Agincourt

by Juliet Barker

  Once the English had finished, the corpses were despoiled for a second time by the local people, who literally stripped them stark naked. “None of them, however, illustrious or distinguished, possessed at our departure any more covering, save only to conceal his nature, than that with which Nature had endowed him when first he saw the light,” the chaplain noted.46 This was more than just a conventional pious platitude about all men being equal under the skin. Without their banners, pennons, surcoats or coats of arms, it was impossible for the heralds and other armorial experts to identify which individuals had been killed. Once they had also been robbed of their armour and garments, it was not even possible to tell a nobleman from a citizen militiaman.

  Identifying the dead was made more difficult by the fact that so many of them had received head and facial wounds. One chronicle claimed that only eighteen out of some five or six hundred Breton dead could be identified “because all the others were so lacerated that no one could recognise them.” This was in part because of the nature of the battle: the arrows had been aimed principally at the visors of the approaching enemy, and those men-at-arms who fell in the crush and the mud were dispatched by the archers, who raised their visors as they lay helpless and stabbed them with their daggers or struck them with their leaden mallets. Some of the dead must also have been the prisoners whose execution Henry had ordered when a French rally seemed likely. Again, head wounds are likely to have been a common cause of death, since the prisoners would all have been unhelmed. It may perhaps be significant in this context that when the body of Antoine, duke of Brabant, was discovered, two days after the battle, it was lying naked a little way from the field. He had a wound to his head but his throat had also been cut. One imagines that he was too important a prisoner to have been executed—but in the heat of battle his makeshift surcoat was evidently not enough to identify and protect him.47

  The local Ruisseauville chronicler also claimed that “the king of England had 500 men well armed and sent them amongst the dead, to take off their coats of arms and a great quantity of armour. They had small axes in their hands and other weapons and they cut both the dead and the living in the face so that they might not be recognised, even the English who were dead as well as the others.” Though he was not noted for his accuracy, his story may be substantially true. Le Févre de St Remy also records that Henry V ordered that all the armour, above and beyond that which his men could carry away, was to be gathered together in a single house or barn, which was then to be set on fire. While one can imagine that many of the corpses might have been disfigured in the process of removing their armour, especially as this must have been done in haste, this was not the object of the exercise, but incidental to it. The real purpose was to prevent such a vast cache of armour and weapons falling into the hands of the enemy, enabling them to mount an attack on the rear of the English army as it resumed its march to Calais.48

  Before that march could begin, there were other tasks to perform. There were too many bodies lying on the battlefield for the English to contemplate giving them all a Christian burial; we do not even know whether they did this for their own compatriots. Certainly the corpses of some of the more eminent victims—in particular, Edward, duke of York, and Michael, earl of Suffolk—were recovered for removal to England. Given the length of time it would take to transport them, and the lack of facilities to embalm them or encase them in lead to prevent them putrefying, it was the medieval practice to quarter the bodies and boil them until the flesh came away from the bones. This pragmatic but unpleasant procedure meant that the bones could then easily be transported back to England in a simple chest or coffer, to be interred with all due ceremony in their final resting place. Who was responsible for carrying out this gruesome office we do not know, though we can guess that Thomas Morstede and his team of surgeons—if they were not too busy attending the living—were probably involved.49

  It would be several days before the rest of the dead were buried. The families of the greater lords sent their servants and priests to search the battlefield for their loved ones. In this way, the bodies of the dukes of Alençon, Bar and Brabant were discovered, together with those of Constable d’Albret, Jacques de Châtillon, Galois de Fougières, the archbishop of Sens and the counts of Nevers and Roucy. Even at this late stage, some men were still found alive under the heaps of dead. Englebert van Edingen, sire de Kestergat, for instance, was discovered lying badly wounded three days after the battle, but even though he was carried to St Pol, he did not recover and died shortly afterwards. Every effort was made to take the dead back to their homes for burial beside their ancestors: the body of Philippe, count of Nevers, was embalmed and taken to the Cistercian abbey of Elan, near Mézières, in the Ardennes; the corpse of his brother the duke of Brabant was embalmed on the field and carried in a formal funeral procession through the grieving towns of his duchy to lie in state in Brussels, before being buried beside his first wife at Tervueren. The duke of Alençon was similarly embalmed so that his body could be taken for burial in the abbey church of St Martin at Sées, but his entrails were interred close to the great altar in the Franciscan church at Hesdin. Guillaume de Longueil, captain of Dieppe, was brought back to the town and buried with due honour in the church of St Jacques, together with one of the two sons who died at Agincourt with him; the body of his other son presumably could not be found.50

  Many other members of the local nobility found a final resting place in the churches and abbeys of Artois, Picardy and Flanders, where they were joined by those for whom the journey home was just too far. It was said that so great a number of bodies were brought for burial to the churchyards of Azincourt and Ruisseauville that all further interments there had to be prohibited. The proximity of the two churches at Hesdin, some seven miles from the battlefield, meant that they also received so many corpses that they were obliged to resort to mass graves. Constable d’Albret, far from his native Gascony, was given the place of honour before the grand altar of the Franciscan church, but thirteen other noblemen were interred elsewhere in the building, including two “lords whose names we do not know,” who were buried together by the holy water stoup in the nave. The great abbey church of Auchy-les-Moines at Hesdin provided a final resting place within its walls for fifteen noblemen, including Jacques de Châtillon, his brothers-in-law Gui and Philippe de la Roche-Guyon, who shared a single grave, Guichard Dauphin and eleven others. Despite the fact that four of these, including Galois de Fougières and “le petit Hollandes,” the son of the bailli of Rouen, were interred together, space was at such a premium that twelve more corpses, among them that of Symmonet de Moranvilliers, the bailli of Chartres, had to be buried in a communal grave in the cemetery behind the choir. It can have been small compensation for such indignity that their names and places of burial were assiduously recorded by Montjoie king of arms, with the assistance of Ponthieu and Corbie kings of arms, numerous heralds and pursuivants and the servants of those who had died.51

  In the end, it fell to the local clergy to make the necessary arrangements for the interment of the unidentified dead. Louis de Luxembourg, bishop of Thérouanne, in whose diocese Azincourt lay, authorised the consecration of a section of the battlefield. Under the direction of the abbots of Ruisseauville and Blangy, a series of long trenches were dug and somewhere in the region of six thousand corpses received a crude but Christian burial in these anonymous grave pits. A great wooden cross was raised over each mass grave, but no permanent memorial was erected until the nineteenth century and their location is still a matter of dispute today.52 The dead of Agincourt were not the first, nor yet the last, to find an anonymous corner in the graveyard of Europe which is the Somme.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE RETURN OF THE KING

  Walking back across the battlefield, through “the masses, the mounds, and the heaps of the slain,” the English chaplain was not alone in weeping at the scale of the slaughter. Like his king, he was utterly convinced of the justice of the English cause
and his fanaticism on this point made him blind to alternative or, indeed, opposing views. He was therefore unable to see the French dead simply as those who had given their lives in defence of their country against a foreign invader. He was also unaware of how many of them had put aside bitter party differences to do so, an altruism that made their deaths all the more poignant. Though his sympathy is expressed in terms that make uncomfortable reading for those who do not share his conviction, it was nevertheless totally genuine. He could not help but be touched by the thought that so great a number of warriors, famous and most valiant had only God been with them, should have sought their own deaths in such a manner at our hands, quite contrary to any wish of ours, and should thus have effaced and destroyed, all to no avail, the glory and honour of their own country. And if that sight gave rise to compunction and pity in us, strangers passing by, how much more was it a cause of grief and mourning to their own people, awaiting expectantly the warriors of their country and then seeing them so crushed and made defenceless. And, as I truly believe, there is not a man with heart of flesh or even of stone who, had he seen and pondered on the horrible deaths and bitter wounds of so many Christian men, would not have dissolved into tears, time and again, for grief.1

  Even the most impious soldier in the English army must have been given pause for thought by a victory that surely justified the term miraculous. Indeed, it was not long before rumours began to circulate that a miracle really had taken place. There were those who were prepared to testify that they had seen St George, the warrior patron saint of England, fighting on behalf of the English, just as he had aided the Normans against the Saracens in the battle of Cerami in 1063.2 If St George did appear, neither the chaplain nor our other eyewitnesses noticed him. All were united, however, in attributing the victory to God. “Our England . . . has reason to rejoice and reason to grieve,” the chaplain wrote in words that again echoed his king’s sentiments. “Reason to rejoice at the victory gained and the deliverance of her men, and reason to grieve for the suffering and destruction wrought in the deaths of Christians. But far be it from our people to ascribe the triumph to their own glory or strength; rather let it be ascribed to God alone, from Whom is every victory, lest the Lord be wrathful at our ingratitude and at another time turn from us, which Heaven forbid, His victorious hand.”3

  This was, in essence, the view of almost all contemporaries, including the French themselves. Some Burgundians were quick to blame the Armagnacs, circulating rumours among the international representatives of the Church meeting at the council of Constance that Charles d’Albret and Charles d’Orléans had betrayed their own side by defecting during the course of the battle to throw in their lot with the English—a particularly distasteful attempt to ward off criticism of their duke’s own absence from the battle. It was even said that the Agincourt news was received with joy in Paris because it was a defeat for the Armagnacs.4

  Other chroniclers, regardless of party, pointed the finger of blame squarely at the leaders of the French forces. They were accused of being too hasty in not waiting for the arrival of their own archers and crossbowmen, which was patently untrue; of being too arrogant to accept the military assistance of these men because they were their social inferiors, which has some justice; and of failing to impose discipline, which was true of the small cavalry unit, but not of the huge numbers of infantry, who had patiently maintained their position for hours on end the evening before and the morning of the battle. Whatever practical explanations for the disaster could be found, French commentators regarded these as merely incidental. They had no doubt that the real reason for the defeat was divine punishment for their own sins. By this they meant both the personal moral failings, such as the sin of pride that they attributed to the nobility in taking their places in the vanguard, or the cowardice that had caused so many to flee the field, and the political ambitions and quarrels that had set Armagnac against Burgundian, plunged the country into civil war and enabled the English to invade in the first place.5

  It is said that Henry seized an early opportunity to lecture his French prisoners on this subject, informing them that “he had done nothing, nor had the English; it was all the work of God and of our Lady and St George and due to your sins, for they say that you went to battle in pride and bombastic fashion, violating maidens, married women and others, and also robbing the countryside and all the churches; acting like that God will never aid you.” Another version of the same anecdote has Henry tell Charles d’Orléans that God himself had opposed the French: “and, if what I have heard is true, it is not surprising; for it is said that there was never seen more discord or disorder caused by sensuality, mortal sins and evil vices than reigns in France today.”6

  Just how many prisoners were now in English hands is a matter as hotly disputed and as irresolvable as the number of combatants in the French army. The lowest contemporary estimate comes from an English source, Thomas Walsingham, who suggested that 700 men were captured at the battle; le Févre puts the figure at 1600 and says that they were “all knights or esquires,” a statement that is likely to be true, given that anyone of lower rank would not be worth ransoming. Both the monk of St Denis, with 1400, and the chronicler of the nearby abbey of Ruisseauville, with 2200, are in the same sort of region, as is the report that went to the council of Constance suggesting 1500.7

  Whatever their actual numbers, it is indisputable that they included some of the greatest men in the kingdom: Charles, duke of Orléans; Jean, duke of Bourbon; Charles, count of Eu; Louis, count of Vendôme; and Arthur, count of Richemont; together with the paragon of French chivalry Marshal Boucicaut. It was a disaster for the Armagnac cause on an epic scale. With the exception of the dauphin, who would die, unlamented, only a couple of months later in December 1415, the seventy-five-year-old duke of Berry, who would die the following year, and Louis, duke of Anjou (whose force of 600 men failed to arrive in time for the battle, turning tail and returning to Rouen without striking a blow when they encountered some of the French fleeing from the field), every Armagnac leader of any consequence had been killed or taken captive.

  As evening approached and even the skies wept over the blood-soaked field of Agincourt, Henry decided that it was too late to resume his journey to Calais. However objectionable it might be to have to spend the night in such close proximity to the piles of unburied dead, his men were desperately short of rest and sleep. They needed to gather their strength, and the French baggage wagons, abandoned on the field, offered them a welcome and ready supply of provisions after the tight rationing of the previous weeks. The king himself retired to his former lodgings at Maisoncelle, where, as they were bound to do by the terms of their indentures, his captains surrendered to him all the princes of the blood royal and French commanders who had been captured. According to one source, written almost a quarter of a century later by an Italian under the auspices of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, Henry required the most noble of his French prisoners to serve him at his feast that night. Though the story obtained popular currency because it was repeated by Tudor historians, it does not occur in any eyewitness or contemporary account, and seems to have been an embellishment. After all, as le Févre de St Remy pointed out, most of the prisoners had been wounded and therefore would not have been in a fit state to wait upon their conqueror. In any case, this was not a moment for the sort of ruthless humiliation of his prisoners which Henry had displayed at the public surrender of Harfleur. Instead, he treated them with grace and punctilious politeness, speaking courteously and comfortingly to them, ensuring that the wounded were treated and offering food and wine to them all.8

  Very early the next morning, on Saturday 26 October, the king left his lodgings and escorted his prisoners in a final penitential act of walking over the battlefield. “It was a pitiful thing to see the great numbers of the nobility who had been killed there for their sovereign lord, the king of France,” le Févre remarked: “they were already stripped naked as the day they were born.” Even at this l
ate stage the living could still be found under the piles of the dead. Those who were capable of identifying themselves as being of noble birth were taken prisoner; the rest, including those too severely wounded to travel, were put to death.9

  The king now gave the command for his army to resume its journey towards Calais. The remarkable reversal in fortune that had befallen them the previous day was acknowledged by the decision that although they would still march in their customary battle formation, the order to wear coats of arms was rescinded; the English were no longer expecting or looking for a fight. Monstrelet tells us that three-quarters of them now had to travel on foot. Many horses on both sides were undoubtedly killed in the battle, despite the fact that all the English and most of the French had not used them for fighting. It is a matter of record in the royal accounts for the period that the king alone lost twenty-five, in addition to a further twenty that died on the march. Despite these heavy losses, the number of horses shipped back to England at the end of the campaign still outnumbered the men. Even the duke of York’s retinue, which had suffered especially high casualties in the battle, returned with 329 horses as opposed to only 283 men. If three-quarters of the English army really did have to resume their march on foot, it can only have been because their horses were required for carrying the wounded, the prisoners and possibly booty, but it seems more likely that Monstrelet’s claim was simply an exaggeration.10

  Nevertheless, the English progress towards Calais was unusually slow. They had some forty-five miles to cover and it took them a full three days. After the high drama and tension of the journey to Agincourt, the remainder of the march was such an anticlimax that even the chaplain passed over it without any comment. This cannot have entirely reflected the actual mood of those in command, for Henry at least was aware that, despite his victory, his men were not yet out of danger. Jean, duke of Brittany, with his Breton forces, was not so far away at Amiens. Louis d’Anjou’s six hundred men, under the command of the sire de Longny, were even closer, having come within three miles of the conflict before turning to flee. And no one knew for sure where John the Fearless was, or whether he would put in a belated appearance with the Burgundian forces he had claimed to be raising for so long. There could be no certainty that the alliances with the dukes of Brittany and Burgundy would hold in the light of the capture of the former’s brother, Arthur, count of Richemont, and the deaths of both the latter’s brothers, Antoine, duke of Brabant, and Philippe de Nevers, at Agincourt. The English could not afford to relax their guard against the possibility of an ambush until they finally reached the safety of the Pas-de-Calais.