Blood Cries Afar (20 page)

At this time Louis was 26; he had acquitted himself well in the Flanders campaign of the previous year but was now facing the greatest threat that he and his father had ever known. He was aware of the importance of avoiding any rash mistakes at this crucial juncture. Louis was quite unlike his father in most respects. Small and pale, in contrast to his father’s burly countenance, he was nevertheless imbued with the chivalric spirit of a true knight that was so lacking in his father. Coupled with his energy in time of war he earned for himself the soubriquet of ‘The Lion’ from his later biographer, Nicholas de Bray. He was a true warrior who loved fighting and who risked his life in its pursuit. But he was not recklessly impulsive; rather, he was a highly effective and competent commander who took time for the necessary logistical preparations before starting military operations. Between 1211 and 1226 he spent over four complete years in the field; by his death he had participated in seven major campaigns, including crusades in southern France.

All this was befitting an alleged descendant of Charlemagne, as eagerly presented by Capetian propagandists. To the fore of these was Gilles de Paris, who wrote his epic poem
Karolinus
for Louis to assist him in emulating his great ancestor. Such a gift would not have been lost on the learned and cultured Prince who had also received Rigord’s
Deeds of Philip Augustus
and William the Breton’s own epic poem, the
Philippidos
. Louis is an altogether more attractive, vibrant figure than his clever, scheming, calculating father, gaining an almost saintly reputation for himself by fathering a saint, the great monarch St Louis IX (born just two months before these events at La Roche-au-Moine). Louis’s religious influence on his more famous son should not be underestimated. Louis has sadly been much neglected by historians despite his significant impact on the medieval world. This is largely due to the brevity of his own reign (1223–6) and, to a greater degree, his being overshadowed by his remarkable family: his father, Philip; his son, St Louis; and his formidable wife, Blanche of Castile.
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Louis’s army was poised to descend upon John’s siege camp on 2 July. Through his scouts John learned of Louis’s approach and of the French inferiority of numbers. John did no seem to need much bidding by his spies: he arranged his army in battle order ready to meet the oncoming French. At the vanguard of the French forces was the marshal, Henri Clément, a man ‘small in stature but great in heart’.
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With the French were William des Roches and Aimery de Craon, the only two major barons present (there were eleven with Philip). A large French force under the heir to the throne was about to engage with a larger English force under the King of England. The scene was set for an epic and potentially decisive encounter between the Angevin and Capetian dynasties.

But it never happened. John’s Poitevin’s barons, under Aimery de Thouars and including the Counts of la Marche and Eu, refused to fight. They declared themselves unprepared for pitched battle. This refusal may have been on military grounds – battle avoidance was a common stratagem in medieval warfare – but given the superiority of English numbers (a fact agreed by both English and French sources) this is unlikely. More probably the real reason – or excuse – was, as William the Breton suggests, the Poitevins’s reluctance to fight against the immediate forces of their suzerain. Such action was not without precedent: the Poitevins had also baulked at fighting Philip in 1206; and in 1159, John’s father, Henry II, declined to come to blows with Philip’s father, Louis VII, at Toulouse for the same reason. Wendover’s accusation of treachery may be too judgemental, although Aimery de Thouars had a reputation as an habitual turncoat and certainly had a chequered career: this Seneschal of Anjou and custodian of Chinon had fought with John before 1202; with Arthur of Brittany after 1202; Philip Augustus made him Seneschal of Poitou after taking it in August 1204; in 1205 the Thouars family returned to John’s side and in 1208 his son was captured by Philip. In 1214, concerns for the best interests of his family and castle are likely to have dominated his reasoning; the doubt over events in the north-eastern sector may also have played a part.

The barons withdrew leaving John exposed to uncertainty in his ranks; where some led, others could follow. He was never an assured and confident commander who could rely wholeheartedly on his soldiers’ loyalty, and he suffered for it. His string of military victories came to an end at La Roche-au-Moine. Before the advancing French, he fled back to La Rochelle where his campaign had started with such promise four months earlier. This retreat was nothing if not determined and swift, covering 115 km in two anxious days. It is possible that John thought Philip’s whole army had returned to the region. La Roche-au-Moine was a rout without a battle, its pathetic anti-climax summing up John’s sudden and complete reversal of fortune. Wendover claims that when Louis heard of John raising camp he actually feared that John ‘would attack him, and fled in the opposite direction from King John’s; and thus each army ignominiously taking to flight, turned their backs on one another’.
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If this did happen, the French withdrawal was only momentary as their scouts would have passed on news of John’s own retreat. Before long the valiant garrison of La Roche-au-Moine were pillaging the deserted English siege camp, for in its haste the Angevin army had left all behind it: siege engines, tents, clothes, money and valuables. As the French came onwards many of the English who had not been so quick to flee were harried, many drowning as they attempted to cross the Loire in overladen barges; stragglers were cut down by the French vanguard. The skirmish was a bloody one. Among those slain in the pursuit were John’s chaplain (William the Breton’s opposite number) and Paies de Rochefort, mortally wounded in two places. Henri Clément died a few days later, probably from wounds sustained in the encounter, possibly exacerbated by fever. The pendulum had swung in Louis’s direction and he quickly capitalised on his victory by undoing much of John’s work during his Poitevin campaign. He rapidly retook many of the castles recently lost to John, razing to the ground those of Montcontour and Beaufort; garrisons were placed in all the strategic strongpoints; he ravaged the lands of Aimery de Thouars and many of the region’s towns; and, significantly and symbolically, he regained control of Angers, throwing down the defensive wall hastily erected there by John. Any person found from John’s side was clapped in irons. Anjou was back under Capetian dominance once again. The only clouds over the spectacular success were the marshal’s death and the uncertainty over his father’s fate in Flanders where the German-Flemish coalition forces were advancing.

Philip Augustus’s cause had been greatly served by his son’s achievement. The bold but necessary decision the King had taken at Châteroux to split his army into two had been vindicated by events in Anjou. The defence of La Roche-au-Moine had brought the French the time needed to launch a direct attack against a previously mobile English army and its Poitevin allies. The result was, at one blow, the end of John’s advances in Poitou and the firm securing of one of the two fronts against France. However, back at La Rochelle, John had not given up Poitou yet. His army had been put to flight, with him leading the way, but it had not been destroyed. He still intended to co-ordinate his strategy with his allies in the north-east, where they held the initiative, and in the second week of July he wrote back to England calling for reinforcements to pursue his military operations. His dissembling letter unwittingly reveals the anxiety that had crept into his thoughts: ‘Everything is, by God’s grace, happy and prosperous with us … We earnestly entreat those who have not crossed with us to come to us immediately … Know that if any of you have incurred our displeasure, the best way to make amends is by answering this summons.’
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Any defeat was serious and potentially disastrous for a military commander, but only subsequent events could determine whether this would be the case. Poole calls the encounter at La Roche-au-Moine a ‘disaster’ for John, as indeed it proved to be; Sivèry rightly believes that John’s defeat here was a major factor leading to the French invasion two years later.
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Yet had the outcome at Bouvines been reversed by a coalition victory, John’s defeat would have been of relatively little consequence; for the French this scenario would have been their equivalent of Harold’s great victory at Stamford Bridge in 1066 and the swift negation and irrelevance of this a few weeks later at Hastings.

What would an Angevin victory at La Roche have meant, if anything? The pressure on Philip Augustus in north-east France would have intensified even more, and his defensive inversion of a Schlieffen-like plan would have been widely perceived as a failure. But it is doubtful that John would have pressed for Paris, still some distance off with the inevitable dangers of over-extended supply routes and exposed vulnerability deep in enemy territory, and with the bulk of Louis’s army still in the field. Only an overwhelming Agincourt-style victory would have made this a feasible option. Ralph Turner goes further, opining convincingly that John did not even have plans for an assault on Normandy, seeking instead ‘a decisive victory elsewhere in France that would convince the Norman nobility of Capetian weakness, and persuade them to return to Angevin allegiance’.
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This accords with my emphasis on the importance of political momentum in medieval warfare. However, Daniel Power’s analysis of John’s strained relations with the Norman aristocracy would seem to make this hope optimistic;
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but John was probably hopeful that pragmatic self-interest and the new political reality would win them over.

And what of John’s fickle Poitevin allies? Their policy of a weak Capetian neighbour and a distant Angevin overlord could now be improved upon: a serious blow by the coalition against Philip would offer the enticing prospect of an impotent Capetian overlord on the one hand, and a weakened John on the other. Aware of the coalition’s intentions, did the Poitevins see practical political autonomy beckon?

Why, then, did John choose to fight (assuming he did)? Battle avoidance was common operational practice in the Middle Ages. It is likely that John did not wish to lose the momentum he had built up with all its impressive results. A victory would have added tremendous impetus to the powerful – and potentially almost irresistible – momentum he already had in progress. His earlier victories and superior numbers would have boosted his confidence, and John had a tendency to oscillate sharply between over-confidence and pessimism about the situation. And with the powerful Poitevins momentarily gathered on his side, it is understandable that he should wish to make use of them. We have seen how his early military victories affected the political environment, persuading leading figures such as the Count of Nevers to line up with him. This tide of allegiance could prove even more effective than military victory in the field and could certainly be shaped by it. John would surely have learned this the hard way from the loss of Normandy, especially after the fall of Château Gaillard (and he would be reminded of it again in 1216). Perhaps he hoped that taking La Roche would have a similar effect, albeit on a smaller scale. For the same reason, Philip wanted Louis to take decisive action at La Roche: as important as raising the siege was the opportunity to break John’s momentum of success. Philip simply could not afford to allow John’s continued progress across the region to become a victorious promenade; the political consequences may have been too damaging, not least in how it could affect his efforts to raise armed support to counter the imperial threat in the north-east.

Such factors would have determined strategy. The French victory did not release a great deal of men from this sector to the north-eastern one. Louis’s army of 800 knights and thousands of footsoldiers was not strong enough to finish off John, and did little more than ravage the lands of the Viscount of Thouars, having crucially retaken lost castles; John had to be contained in La Rochelle and Capetian garrisons were placed in all the newly taken strongholds of the territory regained. But Louis had secured this front and neutralised the King of England. The Angevin momentum had been broken. This was the important significance of La Roche. But for Bouvines, the overlooked encounter at La Roche-au-Moine would be recognised as a major French victory. Some chroniclers certainly deemed it such, with Matthew Paris going so far as to claim, rather dubiously, that La Roche was celebrated as the major Capetian success of 1214.
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A sober verdict on Louis’s victory at La Roche is provided by the Anonymous of Béthune, who wrote: ‘Know that it was a good thing of which his father was very well aware.’
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Despite his letters home and over-optimistic plans, John’s active role in the coalition had been reduced to a relatively passive one of tying down much of Louis’s army in this region of France when it was sorely needed elsewhere. The fate of John’s designs in France and that of the Capetian monarchy was about to be decided in the north-east and without his direct involvement.

From Châteroux, Philip had hurried north to meet the even greater threat facing Normandy and Paris. The long years of careful coalition building by John (structured on the relations formed by his brother Richard) now culminated in an impressively powerful league united against France.
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This league had manifested itself as a formidable host in the Lowlands, poised to press down into France. John’s brother, William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, was, tenuously, the commander-in-chief of this grand army, but his command was neither readily accepted nor undisputed among the other elite generals. Otto IV, Holy Roman Emperor, was the prominent figure, but his force was a relatively small one and Salisbury’s prominence reflected the input of the coaltions’ chief paymaster: John. Joining them were the contingents of Count Ferrand of Flanders, Count Renaud de Dammartin of Boulogne, Count William of Holland and the Flemish troops under Hugh de Boves, the last having been recalled from John’s service in England for this great campaign. The allies also added to their ranks the Dukes of Limburg and Brabant, Count Conrad of Dortmund and many other important barons and the troops they brought with them. They awaited the late arrival of John’s nephew, Otto of Brunswick, who was eager to crush Philip, not least because the Capetian supported Frederick Hohenstaufen, Otto’s rival claimant to the imperial throne. The delay of Otto and his German princes left the coalition host ravaging and pillaging Ponthieu, and organising attacks on the far north-eastern border. Philip, meanwhile, was granted precious time to muster the feudal host against the impending danger: barons, knights, men-at-arms and communal troops were quickly gathered and reinforced by some of Louis’s knights now spared from Anjou. This great mobilisation was reminiscent of the call to arms in 1124 sent out by Philip’s grandfather, King Louis VI the Fat, when the French kingdom was imperilled by another threatened invasion from the empire, at that time under Henry V. The lack of uncoordinated troop movements amongst the present coalition meant Philip could organise his defensive force, albeit hastily.