1415: Henry V's Year of Glory (66 page)

The duke of Orléans was chosen to represent the royal family at the forthcoming battle. With this in mind – contrary to the earlier policy that both he and Burgundy should stay away – a new plan was formed by the council. Orléans was to have overall command and take charge of the main battle, along with Charles d’Albret and the dukes of Alençon and Brittany (despite the latter’s objections). The vanguard ahead of them was to be led by Boucicaut, the duke of Bourbon, and Guichard Dauphin. The rearguard was to be led by the duke of Bar and the counts of Nevers, Charolais, and Vaudémont. On the wings Tanneguy du Chastel and the count of Richemont were each to be in charge; and the seneschal of Hainault was to lead the specialist heavy cavalry needed to break the ranks of the archers.
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Monday 21st

The English marched north from Athies and Monchy-Lagache this morning. Henry rode in armour, and ordered all his men-at-arms to do likewise.
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He may even have gone looking for a fight, for he led his troops straight to Péronne. But the army passed the town ‘a short distance away to our left’. A number of French men-at-arms approached at a gallop but a group of English men-at-arms responded immediately by riding forward to intercept them. Before they clashed, the French turned their horses and rode back into the town.

By the time the English passed Péronne, most of the French had already left. Nevertheless, looking at the mud churned up by many thousands of horses, deep fear caught the hearts of those in the English army. As the author of the
Gesta
put it, about a mile beyond Péronne,

we found the roads remarkably churned up by the French army, as if it had preceded ahead of us by the thousand. And the rest of the troops – to say nothing of the commanders – fearing that battle was imminent, raised our eyes and hearts to heaven, crying out, with voices expressing our inmost thoughts, that God would have pity on us and in His ineffable goodness, turn away from us the violence of the French.
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As the troops marched on towards the River Ancre, they were looking for a place to camp. They hoped the day’s march would be over quickly. ‘Their hearts were quaking with fear,’ Thomas Elmham wrote. Some skirmishing with the French took place, and at least one man-at-arms was captured.
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The fights were probably much more serious than this single statistic suggests, for any Frenchmen would have needed a considerable number of compatriots to warrant their attacking a group of armed English scouts. And these conflicts on the periphery of the army, which were now happening every day, cannot have done anything but make the English more despondent.

*

In line with the French council’s decision to attack, the duke of Brittany set out from Rouen with a large body of men – six thousand, according to Monstrelet. He must have been leading many soldiers besides his own contingent. But the English ambassadors, Dr John Hovingham and Simon Flete, had not yet departed from Brittany. As they had no doubt reminded him quite recently, the dangers to the duke of breaking his agreement with Henry, and fighting for the French against the English, would be calamitous – if Henry should win.

*

In his castle at Louvain this evening, at about eight o’clock, Duke Anthony of Brabant received the letter that the dukes of Bourbon and Alençon and the other lords had written to him on the 19th. The messenger must have ridden hard – the distance he had covered was about one hundred miles. If the duke of Brabant was going to respond in time to join a battle scheduled to take place before the 26th, he had no time to lose.

His response is very interesting. John the Fearless might have promised Henry that he would not hinder him in his war, but such an anti-French strategy did not affect his brothers’ loyalty. The youngest of the three brothers, the count of Nevers, had already taken the field. Now Anthony followed his lead. He ordered his secretaries
to write letters to all his vassals requiring them to be in arms at Cambrai as soon as possible. And he sent an esquire to the city of Antwerp this same evening with similar orders.
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Tuesday 22nd

Duke Anthony went to the council chamber in the town of Louvain this morning. He asked the town council to give him men-at-arms, archers and crossbowmen to fight against the English. There was not much time; only a few men could be mustered before he departed for Cambrai, where he would gather his vassals.

*

Henry’s passage across the River Ancre may have been at Ancre itself, from which he would have marched in a direct line northwest through Forceville to Acheux, where the army camped tonight. Alternatively he may have crossed at Miraumont, and then turned westwards to Forceville. The latter route would explain why Gilles le Bouvier’s chronicle states that Henry turned away from the road towards Aubigny, where the French had told him they would fight him on Thursday. Other chronicles seem to support this view.
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But why might Henry have changed course at this point, if he was so determined to fight the French?

One possible answer is food. Henry was not negotiating with any towns north of the Somme for safe passage; his men were simply grabbing what they could from the villages through which they passed. But the only reason to suppose that the villages on the way to Aubigny were very poorly provisioned is that the French had already looted them (French chroniclers repeatedly note that the French did more damage in looting than the English). Another explanation is fear. Not necessarily Henry’s own – but that of his men, certainly. Even many years afterwards, the chroniclers’ accounts reflect the terror of the English at this stage. They were marching straight to where they knew a larger French army was waiting for them, on ground that the French had chosen. One day’s rest had not been enough to refresh them. It would have been irresponsible of Henry to force his men along a road through villages where they could find no food on their
way to what they believed would be a fatal battle. Accordingly he turned away, so he could reassure his commanders and his men that, if there was to be a battle, he would choose the site.

Once this point is realised, it becomes apparent that, even if we are wrong in supposing that Henry crossed at Miraumont and changed direction, and that really he crossed at Ancre, the same argument applies. If he rode constantly northwest after passing Péronne, then he had simply decided not to follow the French to Aubigny at an earlier point – when he saw the mud churned up by their horses’ hooves and cart wheels. In order to keep his men’s spirits up, he had to be seen to be taking the initiative himself, and not simply leading them despondently to their deaths at Aubigny.

Did Henry still hope to fight a battle? It is clear that the decision to march to Calais from Harfleur was originally his, and that he fully expected to fight a pitched battle on the way. But it is equally clear that he did not imagine being one hundred miles from Calais after two weeks. The failure to cross the Somme had cost him dearly, for now he was leading a starving, weak and dispirited army. His refusal to follow in the path of the French army to a designated battlefield does seem to suggest that the collective decision-making of the king and council had turned away from actively seeking an engagement. We have seen how the English refused to tackle the French in battle at Blanchetaque; now this deviation seems to indicate that the English were deliberately trying to avoid the French by moving as fast as they could along an alternative route to Calais, not stopping to parley with any towns for food. The question is thus a difficult one to answer; and the truth is that there were differing opinions within the English camp. Even if Henry personally still hoped to engage the enemy, very few of his council and his army shared that hope. And not even Henry was prepared to fight the French on ground that the French themselves had chosen.

Wednesday 23rd

Over the last two days Henry had kept the army moving at fifteen miles per day – almost as fast as he had been travelling when first setting out from Harfleur towards Blanchetaque. Now he pressed on
harder than ever, making them go at least twenty miles. The troops rode or marched in their weary state in a straight line from Acheux to Thièvres. Here they crossed the River Authie, and then passed the next small river, the Grouche, between the walled town of Doullens and the castle of Lucheux. The main army encamped at Bonnières and the villages to the south of Frévent, while the duke of York pushed on to Frévent itself.
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There he led his men against the French men-at-arms in the town; and having put them to flight, set about repairing the broken bridge there, ready for the following morning.

*

The French army had probably marched from Péronne towards Aubigny after hearing back from the heralds on the 20th. It would have appeared to them best to arrive first, to choose their positions and rest, before doing battle. At some point their scouts must have reported that the English had turned away from Aubigny and were heading fast on the northwest road. On hearing this, the French commanders, knowing Henry’s men were tired and malnourished, probably imagined that Henry had decided to try to outmanoeuvre them and get to Calais without a fight. In order to bring the English to battle by the 26th, they had to position themselves between the English and the road to Calais. And they had to do so quickly.

Turning away from the road to Aubigny, the French made their way to St Pol on the River Ternoise. From there it was an easy march along the north bank of the river to cut off the English at Blangy. A letter was sent to the town of Mons (by which route the duke of Brabant was riding) declaring to the townsmen that the battle would take place on the 25th.

Thursday 24th

The English crossed the River Canche this morning and proceeded directly northwards, towards Blangy, where they could cross the River Ternoise. The duke of York and the whole of the vanguard was ahead, clearing a way for the English army. The French were in the same area. Advance English troops regularly came under attack from
squadrons of French men-at-arms. Seven Lancashire archers were captured in one engagement.
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It was becoming clear that both sides were racing to the Ternoise, and if the French stopped them crossing, there would be a battle – with no safe retreat for the English. There was no time to go looking for food. Although most of the troops had not eaten properly for several days, and were growing weaker all the time, their hopes of survival rested on speed, and avoiding a pitched battle with the better-fed, better-equipped and more numerous French men-at-arms.

Henry himself was nervous, distracted. Along the route to Blangy he was told that his herbergers had identified a place in a particular village where he could eat and briefly rest. But he continued, ignorant of where the town was. When informed that he had ridden a mile and half past it, he refused to go back, explaining he was in his cote-armour and it would not do for him to turn up at a village when dressed for war. He could have added that he did not have time. So he rode on, taking the main battle of the army with him, and ordered the duke of York to lead the vanguard further ahead.
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When the duke of York came to the hill overlooking Blangy, he saw French troops desperately trying to destroy the bridge. Immediately he attacked, and fought the men-at-arms there, killing some and taking others prisoner. Having secured the bridge, he sent scouts up the hill on the far side. One returned ‘with a worried face and anxious gasping breath, and announced to the duke that a great countless multitude was approaching’.
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Another account states that the scout who first spotted the French

being astonished at the size of the French army, returned to the duke with a trembling heart, as fast as his horse would carry him. Almost out of breath he said ‘be prepared quickly for battle, for you are about to fight against such a huge host that it cannot be numbered’.
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Soon other scouts returned, and confirmed this sighting. The duke reported the locations to the king.

It was twelve miles to Blangy-sur-Ternoise, so the valley must have come in Henry’s sight about noon or a little later. The author of the
Gesta
notes that the main battle caught their first sight of the enemy here: they were emerging further up the valley, to the right. The
English crossed the Ternoise and climbed rapidly up the hill on the far side. And when they reached the brow of the hill, they were suddenly confronted by the French army.

In describing the moment, the author of the
Gesta
uses the words ‘grim-looking’ to describe the French. It was not their expressions to which he was referring; he could not see their faces. ‘Their numbers were so great as not even to be comparable with ours … filling a very broad field like a swarm of countless locusts,’ he later wrote.
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It was a sentiment echoed by every writer on the English side, and very probably every man in Henry’s army.

This brings us to a most important question. As the army ascended the hill from Blangy to Maisoncelle, and looked for the first time across the field of Agincourt, what did they really see? How many men were there this afternoon? Were the English truly outnumbered thirty-to-one as the author of the
Gesta
relates? Or six-to-one, as Jean de Waurin claimed? Or three-to-one, as reported by the French chronicler Le Fèvre, who was actually in the English army at the time. Or ‘three or four-to-one’, as the French monk of St Denis stated? Or did the French outnumber the English just three-to-two, as the chronicle written by a Parisian cleric said?