The king planned instead to cut Normandy in two by marching from north to south across it, to force neutrality on Anjou and then, having cut the Seine above Rouen – depriving the city of its communications with Paris – to besiege the Norman capital. Caen, the principal city of western Normandy, was the keystone of the first stage of the operation. Once captured it would provide a perfectly sited base for the conquest of western Normandy from which to launch the second stage. In addition it had a large port, easily reached from England. The plan was undoubtedly Henry’s brainchild.
By 18 August the king had joined forces with Clarence’s advance guard and invested Caen. It was a rich city, its wealth based on cloth manufacture and its very active river port. The population may have been as large as 40,000. It was famous for its splendid churches – there were over forty – and known throughout Normandy as ‘the city of churches’. (The battle of 1944 sent much of old Caen up in flames, the destruction being compounded by modern development and nightmarish industrial estates, yet a surprising amount of the medieval city survives.) It was completely cut off. However, the dauphin’s advisers had not been entirely unjustified in supposing it to be a difficult city to attack. The lower half, or new town, was protected by the many-branched River Orne, which made it virtually an island; while the upper half, or old town, was perched on a steep hill below a great citadel. There were strong new walls and many stout bastions, all in good repair, reinforced by ditches filled with stakes and wolf-traps.
Fortunately, the Duke of Clarence had galloped into the suburbs a fortnight earlier and captured two key strongpoints just outside the fortifications before the defenders were able to demolish them, the Abbaye-aux-Hommes and the Abbaye-aux-Dames. At first he had left them in peace. However, when he was asleep in a little garden – lying on the grass in his armour, his head on a stone – a monk, desperate to save his monastery, was brought in and explained that the Abbaye-aux-Hommes was being pulled down. Clarence immediately had ladders brought and in the darkness scaled the monastery’s walls. He also seized the other abbey.
In consequence the people of Caen, who had trusted in their new ramparts, were soon to learn that they were already out of date. The Abbaye-aux-Hommes (founded by William the Conqueror who, ironically, was buried here) still stands, only 600 yards to the west of the site of the city walls. Henry installed both his headquarters and his heaviest guns behind the monastery’s own thick walls; from here the latter hurled their huge gunstones at the ramparts, concentrating on a single spot low down in the masonry. The towers and roofs of the abbey became gun platforms for light culverins which were able to fire over the walls down into the city, ably supported by archers. On the east side of the city the Abbaye-aux-Dames (founded by the Conqueror’s queen) provided another massive gun emplacement even closer to the walls. From both positions cannon were pushed still nearer, behind earthworks and timber screens. A ferocious bombardment ceaselessly battered the city, both night and day. The English guns were so big that the windows of the Abbaye-aux-Hommes shattered at the first discharge. The Monk of St Denis heard that ‘they threw enormous stones with a noise like thunder amid fearsome clouds of black smoke, so that one might have thought they were being vomited forth by hell.’ He adds that smaller cannon were sending over a ‘hail of leaden balls’.5 These fired with surprising rapidity – a primitive cartridge consisting of a box, filled with powder and topped by a bullet, being inserted into the breech.
The bombardment was then concentrated on the new town, which could only fire back ineffectually using small guns mounted on the ramparts. Besides stone shot, the English bombards fired hollow iron balls filled with flaming tow; the former demolished entire stone houses, scattering lethal splinters – several churches were destroyed – while the latter set many wooden buildings on fire. In addition the English mined, tunnelling beneath the walls, though this was not so effective; the defenders placed large bowls of water on the ramparts, detecting the mines by the ripples, and counter-mined, tunnelling down to attack the English underground.
Soon there were several breaches. During the night, when safe from arrow fire, the citizens blocked them with stones, baulks of timber and sandbags, digging trenches behind them filled with stakes. The king called on the defenders to surrender or expect no quarter but was answered defiantly.
The Earl of March arrived at the beginning of September with reinforcements. He had landed at St Vaast and then marched down through the rich Cotentin, burning, slaying and looting. His arrival made the king decide to storm the city.
On the morning of 4 September, after hearing three Masses, the king ordered a general assault on the lower part of the town. He was rumoured to have had an encouraging vision of a fiery cross. The first onslaught was beaten back with the help of showers of burning oil, powdered quicklime and scalding water, as well as volleys of crossbow bolts and stones. One young Englishman, Sir Edmund Spring-house, fell into a ditch behind one of the breaches and was burnt alive by the French, who hurled bales of burning straw down on to him, infuriating his comrades. Henry sent in a second and a third wave of men-at-arms, who climbed down into the breaches and then up to engage the enemy hand to hand. The defenders heard an uproar behind them, panicked and gave ground. Clarence had attacked simultaneously from the opposite side of the new town. A man named Harry Ingles clambered over the rubble and led the duke’s men-at-arms as they hacked their way in towards the town centre. The royal brothers met in the middle of it, joining forces to mop up what was left of the defence. If the chronicles are to believed, the victors then herded all the population they could find, civilian as well as military, regardless of sex, into the market place where, on Henry’s orders, they massacred at least 2,000 of them. Blood ran in streams along the streets. The king ordered the killing to stop after coming across the body of a headless woman with a baby in her lap still sucking at her breast. Instead he sent his men through the streets, crying ‘Havoc!’ to loot and rape. (Anything of value, however, had to be surrendered to his officials.) Crowds knelt in the street as Henry passed, begging for mercy. On 5 September under his signet he wrote the usual amiable letter to the mayor and aldermen of London: ‘God of his high grace sent unto our hands our town of Caen, by assault and with right little death of our people… we and our host been in good prosperity and health.’ One of the greatest historians of the king, Waugh, has written: ‘It is humiliating to our pride in a national hero to read the language of those who suffered under his heavy hand, for when the broken spirit of the French began to revive, the foul massacre of Caen was ever foremost in their minds.’ (This may be an honest enough admission on Waugh’s part but is also a good example of the bias in Henry’s favour which still afflicts English historians.)6
The old town and the citadel surrendered sixteen days later. The citadel could probably have held out for many months, but its garrison’s spirit had been broken by the almost contemptuous ease with which Henry had smashed his way through the new town’s supposedly impregnable walls. They can have had little faith in the ability of a relieving force to overcome so terrible an opponent. Moreover, with shrewdly calculated moderation, he offered surprisingly generous terms. The men were allowed to march off with their arms and keep up to 2,000 gold crowns, the women to retain their jewellery.
The fall of Caen, together with the butchery of its citizens, was widely reported. In Venice, Antonio Morosini received letters ‘from divers parts’ informing him that the king had ‘ordered his subjects – barons and knights, and all his men-at-arms – to kill and cut to pieces everyone they found, from the age of twelve upwards, without sparing anybody … no one had ever heard of such infamy [nequicia] being committed’.7 More importantly, as he must have intended, Henry had struck fear into all Normandy. The Monk of St Denis reports that ‘by taking the town of Caen, the King of England had inspired such terror in the Normans that they had lost all courage’.8 Furthermore, he now had a base from which to conquer Lower Normandy where he could be swiftly reinforc
ed from England, since his ships were able to sail straight up the Orne to Caen. Its marble quarries provided him with good gunstones. As at Harfleur, his behaviour was that of a conqueror who intended to stay for good. The citadel – a large square white donjon with four towers at the angles, very like the Tower of London – became one of his favourite personal residences. In his usual pious way he at once installed a lavishly furnished chapel royal in it. He also confiscated many of the best houses in the city, earmarking them for English settlers. Not less than 500 burgesses – perhaps as many as 2,000 – left rather than stay under English rule.
The French, still split disastrously into Armagnacs and Burgundians, and crippled by their interminable civil war, were incapable of uniting against the English exploitation of the situation. However, the Burgundians appeared to be winning. Henry watched Duke John’s progress with considerable unease. Although technically an ally of the English, the duke was a Valois and a Frenchman and, should he succeed in capturing Paris and the central government, it was only too likely he would turn on the invaders.
The king therefore concentrated on conquering as much of western Normandy as possible, ignoring the approach of winter. No doubt the Normans expected him to wait for the spring, as was the custom, and give them a breathing space. They were due for an unpleasant surprise. Henry struck southwards in the direction of Rouen, his object being to cut off first Lower Normandy and then Upper from any hope of rescue by either Burgundians or Armagnacs.
Meanwhile Huntingdon and Gloucester were charged with overrunning the western half of the duchy – a task which they performed with efficiency and zest. Other English troops – there cannot have been very many of them – struck south into Maine and the duchy of Alençon. The Monk of St Denis records that they brought ‘fire and blood and made everything fall to them, by force of arms, by menace and by terror’, storming all the châteaux.9 ‘There was no resistance, save for a few poor companions who held out in the woods’,10 we learn from Jean Juvénal des Ursins. (The phrase ‘povres compaignons’, which appears so often in Juvénal’s writings, seems to mean those fighting for the Armagnac – later dauphinist – cause.) He tells us that ‘whenever the English caught them, some they haled off to fortresses, others they threw into the river’. Those thrown in the river would have been bound, since drowning was one of the English methods of disposing of unwanted prisoners who could not pay ransoms, no doubt developed during the Welsh wars. On occasion, as will be seen, Henry himself used it.
In December the king laid siege to Falaise, the birthplace and favourite stronghold of his ancestor, William the Conqueror. Situated on a great crag above the town, its citadel was all but impregnable. It had a most distinguished and gallant soldier as its garrison commander, the Sieur Olivier de Mauny, Charles VI’s standard bearer and Keeper of the Oriflamme – the battle banner of France. Very soon, bitter, freezing weather set in – ‘winter with great cold grieved both man and beast’ The First Life tells us – but the king had turf and timber huts built, tents being insufficient. These he surrounded by trenches and a stockade, and ‘which, when it was made, seemed not a worse town than that within the walls’. As at Caen his artillery fired ceaselessly, night and day, demolishing houses, churches, and the tower which contained the town clock. He kept Christmas in his shanty town, all but blown down by hail storms, ‘And notwithstanding that the sharp winter afflicted both the parties marvellously sore, for all the waters in the valleys were frozen and congealed in such manner that it seemed rather to be crystal or any hard stone than water.’11 Using gunstones two feet in diameter he finally smashed a breach in the walls on 2 January – the eighth day of Christmas – whereupon the town surrendered.
Even so the citadel of Falaise, on its tall cliff, still remained well out of reach of his cannon, while it proved impossible to tunnel into the rock on which it rested. So, instead, he pushed his leather ‘sows’, or shelters, up to the foot of the ramparts on the townward side, setting his engineers to work beneath their shelter. The quality of the siege equipment he had brought from England proved its worth and the engineers were able to demolish the masonry in safety with picks and crowbars. On 16 February 1418 the citadel too surrendered. Among the prisoners was a Welshman, Edward ap Gruffydd, who had plainly not forgiven the English for what they had done in Wales. Henry had him hanged, drawn and quartered, the quarters being stuck up at the gates of Caen, Lisieux, Verneuil and Alençon. He had succeeded in taking one of the strongest fortresses in all France, the Verdun of its day. It was truly a shattering blow to Norman morale. Everywhere towns and castles began to surrender to the English king’s troops. It was not simply for fear of his terrifying capability as a soldier: Pierre de Fenin, sometime squire and pantler to Charles VI, explains that Normandy ‘saw no hope of rescue because of the dissension which then existed among the lords of France’.
The Monk of St Denis says that his pen cannot convey what extreme irritation Henry’s ‘bragging’ caused the French. When briefly restored to lucidity, Charles VI was ‘sore afflicted in contemplating the cause for the enemy’s arrogance, it being above all the implacable hatred which divided the [French] host’. He tells us that many strong castles in Normandy surrendered to the English king ‘by dint of promises rather than naked force. For on his word as a prince he guaranteed, to everybody who yielded, exemption from taxes, freedom to concentrate on farming or commerce, and the re-establishment of privileges as they had been in the time of St Louis, late king of France, on the one condition that they wore a red cross of St George on their shoulder. At the same time he abused the right of kings to punish disobedience. Anyone who rejected his summons [to surrender] and who fell into his hands bearing arms was put to death as guilty of lèse-majesté, having first seen him loot and plunder their possessions. If they were young people, not yet old enough to carry arms, or aged men, they had to suffer cruel tortures before being chased into exile. Even mothers were reduced to leaving the country with their children, with the exception of those who resigned themselves to marrying Englishmen.’12
However, the monk also gives us a glimpse of what it was like to meet King Henry, and implies that he must have had considerable charm. ‘French prisoners who came home to arrange their ransoms, and who had got to know the king’s character when in captivity, said that this prince whose exterior and conversation gave every indication of pride and who was generally supposed to be very vindictive, nonetheless behaved in a way worthy of a king and while showing himself pitiless towards rebels treated with the utmost tact those who obeyed him and was anxious they should be shown respect and kindness. He knew how many princes have extended their domains by that sort of behaviour.’13
The impression of graciousness is supported by the monk’s account of the reports of Henry which French ambassadors brought back the following year. They praised his affability, his courtesy, and his generosity, and told how he had loaded them with expensive presents. They told the monk that, ‘He was a prince of distinguished appearance and commanding stature; and although his expression seemed to hint at pride he nevertheless made it a point of honour to treat everybody of no matter what rank or degree with the utmost affability. Always avoiding the long-winded speeches and lectures to which people are ordinarily so prone, he would go straight to the point and confine himself to saying “it’s impossible” or “it must be done”. When he had spoken these simple words he considered himself obliged to do whatever it was as though he had sworn before Christ and His saints. A scrupulous dispenser of justice, he knew how to exalt the lowly and abase the mighty.’14
By the spring of 1418 the king had achieved his first strategic objective, having overrun all Lower Normandy, from Evreux to Cherbourg. The conquered territory was administered by four reliable bailiffs – Sir John Radcliffe at Evreux, Sir John Popham at Caen, Sir Rowland Lenthall at Alençon and Sir John Assheton at Cherbourg. The administrative centre was Caen, where an English chancellor for the duchy of Normandy was installed, and where the chambre des
comptes was given an English president; soon a mint would be established at what was to become the second capital of the new Guyenne. He used the stick-and-carrot method – which he had found so effective with the Welsh – to tame his new subjects, alternately terrorizing and wooing the Normans. Anyone with an income of less the £60 a year who would take an oath of loyalty to the king-duke was (on payment of 10d) given a ‘certificate of allegiance’.
According to Tito Livio of Forli, Henry V’s near-contemporary biographer, the king spent the whole of Lent and Easter in prayer, fasting, vigils and almsgiving.
X
The Fall of Rouen
‘… for iron smiteth not
So sore as hunger doth, if food fail.’
A fifteenth-century translation
of Vegetius’s De Re Militari
‘Unto the French the dreadful judgement day
So dreadful will not be as was his sight’
Shakespeare, King Henry V
Henry marched out from Caen on 1 June 1418 to conquer Upper Normandy, his principal objective being the duchy’s capital, Rouen. A week later he arrived at Louviers, a small but strongly fortified town defended by triple walls, large bastions and many turrets, all equipped with guns of every type and size. He used an ingenious siege engine to undermine the triple walls, while using his own artillery to demolish them with his customary skill. He did not appreciate being shot at himself. He was conferring with the Earl of Salisbury in the latter’s pavilion when a gunstone fired from the town walls hit the tent and very nearly killed them. Despite its defences’ reputation for strength, Louviers surrendered after a fortnight. The king promptly seized the gunners responsible for shooting at Salisbury’s tent and hanged them on tall gibbets.
Even before Henry reached Louviers, disturbing news must have reached him from Paris of a development which upset the entire political scene in France. On 29 May the Burgundian captain, Jehan Villiers de l’Isle Adam, had captured Paris. He and his men had been secretly admitted at night by a Burgundian ironmonger through the Saint-Germain gate. The tyrannical Bernard of Armagnac and his supporters were thrown into prison. A fortnight later a Burgundian mob broke into the prisons and dragged them out, butchering several thousand men, women and children: Count Bernard’s body, naked and obscenely mutilated, lay in the gutter for three days, suffering revolting indignities. The Armagnac provost of Paris, Tanneguy de Chastel, managed to escape with the young dauphin, to rally the Armagnacs outside the capital, but the Duke of Burgundy now controlled Paris and was determined to save it from the English.
Henry V as Warlord Page 14