Agincourt (30 page)

The English garrison was to benefit from the protection of a small fleet that was ordered to patrol and guard the coastline close to Harfleur. A number of cannon were also installed in the town, together with eighteen gunners to operate them. Additionally, forty-two carpenters and twenty masons were to remain behind to restore the broken fortifications of the walls and towers. It was not until December that additional masons and tilers were to be recruited for the restoration of the houses and other buildings within the town. The cost would be phenomenal. Their wage bill, claimed by Harfleur’s new treasurer for the first five months alone, amounted to just over £4892 (more than $3,250,000 at today’s values), and that did not include exceptional sums such as the £800 paid to one Thomas Henlemsted, a “dyker” from Southwark, for removing a mound and making a ditch outside the town walls.
³⁵

Once the arrangements for the security of Harfleur had been completed, Henry had several choices before him. He could return to England with a short but successful campaign behind him having established a bridgehead for any future attempt to reconquer his heritage in Normandy. He could follow in his brother Clarence’s footsteps, and make a
chevauchée
, or armed raid, plundering and burning his way down through the south and west of France to his duchy of Aquitaine. He could extend his area of conquest by besieging another neighbouring town, such as Montivilliers, or Fécamp or Dieppe, which were both further up the coast towards Calais, or even Rouen, which would take him a major step further inland up the Seine.

There were good reasons why Henry adopted none of these alternatives. A five-week campaign, even one that resulted in the capture of a place as important as Harfleur, was not enough to justify the expense, effort and time he had put into the preparations. Nor would it do anything to advance his claim to the crown of France. If he were to force any greater concessions from the French, or, indeed, keep the support of his own people for further campaigns, then he needed to make a grander gesture.

A
chevauchée
to Bordeaux had its attractions: plenty of plunder on the journey for his men, a safe haven at the end, a chance to visit his duchy and perhaps carry out a campaign in the region. Indeed, Master Jean de Bordiu, in his letter of 3 September to the duchy, had stated categorically that it was the king’s “intention” to go to Bordeaux “before he returns to England.”
³⁶
On the other hand, this was written when the fall of Harfleur was expected imminently and before dysentery had made its appearance in his army. It was a month further into the campaigning season before Henry was ready to set off and Bordeaux was over 350 miles away—a very long way to travel for a depleted army that was not in the best of health. The lateness of the season, combined with his reduced numbers and the uncertain state of health of his men, made another siege out of the question, so the guns and siege engines were either put into Harfleur or shipped back to England.

Although rumours were rife all over Europe about the king’s intentions, Henry had already made up his mind what he was going to do. The great army he had assembled at Southampton was now reduced to a mere shadow of its former self. Excluding those in the garrison at Harfleur, he probably had only nine hundred men-at-arms and five thousand archers able to draw sword or fit to fight, as the chaplain put it. Even with this comparatively small number, he did not have enough shipping available to him at Harfleur to send them home directly, since he had dismissed most of his invasion fleet before the town capitulated.
³⁷
Nor did he have enough victuals to enable them all to remain indefinitely in the town.

Henry had arranged to meet his prisoners at Calais on 11 November and it was to Calais that he intended to go. He could have travelled there easily and safely by sea. Instead, he chose to follow in his great-grandfather’s footsteps, and march through what he claimed were “his” duchy of Normandy and “his” county of Ponthieu to “his” town of Calais. He even intended to cross the Somme at the same place, in the full knowledge that it was on a similar expedition, in 1346, that Edward III had won a famous victory over the French at Crécy. Although he would follow a route close to the coastline, it would inevitably bring him within easy striking distance of the French army at Rouen. He probably calculated that his diplomatic efforts of the previous year would ensure that neither John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy, nor Jean, duke of Brittany, would move against him. In that case, the “French” army would actually be a much smaller and weaker Armagnac army. He had failed to draw the dauphin into battle at Harfleur or to give him trial by battle in person. Perhaps this deliberate act of provocation would finally rouse him to action.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE MARCH TO CALAIS

Henry’s decision to march his army overland to Calais was a calculated risk. It was also very much a personal one. A large majority of his council advised against it, fearing that the dwindling English forces would be an easy prey for the French multitudes that had been gathering at Rouen for over a month.
¹
In the meetings that took place after the fall of Harfleur, Clarence argued that the English should return home immediately by sea as being “the next and surest way”: they had lost too many men, both to the sickness and death wrought by dysentery and to manning the garrison, to run the risk of a journey to Calais overland, “and most especiallie considering the greate and infinite multitude of theire enemies, which then were assembled to prevent and hinder the King’s passage by land, whereof by theire espies they had knowledge.” In anyone else’s mouth this would have appeared sound enough reasoning—and there were plenty of others who shared his view—but coming from Clarence this reluctance to engage with the enemy was open to sinister interpretation. His well-known sympathy for the Armagnac cause cast a shadow of suspicion, long and dark, over his motives, his advice, his actions.

Clarence could not have openly defied his brother by refusing to go—that would have been an act of high treason—but he was reckless enough to make his feelings known. If he was not prepared to run the risk of the march to Calais, thus causing a very dangerous confrontation with the king, or would only go with a bad grace that might affect the morale of the men and provide a focus for discontent, then it was in everyone’s interest that an honourable exit should be found for him. Clarence’s name duly appeared on the rolls of the sick and at the beginning of October he received his licence to leave the army and return home. Though it is true that his retinue had been severely affected by dysentery, Clarence’s own actions do not suggest a man suffering from a debilitating disease. Instead of going straight home, he took ship for Calais, where his arrival with “such a great number of men” caused panic in neighbouring Boulogne, which immediately sent off a messenger to Abbeville to inform Constable d’Albret. Fears that Clarence was about to launch a second invasion from Calais were unfounded, but the author of
The First English Life
, who did not know that Clarence was supposed to be ill, assumed that he had been sent back to England to take charge of the fleet, perhaps because the admiral, the earl of Dorset, had been left to captain Harfleur.
²

Though he lacked his brother’s intellectual qualities, Clarence was still every inch the soldier. As noted earlier, Jean Fusoris had contrasted Clarence’s martial character with that of Henry V, whom he thought more suited for the Church than for war. This opinion must have struck a chord with many of the other royal councillors who advised against the proposal to march to Calais. In response to their protestations about the inequality of the size of the respective armies, Henry serenely countered by “relying on divine grace and the justice of his cause, piously reflecting that victory consists not in a multitude but with Him for Whom it is not impossible to enclose the many in the hand of the few and Who bestows victory upon whom He wills, whether they be many or few.”
³
It was an argument that Henry had advanced before,
⁴
and, in an age of faith, it was unanswerable. What is more, it was not simply unthinking piety. Henry was well aware that every military treatise since classical times had expounded the view that a small, well-trained army could defeat a larger one. Christine de Pizan, for instance, discussed the subject at length in
The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry
.

One finds that many armies have been thrown into disarray by their own greater number rather than by enemy forces. And why is this so? Certainly there are good reasons, for a great multitude is more difficult to maintain in good order and is often in trouble because it requires more provisions, is more quarrelsome, and is subject to more delays on the roads . . . For this reason . . . the ancients who had mastered such things useful in battle, knowing the perils from experience, placed a higher value on an army well taught and well led than a great multitude.
⁵
As Vegetius himself had said, rather more succinctly: “Bravery is of more value than numbers.”
⁶

Orders were issued for those selected for the march to equip themselves with enough provisions to last for eight days. It has often been suggested that this was a serious miscalculation and that Henry had been overly optimistic about the length of time it would take to get to Calais. In the light of hindsight, this was clearly the case. On the other hand, without the benefit of that future knowledge, Henry and his advisors had to plan reasonably and appropriately. It was important for the men to have enough supplies to get them to Calais, but they also needed to be able to travel lightly and not be weighed down with unnecessary baggage.

The eight-day figure was not simply plucked out of the air. Despite the fact that he had no maps to calculate his route, Henry knew he would need to cover an average of just under nineteen miles per day, which was perfectly reasonable given that nineteen miles was the acknowledged medieval standard for travelling by land. The ever-reliable Vegetius had stated that an army marching on foot should be able to cover at least twenty miles in only five hours in summertime; had Henry been able to achieve this, his eight days would have taken him well beyond Calais. The English army was disciplined and mostly mounted, but it was not a Roman legion accustomed to long route marches, and it could travel only as fast as its slowest members. Even so, given a longer travelling day, it should have been able to cover the same distance within the eight days for which supplies were allotted, especially as it would be possible to supplement these rations along the way.
⁷

Before the march began, Henry once more issued a set of ordinances in accordance with customary practice and the laws of war. It was going to be of the utmost importance that his small army stayed together and that neither individuals nor companies were tempted to stray by the prospect of plunder, prisoners or even chivalric dreams of a heroic encounter with the enemy. Henry was determined to maintain order among his own men, but also that this would not be a traditional
chevauchée
. His objectives were to challenge the French military and to get to Calais: he did not wish to despoil, massacre or exploit the civilian population. The presence of his army, sweeping through northern France, would be enough to strike terror into the hearts of those living there. With an eye to the longer term, it was important that he did not alienate those whom he hoped and believed would be his future subjects. He therefore decreed that, on pain of death, there should be no burning or laying waste of property or land, that nothing should be taken “except food and what was necessary for the march” and that no “rebels” were to be captured, unless they were offering resistance.
⁸

There is some confusion as to when the army actually set off from Harfleur. Contemporary English sources, who were best placed to know, variously date it to 6, 7, 8 or 9 October. The exchequer accounts paying the wages of the men who went on the march would seem to provide conclusive evidence that it was 6 October, “on which day they left the town of Harfleur with the lord king heading for the battle of Agincourt.” Most of the wage accounts for those who remained in the garrison also run from 6 October, though some begin two days later. Of the three English chroniclers writing before 1422, Thomas Walsingham avoids giving any date at all, Thomas Elmham plumps for 9 October, which was the feast of St Denis, and the chaplain—the only one actually present on the march—miscalculated his dates and gave two conflicting ones.
⁹

The reason for this confusion is that there was no single universal system of dating in medieval times. There were only two constants. The first was the Julian calendar, introduced by Julius Caesar in 45
BC
. It divided the year into twelve months and 365 days, with an extra day at the end of February every fourth year to catch up the discrepancy between the arithmetically calculated year and the solar year as observed by astronomers. The second constant, the “year of grace,” was introduced in
AD
535 by the Church in Rome. This drew a definitive line between the pagan and Christian eras, dividing them into years reckoned before the incarnation (
BC
—Before Christ) and after it (
AD
—
Anno Domini
—the Year of Our Lord). The English, led by the example of the Venerable Bede, had adopted this system by the eighth century; by the fifteenth century it had spread across all of western Europe, except Portugal, which until 1420 clung to 38
BC
as the beginning of its era.
¹⁰

Though the introduction of the “year of grace” or
AD
system brought some measure of uniformity and certainty to the chronologies of western Europe, it had one basic flaw. No particular date was designated for the start of the year. There were, therefore, any number of conflicting dates. Some were logical, like Christmas Day, the day celebrated as Christ’s birth, or Lady Day, otherwise known as the Feast of the Annunciation, which fell on 25 March and was the day that the angel informed Mary that she was to have a child. Others were totally illogical, such as Easter Day, which varied from year to year. Throughout the Middle Ages, the Church, which preferred to start the year with one of its major Christian festivals, successfully opposed attempts to revert to the pagan Roman practice of beginning the year on 1 January. Even though the spread of Protestantism in the sixteenth century gave it renewed credibility, it was not formally adopted in England as New Year’s Day until 1 January 1752.
¹¹