnacs and lynched the new constable. The French chroniclers say that by the autumn the occupants of Rouen were reduced to eating horses,96 and, when these were all gone, dogs and cats, followed by rats, were next.
Those who had previously sought refuge in the city were now considered useless mouths, and several hundred men, women and children, already half-starved, were expelled. King Henry would not allow them to pass through his lines, nor would he provide them with food – as he rightly said, ‘I did not put them there’ – although he did relent on Christmas Day 1418, when he sent one day’s rations into no-man’s-land. The expulsion of the non-effectives in order to make the rations stretch a little further was too late, however, and, on 31 December, a group of French knights appeared on the battlements asking for parley. Henry kept them waiting, but, on 2 January, negotiations were opened and the garrison commander agreed that, if no relief force appeared by 19 January, then he would surrender the city and accept the English terms – which were surprisingly generous. Although an indemnity of 300,000 crowns (£50,000) was to be paid, the garrison could march out to safety, without their weapons and having sworn not to take up arms against the English for one year, and civilians who took an oath of allegiance to Henry would not have their houses or property plundered. No relief force appeared, nor was there any likelihood of one, and so the city of Rouen passed into English hands. Henry spent two months repairing the damage and then continued the subjugation of the rest of Normandy. By the end of the year 1419, the whole of the duchy was once more in English hands.
The military conquest of Normandy was only the first step in reestablishing sovereignty there, and Henry was assiduous in setting up an administration to govern it and make it self-supporting as far as possible. Normans who would not swear allegiance had their lands confiscated and awarded to Englishmen, but those loyal to the English cause were kept on as wardens, bailiffs and justices. In general, the most senior appointments went to Englishmen, but otherwise the existing civil service, such as it was, was re-employed. Normans who took the oath could, for a payment of tenpence (£0.04), be given a certificate which was supposed to protect them from molestation by English patrols or checkpoints. As with Calais, Henry wanted to encourage English settlers, and several thousand, mainly of the minor gentry or the merchant classes, would migrate to Normandy in the years to come. Many of them married Norman girls and over the centuries became absorbed into the native population, and, while some of their descendants are still there today, with names rendered into French approximations, any sense of Englishness has long gone. While not all of Normandy welcomed English rule, and the taxes levied to make the duchy independent of English subsidy were much heavier than those imposed before (or perhaps were collected more efficiently), there was surprisingly little resistance. A few brigands led by dispossessed Frenchmen hid in the woods, and were duly hanged when caught, but the Norman bureaucrats stayed loyal and the English garrison left in Normandy was tiny – had the English presence been unpopular, an uprising could easily have expelled them. The fact that Normandy remained English for another thirty years would indicate that, however oppressive some aspects of English rule might have been, it was preferable to that of the French.
Then came a stroke of luck for England, and Henry got his ally. Despite the fierce enmity between the Burgundian and Armagnac factions, Jean the Fearless, duke of Burgundy, was increasingly concerned by English military successes. He had no time for the dauphin or his Orléanist supporters, but neither did he want English rule over the whole of France – that was something he coveted for himself, in due time. Negotiations between the two opposing French camps were opened, and it appeared to the Burgundians that, despite the appalling fate that they themselves had meted out to the Armagnacs in the Paris uprising, when hundreds of the latter were killed out of hand, some form of compromise agreement might be arrived at. On 10 September 1419, at Montereau on the River Yonne, forty miles south-east of Paris, the duke of Burgundy arrived to pay homage to the twenty-year-old dauphin. As he knelt, the Armagnacs, who had no intention of forgetting or forgiving, struck and Jean was hacked to pieces, his right hand being cut off first, to stop him raising the devil. It was claimed by the Burgundians that the dauphin had personally given the signal for the attack and, true or not, the murder sent shock waves throughout France, with many in Paris and the north blaming the dauphin for all the ills that the war had brought upon them. Duke Jean’s heir, Philip, a mature man of twenty-five, was horrified and immediately made overtures to the only man who could help him to exact revenge – Henry V of England. In December 1419, a formal treaty of alliance between England and Burgundy was signed, whereby Philip would recognize Henry’s claim to the French throne and Henry in turn would not interfere with the Burgundian territories other than as the feudal overlord.
From now on, it would be Anglo-Burgundian armies that would campaign to conquer Dauphinist France, and a combination of the threat of a now far larger military opposition, general war-weariness and disgust at the murder of Philip’s father persuaded the supporters of the mad King Charles VI to make peace with Henry. The result was the Treaty of Troyes, which was signed on 20 May 1420 and granted Henry almost all that he and his forefathers had asked for. Charles may not have known what he was signing, but the treaty was ratified by the parlement and Henry was recognized as Charles’s heir to the French throne. (Queen Isabeau, who had long presided over an alternative court in Burgundian territory, had conveniently declared her son Charles, the dauphin, the product of an adulterous affair and therefore a bastard.) Normandy was to remain an English possession until Henry became king of France, and he was to receive the homage of Brittany. The two kingdoms were not to be amalgamated but ruled separately, albeit by the same man, and Henry was required to conquer that portion of France not already pledged to him – which effectively meant south of the River Loire. In the meantime, Henry was declared the regent of France and betrothed to Katherine of Valois, the nineteen-year-old daughter of Charles VI. While this was intended as a dynastic marriage pure and simple, it seems that it developed into a genuine love match, and Katherine would eventually become a much-loved queen and queen-dowager of England.
The marriage took place within a fortnight of the treaty being signed, for Henry had no time to waste, and after a brief consummation the combined armies marched off to besiege Montereau, the scene of Duke Jean’s assassination. Now any pretence on Henry’s part of being an essentially kindly soul was abandoned: anyone resisting his armies was a traitor and would be dealt with accordingly. Prisoners were hanged outside the walls of Montereau, thus encouraging a swift surrender, and the army moved north to Melun, halfway between Montereau and Paris. Here the task was much harder: the town was well situated for defence – the citadel was on an island in the Seine – and the garrison commander was a particularly determined Gascon, Arnaud de Barbazon. The siege dragged on, with the English trying bombardment of the walls and, when that failed, mining. The French counter-mined and there were ferocious little battles by glimmering torchlight underground, but still the
defenders held out, until at last in November there was no food left, nor a dog, cat or rat, and the town surrendered. Henry was determined to hang de Barbazon, who as a Gascon was doubly a traitor – to him as king of England and overlord of Aquitaine and to him as king of France – but the wily soldier escaped death by quoting a rule of chivalry that said, if a man fought with a king, he was therefore his equal, and de Barbazon claimed to have fought Henry in one of the scuffles in the tunnels. There was no such objection to Henry’s hanging of Scots soldiers in the Melun garrison. Their king, James I, while in fact a prisoner in the Tower, was officially a guest and ally of Henry, so any Scots in arms against England were traitors.
In September 1420, Henry made his ceremonial entrance into Paris to general acclaim: the citizens might not have liked the English, but, if the price of peace and stability was turning out to cheer the traditional enemy, then so be it. Henry spent Christmas 1420 in the Louvre and then left a garrison in Paris to guard against any revanchist tendencies before setting off for England with Katherine. She was crowned queen of England by the archbishop of Canterbury in Westminster on 21 February 1421, and then the royal couple set off on a progress throughout England, partly to show the people their new queen and partly to enforce the collection of more taxes to support the war. Monies raised in Normandy and France were not yet sufficient to make the continuance of the struggle self-supporting, and, while individuals from great nobles to humble archers had done very well out of the war, the English treasury had not. Although there were grumbles, Parliament nonetheless agreed the necessary subsidies.
While the royal progress was going on, news arrived of the first English defeat for many a year, at the Battle of Baugé on 22 March 1421. The king’s brother, the duke of Clarence, was campaigning along the River Loire and intended to invest Angers, but he found that town too strong for his force of, perhaps, 1,500 men-at-arms and 4,500 archers and withdrew to Beaufort-en-Vallée sixteen miles east of Angers. Archers out foraging took some Scottish prisoners who were on the same errand, and, when they were interrogated, they reported that the Franco-Scottish army of around 6,000 men was in the area of Viel Baugé, eight miles to the east-north-east of Beaufort. The chronicles are hazy about exactly what happened, but it appears that Clarence disregarded the advice of his senior commanders, forgot everything the English had learned from decades of campaigning in France and, instead of waiting until his archers returned from foraging, set off with his mounted men-at-arms – probably around 800 or so – in the hope of surprising the French. He seems to have charged uphill on marshy ground against considerably greater numbers, and the result was predictable: he was forced back against the River Couasnon and charged in turn by the Scots under the earl of Buchan. Clarence himself was killed, as were a number of his officers, including Sir Gilbert d’Umfraville, who had advised against the foray, while others were taken prisoner. Only the arrival of the archers under the earl of Salisbury prevented a defeat from becoming a massacre; Clarence’s body was rescued and eventually sent back to England and buried in what is now Canterbury Cathedral near the tomb of his father, Henry IV. Clarence must have known that what he was doing was foolish in the extreme, but, unlike his other brothers, he had not been at Agincourt and dreary sieges held little appeal. He may have thought that here was a chance to win glory for and by himself in a real battle, and that his mere arrival on the field would so frighten and disorganize the French that he could gain an easy victory even against far greater numbers. Had the enemy been entirely French, that might have been the case, but the Scots were experienced mercenary soldiers and quite happy to learn from the English and meet a mounted charge with a battle line of determined infantry. The result of the battle gave some much needed cheer to the Dauphinists but had little or no strategic consequences. What it did do, however, was to make Jean of Brittany have second thoughts about his own position; and despite the debt he owed to English arms – without which he would not have become the duke – he began to make plans to change sides.
In June 1421, King Henry returned to France with another 6,000 troops. He took Dreaux forty miles west of Paris, then went south, taking Vendôme, and then east to Beaugency. Having reduced those towns, he next considered Orléans, but, concluding that a siege of that heavily fortified town with a strong Armagnac garrison would take too long, he bypassed it to the north. In October 1421, he laid siege to Meaux, eighteen miles east of Paris, hoping that it could be taken before the winter set in. Alas, that was not to be, and, as the weather got wetter and colder, dysentery and an outbreak of smallpox hit the army. Even the king fell ill and specialist physicians had to be summoned from England to tend him. He appeared to recover, and the siege went on, the only good news being the announcement of the birth of a healthy son to the king and Queen Katherine at Windsor on 6 December. Henry spent Christmas in Paris with Charles VI and his now reconciled queen Isabeau before rejoining his army in the field. Then finally, on 9 March 1422, the garrison of Meaux abandoned the town and withdrew into a well-defended locality in the suburbs known as the market, where they held out until 10 May. Henry was so exasperated that he had the garrison commander beheaded and his body exhibited upside down on his own gallows.
The English army marched on, responding to a cry for help from the Burgundian town of Cosne, 112 miles south on the Loire, which was being besieged by the Armagnacs, when quite suddenly Henry found he could not ride. He developed a high fever and was transferred to a litter and taken to his castle at Vincennes. The finest medical brains in England and France could do nothing, and, although still completely lucid, he knew the end was near. After summoning his council and laying down the way in which he wished his two kingdoms to be governed and his infant son to be brought up, he died on 31 August 1422. The greatest Englishman that ever lived (at least in the opinion of this author) was no more. He was only thirty-four.
On his deathbed, Henry V nominated his thirty-three-year-old brother John of Lancaster, duke of Bedford, as regent of France and guardian of his eight-month-old infant son, now Henry VI, and his youngest brother, thirty-two-year-old Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, as regent of England. At first all went well, and, when Charles VI of Valois died two months later, it seemed that a smooth succession of Henry VI of England as Henri II of France would be achieved, and the baby was duly proclaimed as such. Anglo-Burgundian armies continued to press south and the dauphin, whose court moved between Poitiers, Chinon and Bourges, was generally considered to be of little account – even by those loyal to his cause. Bedford was not only a competent soldier but also an excellent administrator, and he was well aware of the need to win what in a much later age would be called the campaign of hearts and minds. After he had purged the French civil service of Orléanist sympathizers, it worked loyally for him, and, despite the provisions of the Treaty of Troyes, Normandy was still run as a separate territory. Militarily, Bedford was ably assisted by Thomas Montague, fourth earl of Salisbury, and his second-in-command Richard Beauchamp, thirteenth earl of Warwick. Salisbury’s father had been involved in the plot to murder Henry IV in 1399 and was killed by the mob as a result, but Thomas had proved his loyalty to the Lancastrians over and over again; he was an artillery expert and was said to have been Henry V’s favourite general. Warwick had been brought up a Ricardian, but, when Richard II had turned against the family, they were saved only by Henry Bolingbroke’s assumption of the throne; he had served in most of the Lancastrian wars and been on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Between them, the pair, both in their early forties, directed operations to recover the rest of France. Under them there were a host of thoroughly competent commanders, men who were by no means all of noble blood but had earned their rank and position by professional ability in the field. All did well out of the wars, most became immensely rich, and many acquired French titles and lands which, by and large, they administered fairly and well.
At the height of English power, the whole of Normandy, the valley of the Seine, the Île de France (Paris and its environs)
, Picardy, much of Maine and Anjou, Aquitaine, Calais and its surroundings, and part of Champagne were under English rule. But however benign that rule was to begin with – and Bedford did his best to keep it so – there were problems. The English parliament was becoming reluctant to raise the money to fund the war, thus taxes in English France, particularly in Normandy, had to rise. There was a sales tax (effectively VAT), a hearth tax (council tax), the pattis (road tolls) and an ever-increasing tax on alcohol. On top of the officially levied taxes, there were the depredations of routiers, highwaymen and gangs of brigands, and the unofficial enterprises of many English garrisons, which ran what were effectively protection rackets. Feelings among the peasantry, initially thankful for an English victory that would bring peace and stability, began to turn. Nevertheless, Bedford intended to mount a major campaign in 1424 to subdue the rest of Maine and Anjou and then push south to Bourges and end the war once and for all. Before the operation could be launched, however, there was the distraction of Verneuil, an English-controlled town sixty miles west of Paris on the borders of Normandy. A Scots army had persuaded the town to surrender without a fight by convincing the garrison commander that there had been a battle and that the English army had suffered a major defeat.97 Bedford duly set off to retake the town with a force of around 1,500 men-at-arms and 4,500 archers. Arriving before Verneuil, he formed up in the usual English way: himself commanding the right-hand division of dismounted men-at-arms and Salisbury the left, archers on each flank and a reserve of mounted archers behind. He then waited for the French – a force of around twice his number, composed of Scots and French infantry, Italian mercenary cavalry and crossbowmen.
A Great and Glorious Adventure Page 29