CHAPTER TEN

HARFLEUR

Visiting Harfleur today, it is almost impossible to believe that this quiet little backwater was once one of the most important ports in northern Europe. Virtually nothing remains of the town Henry V saw on that August day in 1415; it is now merely a suburb of Le Havre, the port founded by François I in 1517 when Harfleur’s own waters silted up. The great walls that were once its pride and glory have been replaced by a labyrinthine road system of flyovers and roundabouts that are almost as impenetrable as its medieval fortifications. The salt marshes on its seaward side have became a vast industrial wasteland of smoking chimneys, oil terminals and container ports; the valley above the town, through which the river Lézarde flowed to join the Seine, is now an industrial estate and retail park linking it to Montivilliers. The lazy loops of the river itself were “redressed” by French engineers in the 1830s and replaced with rectilinear canals and quays; the fortifications that made the harbour one of the wonders of medieval Europe were demolished in the nineteenth century and the harbour itself filled in. Even the great church of St Martin, rebuilt in celebration after the English were expelled in 1435, with a delicate spire that can still be seen for miles around, is a sad and decaying historic monument for which the key literally cannot be found.¹

And yet the heart of the town remains defiantly picturesque: a medieval jewel lost in the swamp of Le Havre. Though Henry V’s own guns destroyed almost every building within the walls, much of the rebuilding that took place in the fifteenth century remains. Half-timbered houses crowd the narrow cobbled streets and little squares that still echo to the sound of footsteps; the more important public buildings, including the library and priory museum, though heavily restored, sport militaristic towers; and here and there, half hidden in the undergrowth, one can still find impressive vestiges of the massive walls and gates.

French contemporaries were justifiably proud of the medieval town of Harfleur. For the monk of St Denis, sheltered in his convent outside Paris, it was “the most admirable port in Normandy, sending out ships to all corners of the world and bringing back every type of foreign merchandise to provision and enrich the whole kingdom.” Enguerrand de Monstrelet, a military man, recognised its strategic importance. For him, as for Henry V, it was “the key to the sea of all Normandy.”² Lying on the north bank of the tidal Seine estuary, Harfleur controlled the access to France’s most important inland waterway. Some forty miles up river, travelling as the crow flies, lay the ancient city of Rouen, where the first dukes of Normandy were buried in the tenth century and the Capetian kings of France established their royal naval yard in 1294. Around eighty miles further up river lay Paris itself, capital city, royal residence and administrative centre, with the Seine flowing through its heart. If the English could capture Harfleur, they could establish a stranglehold on military and commercial traffic using the Seine and block one of the main arteries of France.

There was a second strategic purpose to be achieved in capturing the town. Of all the places on the northern coast of France, Harfleur posed the greatest threat to English interests. In recent years it had become the base of choice for attacking the south coast of England: Don Pero Niño, the “unconquered knight,” had retreated to its safety with his prisoners and plunder after raiding the coast of Cornwall in 1400, and Louis d’Orléans had gathered an invasion fleet there in 1404. French troops sent to aid Owain Glyn Dw?246-136?r’s revolt in Wales and the Scots in their campaigns against the English had all sailed from Harfleur. In England the town had also acquired the reputation of being a nest of pirates: many of the attacks on merchant shipping in the Channel had been carried out by French and Italian vessels which took refuge within its harbour and found a ready market for their prizes there.³ For all these reasons, Henry V had identified Harfleur as the target for his invasion. Its capture would serve a dual purpose, increasing the safety and security of English shipping and establishing another bridgehead, like Calais, for any future campaign in France.

Harfleur’s strategic importance had ensured that it enjoyed the best protection that medieval military might could devise.⁴ Great stone walls, some two and a half miles in circumference and fortified at intervals with twenty-four watch towers, encircled the whole town and its famous harbour. These were relatively modern fortifications, built between 1344 and 1361, and the plan was polygonal, with semicircular flanking towers at each angle, which were harder to demolish by cannonade or undermining than traditional square towers. The walls themselves were thicker at their base than at the top, sloping outwards so as to deflect shots from guns and catapults back into the enemy, and the many towers provided vantage points from which flanking fire could be rained on anyone approaching the walls. There were only three gates, guarding the entrances into the town from Montivilliers to the north, Rouen to the south-east and Leure to the south-west. A remnant of one of the towers at the Rouen gate, which also commanded the harbour, or clos-aux-galées as it was known to the French, is the sole survivor today. Though a ruin, its former might is still readily apparent in the depth of its great stone walls, strengthened by arches inside, the absence of any flat external surface and the many small embrasures, at varying heights, for crossbows and guns. Each of the three gates was protected by a bastion (a fortification projecting beyond the line of the walls), a portcullis and a drawbridge over a water-filled moat; these permanent defences had also been strengthened against missile attack by thick tree trunks, driven into the ground and lashed together on the outside, and earth and timber shoring up the walls on the inside.

The defence of Harfleur had been entrusted by Charles VI to Jean, sire d’Estouteville, who held the honorary office of grand butler of France. He had with him a garrison of some one hundred men-at-arms, which, even with civilian assistance, was not a large enough force to be able to offer any prolonged resistance to a determined English assault. Nevertheless, all the natural advantages of the site had been exploited to the full. The town lay about a mile from the Seine, at the head of the tributary valley of the river Lézarde. The southern approach was protected by the ebb and flow of the Seine tides over treacherous salt marshes. The waters of the Lézarde, which entered Harfleur midway between the gates of Leure and Montivilliers, had been partially diverted along a series of ditches and culverts to create a great moat which encircled more than half the town, from the north-east to the south-west, and defended it against attack from the upper reaches of the valley. Controlled by sluices, the river waters powered two mills for grinding corn, which lay just within the walls, and then flowed down a series of culverts through the middle of the town before broadening out to form the harbour and joining the Seine. The great advantage of these sluices from a defence point of view was that they could be closed completely. When this happened, the Lézarde was effectively dammed at its entrance to the town and therefore burst its banks, flooding the entire valley bottom to the depth of a man’s thighs. Forewarned that the English were landing close by, the men of Harfleur broke all the bridges across the river and closed the sluices, creating a vast lake to protect the northern side of the town.⁵

The clos-aux-galées was probably even more strongly fortified than the town. It was created in the 1360s by constructing a massive wall, more than six and a half feet thick and standing fifty feet high above ground and thirty-six feet below, around a loop in the Lézarde to the south of the town. This was then flooded to create a twelve-acre harbour that was both commercial port and royal military arsenal. Protected to the north by the town walls and on either side by its own higher wall, surmounted by defensive turrets, its seaward entrance was guarded by two massive towers, with chains strung between them to prevent unauthorised access. When the English invasion threatened, the French had taken emergency measures to provide additional defences, planting great sharpened stakes around the entrance and under the walls facing the sea, so that, when the tide was up and enemy ships could sail right up to the walls to launch an attack, they ran the risk of being driven onto the stakes and foundering.⁶

The story of the siege of Harfleur might have been very different had it not been for the courage and resourcefulness of one man. Raoul, sire de Gaucourt, was a French version of Sir John Cornewaille, and, like him, a medieval chivalric hero whom the modern world has forgotten. He came from a noble Picard family with a long and distinguished record of service to the crown. Like his father before him, he was deeply attached to the Armagnac cause and had strong personal connections with Charles d’Orléans, Charles d’Albret and Marshal Boucicaut. More importantly, de Gaucourt was a man who aspired to live out the knightly ideal. He was knighted on the field of Nicopolis as a twenty-six-year-old crusader against the Turks, and, with Boucicaut, was captured and put to ransom in that disastrous battle. In 1400 he was one of the fourteen founding members of Boucicaut’s short-lived knightly Order of the White Lady on a Green Shield, who swore “to guard and defend the honour, estate, goods, reputation and praise of all ladies and maidens of noble line” and to fight à outrance against their oppressors. Nine years later, when Boucicaut was governor of Genoa, de Gaucourt led a small French army to his assistance. The two men campaigned together in Italy throughout the summer of 1409, besieging and capturing Milan, and when Boucicaut made his triumphal entry into the city, de Gaucourt was at his side. In the armed struggle between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians, de Gaucourt distinguished himself in 1411 by capturing the bridge of St Cloud on behalf of Charles d’Orléans, but was later defeated in battle at the same place by a combined English and Burgundian force. As the chamberlain of Charles d’Orléans, he played a prominent role in the negotiations that led to the withdrawal of the duke of Clarence’s army from France in 1412 and served as captain of several Armagnac castles.⁷

On 1 January 1415, de Gaucourt was one of sixteen knights and esquires who were chosen by Jean, duke of Bourbon, to be the founding members of another new order of chivalry, the Order of the Fer du Prisonnier, or Prisoner’s Shackle. Like Boucicaut’s order, the duke of Bourbon’s was intended to uphold the honour of women of good birth: the golden shackle, with its chain, being a symbolic representation of the bonds of love, which fettered the knight to his mistress, rather than a reference to criminal activity. In accordance with the order’s constitution, de Gaucourt swore to wear a golden shackle and chain on his left leg every Sunday for two years, “in the expectation that, within that period, we may find an equal number of knights and esquires, of worth and ability, all of them men without reproach, who will wish to fight us all together on foot to the end, each to be armed with what armour he will, together with a lance, axe, sword and dagger at least, and with clubs of whatever length he may choose.” The arms of all the members of the order were to be hung in a chapel where, throughout the two years, a candle would burn, day and night, within another golden shackle used as a candlestick, before an image of Our Lady of Paris. If the challenge was accomplished, then the candle was to be endowed in perpetuity, together with daily masses, and each member would donate to the chapel his shackle and a picture of himself in the arms he wore that day. Anyone who forgot to wear the shackle on the designated Sundays had to pay a fine of four hundred shillings to charity for each offence.⁸

De Gaucourt’s membership of this order raises the interesting possibility that he was wearing his golden shackle on Sunday 18 August, as he performed the far more serious challenge of leading three hundred men-at-arms to the relief of Harfleur. Constable d’Albret and Marshal Boucicaut had not been entirely idle during the English landing. As soon as it became clear that Harfleur was Henry V’s objective, they sent a stream of supplies, including weapons, cannon and ammunition, to reinforce the town. They must also have decided that they needed an experienced and trustworthy knight to take charge of the defences, which is why Raoul de Gaucourt was chosen for the task. Whether he came from Honfleur or Caudebec, the only route he could take into the town was through the Rouen gate on the eastern side. Time was of the essence. He had to get there before the English. His arrival, only the day after Henry laid siege to the western side of Harfleur, is an indication of the desperate pace of his dash across Normandy. Fortunately for his mission, the flooded fields that denied him access to Harfleur from the Montivilliers road also protected him, for the moment, from the English troops encamped on the hillside before the Leure gate. They could only watch helplessly as de Gaucourt coolly rode unopposed down the other side of the valley and into the town.⁹ It was not often that Henry V was outmanoeuvred and, as de Gaucourt was to discover to his cost, the king was not a man to forgive or forget such actions.

Henry’s inability to prevent de Gaucourt and his men getting into Harfleur demonstrated that it was imperative that no further reinforcements should reach the town by the Rouen road. He now entrusted this important task to his brother the duke of Clarence, whom the chaplain described as “a knight no less renowned for the practice of war than for personal courage.” In this instance, he proved himself worthy of both Henry’s confidence and the chaplain’s praise. Under cover of night, he led a large force of men and an artillery train on a difficult ten-mile detour that took them above, up and around the flooded Lézarde valley. During their march they even managed to intercept more reinforcements arriving from Rouen and captured “certain carts and wagons belonging to the enemy, with a great quantity of guns and powder-barrels and missiles and catapults.” At dawn the following day, to the consternation of the besieged, Clarence and his men appeared on the opposite hillside above the town, facing Henry and his troops.¹⁰

While all these preparations were being made to lay siege to Harfleur by land, the seaward side was not neglected. Most of the merchant ships that had transported the army to France were allowed to go home after completing their disembarkation, though some returned again, bearing further supplies and reinforcements, including the men who had been left behind when the fleet first sailed.¹¹ The fighting ships and the royal fleet were not released from service but moved in to blockade Harfleur, barring all access from the Seine or the sea; a number of small boats, carried overland and taking up position on the flooded Lézarde, did the same from the north. Trapped between the two armies to west and east, and blockaded by water to north and south, Harfleur was now completely encircled.

Before the great guns began their bombardment, Henry, punctilious as ever, gave the people of the town one last chance to surrender. He sent one of his heralds to proclaim that in accordance with the twentieth chapter of the book of Deuteronomy (which Henry had already quoted to Charles VI in his letter of 28 July), he offered them peace—if they would open their gates to him freely and without coercion, and, “as was their duty,” restore to him the town, “which was a noble and hereditary portion of his crown of England and of his duchy of Normandy.”¹² If this offer was refused and Harfleur was captured by force, Deuteronomy authorised Henry to exact a terrible vengeance: “you shall put all its males to the sword, but the women and the little ones, the cattle, and every thing else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourselves; and you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the Lord your God has given you.” Though de Gaucourt and d’Estouteville knew as well as Henry what the consequences of their refusal to surrender would be, their duty and honour would not allow them to do anything other than reject his offer out of hand, and defy him to do his worst.¹³

The siege that followed was literally a textbook one, based principally on the ancient classical treatise on military tactics by Vegetius, De Rei Militari, which dated from the fourth century but had been translated and glossed by every medieval writer on the subject, including the fourteenth-century Egidius Romanus, known to the English as Master Giles, and Henry V’s own contemporaries, Christine de Pizan and Thomas Hoccleve. Following standard military practice, Henry ordered that the suburbs of Harfleur should be burnt and cleared, so that he could bring his cannon and siege engines within range of the walls. As the chaplain proudly pointed out, the king “did not allow his eyelids to close in sleep,” but laboured day and night to get his artillery in position. Many “great engines” to assault the town were constructed on site, as were “cunning instruments” for the protection of his own forces. Hordes of carpenters were employed in erecting huge wooden screens to protect the guns and catapults from enemy assault: an ingenious pulley-based device, operated from behind, allowed the gun crews to raise the base of the screen to set the gun’s projectory and fire it. The gunners themselves were protected by trenches built either side of their cannon and by ramparts, hastily constructed from the excavated earth thrown over bundles of sticks.¹⁴

Once the assault on Harfleur began, it was devastating. For days on end, the seventy-eight gunners kept up an incessant bombardment; they worked in shifts, as soon as one team tired, another immediately taking its place, so that there was no respite for the besieged during the hours of daylight. The English cannon and catapults were trained on the main points of resistance—the bastion guarding the Leure gate, the towers and the walls—and as the ten thousand gun-stones they had brought with them did their deadly work, the fortifications of Harfleur gradually crumbled. The noise was terrible: the explosion of cannon-fire, the thud of gun-stones crashing into their targets, the splintering of timber defences and the rumble of falling masonry. One of the cannons, the monk of St Denis was told, was the biggest anyone had ever seen before. When it was fired, it discharged huge blocks as big as millstones with so much black smoke and such a terrifying report “that they seemed to issue forth from the fires of hell.”¹⁵

In the face of this overwhelming assault, de Gaucourt and his men fought back with courage and determination, keeping up a retaliatory bombardment using guns, catapults, and crossbows as long as the bastion, towers and walls remained defensible. (One English man-at-arms, Thomas Hostell, was “smitten with a springolt [that is, a crossbow bolt] through the head, losing one eye and having his cheek bone broken,” though this injury did not prevent him from continuing to fight.)¹⁶ When it was no longer possible to defend the broken remnants of fortifications, the French doggedly fought on, “from inside the ruins also, from behind screens, and through shattered openings in the walls, and from other places where shelter would not have been thought possible.”¹⁷

At night, when the guns were silent, the siege engines still and the English slept, there was no rest for the besieged, who laboured to repair their defences as best they could. Under de Gaucourt’s direction, and presumably with the aid of the civilian population, the crumbling walls were shored up with timber props, bundles of sticks and tubs packed with earth, dung, sand or stones. The lanes and streets inside the walls were also covered with a thick layer of clay, earth and dung to soften the impact of gun-stones falling or shattering inside the town and causing death or injury to the besieged. There was neither time nor energy to spare for repairing the civilian buildings, which suffered terribly under the bombardment. The parish church, St Martin’s, lost both its steeple and its bells. Many “really fine buildings,” as the chaplain noted with regret, even those almost in the middle of the town, were completely destroyed or so badly damaged that they were on the point of collapse.

While the artillery wreaked its devastation from the air, Henry’s Welsh miners were hard at work burrowing under the fortifications of Harfleur. The greatest efforts were made on the Rouen side of the town, where Clarence was in command, because at this point there was no moat to be crossed. Here the walls were protected only by a double ditch, the depth of the inner one being an unknown quantity, as no spy or scout had been able to get close enough to investigate.¹⁸

Military mining had been introduced to Europe from the east during the Crusades in the thirteenth century. It involved digging a tunnel, or a web of tunnels, under the weakest point of a fortification, which was usually a corner or a gatehouse. The walls and roof of the tunnels, like those in a conventional mine, would be shored up with timber props which, at the right moment, would be set alight to make the tunnel collapse. Unlike a conventional mine, where those digging for coal or metal ores had to follow a seam and could work on their hands and knees if necessary, military mines had to be large enough to be able to bring down tons of masonry. This meant that they were usually wide and tall enough to take at least a man standing upright, and in some cases must have resulted in the creation of a vast underground chamber.

The most effective way of preventing a successful mining operation was for the besieged to counter-mine, or dig their own tunnels beneath and into the enemy mines to make them collapse before they reached the walls. Where the sheer weight of earth failed to do this, brushwood and incendiary devices were dropped or thrown in to set the props alight, smoke out the miners and bring down the tunnels. (Christine de Pizan even recommended placing large tubs of boiling water or urine at the entrance to the mine, which could be emptied on the unfortunate miners to scald or maim them.¹⁹) Occasionally, mine and counter-mine would meet, providing the opportunity for a curious subterranean version of the feat of arms, which, given the difficulties to be overcome, was highly prized by chivalrous knights and esquires as a demonstration of exceptional personal valour. In the narrow and gloomy confines of the mine, lit only by the flickering flames of torches, two men-at-arms would fight with whatever weapons they had to hand—swords, daggers, axes and maces—until one of them conceded defeat or an impasse was reached. One cannot imagine men of the calibre of Sir John Cornewaille and Raoul de Gaucourt neglecting such an opportunity to distinguish themselves, and the chroniclers report that there were daily encounters in the mine: “And who most manly fought in the same, supposed himselfe to have achieved greate victorie. And so that mine that was begun for the sudden invasion of the Towne was changed into the exercise of knightlie acts.” So dangerous and prestigious was such combat held to be that those who fought an encounter of this kind were judged to share a special bond and could become brothers-in-arms, even though they came from opposing sides. The most spectacular instance on record took place during the long siege of Melun in 1420, when Henry V himself is said to have fought the captain of the garrison, the sire de Barbazan, on horseback within the mines. When Melun finally fell, Henry announced his intention to execute Barbazan as a rebel. Barbazan responded by invoking the law of arms, claiming that they were brothers-in-arms because they had fought together in the mine, and that his life should therefore be spared. Henry accepted the validity of this claim and did indeed refrain from executing him.²⁰

Despite the English efforts, the French successfully thwarted every attempt to undermine their walls. Henry V had ordered a “sow” to be made, this being a protective mobile shelter under which the miners could take cover as they did their work. All the military textbooks recommended that mining should be conducted out of sight of the enemy, but this was impossible at Harfleur because of the lie of the land. As soon as the French saw that the sow was in place and that a mine was in progress, they took retaliatory measures, digging counter-mines and employing “other technical skills” that were evidently superior to those of the less experienced Welsh miners. Two attempts to undermine the walls were foiled and a third failed to achieve its objective. The only compensation for this lack of success was that the operation had been a useful diversion and forced the French to divide their forces in the town’s defence.²¹

Clarence was also forced to abandon his attempt to fill in the ditches below the Rouen gate walls. For this purpose, he had been gathering bundles of wood and piling them up in front of the ditches. He then discovered that the French had also been busy, stockpiling barrels of flammable powders, oils and fats on the walls. They were only waiting for the English to begin crossing the ditches before setting fire to the barrels and flinging them onto the ready-made bonfires below so as to burn Clarence’s men alive. But this threat did not prevent his men from taking possession of the outer ditch. Having advanced to this new position, Clarence appointed masters-of-works to supervise the digging of a trench, a section of which every man-at-arms and archer in his force was assigned to complete. The excavated soil thrown up on the front facing the enemy was further fortified with a palisade made of tree trunks and stakes, from behind which the gunners and archers could operate in comparative safety. Shielded behind their new defences, the English were now in range and able to drive the defenders off the walls with a barrage of missiles and gun-stones.²²

Although these operations were all carried out under Clarence’s orders, the king himself was in direct control and issuing the commands that his brother obeyed. It was a situation fraught with difficulties, not least because every message carried between the two divisions of the army had to be taken either by boat across the flooded Lézarde valley or by land on the long detour round the valley head. This was a problem that demanded an urgent solution and Henry had applied himself to finding one. According to Master Jean de Bordiu, one of the most senior clerks in the royal household, “Our king cut off the water supply before Montivilliers, which they had retained so that it could not run into the sea.” Though this rather mysterious phrase is open to interpretation, it suggests that Henry dammed the Lézarde higher up the valley, closer to Montivilliers, which was less than three miles away from Harfleur. This would have had two effects. First, it would have deprived the people of Harfleur of their main supply of fresh water, which was a priority of any besieging army hoping to make life on the inside increasingly wretched. Second, it must also have led to the draining of the flooded fields above the town. No chronicler mentions such engineering works, or, indeed, that the flood waters created by closing the sluices at Harfleur gradually evaporated or drained away during the course of the siege, but it is difficult to find any other explanation for de Bordiu’s explicit statement.²³

Henry was indefatigable in his personal supervision of the siege. No one, not even his brother, knew when or where he would appear next. “The Kinge daylie and nightlie in his owne person visited and searched the watches, orders, and stacions of everie part of his hoast, and whome he founde dilligent he praised and thanked, and the negligent he corrected and chasticed.” Jehan Waurin, the fifteen-year-old illegitimate son of the seneschal of Flanders, believed that “King Henry, who was very cunning, often went around the town in disguise to identify the weakest and most suitable place by which he could take it.”²⁴ Whether true or not, the circulation of such stories was a tribute to the power of the king’s character and a highly effective way of keeping his men up to the mark. (They also would inspire Shakespeare’s “little touch of Harry in the night” scene.) This was increasingly important as the siege entered its third week and the battering inflicted on Harfleur had not yet forced its surrender.

Henry, however, was convinced that its fall was imminent. On 3 September Master Jean de Bordiu, who was well placed to know the king’s plans, wrote to the citizens of his native Bordeaux in English Aquitaine:

Please know that the town of Harfleur, with the aid of the Holy Spirit, will be in the king’s hands before 8 days at most. For now it is well and truly breached on the landward side and on two flanks, and everything destroyed inside . . . And when he has taken it, I have heard it is not his intention to enter the town but to stay in the field. In a short while after the capture of the town, he intends to go to Montivilliers, and thence to Dieppe, afterwards to Rouen, and then to Paris.²⁵

On the same day, Henry himself also wrote to Bordeaux, cheerfully informing the citizens that “ourselves and all those of our company [are] in good health and disposition.”

For this, in all humility, we give thanks to our lord God the Almighty, hoping that, by His grace, He will give us, in pursuit of our right, the fulfilment of our desire and undertaking, to His pleasure, and for the honour and comfort of us and you, and of all our other faithful lieges and subjects. To this end we shall do our duty, so that, with God’s help, our enemies will be henceforward less powerful to cause you trouble and harm than they have been in the past.²⁶

Henry had underestimated the determination and ingenuity of de Gaucourt and his men. Harfleur would not fall in eight days, but in eighteen. And those ten extra days were to wreak havoc in the English army and force the king to change his plans.

The problem was dysentery, the scourge of every army on campaign, which was known to the English as “the bloody flux” because its main symptom is bloody diarrhoea. Epidemic dysentery²⁷ is almost always caused by an extremely virulent bacterium, Shigella dysenteriae type 1, which is spread through human faeces. This is usually the result of food or water coming into contact with infected faeces, but so few bacteria are needed to cause infection that it can be spread from one person’s hands to another’s. Up to a third of the population in an epidemic area can be infected and though some recover without treatment within seven days, between 10 and 20 per cent die, usually within thirteen days of the onset of symptoms, from complications including persistent diarrhoea, septicaemia and kidney failure.

All the conditions for an outbreak were present at Harfleur, both within the beleaguered town and in the besieging armies. The weather was hot and humid and the salt marshes and standing water of the flooded fields in the valley bottom were breeding grounds for bacteria and insects. If Henry had indeed succeeded in damming the higher reaches of the Lézarde, this may well have contributed to the problem by reducing the amount of running fresh water available to his own men. The marshy nature of the land also made it more difficult safely to dispose of not only human and animal faeces but also detritus, such as animal carcasses, which was the inevitable consequence of feeding so many troops. Trenches were dug for privies and burial pits for other waste, but these could not be sealed and the problem of sanitation would only increase the longer the siege went on. Nor should it be forgotten that the many thousands of horses in the army, each needing to drink four gallons a day, would probably have contributed to the contamination of the water; we know that many of them, too, died of murrain, an infectious disease.²⁸

The physicians and surgeons in the king’s army were not unaware of the dangers of diseases associated with campaigning. The king’s personal physician, Nicholas Colnet, possessed a copy of Bernard Gordon’s influential and popular treatise, Lilium Medicinae, which set out the following highly relevant and practical advice:

But if the physician is in an army, then the King’s tent and the tents of the physicians and surgeons should be on higher ground, facing a favourable wind; on no account should the tent be at a lower level where all the refuse gathers. Good fresh air, without any stench of corpses or any other things, should be chosen. In summer, the tent should face south and the physicians should carefully take into account everything that might bring sickness on the army and eliminate it as far as possible; such things are heat, rain, rotting corpses, diseases, nuts, cabbages, trees, plants, reptiles, swamps, and such like.

In accordance with this advice, the king and his brother had pitched their tents on the hillsides above Harfleur.²⁹ What neither they nor anyone else in the army could do, even if they had understood how the disease was transmitted, was avoid all contact with those who were infected.

Contemporary chroniclers, unaware of the true cause of the epidemic, blamed either a lack of supplies or, paradoxically, English greed, which (they claimed) led the men to gorge themselves on unripe fruit and the shellfish that were plentiful and readily available in the salt marshes between Harfleur and the Seine estuary.³⁰ (In the medieval mind, the seemingly inexplicable could always be explained by sin.) In fact, such a diet was irrelevant to the spread of dysentery, and the charge that the English were short of victuals is not borne out by the evidence. Apart from what each man had brought with him, which, according to the order of 24 July, was to be enough for three months, they were in receipt of a constant supply of fish (fresh and salted), wheat, beef, wine, ale and other foodstuffs from England and possibly Aquitaine. The earl marshal hired his own ships to bring regular supplies of corn, flour, beer, wine and even a barrel of salmon across from England to Harfleur, suggesting that other retinue leaders did likewise. In addition to the ships plying the Channel, foraging patrols throughout the Chef-de-Caux brought in large quantities of fresh food on a regular basis, particularly corn, which could be ground into flour for bread. The king’s stores at Harfleur issued the archers of Sir James Harington’s retinue alone with 428 pounds of flour, 2576 pounds of beef and 4545 gallons of wine, which does not suggest straitened circumstances.³¹Maintaining supplies at an appropriate level was a matter of such importance that even the king concerned himself with it. When Henry wrote to his subjects in Bordeaux at the beginning of September, he urged them to send him “as quickly as possible” and “without failing in any way” as much wine and other victuals as they could provide, reassuring them at the same time that “those who bring it to us . . . will receive full satisfaction in payment.” Master Jean de Bordiu’s cover letter interpreted this as being a request for between five hundred and seven hundred tuns of wine, but he added two other comments which are perhaps indicative of a sense that the unexpected length of the siege was beginning to cause concern. “Although at present the fields are providing an adequate supply of corn, this cannot, however, meet the future requirements of the great army which is with him, and which increases every day.” Perhaps more significantly, he also noted that “my lord of Dorset . . . who is second in command” and his men “are loudly complaining that there is no way of paying.” It was probably no great encouragement to the merchants of Bordeaux to learn that the king had “great confidence” that the earl would find a way to pay, but Henry’s irritatingly blithe certainty was, as usual, underpinned by his practical arrangements, for he was at that very moment in the process of securing loans from Richard Whittington and others “for the maintenance of our siege of Harfleur.”³²

Exactly when the first cases of dysentery appeared in the English army (or in Harfleur) is not recorded. The presence of the disease only comes to the chroniclers’ attention on 15 September, when its most prominent victim died. Richard Courtenay, bishop of Norwich, was a man who, despite his profession, had put his extraordinary abilities wholly at the service of his king rather than his God. A doctor of civil and canon law, twice elected chancellor of the University of Oxford, of which he was a generous and learned patron, diplomat, financier and a constant companion and advisor to Henry V, the only thing he had never found time to do was to visit his diocese, where John Leicester, archbishop of Smyrna, lived in his palace and performed his ecclesiastical duties for him. For the English chaplain (who was unaware of the bishop’s spying activities), Courtenay was “a man of noble birth, imposing stature, and superior intelligence, distinguished no less for his gifts of great eloquence and learning than for other noble endowments of nature, . . . regarded as agreeable above all others to members of the king’s retinue and councils.” He was also, the chaplain said, “the most loving and dearest” of the king’s friends, which is perhaps a more remarkable epitaph, since there were few men who could claim such a relationship with Henry V. That it was justified is indicated by the fact that the king himself attended his deathbed, bathed his feet for him and closed Courtenay’s eyes when he died. Courtenay was just thirty-five years old. His body was sent back to England where, on the king’s personal command, he was buried among the royal tombs behind the high altar in Westminster Abbey.³³

Three days later, on 18 September, the king lost another devoted servant to the same disease. Michael de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, “a knight of the most excellent and kindly reputation,” was fifty-four years old, had accompanied Henry’s father on crusade to Prussia, and after he became king served him in all his expeditions “by See and by Lande.” The war in France which brought about his premature end would also claim the lives of four of his five sons. His eldest son Michael, who was not yet twenty-one and was also in the army at Harfleur, was killed at Agincourt. Joan of Arc proved to be the nemesis of the rest. Alexander met his death at the battle of Jargeau on 12 June 1429, and in the same battle his three remaining brothers were taken prisoner; two of them, John and Thomas, died in captivity. The de la Poles paid a high price for their loyalty to the Lancastrian kings of England.³⁴

On 15 September, the same day that Richard Courtenay died, a second serious setback occurred. Either because Courtenay’s death had distracted them or, more likely, because they had simply relaxed their guard after almost a month of siege, the men besieging the Leure gate fell victim to a surprise attack by the French. Remarkably, those responsible for this dereliction of duty included Sir John Holland, Sir John Cornewaille and his brother-in-arms Sir William Porter, who had all shared the privilege of being the first to land at Chef-de-Caux. Seizing the moment, the French made a desperate sally out of the gate and managed to set fire to the English defences before being driven back with heavy losses. (It is tempting to think that Raoul de Gaucourt was behind this doomed but gallant gesture, not least because it took place on a Sunday, the day when he wore his golden prisoner’s shackle and chivalric deeds were uppermost in his mind.) Though the attack had inflicted only minor damage in military terms, it was a significant morale-booster for the beleaguered garrison, who taunted their foes as being only half-awake, lazy and failing to keep a better watch.³⁵

There could be only one response to such insults. The following morning, Holland and Cornewaille began an all-out assault on the gate. Arrows, wrapped in tow, dipped in pitch and set alight, were rained upon the fortified position to drive those guarding it away and wreak further destruction. Under cover of night, at Henry V’s command, the ditch separating the English from the gate had been filled with bundles of sticks, so that they could now cross over, torch the gun-shattered remnants of the outer walls and attack the French defenders. Holland’s standard was carried into the centre of the bastion and his men streamed in after it. The French put up a fierce resistance in the hand-to-hand fighting that followed, but eventually, exhausted by their futile attempts to put out the flames, surrounded by smoke and conflagration and overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers, they were forced to abandon their position and retreat behind the town walls. Even now they did not give up their efforts, but swiftly blocked the entrance behind them with timber, stone, earth and dung, so that the English, having gained the bastion, were still unable to enter the town. It took them several days to extinguish the flames, but the remains of the shattered fortification continued to smoke for another fortnight.³⁶

Evidently hoping that this success would have broken the spirit of the French, Henry sent a herald into Harfleur the next morning, 17 September, with a safe-conduct for de Gaucourt and a group of representatives of the town council, so that they could come into the English camp to discuss terms. Henry was at his most charming and persuasive: he greeted them in person and advised them, in his kindliest manner, to surrender the town. He reminded them that Harfleur was part of the duchy of Normandy, which had belonged to the English crown by right since ancient times, and of the fate that would befall them if they continued to resist him. De Gaucourt was exhausted, half-starved, suffering from dysentery himself and staring death in the face, but he still had his pride and his sense of duty. He refused to surrender. Defiantly, he informed Henry that he had not received his office as captain of the town from him and did not recognise his authority: he knew that the king of France would not allow the siege of Harfleur to continue much longer and that any day he would arrive at the head of his army to drive the English away.³⁷

It is impossible to know whether de Gaucourt believed these proud words himself. He may have had a blindly optimistic faith that his king would not allow such an important place as Harfleur to fall without striking a blow in its defence. On the other hand, a man of his military experience must have known that, in tactical terms, it was probably better to allow Harfleur to fall and recapture it after the English had left, rather than risk everything on the unpredictable outcome of a pitched battle.

Cut off from the outside world by the besieging armies, it must have been difficult for de Gaucourt to get any intelligence, let alone up to date information, about what efforts were being made on his behalf. Constable d’Albret and Marshal Boucicaut had now, apparently, united their forces at Rouen. There they had spent huge sumspurchasing a small boat, filling it with food and other necessaries and entrusting it to one Jehan Lescot, a local mariner, with instructions that he should take it to the relief of Harfleur. Astonishingly, Lescot (who may have been a pirate and was highly paid for his services) succeeded in getting through the English blockade not once, but twice, for de Gaucourt later arranged for him to escape in secret from the town, so that he could report back to d’Albret on conditions there. D’Albret also sent Robin de Hellande, the bailli of Rouen, to Paris, entrusted with verbal messages to the king, dauphin and council “touching the descent and arrival of the English and the provisions that ought to be made against them, for the salvation of the said town of Harfleur and of the countryside around it.”³⁸

De Gaucourt may also have been aware that in addition to d’Albret and Boucicaut, some of the local nobility—among them the young seneschal of Hainault, who had once been so eager to test his valour against Englishmen in jousting challenges—had raised their own troops to resist the English. Frustrated by the failure of any officially organised resistance, they had determined to take matters into their own hands, continually harrying the English troops, especially those camped with Clarence before the Rouen gate, and attacking any small groups of Englishmen they found scouting or foraging away from the army. One force of some five hundred or six hundred local knights, led by the sire de Lille Adam and Jacques de Brimeu, decided to make a grand gesture. The plan was that a small party would ride within sight of the enemy camp so that the English would raise the alarm and then give chase on horseback, leaving their archers behind. When they had been drawn sufficiently far away from the main army, they would be ambushed and slaughtered by de Lille Adam and de Brimeu. Unfortunately for the French, de Lille Adam made his move too early and was seen by the English men-at-arms. Realising it was a trap, they immediately abandoned the chase and returned to the safety of their camp. The disaster was compounded by the capture of both de Lille Adam and Brimeu.³⁹

While the local nobility did what they could to resist and harry the English invaders, the princes of the blood royal seemed incapable of decisive action. It was not until 28 August, a week and a half after the siege of Harfleur had begun, that the king’s council at last issued the general call to arms in defence of the country, which it was the duty of every man capable of bearing weapons to obey. The king’s letters authorising the proclamation of the summons in every town and at every public meeting were sent out to the baillis and seneschals of each district with instructions that the muster should take place at Rouen. Letters were also sent directly to towns such as Verdun, Tournai and Amiens, which had their own city militias, ordering them to send assistance to Harfleur. Fifty crossbowmen did indeed belatedly leave Tournai on 17 September, but they did not get as far as Harfleur and returned home two months later, never having encountered the English at all. On 1 September embassies were sent to both Charles d’Orléans and John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy, requesting them to send five hundred men-at-arms each. It was a measure of how deep the rift between them remained, despite the peace that had been celebrated only a few months previously, that both dukes were asked not to come in person with their troops.⁴⁰

On 1 September the dauphin set out with his household from Paris, arriving a couple of days later at Vernon, just over halfway to Rouen, where he remained for the rest of the month. Charles VI himself was not capable of leading his army into war, but on 10 September he made a personal pilgrimage to the great royal abbey of St Denis and there collected the sacred oriflamme from the high altar. It was then entrusted to Guillaume Martel, sire de Bacqueville, who took the customary oath as its bearer, before setting off to join the king’s army gathering at Rouen. A citizen of Paris was sufficiently stirred by these events to note the preparations and departures in his journal. It was perhaps indicative of the general mood in Paris that it was not the plight of his fellows in far-off Harfleur which stirred his indignation, but the tax imposed to finance the campaign. It was, he complained, the heaviest ever seen.⁴¹

As the situation in Harfleur became increasingly desperate, de Gaucourt sent message after message to the dauphin, pleading for assistance. “Your humble subjects, so closely besieged and reduced to great distress by the English, beg your highness that you will make haste to send them help to raise the siege, so that they are not compelled to surrender this most renowned and valuable port and thus bring shame on the majesty of the king.” The dauphin was either embarrassed by these pleas, or simply indifferent to them, for the messengers found it almost impossible to gain admittance to his presence. When they did, they were fobbed off with assurances that “our father the king will deal with these things at an opportune moment.” All they could do was report back that a vast army, forty thousand strong, it was claimed, was gathering at Rouen.⁴² What they could not do was say whether it would arrive in time to save the courageous defenders of Harfleur, or merely to avenge them.