Agincourt

by Juliet Barker

  In the event, the march passed off without any serious incident, though the accounts of the town of Boulogne record that some stragglers in the English army were captured by the men of the garrison and imprisoned in the belfry.11 By the evening of Monday 28 October the army had reached the fortified town of Guînes, which lay within the Pas-de-Calais, and was second only to Calais in its importance. They were welcomed with all due solemnity by the captain of the garrison and Henry, together with his most notable prisoners, spent the night there. The rest of the army pressed on to Calais, which lay only a few miles further north. If they had expected a hero’s welcome, they were mistaken. The citizens of Calais were understandably nervous about admitting almost six thousand half-starved and battle-hardened armed men through their gates. Provision had been made for the army’s arrival: food, beer and medicines had already been sent over from London in abundant quantities, but a shortage of bread was almost inevitable. Anxious to avoid a clash between the soldiers and the citizenry, or the even worse prospect of gangs of armed men rampaging through the streets taking by force what they could not acquire by purchase, the town authorities gave orders that only the leaders of the English army were to be admitted within its walls. The rest, including the less important French prisoners, were to remain encamped outside.12

  The wisdom of this move was readily apparent. There was much hard bargaining between the Agincourt veterans, who were desperate for food and drink, and the hard-nosed traders of Calais, who had an eye on the spoils of battle. The former naturally resented the latter, accusing them of exploiting their situation and forcing them to sell their booty and their prisoners at a mere fraction of their true value, simply in order to obtain the necessaries of life. In fact, a trade in prisoners, especially, was inevitable. Not everyone who had captured a Frenchman could afford to keep him indefinitely: in addition to paying for his living expenses, there was also the cost of his shipment back to England to consider. Many of the prisoners were also wounded and in need of medical care and treatment, which was an expensive luxury at the best of times, but an essential investment if the prisoner was to be kept alive for ransom. And the hope of obtaining large sums of money at some future date was not necessarily as attractive a prospect as that of realising cash in hand.

  Unfortunately, we do not know the exact process by which the figure for the ransom was calculated, other than that it had to be agreed between the captor and his prisoner. A ransom of less than 10 marks (the equivalent of almost $4,444 today) was entirely at the disposal of the captor, whatever his rank, so there must have been a strong temptation to set this as the ceiling value. On the other hand, captors were under pressure from superior officers to obtain the best possible price. According to the terms of their indentures, anyone in the English army who captured a prisoner worth more than 10 marks was obliged to pay a third of the ransom to his own captain, whether that captain was head of a tiny retinue or the king himself. Where the captain had been personally retained by the crown, his indenture obligated him to pay a third of that third directly to the king.13 With the eye of the king fixed firmly upon them, and a comprehensive list of all prisoners being drawn up by his clerks at Calais, underselling of ransoms was not likely to be a common practice.

  Henry himself remained only a single night at Guînes, making a triumphant entry into Calais on Tuesday 29 October over the Nieulay bridge, which had been hastily repaired “against the arrival of the king after his victory at Agincourt,” and along the causeway that led to the town gates. There he was welcomed by its captain, his old friend Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, and a vast crowd of excited citizens. Escorted through the streets by the priests and clergymen of the town, clad in their ecclesiastical robes, bearing the crosses and banners from their respective churches and singing the Te Deum, he was hailed on every side by men, women and children crying, “Welcome to the king, our sovereign lord!” Making his way to the castle, where he was to lodge until his passage home could be organised, he paused only to give thanks at the church of St Nicholas for his victory. Ironically, eleven years earlier, the same church had witnessed the marriage of Richard II to the infant Isabelle of France, a union that had been intended to end the decades of warfare which Henry had now rekindled.14

  Henry was committed to remaining in Calais until 11 November 1415. On that day, all those who had previously surrendered to him, both at the fall of Harfleur and at various stages on the march to Agincourt, were under oath to give themselves up to him again as his prisoners. To a man they did so. Unbelievable as it may seem to a more cynical modern world, they came voluntarily and without any compulsion, other than the power of chivalric ideology. They could have chosen to ignore their obligation: they were at liberty in their own country and the English were not in a position to round them up and throw them into jail. They could have claimed that their oaths were invalid because they were obtained under duress. They could have excused themselves on the grounds of sickness or the needs of their families. Instead, they chose honour before dishonour and keeping faith to perjury. They did so in the knowledge that they faced financial ruin, years in foreign captivity and possibly even execution.

  Raoul de Gaucourt, the former captain of Harfleur, rose from his sickbed at Hargicourt, near Amiens, and, despite being wasted by the dysentery that had had him in its grip since the final days of the siege, made his way to Calais to surrender to Henry V. With him went at least twenty-five of his former companions, including Jean, sire d’Estouteville, Georges de Clère and Colard Blosset. As de Gaucourt later recounted, when he and d’Estouteville appeared before Henry, they demanded that, as they had fulfilled their part of the agreements concluded at the surrender of Harfleur, he should now keep those undertakings that had been given on his part. We do not know what those undertakings were, though de Gaucourt seems to have believed that, having come to Calais as required by his oath, he would now be released again on parole to raise his ransom. But whatever promises had been made by the king’s negotiators, Sir Thomas Erpingham, Henry, Lord Fitzhugh, and the earl of Dorset, Henry himself refused to be bound by them: “he replied, that whatever these parties might have said to us, we should all remain prisoners.”15 As de Gaucourt and his companions were to learn to their cost, their defiance of the king in holding Harfleur for so long against him would be neither forgiven nor forgotten. Their captivity would endure long after most of the prisoners taken at Agincourt had been released.

  The logistical problem of transporting such vast numbers of prisoners ensured that only the most important would be taken back to England. Those who were of lesser value, or who could provide security for their ransoms, were released on oath to raise the money within a specified term. Others, including those who were too sick or badly wounded to travel, remained in custody but were dispersed to various strongholds throughout the Pas-de-Calais. Not all of them survived: Robin de Hellande, bailli of Rouen, for instance, was still in captivity when he died on 15 December 1415, and two of the eleven prisoners in the custody of Ralph Rocheford, captain of Hammes, died during the course of 1416.16 A contributory factor in the deaths of Rocheford’s prisoners may have been that he was allowed only 3s 4d a week (the medieval equivalent of $111 today) for each man’s living expenses: though this was about the same as a skilled workman could expect to earn at the time, it was considered to be the minimum amount necessary for a prisoner of knightly lineage, and contrasts sharply with the 10s 9d allowed to each of the Harfleur defendants during their imprisonment in the Tower of London. Medical expenses were an additional burden: the cure of Jean, sire d’Estouteville’s long illness in 1418 cost the king 40s ($1,317 at modern values) “for divers medicines” purchased from the royal physician, Master Peter Altobasse.17

  All those who had prisoners were obliged to enter into bonds with the king to pay him his portion of their ransoms. This could be costly. One of his retainers, Sir Henry Huse, for example, had to account for nine prisoners from Beauce, Eu, Vimeu, Beaugency and Abbeville in his pos
session: on 16 January 1416 he agreed to pay 200 marks to the king’s treasurer at Calais by midsummer, giving him five months to collect the sum from his prisoners’ families or raise it by other means. Another of the king’s retainers, William Trussell, esquire, had captured nine prisoners at Agincourt, whose ransoms ranged in value from £6 13s 4d to £17 6s 8d: his bond obliged him to pay the king £40.18

  Although both Huse and Trussell could expect to receive twice as much as the king for their personal cut of the ransoms, these were still relatively small amounts compared to the sums that others received for their prisoners. A bundle of forty-nine bonds preserved among the exchequer records lists individual ransoms worth £48 6s 8d, £55 11s 4d and even £163 6s 8d (the last almost $108,868 today). Yet these figures, too, pale by comparison to the phenomenal sums commanded for the great princes who had been captured at Agincourt. Such men belonged to the king as of right, and he was under no legal obligation to compensate their captors. Nevertheless, he clearly did so, for Sir John Grey of Ruthin, who had indented to serve with the relatively modest retinue of fifteen men-at-arms and forty-five foot archers, found himself 1000 marks ($444,360) richer after capturing Charles, count of Eu, and selling him to the king.19 This was not merely a financial speculation on the king’s part, for he had no intention of ransoming the count: like the dukes of Bourbon and Orléans, Marshal Boucicaut, Arthur, count of Richemont, and Raoul de Gaucourt, he was more valuable as a prisoner.

  On 16 November, five days after de Gaucourt and his fellow-defenders of Harfleur had surrendered themselves at Calais, the king and his prisoners, including the princes captured at Agincourt, boarded ship and set sail for England.20 The homecoming was an altogether quieter and humbler affair than the original invasion. The great fleet that had brought the English to France had disbanded many weeks earlier and, though the king had undertaken to pay for the return crossing, he no longer had the means to take his army back with him en masse. Instead, the veterans of the campaign had to find their own passage across the Channel. Each man was allowed two shillings for his own fare, together with a further two shillings for each horse, and it was left to the captains of the retinues to make the necessary arrangements privately with ship-owners and masters visiting the port.

  The greatest part of the victorious army thus made its way back to England from Calais without flourish or fanfare. The men slipped quietly into the Cinque Ports in dribs and drabs, before dispersing to their homes in towns, villages and farmsteads the length and breadth of the country. The hero’s welcome was reserved for their monarch. His passage home was marred by violent late fall storms, in which, it was said, two ships carrying Sir John Cornewaille’s men were lost with all hands, and others, carrying prisoners, were driven ashore on the Zeeland coast. Whether or not it was true that the king’s iron constitution and cheerful demeanour were the envy and admiration of the French prisoners on board his ship, the latter, particularly those still suffering from dysentery, must have suffered horribly during the many hours it took to effect the crossing. They landed at Dover, in a great snowstorm, just before nightfall.21

  News of Henry’s return spread swiftly, and when he set out for London the following morning, he found his road already lined with cheering crowds. His route naturally took him through Canterbury, but it was inconceivable that so pious a king could simply pass through the town without pausing to give thanks for the success of his campaign at England’s premier cathedral. His arrival was obviously expected, for he was met by Henry Chichele, archbishop of Canterbury, at the head of a long procession of clergymen, who welcomed him and escorted him to the cathedral.

  There was a double significance to this visit. Henry’s official purpose was to pay his devotions and make offerings at the great shrine of St Thomas Becket in the Trinity Chapel behind the high altar of the cathedral. Flanking that shrine, however, were the tombs of two of Henry’s own forebears. On one side was that of the great warrior Edward, the Black Prince, with its magnificent gilded and armour-clad effigy, his surcoat emblazoned with the quartered arms of England and France, and his feet bearing the spurs he won at the battle of Crécy: over this tomb, as yet another reminder of his victories at Crécy and Poitiers, hung his funeral achievements, the helm with its lion crest, shield, gauntlets and coat armour he had worn to battle.22

  On the other side of the shrine was the tomb of Henry’s father, Henry IV, who had been interred there just over two and a half years earlier. Though equally imposing in its own way, this tomb was very different from that of the warrior prince: the effigy, carved from marble, portrayed the king in civilian clothing and with a remarkably realistic and care-worn face, which must have been drawn from life. The only intimation of his royal stature was his gilded crown, the “crown Henry” or “Lancaster crown,” the original of which his son had just pawned to his brother, the duke of Clarence, as security for his wages for the Agincourt campaign.23

  The presence of the tombs of the Black Prince and Henry IV on either side of St Thomas Becket’s shrine turned what might otherwise have been just an act of simple piety and thanksgiving into an altogether more momentous affair. As the victor of Agincourt, Henry V had won the right to take his place alongside the victor of Crécy and Poitiers. Perhaps more importantly, he had proved that he had been chosen by God to be the instrument of His will. The crime of his father’s usurpation and the long shadow it had cast over the legitimacy of the Lancastrian kingship had been wiped out. Irrespective of the justice of his claims to the throne of France, no one could doubt any longer that Henry V was indeed, by the grace of God, king of England.

  After visiting the cathedral, Henry made a second pilgrimage to the nearby church of St Augustine’s Abbey, to give thanks at the tomb of the cathedral’s founder and first archbishop. Having spent one, or possibly two nights as the guest of the abbot and his monks, he then set out once more for London. His progress was slow and it was not until six days after landing at Dover that the royal party finally arrived at the king’s manor of Eltham on the outskirts of the city. The leisurely pace was deliberate, for it allowed the citizens time to complete their arrangements for the great pageant that was to mark his triumphal return. Londoners, who had contributed so much to the king’s campaign in terms of finance, shipping and men, had followed his campaign with understandable nervousness. The absence of news during his march from Harfleur had been a cause of particular tension, especially since, on the very day of the battle of Agincourt, “a lamentable report, replete with sadness, and cause for endless sorrow, had alarmed the community throughout all the City, in the boundless grief that it caused.” It took four days for news of the English victory to filter through, reaching London only on the day that the king himself entered Calais.24 That same day, 29 October, was the customary occasion for the newly elected mayor to ride to Westminster Palace to be admitted formally to his office and sworn in before the barons of the exchequer. On learning the joyful news, Nicholas Wottone, the new mayor, decided to break with precedent. With his aldermen and “an immense number of the Commonalty of the citizens of the city,” he went “like pilgrims on foot” to Westminster Abbey. There, in the presence of Henry’s stepmother, Joan of Navarre, a host of lords spiritual and temporal, and some of the more substantial citizens, he made “devout thanksgiving, with due solemnity.” Only after having given their due to God, his saints and especially “Edward, the glorious Confessor, whose body lies interred at Westminster,” did he proceed to Westminster Palace to complete his inauguration. Always swift to guard their civic privileges, the mayor and aldermen went to great lengths to ensure that the reasons for this break with tradition were recorded for posterity, so that no future mayor should feel it incumbent upon himself to walk humbly, rather than ride in pomp, to Westminster.25

  The spontaneous celebrations that greeted the news of Agincourt were as nothing compared to those which hailed the return of the victorious king. London was accustomed to festivities on a grand scale: royal progresses, coronations, jous
ts and tournaments, ceremonies to welcome or honour visiting dignitaries, had all been marked by processions through the streets, the ringing of church bells, allegorical and heraldic displays. On such occasions, too, it was customary for the public water pipes and fountains to run with wine, which no doubt encouraged a convivial atmosphere. The citizens had had almost a month to prepare for this event and the result was as elaborate and visually stunning a pageant as medieval ingenuity could devise. At first light on Saturday 23 November, the mayor and twenty-four aldermen rode four miles out of the city, as far as the heights of Blackheath, to meet the king. They were clad in their finest scarlet and accompanied by huge numbers of citizens, all dressed in red robes with parti-coloured hoods of red and white, or black and white. Each one proudly wore the distinctive and “richly fashioned badge” that marked his status as a member of one of the great London guilds and distinguished him from his fellows in other crafts or trades. At about ten in the morning, the king arrived, bringing with him only a modest personal retinue, but one that pointedly included his French prisoners. After formally congratulating him and thanking him “for the victory he had gained and for his efforts on behalf of the common weal,” the citizens formed themselves up into a procession and, to the sound of trumpets, rode off to escort him in triumph to the capital.26