Agincourt

by Juliet Barker

  The finger of blame was also pointed at a third group of people. In the final stages of the battle, while the English were occupied elsewhere, the alarm was raised that they were being attacked from the rear. Had this been true the English would have been caught between two fronts and in mortal danger, again giving sufficient reason to order the killing of the prisoners. In fact, though there was indeed an attack, it was not upon the army itself, but upon the baggage train. Contemporary chroniclers accused local men of carrying out the robbery and suggest that it was a spur of the moment affair, prompted by the rich pickings available. Three Burgundians, Ysembart d’Azincourt, Robinet de Bournonville and Rifflart de Plamasse, accompanied by a small number of men-at-arms and about six hundred peasants or “people of low estate” from the Hesdin area, were said to be responsible.45

  It is possible that this was part of the official French battle plan. An attack on “the varlets and their carts” behind English lines had been envisaged in Marshal Boucicaut’s earlier plan and a company of several hundred mounted men, under the command of Louis de Bourdon, had been appointed to carry it out.46 On the day of battle, de Bourdon was reassigned to more important duties, but this does not necessarily mean that the idea was abandoned, especially as there was no shortage of men in the French ranks. What more natural than that the task should be given to local men, who knew the lie of the land intimately and could secretly work their way around the English lines?

  The English chaplain, however, suggests that it was an altogether more opportunistic affair, with plunder as its sole objective. He was best placed to know, since he was himself in the baggage train, and had noted that “French pillagers were watching it from almost every side, intending to make an attack upon it immediately they saw both armies engage.” According to him, the attack occurred not in the final stages of the battle but as soon as the fighting began and while the baggage train was still being brought up from its original position in and around Maisoncelle. The pillagers “fell upon the tail end of it, where, owing to the negligence of the royal servants, the king’s baggage was.” This seems a more likely scenario, especially as John Hargrove, a servant of the king’s pantry, later received a royal pardon for losing the king’s plate and jewels at Agincourt.47

  Whenever the raid took place, it was successful beyond the dreams of the perpetrators. They acquired £219 16s in cash, jewels (including a gem-studded gold cross worth more than £2166 and a piece of the True Cross), the king’s crown, his state sword and the seals of the English chancery. The sword, which rapidly acquired the reputation of having once belonged to King Arthur, was later presented by Ysembart d’Azincourt and Robinet de Bournonville to Philippe, count of Charolais, in the hope that it might persuade him to intercede for them if their theft incurred any repercussions. It was a fruitless gesture. Once the rumour had gained ground that it was their actions which had prompted the killing of the French prisoners, Philippe was forced to give up the sword to his father, John the Fearless, who had the two men arrested and imprisoned. If nothing else, they were convenient scapegoats and punishing them would appease not only the outcry in France but the duke of Burgundy’s English ally.48

  Back on the battlefield, it soon became clear that the attempt to rally the French had failed. With their leaders dead and the king of England advancing menacingly towards them, the last remnants of the rearguard realised that further resistance was futile. Those who still had their horses gave themselves up to flight, abandoning those on foot to their fate and the possession of the field to the English. Though it was obvious that victory was his, Henry had one last formality to observe. Before the battle began, he had ordered that his heralds “should diligently attend only to their own duties” and should not take up arms themselves. As le Févre de St Remy explains, the English heralds had then joined their French counterparts to watch the course of the combat together.49 By reason of their office, they stood above partisan loyalties and were there as impartial international observers. As if they were attending a joust or tournament, it was their role to record valiant deeds and, ultimately, to award the palm of victory.

  It was for this reason that Henry V now summoned them to his presence. He formally requested Montjoie king of arms, the senior herald of France, to tell him whether the victory had fallen to the king of England or to the king of France. In acknowledging that God had indeed given victory to Henry, Montjoie was thus forced to admit that the king of England had won his trial by battle and that he had proved that his cause was just. Afterwards, Henry asked him the name of the castle that stood close to the battlefield and was informed that it was called Azincourt. “And because, said the king, all battles ought to bear the name of the nearest fortress, village or town to the place where they were fought, this battle will now and for ever be known as the battle of Azincourt.”50

  PART III

  THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE ROLL OF THE DEAD

  The sheer scale of the French defeat was genuinely humbling, even frightening. Thousands of Frenchmen lay dead on the field of Agincourt. The exact number is impossible to gauge because contemporary chronicle sources vary wildly and there are no comprehensive official administrative records to draw upon. Thomas Walsingham, for instance, gives the very precise figure of 3069 knights and esquires, plus almost a hundred barons, but admits that the number of common people was not counted by the heralds. The chaplain counted ninety-eight men above the rank of banneret, “whose names are set down in a volume of record,” which was probably the same source used by Walsingham. He also says that the French lost a further fifteen hundred and more knights “according to their own estimate,” and between four and five thousand other gentlemen, “almost the whole nobility among the soldiery of France.” On the other hand, the Venetian Antonio Morosini, quoting a letter written at Paris on 30 October, five days after the battle, when no one yet knew for sure what the losses had been, lists (inaccurately) the names of twenty-six barons killed and thirteen taken prisoner, and puts the final number of dead at between ten and twelve thousand, though it is not clear whether this includes commoners.1

  What is beyond dispute is not so much the precise magnitude of the French losses, but the fact that the corresponding figures for the English dead were, by any standard, infinitesimally small. Only two magnates lost their lives: Edward, duke of York, and Michael de la Pole, the young earl of Suffolk, whose father had died of dysentery at Harfleur a few weeks earlier. Most chroniclers suggest that somewhere in the region of thirty others were killed, together with some four or five gentlemen, of whom only two are usually named, Sir Richard Kyghley and Daffyd ap Llewelyn. These figures are, as we shall see, a serious underestimate of the true total, though it seems unlikely that the real number was as high as the 1600 “men of all ranks” cited by le Févre,2 if only because this would have been over a quarter of the entire English army and not even the most ardent propagandist could have claimed that such a loss was insignificant.

  The most interesting of all the English dead was Edward, duke of York, a man who has been much maligned by posterity. A first cousin of both Richard II and Henry IV, he has been characterised as “unstable and treacherous,”3 a label that could just as easily be applied to every prominent figure who lived through the troubled reign of Richard II and survived the usurpation and change of dynasty. It was the duke’s misfortune to have had to walk a fine political line and to be the victim of both Ricardian and Tudor propagandists (including Shakespeare). A particular favourite of Richard II, he had played a leading role in the arrest of the Appellants and had appealed them for treason in his role as constable of England. On the other hand, he became uncomfortable with Richard’s increasingly despotic behaviour, balked at his decision to exile the future Henry IV and in the end deserted to the latter during the usurpation, as did all but a very few die-hard loyalists.

  Although he was implicated by association in both the murder of the Appellant duke of Gloucester and the
anti-Lancastrian plots of his sister and brother, his own complicity was never proved. He spent seventeen weeks imprisoned at Pevensey Castle after his sister’s plot was discovered, but he was treated with a kindliness that casts doubt on his guilt and which he remembered many years later with a legacy of twenty pounds to his former jailer in his will. Though some of his lands remained forfeit to the crown, he won back his former posts and served Henry IV with distinction in Aquitaine and Wales; as a result of his role in the Welsh wars, he earned the friendship of the prince of Wales, who personally stood guarantor for his loyalty in Parliament in 1407 and appointed him to positions of trust in his own reign.4

  Like many of those in Henry V’s inner circles, including the king himself, Edward was deeply religious and imbued with that particular form of self-abasing piety which was the acceptable, mainstream version of Lollardy. When he made his will, during the siege of Harfleur, he called himself “of all sinners the most wicked and guilty” and requested that, if he died away from home, his corpse was to be taken back with the minimum of ceremony by two of his chaplains, six of his esquires and six of his valets. Six candles only were to burn round his bier and he was to be buried in the collegiate church of St Mary and All Saints, which he had founded at Fotheringhay, in Northamptonshire, three years earlier.5

  Like many of his contemporaries, he was a man of literary tastes, who was familiar with, and able to quote from, the works of Geoffrey Chaucer. What makes him exceptional is that he was also the author of a treatise on hunting, which he wrote and dedicated to Henry V when the latter was prince of Wales. In his prologue he described it as a “simple memorial,”6 but it is an extraordinary book in many ways. The duke, like most medieval noblemen, was passionate about hunting. For him it was not simply a pleasant pastime, nor even just a practical way of providing fresh meat for the table. It was a battle of wits and skill against a respected quarry, a question of intimate knowledge of habits, habitation and lie of the land, all governed by strictly enforced rules of conduct and etiquette to prevent the killing of breeding animals and those that were too young or inedible, but also to ensure that no part of a carcass was wasted.

  Unusually, since the book was designed for the use of the aristocracy, it was not written in French, the language of chivalry, but in English. Much of it is a translation of a famous hunting treatise by Gaston Phoebus, count of Foix, who died in 1391, appropriately enough of a stroke sustained on the hunting field. But the duke of York was no mere translator. He was also Henry IV’s official master of hart-hounds7 and he knew his sport inside out. He therefore drew heavily on his own knowledge to add information that was peculiar to England, and to embellish his original with comments based on his own experience. The Master of Game is an unrivalled source of practical information about the medieval practice of hunting, from the basics of choosing the right dog for the right task, through to the highly prized art of correctly dismembering a carcass. It is not a dull scholarly treatise, but a celebration of one man’s passion, written with a lyricism to rival that of Chaucer. For the duke, no pleasure on earth could rival that of hunting. It was a foretaste of paradise. “Now shall I prove how hunters live in this world more joyfully than any other men,” he had written.

  For when the hunter riseth in the morning, and he sees a sweet and fair morn and clear weather and bright, and he heareth the song of the small birds, the which sing so sweetly with great melody and full of love, each in its own language in the best wise that it can . . . And when the sun is arisen, he shall see fresh dew upon the small twigs and grasses, and the sun by his virtue shall make them shine. And that is great joy and liking to the hunter’s heart . . . And when he hath well eaten and drunk he shall be glad and well, and well at his ease. And then shall he take the air in the evening of the night, for the great heat that he hath had, . . . and lie in his bed in fair fresh clothes, and shall sleep well and steadfastly all the night without any evil thoughts of any sins, wherefore I say that hunters go into Paradise when they die, and live in this world more joyfully than any other men.

  . . . Men desire in this world to live long in health and in joy, and after death the health of the soul. And hunters have all these things. Therefore be ye all hunters and ye shall do as wise men.8 The manner of the duke’s death is not recorded by contemporaries, but it is suggestive that there was a remarkably high casualty rate among his own retinue. (The legend that he was fat, and was therefore trampled underfoot and suffocated, is a late Tudor invention, though it is still repeated unquestioningly by modern historians.9) The duke had originally indented to serve with 100 men-at-arms and 300 archers, though he ended up taking 340 archers (and had to mortgage his estates to pay their wages before he sailed from Southampton).10 By 6 October, when the exchequer records for the second financial quarter began, two days before the departure from Harfleur, his numbers had been reduced to eighty men-at-arms and 296 archers (four of the latter had been struck off because they could not fire the required minimum ten aimed arrows per minute). During the march he lost three more men-at-arms and three more archers, so his entire company at the battle consisted of 370 men. The records of those who reshipped home from Calais reveal that only 283 of them survived the battle: eighty-six of his esquires and archers—almost a quarter of those present—died at Agincourt with him.11

  This high casualty rate tallies with what we know of the course of the fighting. The duke was commanding the English vanguard, which formed the right wing at the battle, and was therefore the recipient of the assault by the French left wing, led by the count of Vendôme, which also suffered very heavy losses.12 The chaplain tells us that the fighting was hardest and the piles of bodies highest round the standards of the three English divisions, so this too suggests that the duke and his men were among those who bore the brunt of the French assault. The information that has survived about other English retinues indicates that the duke’s losses at Agincourt were exceptionally high.13

  Sir Richard Kyghley, a Lancashire knight and friend of Sir William Botiller, who had died at Harfleur, had a personal retinue of six men-at-arms and eighteen archers. Sir Richard himself was killed at the battle, with four of his archers, William de Holland, John Greenbogh, Robert de Bradshaw and Gilbert Howson. Although we do not know where or how Kyghley died in the battle, it is interesting to speculate that he may have been in charge of the Lancashire archers and that they may have been on the English right wing, flanking the duke of York’s company. The Lancashire contingents certainly seem to have suffered heavier losses than any other retinue, apart from the duke of York’s, suggesting that they too were in the midst of the fiercest fighting on that wing.14

  The other men-at-arms killed at Agincourt whose names have been preserved were also a close-knit group from a single region.15 Daffyd ap Llewelyn, known to his contemporaries as Davy Gam, has acquired semi-legendary status as the Welshman who was the inspiration for Shakespeare’s Fluellen (a corruption of Llewelyn). He was also said to have been the subject of a verse by the rebel princeling Owain Glyn Dw?246-136?r, describing him as a short, red-haired man with a squint (“Gam” being a Welsh nickname for squinting). Llewelyn had always been a loyal Lancastrian. His lands, which he held from Henry IV, first as earl of Hereford then as king, were principally in Brecon. During the Welsh revolt, his loyalty made him a target for rebels, and in 1412 he had been betrayed into the hands of Owain Glyn Dw?246-136?r and held captive until he was eventually ransomed.16

  Although he brought a retinue of only three archers to the Agincourt campaign, Llewelyn was knighted on the field, only to fall in the battle. With him died his two sons-in-law Watkin Lloyd and Roger Vaughan, the former of whom had been recruited by John Merbury, the chamberlain of south Wales, as one of a company of nine men-at-arms, fourteen mounted archers and 146 foot archers from Brecon. Vaughan’s widow, Gwladis, married as her second husband William Thomas of Raglan, who was also a veteran of Agincourt, and, like her father, was said to have been knighted on the field.17

&nbs
p; Though the picture is inevitably flawed because the available records are incomplete, one can identify at least 112 men from the English side who were killed in the battle, a figure that excludes those who later died of their wounds. Of these, almost exactly two-thirds were archers, whose names have survived only in exchequer records and would not have been recorded by any contemporary chronicler. When we turn to the French side, there are no equivalent administrative records to give us even a hint of the numbers of non-noble men who died. What we do have are lists of men whose names have been recorded only because they were entitled to bear a coat of arms. These lists were usually compiled by heralds, but even they were unable to be comprehensive. This was sometimes because local knowledge was lacking: a Breton chronicler, such as Alain Bouchart, was able to add the names of several Breton knights whom the Armagnac and Burgundian sources had failed to identify. (Bouchart also noted that all three hundred Breton archers, under the command of Jean de Chateaugiron, sire de Combour, “except for very few,” were killed in the battle with him.)18