Blood Cries Afar (39 page)

Other gains were made. The cities – but not the castles – of Ely and Lincoln were taken before the truce. Cambridge and Pleshey Castles also fell to Louis. Now, on the expiration of the first truce, a further one was under negotiation between William Marshal and Louis, the former at Oxford, the latter at Cambridge. This one, to last until 23 April, cost the royalists more castles: Hedingham, under siege, and Colchester, Norwich and Orford. Hedingham was returned to Robert de Vere while Gillon de Melun received Orford, Simon de Poissy Cambridge and William de Mandeville Pleshey.
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The Dunstable annalist reports that all the castles of Essex and Suffolk were now in Louis’s hands. Thus, by the end of January, Louis had actually strengthened his position, even though over three months had elapsed since John’s death. With little effort, he now had most of the eastern half of England secured. Thus Louis had indeed regained his momentum, and the hope was that this would place greater pressure on strongholds such as Dover to appreciate the futility of further resistance.

Why was the impact of John’s death so muted? Why had the royalists not reaped far greater rewards from this heaven-sent opportunity? The biographer of William Marshal was confused by the situation, believing, unpersuasively, that the ‘fine, magnificent, well fortified’ castles of Norwich and Orford had been handed over without the Marshal’s agreement, ‘and that was a wrong thing to do’.
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(The
History of William Marshal
makes a reappearance as a valuable source with the onset of the new reign, disassociation with the failures of John now replaced by the accolade of the Marshal’s greatest role as leader of the nation. The lengthy poem compensates for Ralph of Coggeshall’s cursory treatment of just one-and-a-half pages from the coronation of Henry III to the end of the war.) One explanation for the royalists’ sluggish start was simply a matter of time: many were waiting to see how the regency council responded to Louis and waiting to see if it would – or could – reverse the situation. There was the real possibility that the council would come to terms with Louis at any moment. Many barons were still sitting opportunistically on the fence. Louis’s initial flurry of triumphs kept them there longer than they might otherwise have been, underlining the intent of his post-Dover strategy. The royalist camp, like the Franco-baronial one, had its own divisions, although these proved less damaging. Hubert de Burgh had some friction with the Marshal (the latter refusing to provide more material aid to Dover), but also a real competitive hostility with Peter des Roches that later grew into a feud. Brian de Lisle, Philip Mark and the Earl of Derby were also at loggerheads over castle ownership. Perhaps the mightiest baron of all, Earl Ranulf of Chester, threatened to leave on crusade, while Savary de Mauléon was back in Poitou after Christmas and actually did embark on crusade. In fact, Ranulf did not have to go far to become a crusader: although the exact date is uncertain, probably sometime between Henry’s coronation and late January, the pope decreed the royalist cause as a crusade and Guala instructed Henry’s men to wear a white cross on their chests. (In the Holy Land, crusaders wore the cross on their shoulders.) More practical spiritual help followed: with John gone, the episcopacy reformed as eleven out of the twelve bishops who had abandoned John returned to the crown’s service.

But there were other specific reasons, too, for caution and patience. One, proposed by David Carpenter, was simply that the Marshal was not yet in a position to counter-attack.
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He had spent November and December in Gloucester and Bristol and waited until the new year before heading to Nottingham and offering assistance to Lincoln. It should also be noted that Louis did not make inroads into the west either, so both sides may have been using the opportunity to consolidate their positions, something that Louis achieved far more successfully. The Marshal may have feared incursions by Llewelyn and Reginald de Braose from the west, which would have left the rear of William’s forces in danger; the Welsh had a tradition of attempting to exploit the moments of political uncertainty at a time of succession. The other, perennial, problem was money. The system of government had all but broken down, with revenues being collected more from local military activity, ransoming, extortions,
tenseries
and ravaging than bureaucracy. The Marshal’s biographer reveals that ‘the King has hardly any resources’ and that ‘the child has no wealth’.
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Hard cash was in short supply and payment of royalist troops and mercenaries often had to be made in jewellery and silks. This forced the royalists to adapt the same measures as we have just seen Louis taking. Thus William Marshal threatened to torch Worcester unless it handed over £100 it had pledged to pay John. Poor old Abbot William Trumpington of St Albans was again raided on 22 January, this time by royalists. Wendover reports that Falkes de Bréauté descended on the abbey that evening with ‘knights and robbers’ from his garrisons and pillaged the town. Even children were taken prisoner, and someone was slain at the door of the church where he had been running to take sanctuary. These ‘agents of the devil’ then demanded £100 from the Abbot or else they would ‘immediately burn the whole town with the monastery and other buildings’.
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Falkes took his booty back to his stronghold at Bedford before setting out again to take some 60 clergy and noncombatants prisoner elsewhere.

This explanation may complement rather than overturn another one: that the royalist council had undertaken a deliberate strategy adopted at this time. This suggests that the royalists wanted to spread out Louis’s forces and to catch them exposed beyond their bases.
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This entailed the deliberate withdrawal of isolated and exposed garrisons in Essex, East Anglia and elsewhere, hence the swift capitulations to Louis. The men and materiel from these might be better deployed elsewhere; thus Norwich and Orford Castles, the loss of which so exercised William Marshal’s biographer, had their stores transferred to Dover. The royalists may have been anxious of attack from their western flank; it is also worth considering whether a motivation for their consolidation was the fear of a co-ordinated attack from the Welsh in the west and Louis in the east. But as we have seen, Louis’s focus was very much on expanding his authority through the east. In this he largely succeeded, but a visit to Lincoln failed to persuade Nichola de Haye to give up the royal castle there. Whatever the reasons behind royalist strategy – consolidation for defence, consolidation for offence, restraints of money, or a developing combination of all three – their counter-attack began in the new year.

Truces were easier to break than to maintain. Both sides accused the other of breaking the terms of the truce, and in February a bloody and bruising encounter took place at the neighbouring south-eastern ports of Rye and Winchelsea, between Hastings and Dover. The royalists moved fast to gain the initial advantage when a changing situation presented itself. The change was brought about dramatically by Louis’s decision to return to France. This was a risky move necessitated by the need for men and money. We have seen how his forces were being depleted by continental troops returning home; and now with Henry on the throne, there was a well-founded fear that many barons would at best not support him and at worst desert him. The Barnwell chronicler believes Louis was summoned urgently home by his father to a council, while Wendover believes Louis was deeply anxious over the weight of religious opinion against him: an anathema with the threat of a renewed excommunication following; the English episocopate back on the royalists’ side; and a crusade pronounced against him. It is possible that in addition to tangible material support, Louis might have been looking for diplomatic allies in France, too, even if his father made a pretence of not talking with him. But William the Breton, the best placed to know but least consulted on this, reports that Louis lacked money to pay his soldiers and in France found both reinforcements and funds from his friends.
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Either way, the barons were greatly dismayed by Louis’s intended departure and, uncertain about the near future, they made Louis swear to return before the truce expired. Their vulnerability was increased by a setback at Mountsorrel on 20 January. From here, the baronial garrison went on a raid to procure plunder and provisions, but the royalist garrison at Nottingham, heaving learned of this from their scouts, intercepted them; they killed three rebels and captured ten knights and 24 sergeants.
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From London Louis set out for the south coast to sail to France. He had heard that his castle at Rye had been lost through subterfuge. It had been taken by Philip d’Albini’s flotilla. Hubert de Burgh was also operating along the coasts of Kent and Essex. Louis’s grasp on the southern ports was not assured, and the Cinque ports were slipping away from even nominal obedience. From Ireland the royalists had collected a flotilla at Winchelsea, next to Rye, where they were joined by more vessels to blockade the ports. Powerful forces made for the area from both sides. The vernacular sources provide a remarkable and detailed account of what happened there.
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Just before reaching Winchelsea, Louis stayed in the safety of the Earl of Warenne’s castle at Lewes where he fretted over supplies through the Weald. This suggests that his plan was to base himself at Winchelsea to recapture Rye before leaving for France. He may also have been making the dash to Winchelsea in the hope that he would be able to embark before royalist reinforcements made this impossible by taking this town along with Rye. His entry into the town was unresisted. The burghers burned their mills, thus hindering Louis’s provisioning of his men, and took to the strong royalist ships off Rye which blockaded the ports. These were now under the command of Philip d’Albini, governor of the Channel Islands and sparring partner of Eustace the Monk. Both the Anonymous and the biographer of William Marshal confirm that these ships had strong complements of armed men and supplies. Louis’s land route back to London was also blocked; Willikin of the Weald and his guerrilla force had seen to that by destroying the bridges and guarding the travel ways. The
History of William Marshal
says that Willikin was in ‘no mind to play games’; many French stragglers and prisoners were beheaded. Willikin’s force also had the great advantage of knowing the area intimately and they used this knowledge to great effect. As the biographer comments, the French Prince ‘did not know which way to turn … Louis was harried so that he felt himself in desperate straits.’ It seems to have been a classic luring to a siege to ensnare the enemy. Louis was caught in a well-made trap.

Louis’s fears over supplies manifested themselves starkly, as the Anonymous tells us as he takes up the rest of the story. His men had wheat but, with the mills gone, no easy way to grind it, so they attempted to do so by hand. They were unable to catch fish and relied on large nuts found in the town for some sustenance. Truces with the enemy meant little, and the English sailors (presumably augmented by crews from Ireland and the continent) would come ashore to shoot and hurl their missiles at the weakening French. All the while Louis’s losses mounted. William Marshal’s biographer claims, with exaggeration, that Louis lost thousands of his troops, ‘men who had been overconfident about having England in their hands’. The biographer has no sympathy for the French, whom he labels ‘mercenaries’. Earlier in his poem he seems to gloat over French deaths:

Many a barrel and cask of fine wine the French mercenaries drank, and they were so full of arrogance that they said England was theirs, and that the English should vacate the land, for they had no right to it; the French, they say, would have it for their own profit. That arrogance was of no avail whatever: subsequently I saw a hundred of them eaten by dogs, men whom the English had killed between Winchester and Romsey. That was the only land they managed to keep.
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Louis sent out men on foot to sneak through the enemy lines to seek help from London. Some obviously broke through the enemy lines and the terrifying bands of Willikin’s decapitating guerrillas to reach the capital. Here they announced Louis’s orders ‘to help them because they were in great trouble and the English were making things wretched for them’. A relief force was dispatched as French knights went to the assistance of their lord. This force, comprising Guillaume, castellan de St Omer, Raoul Plancöet, Hugh Tacon, Jean de Beaumont and others not named, was only a small one and thus feared to go the direct route through the Weald. Instead they made for Canterbury and thence struck southwest to Romney. We can see how Willikin’s forces dominated the Weald by the relief plan hatched: help was to come from the sea, not the land. From Romney they sent instructions to Louis’s governor in Boulogne, a Cistercian monk, to send all the ships they could ‘because their lord Louis was in very grave trouble at Winchelsea’. The governor sent some 200, all but one sailing to Dover, the exception braving the blockade to boost the flagging morale of the French trapped in Wincheslea with news of the relief operation. This ship may well have been captained by Eustace, for a few lines further on the Anonymous says that he was with Louis. French knights began embarkation at Dover but the winter weather conditions and lack of prevailing winds prevented their departure for Winchelsea for a fortnight. It was a long fourteen days for Louis and his men; they ‘suffered greatly because their supplies were running out’.

Louis, Eustace and his advisers held a council of war to discuss what could be done to alleviate their predicament until reinforcements arrived. The ever resourceful Eustace came up with a plan. He proposed adapting one of his large galleys by building a castle-like structure upon it, presumably a large fighting platform. When completed, it was so huge it spread over the sides of the ship and caused amazement amongst all those who saw it. Other ships the French had taken from the English in their combats guarded it from attack. Behind this heavy ship followed another carrying a petraria to hurl stones at the English vessels. On shore, Louis had two other petrarias erected that caused the English flotilla great problems. But the plan came to nothing. In a pre-emptive strike, the English launched a bold night attack that saw them capture the large galley. They taunted their enemy with their victory by destroying it piece-by-piece ‘before the eyes of the French’. Feeling the strain of the last few weeks, Louis lashed out at the Viscount of Melun and blamed him for the disaster, for the Viscount had been charged with the watch that night. ‘But my leader!’ he responded. ‘Your men are so starved I cannot find anyone willing to perform guard duty’, then adding that Louis himself would not be able to find four knights to do so. Louis retorted that he would go on guard. A heated argument broke out. Eustace de Noeville joined in, somewhat obsequiously telling Louis that ‘the viscount does not know what he is saying’ and that ‘forty’ knights could be found. The Viscount and Eustace then went for each other, going back and forth with their contradictions of the other’s statement. Eustace had he last word: he did indeed find 40 guards to man the watch.