With the Lollard danger successfully averted, the King could turn his attention to what his second parliament - which met at Leicester on 30 April 1414 - was already referring to as his 'adversary of France'. The Hundred Years War still continued: the previous two reigns had marked only a lull, procured by a series of truces intermittently renewed - the most recent one, for twenty-five years, sealed by Richard II in 1396 when he married little Isabelle of France. But such truces bought only comparative peace. Even when there were no armies on foreign soil, neither the French or English coasts were safe from occasional incursions: both Rye and Winchelsea had been burnt to the ground by French raiding parties in the 1370s,1 and thirty years later the ports and coastal villages of northern Brittany were being persistently harried by English pirates. The French attack on Bordeaux in 1406, with the expeditions of Arundel in 1411 and Clarence in 1412, had kept the pot boiling: throughout the country it was generally understood that full-scale war would be resumed before long, and Henry was determined to lose no time in winning what he seems genuinely to have believed was his birthright: the French crown.
As we have seen, the identical claim had been made the best part of a century before by his great-grandfather Edward III, on the grounds that Edward's mother Isabella was the rightful heir to the childless King Charles IV;2 but it had been rejected by the French, who had pointed out that the old Salic Law of Charlemagne recognized male heirs only. The crown had therefore passed to Charles's first cousin, Philip of Valois. Three Kings had reigned over France since Philip; Henry was therefore now effectively claiming not only that he was the rightful sovereign, but that the last four rulers had been illegitimate. In fact, his claim was even less justifiable than his great-grandfather's: any right that might have existed would have passed to the Earl of March, Richard II's legitimate, heir, rather than to a usurper's son. Such considerations,
1. It was as a defence against further forays of the same sort that Bodiam Castle in East Sussex was built during the following decade - the most complete and unspoilt late-medieval moated castle surviving anywhere in the country.
2. See p. 17.
however, were of little interest to Henry. 'No King of England, if not King of France!' - the words are Shakespeare's, but the sentiment was certainly his own. His character was straightfoward and direct, impatient of legal subtleties: he saw things in black and white, and by the early summer of 1414 he was preparing for the fray.
There could have been no more favourable moment to attack. France, virtually paralysed under an imbecile monarch, was split down the middle, with Charles of Orleans and the Armagnacs on one side and the Duke of Burgundy on the other. England, on the other hand, still possessed her two invaluable bridgeheads, Calais and Bordeaux - though in the event, neither would be used. There were domestic reasons, too, which made a foreign war desirable. The Lollard rebellion, hopeless failure as it had been, had occurred only ten months after Henry's accession and had severely shaken his confidence. He was not, it appeared, as popular as he had imagined. He needed now to burnish his own image, while distracting attention as far as possible from the dissatisfaction and dissent that had so unfortunately — some said ominously - marked the beginning of his reign. He was aware, too, of the vast numbers of idle soldiery who were roaming the kingdom - men whose courage and military skill made them virtually invincible in war, but who could cause havoc in the countryside when a protracted spell of peace, without opportunities for plunder or pillage, left them with no employment for their swords.
Early in 1415 the King sent his uncle Thomas Beaufort to the French court, at the head of an impressive company of high ecclesiastics and noblemen and armed with a list of still more formidable demands. It was a tactic as old as diplomacy itself: deliberately to ask of a weaker nation more than it could possibly perform, and then to use its inevitable refusal as an excuse for war. First on the list was the crown of France. When this was denied - as it clearly would be — Beaufort was to demand Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Touraine and all the territories ceded to Edward III by the Treaty of Bretigny in 1360.1 Next he was to claim half of Provence, with the castles of Beaufort and Nogent, as being part of the Lancastrian inheritance through John of Gaunt. These territorial demands accounted for much of the French kingdom; but they were not all. Henry also insisted on the immediate payment of all the arrears
1. See p. 38.
of the ransom of John II, captured during the battle of Poitiers in 1356 - a sum which amounted to no less than 1,600,000 gold crowns. Finally he required the hand of Charles VI's daughter Katherine, on account of whom he professed himself ready to accept a dowry of a further 2,000,000 crowns.
France was not ready for war, and was willing to pay heavily to avoid it; but such demands were beyond the bounds of reason. The French negotiators, led by the Duke of Berry, offered a considerable territorial addition to the English duchy of Aquitaine and, for Katherine, an unprecedented dowry of 600,000 crowns, later increased to 800,000; but beyond that they could not go. Unhesitatingly Beaufort rejected the offer and returned with his retinue to England to inform his master. Henry could not conceal his satisfaction. It was exactly what he had expected. Diplomacy could have gained him valuable territory and a considerable increase in wealth; but only war could win him a crown.
With the return of the ambassadors, Henry began his preparations in earnest. Transportation would be one of his principal problems: he now sent out commissioners to every English port between Newcastle and Bristol, with orders to commandeer all ships above a certain capacity and to press sufficient sailors to crew them. Two of his knights were dispatched to the Low Countries to hire still more, with the result that in less than six months he had some 1,500 vessels lying at anchor along the south coast between Southampton and Portsmouth. Meanwhile he concentrated his own energies on the army, contracting for about 2,500 men-at-arms — fully armoured knights with their attendant esquires and pages - and perhaps 8,000 archers, together with gunners, sappers, armourers, grooms, surgeons, cooks, saddlers, smiths, fletchers, chaplains and even fifteen minstrels. With them were vast numbers of largely untrained hangers-on who could be mobilized as necessary. All were remunerated according to their rank and station, from dukes who were paid thirteen shillings and fourpence a day to the archers and other ranks who received sixpence. The cost, inevitably, was enormous: huge cash loans were raised from the wealthier private citizens, with virtually everything of value that the King possessed — including many of the crown jewels — being offered as security.
While this immense force was assembling, Henry set off on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St Winifred at Holywell in Flintshire — a distance
of some 160 miles each way - returning in time for a solemn service at St Paul's on 16 June. Then he headed once again for the south coast, stopping briefly at Winchester to receive a delegation from the French court, dispatched in a desperate last-minute attempt to avert the coming invasion. He received the ambassadors with all the honour due to their high rank, and loaded them with presents; but he rejected their improved offer of 900,000 crowns for Katherine's dowry. The expedition, as he politely explained to them, was on the point of departure. There could be no turning back now.
If Henry did not in fact sail quite as soon as he had hoped, this was because on 31 July the Earl of March came to him at Portchester Castle near Portsmouth with disturbing news: a conspiracy was being hatched against him, and chief among the plotters was March's former brother-in-law Richard of Conisborough, Earl of Cambridge and younger brother of the Duke of York. After the death of his first wife, Anne Mortimer, Richard had married the sister-in-law of Harry Percy's daughter; he was thus in close contact with the family of Northumberland, and in particular with Hotspur's cousin, a certain Sir Thomas Grey. His intention - with the help of the Scots, of Glendower and his Welsh rebels, and of Oldcastle and his Lollards — was to assassinate Henry and his brothers on 1 August, replacing him with March, as Richard II's legal heir. The third member of the c
onspiracy was one of the King's most trusted confidants, 'whom he greatly loved and who had many times slept in his chamber':1 Henry, Lord Scrope of Masham, nephew of that Archbishop Scrope whom Bolingbroke had executed ten years before. The three had approached March as early as 21 July; it was only ten days later that he had decided to expose them.
The King, on the other hand, lost no time. Summoning a council of his chief magnates - they included Cambridge, Grey and Scrope -he announced that rumours had come to him of a possible plot, almost incredible as it seemed to be. Perhaps he was looking hard at the three men as he spoke; in any case they all immediately confessed — Scrope maintaining that although he was aware of the plot he knew nothing of the intended assassination - and were immediately sentenced to be hanged, drawn and beheaded. By the royal prerogative the hanging was remitted, and so also, for Cambridge and Grey, was the drawing; only
1. St Remy, Chronique, I, 224.
Scrope was drawn on a hurdle through the streets of Southampton to the north gate, where all three were executed just outside the city wall. Later Scrope's head was spiked on one of the gates of York, and Grey's on the Tower at Newcastle - a ghastly warning to the north that did not go unheeded. There remained the Earl of March. True, he had revealed the plot; but it had taken him ten days to do so, and he may have been thinking only to save his own skin. Not till 9 August was he granted a full pardon and restored to royal favour. And two days later, on Sunday the nth, leaving as Regent his brother John, Duke of Bedford, and carrying such of the crown jewels as were not in pawn together with a hefty piece of the True Cross, the King boarded one of his 'great' ships, La Trinite Royale, and crossed the Channel to Harfleur.
From the moment that he had called his forces to Hampshire rather than to Kent, it had been clear that he had already decided against Calais as a port of disembarkation. Not only did he have in the Solent a superb natural harbour; his objective was not Picardy but the mouth of the Seine, less than a hundred miles of easily navigable river from Paris. The one serious obstacle in his way was Harfleur itself, whose great castle, towering above the harbour, was generally believed to be impregnable. Its walls ran some two and a half miles from shore to shore, protected by a broad, deep moat and no less than twenty-six towers. The fleet anchored in the estuary safely out of range of its cannon, while the army landed on the soft, marshy terrain a little to the east of the town and trundled its siege engines into position. On the following day the operation began.
It was to continue for the next five weeks - weeks which, to the besieging army, rapidly became a nightmare. The marshes, unhealthy at the best of times, swarmed with flies in the August heat; and the only available food supplies, which consisted largely of rotten fruit and dubious shellfish washed down with raw Normandy cider, led to fever and dysentery, which quickly spread through the whole army. Within a month the Bishop of Norwich and the Earl of Suffolk were dead, together with many of the leading knights and some 2,000 men; another 5,000, including the King's brother the Duke of Clarence and the Earls of March and Arundel, were sent back to England on stretchers. But life was equally hard for the people of Harfleur. They were by now running seriously short of food; and on 18 September the seigneur d'Estouteville, commander of the garrison, sent to the King asking for terms. Henry's first reaction was to insist on unconditional surrender; then, realizing that his own army could not long continue in its present condition, he relented and gave permission for a delegation from the town to appeal for help to the Dauphin in Rouen, on condition that if this were not forthcoming within four days, Harfleur would capitulate. The delegation set off, only to be informed that the French army was not yet ready for action; and on the 22nd, as promised, d'Estouteville surrendered. There followed a ceremonial entry into the town, with all the pomp and panoply that the King could muster; even then, however, he dismounted at the gates, removed his shoes and went barefoot into the church of St Martin to give thanks.
His treatment of the townspeople was severe rather than savage. Harfleur was not put to the sack, as it might easily have been. The chief citizens were captured and held to ransom. As for the rest, those who agreed to swear allegiance to the English crown were permitted to remain; those who refused — numbering some 2,000, including women and children - were driven from the city. (Most of them were later picked up by the French army and resettled in Rouen.) Henry, meanwhile, sent a messenger to the Dauphin bearing a challenge to single combat, the crown of France to go to the winner after the death of Charles VI; but this seems to have been rather a matter of form than anything else. The nineteen-year-old Dauphin, a confirmed debauchee who had already contracted the disease which was to kill him within the year, was hardly likely to measure himself against a professional soldier eight years his senior, in the prime of life and the pink of condition.
Harfleur had been, in a sense, a victory; it was certainly reported as one in London. But it had also been a catastrophe. Death or disease had deprived the King of almost a third of his men. Of the 2,500 men-at-arms who had sailed with him to France, there remained only some 900, with perhaps 5,000 archers. In such circumstances, the planned advance on Paris was obviously out of the question: the only sensible course for Henry would have been to return directly to England, leaving a strong garrison in the conquered town. Although his reputation might not have been enhanced by the expedition, at least he could have claimed another English bridgehead on French soil. But for him the adventure was not yet over. His spirits were largely unaffected by his losses, and he now announced to his surviving captains his intention of advancing to Calais.
To most of them, such a plan must have seemed little short of insane. Calais was separated from Harfleur by 150 miles of difficult country, studded with hostile castles and fortified towns and crossed by a number of rivers, many of which might soon be flooded by the autumn rains. The French army, meanwhile, was known to have received the Armagnac reinforcements it had long been expecting; it now easily outnumbered the sadly depleted English force and could confidently be expected to block its path. Of all this the King was well aware, but his mind was made up. On 8 October, leaving his uncle Thomas Beaufort, Earl of Dorset, with 1,200 men to garrison Harfleur, he gave the order to march.
The first week of the English advance went better than might have been expected. There was the occasional minor skirmish, but the French army continued to hold back, the walled towns along the way surrendered at once and the rivers Bethune and Bresle were negotiated without mishap. The first serious obstacle was the Somme. There was a well-known ford at its mouth, known as Blanche-Taque, where Edward III had crossed on his way to Crecy sixty-nine years before; but this the French army had rendered impassable with rows of sharpened stakes, while its approaches were defended by a company of cavalry. All Henry could do was to lead his men upstream in search of another crossing-point. For nearly sixty miles they followed the left bank, past Amiens and Abbeville - both formidably defended - until they eventually found a ford near the village of Bethencourt, where they crossed in safety. But many of them had set out in an already fragile state of health, they had now been ten days on the march, and they were dog-tired. Between them and Calais lay over a hundred miles of open road — and somewhere along it, almost certainly, the enemy.
They had not gone far beyond the Somme when the French heralds rode up and informed the King that that army was indeed a short distance ahead, and that he must prepare to face it in pitched battle, on ground — for such were the rules of medieval chivalry — favourable to neither side. Henry accepted the message cheerfully enough (unlike most of his men who, according to the royal chaplain, believed that their only hope lay in the mercy of God) and, assuming that the enemy would attack almost at once, immediately donned his armour, ordering his knights to do the same. In fact the two sides did not meet for another three days; but at last, on the morning of 24 October, the coming of dawn revealed the French army encamped on the opposite bank of the little river Ternoise. After some difficulty in securin
g the existing bridge, the English crossed in safety; but the King knew that he would not get much further without a fight, and it soon became clear just where the battle was to be - in the open country some thirty miles north-west of Arras, between the two neighbouring villages of Tramecourt and Agincourt.1 As he watched the French army preparing for the fray, Henry seems at last to have recognized the gravity of his situation. He was, first of all, overwhelmingly outnumbered — perhaps by as much as five or six to one. Moreover the enemy was fresh and rested, while his own men were near exhaustion after two full weeks on the march. And so he suddenly took a decision which has always tended to be overlooked by the more patriotic or chauvinist historians, Shakespeare himself included: he sued for peace. Sending over to the French camp the handful of prisoners that he had taken on the road from Harfleur, he offered in addition the restoration of that town and all his other gains, with full compensation for all the damage caused by his troops, in return for their safe passage to Calais. There was little hope, as he well knew, that his offer would be accepted; but at least it would delay the start of the battle by some hours, giving his soldiers the chance of the night's rest that they so desperately needed.
For a week there had been almost incessant rain. All day the storm clouds had been gathering once again; and as evening fell there came yet another downpour, which continued for much of the night. Lying - as most of the English were - out in the open, few of them could have got much sleep. Fewer still could have realized, however, that where the coming battle was concerned, this almost unremitting rain was the best thing that could possibly have happened and would be seen, in retrospect, as a gift from God.
By the morning of Friday 25 October - it was the Feast of SS. Crispin and Crispinian - the rain had stopped, leaving the recently ploughed meadows between the woods of Tramecourt to the east and Agincourt
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