The Greatest Knight

by Thomas Asbridge

  He was said to have exhorted his men to fight, ‘in order to defend our name, for ourselves and for the sake of our loved ones, our wives and our children’, but also ‘to defend our land and win for ourselves the highest honour’. This powerful appeal played upon notions of chivalry, sovereign allegiance and familial obligation. But William also warned that the French had come ‘to take for themselves the lands of our men’ and stated that ‘they seek our total destruction’, phrases that emphasised both the threat to personal property and the enemy’s supposed savagery.

  Marshal then seems to have made an effort to stiffen the royalists’ resolve. ‘Let us make sure there is no coward amongst us,’ he reputedly declared, for ‘it is God’s wish that we defend ourselves’ – a clear evocation of the army’s sanctified status. Finally, he cautioned his troops to ready themselves for a bloody mêlée. ‘The road that lies ahead’ must be freed ‘with blades of iron and steel’, he argued, but ‘nobody should hold back [because] a man takes full revenge for the wrong and shame done to him’. The speech, as recorded by the biographer, was a model of inspirational battlefield rhetoric, leading the audience from the justification of conflict, through to potent appeals for steadfast courage and ruthless ferocity.

  By 19 May, the royalists were ready to march on Lincoln. The shrewd strategy employed by Earl William in planning his advance was shaped by the nature of local topography – knowledge of which was probably gleaned from Peter des Roches, who had been attached to Lincoln Cathedral earlier in his career – and informed by Marshal’s own rich military experience. Lincoln was built on the northern banks of the River Witham, with a circuit of ancient Roman walls running in an extended rectangle from the lower town, north up a steep slope – rising 175 feet in less than three-quarters of a mile – to a long ridge. Here the battlements enclosed an imposing twelfth-century Norman castle in the west and a towering cathedral to the east. The outer ring of defences was punctuated by at least five major gateways. The French and the rebel barons were stationed inside the town walls, and were trying to break through the castle’s inner defences using siege engines and stone-throwing machines.

  William Marshal recognised that any attempt to march directly on Lincoln from Newark would be fraught with danger. Should they arrive from the south, the royalists would be forced to confront the enemy across the bridge spanning the River Witham, and would then have to make an exhausting climb up a sharp incline from the lower town, fighting as they went. The earl decided to negate these obstacles by circling around from the west in a wide arc, and then ascending the main ridge, to advance on Lincoln from the north-west. This would allow his men to attack from the north, giving them the benefit of fighting downhill once they pushed through the upper town. It might also enable the royalists to link up with the castle’s garrison before the Anglo-French could mount a counter-attack. Given that William’s major objective was to inflict a crushing blow against his opponents, the one potential drawback of this strategy was that it left the allies with a clear route of escape to the south, if they chose to flee rather than fight.

  After the first day’s march, the royalists camped about eight miles to the north-west of Lincoln. Then, rising before dawn, they mounted the ridge and marched on to the town in seven detachments, with crossbowmen in the vanguard and the baggage train bringing up the rear. They arrived at Lincoln not long after 6 a.m. on Saturday, 20 May 1217. According to a song composed after the battle, the morning sun glinted off their helmets and armour as they approached. Marshal was again reported to have called out to his troops, telling them to seize this ‘chance to free our land’, to seek the ‘eternal glory’ of victory and feel no fear because any who fell would soon find themselves ‘in paradise’. ‘God knows who are his loyal servants’, William supposedly declared, ‘of that I am completely certain’. He would reward the faithful, while sending the French ‘down to Hell’.

  Battle joined – 20 May 1217

  Despite his remarkable old age, William Marshal had no intention of directing the battle of Lincoln from a distance. He planned to throw himself into the thick of the fighting, leading his force by example. However, Marshal had first to engineer a confrontation. The royalists were ready to face the enemy on the ridge running north from Lincoln, though an engagement on this open ground would allow the Anglo-French allies to capitalise on their numerical advantage by bringing their full weight of numbers to bear. As it was, William’s opponents refused to attack. Once alerted to the royalists’ approach, the allied commanders rode out of Lincoln to survey the field. Robert FitzWalter and Saer of Quincy argued for an immediate frontal assault, but Thomas of Perche (not unreasonably) saw no reason to risk such a direct strike, and withdrew inside the town walls, deploying troops to defend the battlements and hold the northern gate.

  Earl William now had to find a way to force an entry into Lincoln. The royalists had not come equipped with heavy siege machinery; nor could they afford to settle in for a prolonged investment of the town walls, as the resultant delay might allow Prince Louis time to march north and bolster the Anglo-French position. The castle, held by Lady Nicola de la Haye, could be entered through a gate from the west, where its ramparts abutted the main town wall, but the idea of leading the entire royalist army into this fortress was rejected. This was probably because the stronghold’s east gate, which gave access to the upper town and the area in front of the cathedral, was heavily guarded by the besieging allied forces.

  Marshal therefore dispatched a number of reconnaissance parties to search out other points of access. One of these was led by John Marshal, but it seems to have been Peter des Roches’ group who made a crucial discovery: a sizeable gate, in the north-western quadrant, that had been blocked by masonry and rubble. The Anglo-French had evidently judged this entryway to be securely barricaded, but when des Roches reported back to Earl William, he argued that, with enough men, it could be cleared and a path into Lincoln opened. This would allow the royalists to launch an unheralded and deadly strike into the heart of the upper town.

  William Marshal set about creating a diversion, so that this work could begin unseen. Ranulf of Chester was keen to lead the first charge of the day, so he was sent to attack the northern gate. At the same time, Faulkes of Bréauté led a large contingent of crossbowmen into the castle, positioned them on the walls facing into the town and began peppering the Anglo-French troops within, inflicting terrible damage. The task of clearing the north-western gate proved laborious, and perhaps took a number of hours, but this effort escaped the notice of the allies within – as fighting continued in front of the castle and the north gate – and the work was eventually completed around midday.

  The royalists now had a route into Lincoln. As a large force of knights mounted their warhorses in advance of launching a blistering charge, the excitement of the moment seems to have overwhelmed Earl William. According to the History, he pushed to the front and, bellowing ‘Ride on!’, spurred his mount forward through the newly opened gate. But in his eagerness to enter the fray, the elderly Marshal had forgotten to don his helmet – a potentially lethal mistake. A young squire rushed forward to rein him in and politely pointed out this oversight. Once William and all of his comrades were fully armoured, they poured through the north-west gate and the assault began.

  Earl William led the way, along with his son Young William Marshal, Longsword and Peter des Roches. Riding together, they raced down Westgate Street and then turned right (to the south), to emerge in front of the castle. Here Faulkes of Bréauté’s crossbowmen were still wreaking havoc among the enemy – one chronicler noting that the horses of the rebel barons were being ‘mown down and slaughtered like pigs’. Marshal’s force suddenly burst on to this chaotic scene, charging at full pace into the Anglo-French ranks. William was said to have ‘plunged into the very thick of them’, surging forward to the depth of three spear lengths. Amid this first cacophonous crush of combat, des Roches apparently shouted, ‘This way! God is with the Marshal’,
and battle was joined.

  The dramatic arrival of William Marshal’s contingent shocked the allied forces stationed in front of the castle, as they were wholly unaware that Lincoln’s outer defences had been breached. One of their engineers, who was busily operating a stone-throwing machine, mistook the earl’s men for his own troops and turned back to his siege engine. He was just preparing to unleash another missile on the castle, when the royalist knights raced past and ‘cut off his head without any further ceremony’. In the aftermath of the initial charge, the fighting inside Lincoln quickly dissolved into a frenzied mêlée. This was the same frantic, close-quarter combat on crowded streets that Marshal had mastered in his younger days at the likes of Neufchâtel and Le Mans, but as a seventy-year-old, he was hard-pressed to hold his own.

  According to the History, the aged William Marshal did muster one mighty attack. Robert of Roppesley – one of King John’s former household knights who had joined the baronial party – drove forward, delivering a ‘savage’ lance strike to William Longsword’s body (though his armour saved the earl of Salisbury from major injury). Roppesley’s weapon shattered on impact, but as he charged through and wheeled his horse, Marshal rode up and ‘dealt him such a fierce blow between the shoulders that he almost knocked him to the ground’. The battered rebel knight reportedly crawled to a nearby house, where ‘out of fear, [he] went to hide in an upper room as quickly as he could’.

  As the intense fracas raged in the area between the castle and the cathedral, the outcome of the battle hung in the balance. The French commander, Count Thomas of Perche, rallied his troops in the courtyard directly in front of Lincoln Cathedral and made a hard-bitten stand. It was here that the fighting reached a crescendo. Many were said to have been ‘wounded and maimed, trampled on and beaten’. Count Thomas ‘put up a very stern defence’ and began to regain some ground. The biographer claimed that Earl William was still in the very heart of the fray, and took three shuddering blows to the head from Thomas of Perche himself, that left his helmet badly dented. But this detail was not mentioned in other sources, so it may have been added for dramatic effect.

  Nonetheless, it is clear that Count Thomas came to a sudden, grisly end, there in the great cathedral’s shadow. One of Faulkes of Bréauté’s knights – a former mercenary named Reginald Croc – pressed forward to assail the count of Perche. Croc delivered a deadly lunge that went ‘through [the] visor’ of Thomas’ helmet and, as ‘the point of the sword’ pierced the count’s eye it drove straight into his brain. ‘Mortally wounded’, Thomas fell from his horse, though Reginald Croc also seems to have been severely injured during this bold attack, and died later that same day.

  The sight of Count Thomas’ collapse caused shock on both sides. The Anglo-French forces were ‘greatly dismayed’, and began to make a panicked retreat south, down the steep hill into the lower town. At first, the royalists were also uncertain of what had occurred. It was thought that Thomas of Perche may simply have been knocked unconscious. William Marshal ordered the count’s helm to be carefully removed, and only then did it become clear that ‘he was stone dead’. The violent demise of such a prominent figure was unusual, even in the heat of full battle – a testament to the effectiveness of medieval armour and the general practice of seizing high-value captives for ransom. Even the biographer conceded that ‘it was a great pity that [Count Thomas] died in this manner’.

  The battle of Lincoln was not yet over, but its momentum was swinging definitively in the royalists’ favour. Earl William’s forces pursued the fleeing Anglo-French troops downhill and the earl of Chester, who had managed to break through the north gate, joined the fight. With the slope in their favour, the royalists were able to beat back the allies’ forlorn attempt to mount a counter-attack, and a full-scale rout began. Many of the fleeing Anglo-French were caught in the bottleneck of the southern gate and the bridge over the Witham. Others were pursued for many miles to the south of Lincoln. Some were butchered, especially among the infantry, but most were taken as prisoners. Around 200 knights managed to escape, and the History mockingly likened them to rats, scuttling all the way to London.

  William Marshal had led the royalists to a stunning victory. Robert FitzWalter, Saer of Quincy and many other leading rebel barons were taken captive, along with a large portion of Prince Louis’ forces. Earl William had taken a huge, yet arguably necessary, risk, but the gamble had paid off. He survived the fearsome encounter, somewhat battered, yet otherwise unscathed, but the heart of the Anglo-French army had been crushed. The English historian David Carpenter has rightly described Lincoln as ‘one of the most decisive [battles] in English history’, concluding that its outcome ‘meant that England would be ruled by the Angevin, not the Capetian dynasty’. With such glorious news to relate, it is little wonder that Marshal rode off to Northampton that same day, even ‘before [taking] any food’ according to Roger of Wendover – determined to tell young King Henry III and Guala that the tide of the civil war had been turned.

  WAR’S END

  Louis of France learnt of the disastrous defeat at Lincoln on 25 May and immediately broke off his siege of Dover, retreating north to London. William Marshal could perhaps have sought to encircle the great city and capture the Capetian prince, but the earl recognised that the royalists’ resources remained meagre, in spite of their recent triumph. It was now critical that the war be drawn to a swift end, as efficiently as possible, and the key step in this process was to usher Louis out of England.

  Negotiations over a settlement began almost immediately, and initial terms were agreed on 13 June. Marshal’s demands were far from punitive. In return for Prince Louis’ immediate departure, the sentences of excommunication levelled against the French and the rebel baronial allies would be lifted, and the latter would recover their English lands. Prisoners on both sides were to be released, and the ‘liberties and customs of the kingdom of England’ set out in the 1216 re-issue of Magna Carta would henceforth be ‘enjoyed across the realm’. Even so, a stumbling block was hit when the papal legate Guala insisted that the churchmen who had ignored Rome’s express orders by continuing to support Louis of France must remain excommunicate. The Capetian prince refused, quite admirably, to abandon these faithful allies, declaring that ‘there was no way that he would make peace without them’, and the talks thus broke down on 15 June.

  The baronial party now began to fracture at a precipitous rate. Over the next eight days, more than sixty nobles returned to the king’s camp, and close to another hundred followed suit in the course of that summer. As before, the vast majority of these reversi received equitable treatment. The Capetians made a last-ditch attempt to snatch victory in late August, when a large army of French reinforcements set sail from Calais. The fleet of ships carrying them across the Channel was commanded by the infamous mercenary sea captain Eustace the Monk – a man who had renounced his holy orders to become a pirate, and was thus derided with particular vitriol by clerical chroniclers.

  On 24 August 1217, a makeshift English fleet set sail from Sandwich to repel this invasion force. For once, William Marshal agreed not to place himself in the front line, allowing Hubert of Burgh to lead the defence in his stead. Earl William watched from the shore, alongside King Henry, and they seem to have enjoyed a clear view of events, as the biographer noted ‘it was a fine day and [thus] possible to see far out to sea’. The battle of Sandwich was a vicious affair that left an estimated 4,000 men dead or drowned. A number of heavily loaded French ships, including Eustace the Monk’s own lead vessel, were rammed and boarded. Hubert of Burgh’s men threw pots of lime powder crashing down on to the enemy decks and, with the acrid air blinding the French, they managed to overcome any resistance with relative ease. The English scored a second historic victory that day, and the remnants of the Capetian fleet beat a hasty retreat. William des Barres, the famed Capetian champion, was captured, as was the count of Blois. Eustace the Monk was apparently found cowering below decks, but was dragged up in
to the light and summarily beheaded.

  After this reversal, Prince Louis’ position in England became untenable. As one chronicler put it, he found himself ‘destitute of present aid and despairing of the future’. William Marshal now moved to encircle London, and peace negotiations began anew on 28 August. It took two weeks of wrangling to finalise terms, but a treaty, closely mirroring that tabled on 13 June, was eventually agreed at Kingston, to the south-west of London. By late September, Earl William was able to escort Louis to Dover and watch, with satisfaction, as the Capetian invader set sail for France.

  William Marshal has sometimes been criticised for not forcing more injurious and humiliating conditions upon his vanquished enemy. Indeed, within a generation, rancorous and uncharitable chroniclers such as Matthew Paris would suggest that William had somehow betrayed England in 1217 by not punishing Louis of France with sufficient venom. Marshal does seem to have placed too much trust in the French prince. Louis promised to convince his father, Philip Augustus, to restore the Continental Angevin lands seized from King John to Henry III. Earl William took Louis at his word, rather than requiring him to seal a binding assurance, and the prince subsequently reneged on his oath. But critics like Matthew Paris ignored the continued weakness and instability of the royalists’ position in England during the late summer of 1217. The realm had been broken by the civil war, its finances and systems of governance lay in ruins and its king was barely ten years old. Just as it had been in the immediate aftermath of Lincoln, Marshal’s overriding priority in September 1217 was to secure peace and herd the French out of England before the whole kingdom ground to a halt.