1415 Agincourt (eBook)

Introduction

The Letter Book of the City of London records that on Friday 25 October 1415 ‘a lamentable report replete with sadness and cause for endless sorrow’ was circulating in the city. Such pessimism had arisen because no one knew what was happening to the English army and its king ‘valorously struggling to gain the rights of his realm overseas… all particulars lay shrouded in mystery’.1 On the same day, news arrived in Abbeville of a great French victory and a feast was arranged by the guild of silversmiths to celebrate.2 Little did either place realise what was actually happening at Agincourt. But soon the truth was known. A marginal entry in the account of the Abbeville guild, with classic understatement, noted that news of the victory was ‘not true’. By contrast, the entry in the London Letter Book went on to say that a trustworthy report arrived within a few days ‘to refresh all the longing ears of the city’. King Henry had ‘by God’s grace, gained victory over the enemy who had united to resist his march through the midst of his territory towards Calais’. The majority of his opponents had been ‘delivered to the arbitration of death or had submitted to his gracious might, praise be God’. This ‘joyous news’ arrived in London early on the morning of Tuesday 29 October. After proclamation outside St Paul’s at 9 a.m., the bells of the city churches were rung and Te Deums sung. Later in the day, there was solemn procession to Westminster Abbey to offer thanks at the shrine of Edward the Confessor. Among those present was Joan of Navarre, the widowed queen of Henry IV, who doubtless had mixed emotions if she had already learned that her son by her first marriage, Arthur, Count of Richemont, brother of the Duke of Brittany, was among those who had submitted as prisoners to the ‘gracious might’ of her stepson, Henry V.

In today’s age of rapid and mass communication, it is hard to imagine a time when news travelled so slowly and uncertainly.3 On the day the victory was announced in London, Henry V, his army and his prisoners arrived at Calais. Alongside Richemont were the French king’s nephew, Charles, Duke of Orléans, the Duke of Bourbon, the Counts of Eu and Vendôme, and the marshal of France, Boucicaut. Meanwhile at Agincourt, the servants of their erstwhile comrades-in-arms continued to search the piles of naked and disfigured dead in the hope of finding their masters. The contrast between fatalities on each side was immediately obvious by the roll call of the noble dead alone. The body of Henry’s second cousin, Edward, Duke of York, had been boiled and placed in a barrel to bring home, as had the body of Michael de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, who had inherited his title only six weeks earlier when his father died from dysentery at the siege of Harfleur. On the French side, the bodies of the constable of France, Charles, Sire d’Albret, the Dukes of Bar, Brabant, and Alençon, the Counts of Nevers, Vaudémont, Salm, Roucy, Marle and countless others of the flower of French chevalerie were found and carried off for burial.

Agincourt was an unmitigated disaster for the French as well as a blood bath. Harfleur, the town near the mouth of the Seine that Henry had taken after a siege of five weeks (17 August–22 September), remained in English hands and defeat in battle meant that there was no chance of an early attempt at its recovery. By contrast, Henry’s star was in the ascendant. The parliament that opened at Westminster on 4 November while the king was still at Calais lasted only eight days – the shortest of any medieval parliament – and voted him customs duties for life. His victory was all the more amazing, since, as the London Letter Book notes, the French had delayed and harried his homeward march across Normandy for two-and-a-half weeks (8–25 October) and had forced him to engage against his will. Within one day, therefore, the world had changed for English and French alike.

Any battle like Agincourt, with such an imbalance of mortality rates between the protagonists, would be bound to attract attention at the time and for centuries to come. There has indeed been a vast amount of ink expended on the battle through a wide variety of genres.4 Several key perceptions prevail: the victory of the few against the many; of the common man against the arrogant aristocrat; of Henry V’s military genius against French royal incompetence. Myths have also developed, not least the supposed invention of the V-sign by victorious English archers. But can such interpretations be sustained? One danger is taking the battle out of its context. Agincourt took place within a dramatic and complex period in English and French history. Henry was the son of a usurper and still insecure on his own throne in 1415. France had a king who suffered from psychological illness, and in the years leading up to Henry’s invasion had been troubled by civil war. The aim of this book is to examine Agincourt as the final stage of the whole campaign and to attempt a balanced treatment of Henry’s aims and actions and of French responses to them.

In many ways a historian works like a detective, finding as much evidence as possible and assessing it critically to find the truth. A detective can interview those involved. We must make do with interrogating the eyewitness accounts.5 John Hardyng claimed to have served on the campaign but the accounts he gave in his verse chronicles are perfunctory and written over forty years later.6 The Flemish chronicler Jean de Waurin was on his own admission fifteen years old at the time of the campaign, and accompanied the French army at the battle. He adds that he gained information from Jean Le Fèvre, who was later King-of-Arms of the Burgundian order of the Golden Fleece and who was ‘at the time of the battle nineteen years old and in the company of the king of England in all the business of this time’. In what capacity Le Fèvre was with the English is not certain, although it was probably with the heralds rather than as a soldier. A second comment by Waurin suggests Le Fèvre was with the English on the march as well as the battle, but it is not certain whether he was present at the siege. Both men put together their chronicles later in life, Waurin in the 1440s and ’50s and Le Fèvre in the ’50s and ’60s. They also drew on testimony of other heralds and of French soldiers such as Sir Hue de Lannoy and his brother, Sir Guillebert.7 Our earliest eyewitness account is written from an English perspective. This is the anonymous Gesta Henrici Quinti, written by a chaplain who was with Henry’s army for the whole campaign. This is therefore the most important narrative source we have, although it has its shortcomings and does not always answer the questions we would most like to ask.

There are also a number of works where information must have come from eyewitnesses. The Vita Henrici Quinti (c.1438) was written by Titus Livius Forojuliensis, an Italian in the pay of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, Henry V’s last surviving brother and a veteran of the battle. The Vita et Gesta Henrici Quinti (c.1446–49) is an anonymous work commonly called the Pseudo-Elmham, which is known to have drawn on information from Sir (later Lord) Walter Hungerford, who also fought at Agincourt. Three texts, the Chronique d’Arthur de Richemont by Gruel (c.1458), the Chronique de Perceval de Cagny (late 1430s), a family chronicle of the Dukes of Alençon, and Edouard Dynter’s Chronique des ducs de Brabant (1440s), were linked to French lords who were present.

Since Agincourt was a major event, it found its way into contemporary monastic chronicles such as those of Thomas Walsingham (c.1420–22) of St Albans, and of the Religieux of Saint-Denis (c.1415–22), religious houses long associated with the writing of histories. Another monk, Thomas Elmham of St Augustine’s, Canterbury, wrote the verse Liber Metricus de Henrico Quinto (c.1418). When histories in English such as the Brut and the London-based chronicles became popular later in the century, the events of 1415 were recounted there too. In France, accounts of the battle were included in major works such as the Chroniques of Enguerran de Monstrelet (c.1444); the Histoire de Charles VI (1430–40s) of Jean Juvenal des Ursins; the Histoire de Charles VII (1471–72) of Thomas Basin; the Mémoires (1430s) of Pierre de Fenin; the Chroniques of the Berry Herald (?1450s), as well as in lesser works such as the Chronique de Ruisseauville (?1420s–30s), a place close to Agincourt.

In a desire to tell a good story, modern commentators have tended to choose the juiciest bits from each chronicle to create one single account. But we need to exercise some caution when using these chronicles, even those of our eyewitnesses, as ‘evidence’. They give conflicting accounts and they were written to their own agenda, which makes it dangerous to take what they say at face value. For the French, Agincourt was such a disaster that someone had to be to blame for it. Its interpretation was politicised in the context of previous and ongoing tension between the Burgundian and the Armagnac (or Orléanist) factions. Even the Religieux of Saint-Denis, the nearest we come to an official court chronicler, and other non-aligned writers such as the Berry Herald, felt the need...