The problem of making a lasting peace had been postponed. In the light of the experience of thirty years earlier, what were the chances for the temporary agreement? Some may well have had their fears. In France the rule of the dukes who sought to govern in the place of Charles VI who, since 1393, had suffered from the intermittent attacks of a mental illness which was to remain with him until his death in 1422, appealed to a rising sense of nationalism which tended to favour a vigorous defence of French interests. Then, when the truce had run for little more than three years, Richard II was deposed and murdered, his place as king of England being taken by Henry IV, the son of John of Gaunt. Richard’s young wife, Isabella, no longer wanted at the English court, was despatched — without her dowry — back to France, where feeling turned sharply against Henry for his deposition of the French king’s son-in-law.
In such circumstances it is not surprising that the truce of 1396 was never properly observed. The French gave support to the Scots who, from very early on in the new reign, caused trouble in the north; while to the west, in Wales, where Owain Glyn Dŵr was to rise against English rule in 1400, French troops landed and at one time might have been seen in the Herefordshire countryside. This was a game which two could play, and the English were to raid the coast of Normandy several times between 1400 and 1410. During these years, too, piracy in the Channel was rife, probably encouraged by both sides as a matter of policy.11 Yet neither side, partly because of the very existence of the truce, partly because of its own domestic divisions (which were becoming more serious in France as the first decade of the new century progressed) wished to raise fundamental issues. Henry IV appears to have had no burning ambition to secure the French crown, and during his reign Aquitaine suffered from relative neglect. The war had moved, well and truly, towards more northern parts of France.
Or almost so. In 1411, at the request of John, duke of Burgundy, a small English force took part in what was rapidly becoming a situation of civil war in France. In May 1412 a treaty (that of Bourges) was sealed between Henry IV and the dukes of Berry, Bourbon, and Orléans which gave the English king much of what his predecessors had spent years fighting for: a recognition that Aquitaine was rightfully English, and an undertaking to help the king defend it; the cession of twenty important towns and castles; and agreement that certain lands, notably Poitou, were to be held by them of the English crown, and would revert to it when the present holders died.12
Such concessions appeared momentous; yet they were made largely to secure English military help for one faction against another in a situation of civil war, and were unlikely to command lasting support, above all since the king, Charles VI, had had no part in this dismemberment of his kingdom. When the French dukes made peace among themselves at Auxerre three months later, the only losers were to be the English. When Thomas, duke of Clarence, second son of Henry IV, brought a force into France in August 1412 to fulfil the terms of the agreement made in May, he was met by a united opposition. Unable to impose himself, Clarence allowed himself to be bought off before returning home through Bordeaux, plundering on the way. Yet the text of the treaty of Bourges had made concessions which could be regarded as at least impolitic, at worst treasonable, to the French crown. Henry V was to remind the world of what had been conceded when, in his turn, he became king of England in 1413.
Once king, Henry soon set about making heavy demands of the French. In the following year these became even tougher: he demanded the crown of France; then he reduced this to the territories of Angevin days, Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Touraine, Aquitaine (to include Poitou, part of the concession made by the princes at Bourges in 1412), together with the substantial arrears still due for the ransom of John II and, following the now well-established pattern, the hand of a daughter of the French king, this time Catherine, sister to Isabella whom Richard II had married in 1396, together with a dowry. By 1415 he showed himself willing to accept a good deal less: he would settle for the legal and territorial terms agreed at Brétigny, now more than half a century earlier, and a smaller dowry. That, for the moment, was as far as he would go. When the French refused his conditions, Henry decided on the war which his diplomacy had given him time to prepare. He would fight the enemy in a good cause: denial of justice.
In August 1415 an English army landed in Normandy and at once began the siege of Harfleur, at the mouth of the river Seine. Six weeks later the town, which had suffered heavily from the bombardment of English cannon, capitulated. The problem now was what to do next. Probably against the advice of his commanders Henry decided to lead what remained of his army, decimated by illness contracted at the siege, to Calais, thought to be about a week’s march away. In fact the English were almost outmanoeuvred by the French army. Yet, on 25 October 1415, although outnumbered, Henry and his force, relying on the traditional weapon of archers and men-at-arms, met and defeated the French at Agincourt. The French, probably over-confident of victory, allowed themselves to be drawn into a cavalry advance, carried out under a hail of arrows, across recently ploughed ground made softer yet by the rain which had fallen the previous night. The chronicles record the large number of French who, at the day’s end, lay dead on the field, while, by contrast, very few Englishmen lost their lives. Among the many notable prisoners taken was Charles, duke of Orléans, who was to spend the next quarter of a century an honourable captive in England, developing a considerable talent as a poet in both French and English. In the meanwhile, England and her king were to live for many years on the reputation won on that autumn day. Only too evidently had God given his judgement in favour of the English claim for justice.
In 1416 the French made a serious attempt to regain Harfleur, which they blockaded by land and sea. The garrison suffered considerably, but on 15 August 1416 John, duke of Bedford, defeated the enemy fleet in the estuary in what has come to be known as the battle of the Seine. The threat to Harfleur was now eased, and the value of being able to defeat the enemy at sea was once again proved.
In the following year, 1417, Henry returned to Normandy. Harfleur had taught him a lesson: he must be properly prepared for siege warfare, all the more so since he now planned a conquest which could only be achieved through sieges and the show of effective military might. By the summer of 1419 all Normandy was his: the major walled towns of the duchy, Caen, Falaise, Cherbourg, and Rouen had all fallen to the English besiegers. This marked an important change in English policy towards France. The day of thechevauchée, or prolonged raid, was now almost over. Henry wanted nothing less than military conquest. With it went the need to govern and administer lands thus acquired, and the demand that the inhabitants of those lands should recognise the legitimacy of English rule by taking an oath of allegiance to Henry. He went farther still. Those who refused him their recognition were deprived of their lands and forced into a form of internal exile within France, into that area which the Valois ruled. Lands thus confiscated were Henry’s to do what he liked with. Many, ranging from large estates to small-holdings in towns, were given by him to his French supporters and to those English whom he could tempt over to settle in northern France. In this way, through a deliberate policy of conquest and settlement, Henry V extended the sharing of the profits of war (in this case largely immoveable property) to many of his compatriots, both soldiers and civilians. By so doing he changed the very character of the conflict, for through the creation of a wider involvement in its success he tried to ensure that he, and his successors, would have broad support for the continued involvement of England and Englishmen in France. The presence of those Englishmen was the most convincing proof available that, in Normandy at least, war had secured justice.
Normandy won, where would Henry turn to next? The divisions among the French, so much at odds with one another, helped him militarily. Yet when it came to negotiation, who would speak to him in the name of France? Faced by an enemy triumphant on their own territory, the French parties tried to make common cause. At Montereau, south-east of Paris, the dauphin Charles met his great political rival, John, duke of Burgundy, on 10 September 1419. At this meeting the dauphin may have implied that the duke, whose reluctance to adopt a strongly anti-English stance was generally recognised, had been guilty of treason to the French crown. An altercation blew up, and in the ensuing scene Duke John was felled by a blow from a member of the dauphin’s entourage.
This political murder only aggravated the political divisions within France. It also gave Henry V the chance he needed. The brutal death of Duke John inevitably pushed Philip, his son and successor, onto the side of the one man who could help him. Henry grasped the opportunity; it could lead to Paris (which the Burgundian party at that moment controlled) and to much else, besides. It may well have been at this moment, in the autumn of 1419, that Henry V decided that the crown of France, which none of his predecessors had achieved, might be his.13 During the course of the coming months, the terms of what Henry could obtain in concessions from the French (or at least from that branch of the body politic which was, at that moment, dominant) were worked out. The result was the treaty of Troyes of May 1420.
This was the most important treaty of the Hundred Years War.14 It overtook in significance and ended the sixty-year domination of the treaty of Brétigny. The reason is simple enough. The treaty arranged between Edward III and John II had adopted a mainly feudal approach to the dispute which separated the two kings and their people; it had decided who held what, and how. That arranged between Henry V and Duke Philip of Burgundy, imposed upon the sick king, Charles VI, and then formally registered (or approved) by France’s highest judicial body, the Parlement, did not carve up the kingdom, at least not on paper. Its aim was to preserve the unity of France, to arrange matters in such a way that, in due course (and, in view of the king’s health, not before too long) a new dynasty might assume the crown of France. That dynasty was to be the royal house of England.
The treaty of Troyes made Henry V heir to the crown of France. Charles VI, now only occasionally lucid, was to remain king until his death, but in the meantime Henry would act as regent (in effect, in control of the government) succeeding to the crown when Charles died, a fact which was soon to be interpreted to imply English recognition of the legitimacy of Charles VI’s rule as king of France. To give the settlement greater weight it was also agreed that Henry should take to wife Catherine, Charles’s daughter, whose hand he had sought in negotiation some years earlier. The couple were married in the cathedral at Troyes on 2 June 1420.
What the treaty did not do was to make the two kingdoms of France and England one; they were to remain separate, each with its own legal and administrative identity. The unifying factor between them was to be dynastic and personal. How effectively the king of England could direct the government of France was the most important of a number of unresolved questions left by the treaty. Translating a paper agreement into reality was likely to prove difficult; several major problems would need to be overcome. The greatest was that the dauphin, Charles (he was, in fact, the third dauphin, two elder brothers having died prematurely) had been deprived of his legitimate right to succeed his father as king. Much play was made of the fact that, since he had been present at the murder of John, duke of Burgundy, at Montereau he could not properly and worthily inherit the throne, from which he was now excluded. Yet, it was asked, was it possible to exclude him by treaty, so manifestly an arrangement between the king of England and the Burgundians (the dauphin’s political rivals), and then imposed upon a sick king who was in no position to resist? To many, loyal to the idea of direct succession within the royal family, this seemed wrong. To such, the dauphin became the living symbol of resistance to English rule in the years to come.
A further complication was the undertaking given by Henry V that he would use every means at his disposal to bring under his control those extensive areas of France not yet according him their allegiance, an ambitious military plan which, it could be argued, was beyond his financial and military capabilities. For not the least of Henry’s problems was how to raise the money required for the accomplishment of such an undertaking. Would his new French subjects pay to continue a civil war against their compatriots? Alternatively, would Englishmen be willing to subscribe towards the accomplishment of this great task? Henry must very soon have begun to have doubts on both scores.
The treaty of Brétigny had been termed the ‘Great Peace’; that of Troyes came to be known, at least in English circles, as the ‘Final Peace’. One can see why; but was it really to be so? Born out of a particular set of circumstances, the treaty did little to unite France, but served rather to underline the divisions which had existed for two decades or more. The English had come to France encouraged to make the most of a lack of united opposition to them. This they succeeded in doing. But it cannot be claimed that the unity implied in the term ‘Final Peace’ was achieved, either then or later. France remained a divided country. This can best be seen in the demand made by princes who had subscribed to the treaty that those who lived in their lands should do the same. Many refused; even the town of Dijon, capital of the duchy of Burgundy, only did so when ordered to do so by its duke. Classified as ‘rebels’, those who would not recognise the new political order which the treaty represented suffered the confiscation of their property and were forced to move to the rival obedience where, over the coming years, some helped to foster opposition to English rule in northern France.
Henry, on his part, turned seriously towards the fulfilment of his new obligations. It was while he was away in England, crowning his wife as queen and seeking further material support for the war, that his brother, Thomas, duke of Clarence, was defeated and killed at Baugé, in Anjou, by a Franco-Scottish force on 22 March 1421. Had the French taken proper advantage of their unexpected victory, it is possible that they could have reversed the way the war seemed to be going. But they failed to do so, and when Henry returned to France he was able to clear the enemy from strongholds which they still held near Paris, including the formidable town and fortress of Meaux, before which he spent some seven months in 1421—2. It was while he was besieging that town that the king contracted a fatal illness. On 31 August 1422, he died at Vincennes, just outside Paris. His successor as king of England, Henry VI, was not yet a year old.
Henry V had given the war with France a new twist.15 He had come to France (in which he spent more than half his life as king of England) and had, as contemporaries recognised, achieved considerable conquests, something which his predecessors had never done on that scale or within so short a period of time. He had done better than they had in the sense that he had claimed the crown of France and, by treaty, had come close to exercising its authority. He had done more, too, that would be of significance in the future. In Normandy, that part of France which he had made peculiarly his, he had taken over everyday government, now exercised in his name by men appointed by him. Furthermore, in an attempt to reward men for military service and to encourage others to serve in France, Henry had pursued a policy of granting lands and titles which had come into his hands, thereby creating an important interest, other than his own, in the extension and maintenance of the conquest. Englishmen were given lands to exploit, but also to defend. A number of them settled in France, took up what were essentially non-military occupations, and sometimes married French wives. Before long they had become settlers; their children knew no other life. If there were to be a failure in maintaining this conquest, the ‘livelihood’ of these people would be at stake. Every effort must be made to keep them there.