by Teresa Cole
Fiercely protective of her young son-in-law, Yolande was equally fighting for the rights of her own son, for whom she had become regent on the death of her husband in May 1417. Though her dislike of the English was clear, she had now to join with the Duke of Brittany in treating with Henry, whose advance had led him to the very borders of Normandy.
While Henry was still at Alençon he was visited by the Duke of Brittany to remind him that they had an existing truce, and to extend that truce for Brittany, Maine and Anjou until the following September. The king was happy to do this. With his southern and western borders secure he would be free to turn his attention elsewhere.
It was late in the year by now and most armies had been stood down for the winter. Henry, however, had one more target in mind. On his journey south he had left unconquered the town of Falaise, rightly feeling that this might take some time to achieve. Now, though, with the countryside around already subdued, he set out to besiege the town. The Earl of Salisbury had been sent ahead with an advance guard to hinder any preparations that might be underway to withstand an onslaught, and on 1 December the town was surrounded and the siege begun.
Once again facing a walled town and a castle perched on a rocky crag, Henry was thorough in his dispositions. Log huts roofed with turf protected his men from the worst of the cold, while a market established in the camp kept them fed. As the guns blasted away at the walls and town, fierce resistance was met with from its governor, Olivier de Maunay, who launched frequent sorties at the besiegers with losses on both sides.
After a month the town was forced to surrender, but the governor and garrison withdrew to the castle to hold out for a further month. Usual mining operations were not possible against the great rock on which the castle stood, but the English set to with pickaxes and, despite the efforts of the defenders to rain down fire and boiling pitch on them from above, so undermined the walls that de Maunay was eventually forced to surrender. As punishment for this Henry kept him in prison until he had raised a ransom sufficient to pay for the damage to both castle and fortifications.
By now it was February and, putting in place an English commander and garrison, Henry withdrew to his headquarters at Caen to see out the season of Lent. In the meantime, however, he sent out three separate forces to consolidate his hold on all the other areas of Normandy west of the Seine. Gloucester and the Earl of March went westward to the Cotentin peninsula, which quickly submitted with the exception of the port of Cherbourg. Despite an intense battering from the artillery used by Gloucester, Cherbourg held out under siege for five months. Meanwhile the Earl of Warwick took Domfront and all the lands up to the borders of Brittany, while in the boldest move, Clarence was sent eastward towards the Seine, on the far side of which the forces of John the Fearless were clearly established.
It is to be noted that by Easter 1418 Henry had kept an army in the field for roughly nine months, including the whole of one winter. This was almost unprecedented at a time when campaigning was usually confined to definite seasons. Those who had signed indentures for one year’s service were already approaching the end of their time and new indentures would be issued, while in England the Duke of Bedford was actively recruiting fresh men on the king’s behalf. Reinforcements were needed not only for the king’s future plans but also to replace those now left as garrisons in the places already taken. In May 1418 the huge sum of £26,000 was dispatched to France to cover the pay and provisioning of what was becoming a standing army.
In May, too, the biggest shift of power for some time took place between the rival French factions. On the 29th of that month the many Burgundian sympathisers in Paris rose up in revolt against the Armagnacs and a party of the besieging Burgundian army was let in. There followed a period of ransack and massacre which John the Fearless made no attempt to control, during which almost everyone with Armagnac sympathies, including Bernard of Armagnac himself, was put to death. The mob was later thanked by the duke for their good service.
The poor mad king was delivered up to John the Fearless who, with both king and queen in his control, was now the effective ruler of France. The Dauphin, however, had escaped, escorted by an Armagnac captain, Tanneguy du Chatel, who was himself to play a significant role in the future. In fact, with the single exception of the fourteen-year-old new Duke of Anjou, the Dauphin was by now sorely lacking in noble supporters. All those who could have advised him or led armies on his behalf had either died at Agincourt or soon after, or were prisoners in England, leaving mercenary captains like du Chatel to take up both roles.
With an eye to the enhanced power of his supposed ally in Paris, Henry now moved his newly reinforced army eastwards towards the Seine. It was quite possible that, with his rival effectively disposed of, John of Burgundy might now break his truce and turn on the English, and Henry intended to be in as strong a position as possible before that happened.
In late June the strategic town and castle of Pont-de-l’Arche on the Seine was besieged and it fell some three weeks later. Now, having control over the river to the south and thereby cutting off aid from Paris, the king turned his attention northwards to the great prize of Rouen, ancient capital of Normandy.
The people of Rouen were not caught unprepared. The previous winter they, like so many others, had expelled the Armagnacs and gone over to the Burgundian side, and they had since been reinforced with some four thousand Burgundian soldiers. Determined to learn the lessons from other sieges, they ruthlessly executed the plan that had been half-heartedly attempted at Caen, razing to the ground the suburbs that had grown up outside the town walls and creating a wide, desolate space all around. The walls themselves were around five miles long, completely surrounding the old town, and were studded with towers and barbicans. Rubble from outside was brought in to repair any damage to these fortifications, and fine new artillery was deployed, along with many crossbowmen under the command of Alain Blanchard, who was to become something of a folk hero in France.
From the English point of view there were six gates into the town, all of which would need watching, and from any one of which sorties could be launched to attack the besiegers. Where the River Seine flowed past, Henry had chains slung across it to prevent any access by water, and once again a bridge of boats was used by the English to connect the various camps of the besiegers, as had been successfully done earlier at Pont-de-l’Arche.
The estimates of numbers inside the walls on that July day when the English king arrived with his army vary enormously. Different accounts of the siege give totals from seventy thousand down to twenty thousand. Though Rouen was a major centre and quite possibly did have, in peaceful times, a population of seventy thousand, no doubt many of these had left as the threat of attack drew closer, particularly when the extensive suburbs had been destroyed. On the other hand it is likely that refugees from other parts of Normandy might have added to the numbers. An order was given that every family in the town must provide itself with enough food for ten months or leave the town. Where they were to get it from, when it was not yet harvest time and the English were in control of most of the countryside, was not specified. As events were to prove, there was nothing like that amount of food stockpiled, though by all accounts some poor people, possibly the refugees, were expelled before the siege began.
Similarly exaggerated figures have been quoted for the size of the English army, in some accounts reaching as high as forty-five thousand. Since Henry brought fewer than twelve thousand with him the previous year and this force, though recently reinforced, would have been depleted by garrison duties and by the numbers still occupied with Gloucester at Cherbourg, a more realistic figure would be about seven thousand.
The siege effectively began on 29 July, though the encirclement was not totally complete until the outlying fort of St Katherine was taken by the Earl of Salisbury with heavy losses on 2 September. It quickly became clear, however, that it was not going to go the way of earlier sieges. The wide, desolate area created outside the walls, toget
her with the French artillery and crossbowmen, kept the English guns too far away to be effective. Indeed there is evidence that they were never used. Rouen was not going to be battered into submission, it would have to be starved to death.
The constant sorties from the town in the early weeks of the siege led Henry to order the digging of a great ditch all, or at least most of the way, around the outside, to be topped with a palisade. Then it was simply a matter of waiting.
The hope, indeed the expectation of those inside was that the Duke of Burgundy would soon appear with a mighty army to lift the siege. When in late October food began to run short and there was no sign of him, the first of two ‘appeals’ was smuggled out. Addressed to the king and also to the Duke of Burgundy, ‘who has the government of the king and his kingdom’, it begged for urgent assistance. More than that, it carried a fairly blunt threat that if such assistance was not forthcoming they would be prepared to transfer their allegiance to Henry, and that in that eventuality they would become the bitterest of enemies both to the French king and to John of Burgundy.
Stirred into action, the duke began assembling an army. On 17 November the oriflamme (presumably a new oriflamme) was taken from St Denis and the army set out northwards as far as Pontoise. And there they stopped. Clearly if they had marched on to Rouen there must have been a battle, but whether John the Fearless did not want to fight his ‘ally’ or, with the recent memory of Agincourt, was afraid to do so, we don’t know. There was a half-hearted attempt at negotiations mediated by the Bishop of Beauvais which came to nothing, and then, having exhausted the food available at Pontoise, the army marched on to Beauvais and Rouen was abandoned to its fate.
By now there was real starvation inside the sealed-up town. We have an account of the siege in the form of a long poem written soon afterwards by one John Page. Nothing is known of him except his own claim that ‘at that siege with the king I lay’ and that there was an archer of that name in the retinue of Sir Philip Leche when they embarked in 1417. Apart from giving us full details of the disposition of the English lords and men about the walls, he also paints a stark picture of the plight of those inside as the siege dragged on from November into December. ‘Their bread was full nigh gone, and flesh, save horse, had they none. They ate dogs, they ate cats. They ate mice, horse and rats.’ When all this failed, ‘then to die they did begin, all that rich city within. They died faster every day than men might them in earth lay.’
In early December, in a desperate move to hold out a little longer, the gates of the town were briefly opened and, according to John Page, ‘many a hundred’ poor people were expelled. Women with children and old men, they could go as far as the ditch but no further, for Henry would not allow them through, and though out of pity the English soldiers gave them some bread ‘though they had done some of our men to death’, they were soon ordered to stop. Once again the more ruthless side of Henry showed through. ‘I did not put them there,’ was his response when he was asked to show mercy, and he put the blame for the many deaths from cold and starvation squarely on the shoulders of the garrison commander, Guy Le Bouteiller, who would not surrender the town to his rightful lord.
The one exception he made to this was on Christmas Day, when ‘because of that High Feast’ he sent food and drink to those in the ditch, who then declared that this ‘excellent king … hath more compassion than hath our own nation’ and ‘God, as Thou are full of might, grant him grace to win his right’. Sadly the truce lasted only that one day.
Late in December a further appeal was sent from the town to John of Burgundy on the same lines as before, but this time adding that if no help was received they would surrender in a matter of days. There is evidence that his reply came in the form of a secret order that they should do the best deal they could with Henry for they could expect no help from anyone else.
As John Page wryly notes, where all else fails ‘hunger breaketh the stone wall’, and in early January negotiations were opened. Apparently a group of citizens inside called from the walls until they attracted the attention of Sir Gilbert Umphraville. Discovering that his ancestors had come from Normandy they decided they could trust him to carry their request for terms to the king. There was to be no compromise, however. Death or surrender were the only options, and it was finally agreed on 13 January that, if no relief came in six days, the gates would be opened to the English. Of course there was no relief, and so on 19 January the Duke of Exeter took possession of the town and castle on behalf of the king. Henry himself came in solemn procession the day after, riding through crowds that the chronicles tell us were more like the dead than the living, up to the great cathedral of Notre Dame to give thanks for all he had achieved.
Once again under the rules of war the English would have been entitled to plunder the town but there was no sack in Rouen. In fact the terms imposed were seen as surprisingly merciful. Only one man was to be hanged, the commander of crossbows, Alain Blanchard, who had rashly made a habit of hanging English prisoners from the town walls. A priest who had solemnly cursed Henry with bell, book and candle was imprisoned, but the rest of the garrison could leave, without their arms or armour, taking with them any citizens who refused to swear allegiance to the English king. Those who did so swear could in general keep their property, though an overall fine of three hundred thousand crowns was demanded. Best of all, the order was given that the people of Rouen should be fed.
In fact, true to their earlier threat, the vast majority of the citizens did take the oath of allegiance, and Henry’s hand was further strengthened over the next few months by the mopping up of the last areas of resistance in Normandy. Soon, with the exception of a few tiny spots – Mont St Michel, for instance, which held out for a full twenty-five years until finally relieved by the French – all of the duchy was his. Now it was time to talk.
Of the three players in the game Henry was by far the strongest. He had already defied and outfaced John of Burgundy, while the Dauphin’s party was still licking its wounds from the year before. It was with Burgundy, then, that Henry prepared to negotiate.
After a preliminary sending of envoys, a meeting of the principals was arranged at Meulan in May 1419. Not only John the Fearless was to attend but also King Charles VI and Queen Isabeau, along with their daughter the seventeen-year-old Katherine, whose marriage with Henry had been under discussion for the past half-dozen years. Katherine was the tenth child of Charles and Isabeau and the youngest daughter, being some twelve years younger than her sister Isabella, who in 1396 had been the child bride of Richard II.
A field was elaborately set out for the meeting at Meulan, with pavilions for the French at one end and for the English at the other. In the middle was a large negotiating pavilion for the principals and their chief advisors. In the event Charles was, as usual, too ill to attend and the outcome of the meeting was mixed. By all accounts Henry was very taken with Katherine but not to the extent of modifying his demands. These now included all the lands promised in the Treaty of Brétigny plus his recent conquests in full sovereignty, plus the hand of Katherine and a dowry of eight hundred thousand crowns. The French offer seemed to have advanced not at all since their last discussions on the subject in the summer of 1415. The only concession achieved by the meeting was that Henry might possibly be prepared to renounce his claim to the throne of France if he got all the rest.
A further meeting was arranged to take place in July but by then John of Burgundy was having second thoughts. It is quite likely that he felt agreeing to Henry’s demands would be giving far too much away. He was, after all, supposed to be speaking on behalf of the French king, and there was always a possibility that his own supporters might abandon him and go over to the Dauphin if he was seen to be caving in to English demands.
For whatever reason, when an envoy from the Dauphin proposed that they should join forces against the common enemy he was not unwilling. By some accounts it was Tanneguy du Chatel, now effective leader of the Dauphin’s forces, who
made this proposal. The result was a meeting at Pouilly-le-Fort near Melun on 11 July, where the former sworn enemies John the Fearless and the Dauphin Charles agreed to work together for the expulsion of the English. Each was to raise an army and a further meeting was arranged for 10 September at Montereau to finalise the details of their campaign.
Henry’s reaction to this was typically decisive. On 29 July his previously arranged truce with John the Fearless came to an end. That same night he sent a force to capture the town of Pontoise, which until very recently had been the duke’s headquarters in the area. Refugees streamed towards Paris, soon to be followed by the English army itself. On 3 August Clarence with an advance guard appeared outside St Denis only six miles from Paris, and the royal court, king, queen and princess all, fled to the safety of Troyes near the Burgundian border. A week later the English army was outside Paris itself. While the Parisians looked to John the Fearless to save them he was still collecting his army and preparing for his meeting with the Dauphin.
It says a lot for the lack of trust between these two that the security arrangements for this meeting were stringent. It was to take place on a bridge over the Seine which was barricaded at each end. Only the duke, the Dauphin and a few of their most senior advisers and household were to be allowed onto the bridge. What could go wrong?
At 5 p.m. each party entered the fenced-off area and proceeded to the centre of the bridge. In a show of courtesy to the son and heir of his king John the Fearless knelt before him, and then, as he rose to his feet, he was struck down and killed by Tanneguy du Chatel. In the hubbub that followed at least one other Burgundian was killed and others were wounded, before the shocked and horrified Dauphin was hustled away by his supporters.