CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Walking back across the battlefield, through “the masses, the mounds, and the heaps of the slain,” the English chaplain was not alone in weeping at the scale of the slaughter. Like his king, he was utterly convinced of the justice of the English cause and his fanaticism on this point made him blind to alternative or, indeed, opposing views. He was therefore unable to see the French dead simply as those who had given their lives in defence of their country against a foreign invader. He was also unaware of how many of them had put aside bitter party differences to do so, an altruism that made their deaths all the more poignant. Though his sympathy is expressed in terms that make uncomfortable reading for those who do not share his conviction, it was nevertheless totally genuine. He could not help but be touched by the thought that so great a number of warriors, famous and most valiant had only God been with them, should have sought their own deaths in such a manner at our hands, quite contrary to any wish of ours, and should thus have effaced and destroyed, all to no avail, the glory and honour of their own country. And if that sight gave rise to compunction and pity in us, strangers passing by, how much more was it a cause of grief and mourning to their own people, awaiting expectantly the warriors of their country and then seeing them so crushed and made defenceless. And, as I truly believe, there is not a man with heart of flesh or even of stone who, had he seen and pondered on the horrible deaths and bitter wounds of so many Christian men, would not have dissolved into tears, time and again, for grief.1
Even the most impious soldier in the English army must have been given pause for thought by a victory that surely justified the term miraculous. Indeed, it was not long before rumours began to circulate that a miracle really had taken place. There were those who were prepared to testify that they had seen St George, the warrior patron saint of England, fighting on behalf of the English, just as he had aided the Normans against the Saracens in the battle of Cerami in 1063.2 If St George did appear, neither the chaplain nor our other eyewitnesses noticed him. All were united, however, in attributing the victory to God. “Our England . . . has reason to rejoice and reason to grieve,” the chaplain wrote in words that again echoed his king’s sentiments. “Reason to rejoice at the victory gained and the deliverance of her men, and reason to grieve for the suffering and destruction wrought in the deaths of Christians. But far be it from our people to ascribe the triumph to their own glory or strength; rather let it be ascribed to God alone, from Whom is every victory, lest the Lord be wrathful at our ingratitude and at another time turn from us, which Heaven forbid, His victorious hand.”3
This was, in essence, the view of almost all contemporaries, including the French themselves. Some Burgundians were quick to blame the Armagnacs, circulating rumours among the international representatives of the Church meeting at the council of Constance that Charles d’Albret and Charles d’Orléans had betrayed their own side by defecting during the course of the battle to throw in their lot with the English—a particularly distasteful attempt to ward off criticism of their duke’s own absence from the battle. It was even said that the Agincourt news was received with joy in Paris because it was a defeat for the Armagnacs.4
Other chroniclers, regardless of party, pointed the finger of blame squarely at the leaders of the French forces. They were accused of being too hasty in not waiting for the arrival of their own archers and crossbowmen, which was patently untrue; of being too arrogant to accept the military assistance of these men because they were their social inferiors, which has some justice; and of failing to impose discipline, which was true of the small cavalry unit, but not of the huge numbers of infantry, who had patiently maintained their position for hours on end the evening before and the morning of the battle. Whatever practical explanations for the disaster could be found, French commentators regarded these as merely incidental. They had no doubt that the real reason for the defeat was divine punishment for their own sins. By this they meant both the personal moral failings, such as the sin of pride that they attributed to the nobility in taking their places in the vanguard, or the cowardice that had caused so many to flee the field, and the political ambitions and quarrels that had set Armagnac against Burgundian, plunged the country into civil war and enabled the English to invade in the first place.5
It is said that Henry seized an early opportunity to lecture his French prisoners on this subject, informing them that “he had done nothing, nor had the English; it was all the work of God and of our Lady and St George and due to your sins, for they say that you went to battle in pride and bombastic fashion, violating maidens, married women and others, and also robbing the countryside and all the churches; acting like that God will never aid you.” Another version of the same anecdote has Henry tell Charles d’Orléans that God himself had opposed the French: “and, if what I have heard is true, it is not surprising; for it is said that there was never seen more discord or disorder caused by sensuality, mortal sins and evil vices than reigns in France today.”6
Just how many prisoners were now in English hands is a matter as hotly disputed and as irresolvable as the number of combatants in the French army. The lowest contemporary estimate comes from an English source, Thomas Walsingham, who suggested that 700 men were captured at the battle; le Févre puts the figure at 1600 and says that they were “all knights or esquires,” a statement that is likely to be true, given that anyone of lower rank would not be worth ransoming. Both the monk of St Denis, with 1400, and the chronicler of the nearby abbey of Ruisseauville, with 2200, are in the same sort of region, as is the report that went to the council of Constance suggesting 1500.7
Whatever their actual numbers, it is indisputable that they included some of the greatest men in the kingdom: Charles, duke of Orléans; Jean, duke of Bourbon; Charles, count of Eu; Louis, count of Vendôme; and Arthur, count of Richemont; together with the paragon of French chivalry Marshal Boucicaut. It was a disaster for the Armagnac cause on an epic scale. With the exception of the dauphin, who would die, unlamented, only a couple of months later in December 1415, the seventy-five-year-old duke of Berry, who would die the following year, and Louis, duke of Anjou (whose force of 600 men failed to arrive in time for the battle, turning tail and returning to Rouen without striking a blow when they encountered some of the French fleeing from the field), every Armagnac leader of any consequence had been killed or taken captive.
As evening approached and even the skies wept over the blood-soaked field of Agincourt, Henry decided that it was too late to resume his journey to Calais. However objectionable it might be to have to spend the night in such close proximity to the piles of unburied dead, his men were desperately short of rest and sleep. They needed to gather their strength, and the French baggage wagons, abandoned on the field, offered them a welcome and ready supply of provisions after the tight rationing of the previous weeks. The king himself retired to his former lodgings at Maisoncelle, where, as they were bound to do by the terms of their indentures, his captains surrendered to him all the princes of the blood royal and French commanders who had been captured. According to one source, written almost a quarter of a century later by an Italian under the auspices of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, Henry required the most noble of his French prisoners to serve him at his feast that night. Though the story obtained popular currency because it was repeated by Tudor historians, it does not occur in any eyewitness or contemporary account, and seems to have been an embellishment. After all, as le Févre de St Remy pointed out, most of the prisoners had been wounded and therefore would not have been in a fit state to wait upon their conqueror. In any case, this was not a moment for the sort of ruthless humiliation of his prisoners which Henry had displayed at the public surrender of Harfleur. Instead, he treated them with grace and punctilious politeness, speaking courteously and comfortingly to them, ensuring that the wounded were treated and offering food and wine to them all.8
Very early the next morning, on Saturday 26 October, the king left his lodgings and escorted his prisoners in a final penitential act of walking over the battlefield. “It was a pitiful thing to see the great numbers of the nobility who had been killed there for their sovereign lord, the king of France,” le Févre remarked: “they were already stripped naked as the day they were born.” Even at this late stage the living could still be found under the piles of the dead. Those who were capable of identifying themselves as being of noble birth were taken prisoner; the rest, including those too severely wounded to travel, were put to death.9
The king now gave the command for his army to resume its journey towards Calais. The remarkable reversal in fortune that had befallen them the previous day was acknowledged by the decision that although they would still march in their customary battle formation, the order to wear coats of arms was rescinded; the English were no longer expecting or looking for a fight. Monstrelet tells us that three-quarters of them now had to travel on foot. Many horses on both sides were undoubtedly killed in the battle, despite the fact that all the English and most of the French had not used them for fighting. It is a matter of record in the royal accounts for the period that the king alone lost twenty-five, in addition to a further twenty that died on the march. Despite these heavy losses, the number of horses shipped back to England at the end of the campaign still outnumbered the men. Even the duke of York’s retinue, which had suffered especially high casualties in the battle, returned with 329 horses as opposed to only 283 men. If three-quarters of the English army really did have to resume their march on foot, it can only have been because their horses were required for carrying the wounded, the prisoners and possibly booty, but it seems more likely that Monstrelet’s claim was simply an exaggeration.10
Nevertheless, the English progress towards Calais was unusually slow. They had some forty-five miles to cover and it took them a full three days. After the high drama and tension of the journey to Agincourt, the remainder of the march was such an anticlimax that even the chaplain passed over it without any comment. This cannot have entirely reflected the actual mood of those in command, for Henry at least was aware that, despite his victory, his men were not yet out of danger. Jean, duke of Brittany, with his Breton forces, was not so far away at Amiens. Louis d’Anjou’s six hundred men, under the command of the sire de Longny, were even closer, having come within three miles of the conflict before turning to flee. And no one knew for sure where John the Fearless was, or whether he would put in a belated appearance with the Burgundian forces he had claimed to be raising for so long. There could be no certainty that the alliances with the dukes of Brittany and Burgundy would hold in the light of the capture of the former’s brother, Arthur, count of Richemont, and the deaths of both the latter’s brothers, Antoine, duke of Brabant, and Philippe de Nevers, at Agincourt. The English could not afford to relax their guard against the possibility of an ambush until they finally reached the safety of the Pas-de-Calais.
In the event, the march passed off without any serious incident, though the accounts of the town of Boulogne record that some stragglers in the English army were captured by the men of the garrison and imprisoned in the belfry.11 By the evening of Monday 28 October the army had reached the fortified town of Guînes, which lay within the Pas-de-Calais, and was second only to Calais in its importance. They were welcomed with all due solemnity by the captain of the garrison and Henry, together with his most notable prisoners, spent the night there. The rest of the army pressed on to Calais, which lay only a few miles further north. If they had expected a hero’s welcome, they were mistaken. The citizens of Calais were understandably nervous about admitting almost six thousand half-starved and battle-hardened armed men through their gates. Provision had been made for the army’s arrival: food, beer and medicines had already been sent over from London in abundant quantities, but a shortage of bread was almost inevitable. Anxious to avoid a clash between the soldiers and the citizenry, or the even worse prospect of gangs of armed men rampaging through the streets taking by force what they could not acquire by purchase, the town authorities gave orders that only the leaders of the English army were to be admitted within its walls. The rest, including the less important French prisoners, were to remain encamped outside.12
The wisdom of this move was readily apparent. There was much hard bargaining between the Agincourt veterans, who were desperate for food and drink, and the hard-nosed traders of Calais, who had an eye on the spoils of battle. The former naturally resented the latter, accusing them of exploiting their situation and forcing them to sell their booty and their prisoners at a mere fraction of their true value, simply in order to obtain the necessaries of life. In fact, a trade in prisoners, especially, was inevitable. Not everyone who had captured a Frenchman could afford to keep him indefinitely: in addition to paying for his living expenses, there was also the cost of his shipment back to England to consider. Many of the prisoners were also wounded and in need of medical care and treatment, which was an expensive luxury at the best of times, but an essential investment if the prisoner was to be kept alive for ransom. And the hope of obtaining large sums of money at some future date was not necessarily as attractive a prospect as that of realising cash in hand.
Unfortunately, we do not know the exact process by which the figure for the ransom was calculated, other than that it had to be agreed between the captor and his prisoner. A ransom of less than 10 marks (the equivalent of almost $4,444 today) was entirely at the disposal of the captor, whatever his rank, so there must have been a strong temptation to set this as the ceiling value. On the other hand, captors were under pressure from superior officers to obtain the best possible price. According to the terms of their indentures, anyone in the English army who captured a prisoner worth more than 10 marks was obliged to pay a third of the ransom to his own captain, whether that captain was head of a tiny retinue or the king himself. Where the captain had been personally retained by the crown, his indenture obligated him to pay a third of that third directly to the king.13 With the eye of the king fixed firmly upon them, and a comprehensive list of all prisoners being drawn up by his clerks at Calais, underselling of ransoms was not likely to be a common practice.
Henry himself remained only a single night at Guînes, making a triumphant entry into Calais on Tuesday 29 October over the Nieulay bridge, which had been hastily repaired “against the arrival of the king after his victory at Agincourt,” and along the causeway that led to the town gates. There he was welcomed by its captain, his old friend Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, and a vast crowd of excited citizens. Escorted through the streets by the priests and clergymen of the town, clad in their ecclesiastical robes, bearing the crosses and banners from their respective churches and singing the Te Deum, he was hailed on every side by men, women and children crying, “Welcome to the king, our sovereign lord!” Making his way to the castle, where he was to lodge until his passage home could be organised, he paused only to give thanks at the church of St Nicholas for his victory. Ironically, eleven years earlier, the same church had witnessed the marriage of Richard II to the infant Isabelle of France, a union that had been intended to end the decades of warfare which Henry had now rekindled.14
Henry was committed to remaining in Calais until 11 November 1415. On that day, all those who had previously surrendered to him, both at the fall of Harfleur and at various stages on the march to Agincourt, were under oath to give themselves up to him again as his prisoners. To a man they did so. Unbelievable as it may seem to a more cynical modern world, they came voluntarily and without any compulsion, other than the power of chivalric ideology. They could have chosen to ignore their obligation: they were at liberty in their own country and the English were not in a position to round them up and throw them into jail. They could have claimed that their oaths were invalid because they were obtained under duress. They could have excused themselves on the grounds of sickness or the needs of their families. Instead, they chose honour before dishonour and keeping faith to perjury. They did so in the knowledge that they faced financial ruin, years in foreign captivity and possibly even execution.
Raoul de Gaucourt, the former captain of Harfleur, rose from his sickbed at Hargicourt, near Amiens, and, despite being wasted by the dysentery that had had him in its grip since the final days of the siege, made his way to Calais to surrender to Henry V. With him went at least twenty-five of his former companions, including Jean, sire d’Estouteville, Georges de Clère and Colard Blosset. As de Gaucourt later recounted, when he and d’Estouteville appeared before Henry, they demanded that, as they had fulfilled their part of the agreements concluded at the surrender of Harfleur, he should now keep those undertakings that had been given on his part. We do not know what those undertakings were, though de Gaucourt seems to have believed that, having come to Calais as required by his oath, he would now be released again on parole to raise his ransom. But whatever promises had been made by the king’s negotiators, Sir Thomas Erpingham, Henry, Lord Fitzhugh, and the earl of Dorset, Henry himself refused to be bound by them: “he replied, that whatever these parties might have said to us, we should all remain prisoners.”15 As de Gaucourt and his companions were to learn to their cost, their defiance of the king in holding Harfleur for so long against him would be neither forgiven nor forgotten. Their captivity would endure long after most of the prisoners taken at Agincourt had been released.
The logistical problem of transporting such vast numbers of prisoners ensured that only the most important would be taken back to England. Those who were of lesser value, or who could provide security for their ransoms, were released on oath to raise the money within a specified term. Others, including those who were too sick or badly wounded to travel, remained in custody but were dispersed to various strongholds throughout the Pas-de-Calais. Not all of them survived: Robin de Hellande, bailli of Rouen, for instance, was still in captivity when he died on 15 December 1415, and two of the eleven prisoners in the custody of Ralph Rocheford, captain of Hammes, died during the course of 1416.16 A contributory factor in the deaths of Rocheford’s prisoners may have been that he was allowed only 3s 4d a week (the medieval equivalent of $111 today) for each man’s living expenses: though this was about the same as a skilled workman could expect to earn at the time, it was considered to be the minimum amount necessary for a prisoner of knightly lineage, and contrasts sharply with the 10s 9d allowed to each of the Harfleur defendants during their imprisonment in the Tower of London. Medical expenses were an additional burden: the cure of Jean, sire d’Estouteville’s long illness in 1418 cost the king 40s ($1,317 at modern values) “for divers medicines” purchased from the royal physician, Master Peter Altobasse.17
All those who had prisoners were obliged to enter into bonds with the king to pay him his portion of their ransoms. This could be costly. One of his retainers, Sir Henry Huse, for example, had to account for nine prisoners from Beauce, Eu, Vimeu, Beaugency and Abbeville in his possession: on 16 January 1416 he agreed to pay 200 marks to the king’s treasurer at Calais by midsummer, giving him five months to collect the sum from his prisoners’ families or raise it by other means. Another of the king’s retainers, William Trussell, esquire, had captured nine prisoners at Agincourt, whose ransoms ranged in value from £6 13s 4d to £17 6s 8d: his bond obliged him to pay the king £40.18
Although both Huse and Trussell could expect to receive twice as much as the king for their personal cut of the ransoms, these were still relatively small amounts compared to the sums that others received for their prisoners. A bundle of forty-nine bonds preserved among the exchequer records lists individual ransoms worth £48 6s 8d, £55 11s 4d and even £163 6s 8d (the last almost $108,868 today). Yet these figures, too, pale by comparison to the phenomenal sums commanded for the great princes who had been captured at Agincourt. Such men belonged to the king as of right, and he was under no legal obligation to compensate their captors. Nevertheless, he clearly did so, for Sir John Grey of Ruthin, who had indented to serve with the relatively modest retinue of fifteen men-at-arms and forty-five foot archers, found himself 1000 marks ($444,360) richer after capturing Charles, count of Eu, and selling him to the king.19 This was not merely a financial speculation on the king’s part, for he had no intention of ransoming the count: like the dukes of Bourbon and Orléans, Marshal Boucicaut, Arthur, count of Richemont, and Raoul de Gaucourt, he was more valuable as a prisoner.
On 16 November, five days after de Gaucourt and his fellow-defenders of Harfleur had surrendered themselves at Calais, the king and his prisoners, including the princes captured at Agincourt, boarded ship and set sail for England.20 The homecoming was an altogether quieter and humbler affair than the original invasion. The great fleet that had brought the English to France had disbanded many weeks earlier and, though the king had undertaken to pay for the return crossing, he no longer had the means to take his army back with him en masse. Instead, the veterans of the campaign had to find their own passage across the Channel. Each man was allowed two shillings for his own fare, together with a further two shillings for each horse, and it was left to the captains of the retinues to make the necessary arrangements privately with ship-owners and masters visiting the port.
The greatest part of the victorious army thus made its way back to England from Calais without flourish or fanfare. The men slipped quietly into the Cinque Ports in dribs and drabs, before dispersing to their homes in towns, villages and farmsteads the length and breadth of the country. The hero’s welcome was reserved for their monarch. His passage home was marred by violent late fall storms, in which, it was said, two ships carrying Sir John Cornewaille’s men were lost with all hands, and others, carrying prisoners, were driven ashore on the Zeeland coast. Whether or not it was true that the king’s iron constitution and cheerful demeanour were the envy and admiration of the French prisoners on board his ship, the latter, particularly those still suffering from dysentery, must have suffered horribly during the many hours it took to effect the crossing. They landed at Dover, in a great snowstorm, just before nightfall.21
News of Henry’s return spread swiftly, and when he set out for London the following morning, he found his road already lined with cheering crowds. His route naturally took him through Canterbury, but it was inconceivable that so pious a king could simply pass through the town without pausing to give thanks for the success of his campaign at England’s premier cathedral. His arrival was obviously expected, for he was met by Henry Chichele, archbishop of Canterbury, at the head of a long procession of clergymen, who welcomed him and escorted him to the cathedral.
There was a double significance to this visit. Henry’s official purpose was to pay his devotions and make offerings at the great shrine of St Thomas Becket in the Trinity Chapel behind the high altar of the cathedral. Flanking that shrine, however, were the tombs of two of Henry’s own forebears. On one side was that of the great warrior Edward, the Black Prince, with its magnificent gilded and armour-clad effigy, his surcoat emblazoned with the quartered arms of England and France, and his feet bearing the spurs he won at the battle of Crécy: over this tomb, as yet another reminder of his victories at Crécy and Poitiers, hung his funeral achievements, the helm with its lion crest, shield, gauntlets and coat armour he had worn to battle.22
On the other side of the shrine was the tomb of Henry’s father, Henry IV, who had been interred there just over two and a half years earlier. Though equally imposing in its own way, this tomb was very different from that of the warrior prince: the effigy, carved from marble, portrayed the king in civilian clothing and with a remarkably realistic and care-worn face, which must have been drawn from life. The only intimation of his royal stature was his gilded crown, the “crown Henry” or “Lancaster crown,” the original of which his son had just pawned to his brother, the duke of Clarence, as security for his wages for the Agincourt campaign.23
The presence of the tombs of the Black Prince and Henry IV on either side of St Thomas Becket’s shrine turned what might otherwise have been just an act of simple piety and thanksgiving into an altogether more momentous affair. As the victor of Agincourt, Henry V had won the right to take his place alongside the victor of Crécy and Poitiers. Perhaps more importantly, he had proved that he had been chosen by God to be the instrument of His will. The crime of his father’s usurpation and the long shadow it had cast over the legitimacy of the Lancastrian kingship had been wiped out. Irrespective of the justice of his claims to the throne of France, no one could doubt any longer that Henry V was indeed, by the grace of God, king of England.
After visiting the cathedral, Henry made a second pilgrimage to the nearby church of St Augustine’s Abbey, to give thanks at the tomb of the cathedral’s founder and first archbishop. Having spent one, or possibly two nights as the guest of the abbot and his monks, he then set out once more for London. His progress was slow and it was not until six days after landing at Dover that the royal party finally arrived at the king’s manor of Eltham on the outskirts of the city. The leisurely pace was deliberate, for it allowed the citizens time to complete their arrangements for the great pageant that was to mark his triumphal return. Londoners, who had contributed so much to the king’s campaign in terms of finance, shipping and men, had followed his campaign with understandable nervousness. The absence of news during his march from Harfleur had been a cause of particular tension, especially since, on the very day of the battle of Agincourt, “a lamentable report, replete with sadness, and cause for endless sorrow, had alarmed the community throughout all the City, in the boundless grief that it caused.” It took four days for news of the English victory to filter through, reaching London only on the day that the king himself entered Calais.24 That same day, 29 October, was the customary occasion for the newly elected mayor to ride to Westminster Palace to be admitted formally to his office and sworn in before the barons of the exchequer. On learning the joyful news, Nicholas Wottone, the new mayor, decided to break with precedent. With his aldermen and “an immense number of the Commonalty of the citizens of the city,” he went “like pilgrims on foot” to Westminster Abbey. There, in the presence of Henry’s stepmother, Joan of Navarre, a host of lords spiritual and temporal, and some of the more substantial citizens, he made “devout thanksgiving, with due solemnity.” Only after having given their due to God, his saints and especially “Edward, the glorious Confessor, whose body lies interred at Westminster,” did he proceed to Westminster Palace to complete his inauguration. Always swift to guard their civic privileges, the mayor and aldermen went to great lengths to ensure that the reasons for this break with tradition were recorded for posterity, so that no future mayor should feel it incumbent upon himself to walk humbly, rather than ride in pomp, to Westminster.25
The spontaneous celebrations that greeted the news of Agincourt were as nothing compared to those which hailed the return of the victorious king. London was accustomed to festivities on a grand scale: royal progresses, coronations, jousts and tournaments, ceremonies to welcome or honour visiting dignitaries, had all been marked by processions through the streets, the ringing of church bells, allegorical and heraldic displays. On such occasions, too, it was customary for the public water pipes and fountains to run with wine, which no doubt encouraged a convivial atmosphere. The citizens had had almost a month to prepare for this event and the result was as elaborate and visually stunning a pageant as medieval ingenuity could devise. At first light on Saturday 23 November, the mayor and twenty-four aldermen rode four miles out of the city, as far as the heights of Blackheath, to meet the king. They were clad in their finest scarlet and accompanied by huge numbers of citizens, all dressed in red robes with parti-coloured hoods of red and white, or black and white. Each one proudly wore the distinctive and “richly fashioned badge” that marked his status as a member of one of the great London guilds and distinguished him from his fellows in other crafts or trades. At about ten in the morning, the king arrived, bringing with him only a modest personal retinue, but one that pointedly included his French prisoners. After formally congratulating him and thanking him “for the victory he had gained and for his efforts on behalf of the common weal,” the citizens formed themselves up into a procession and, to the sound of trumpets, rode off to escort him in triumph to the capital.26
About a mile from the city, at St Thomas Waterings, just outside Southwark, the abbot of Bermondsey and a procession of London clergymen were waiting to receive the king. Bearing the holy relics, crosses and banners of their churches, they sang the Te Deum and acclaimed him (in Latin) with cries of “Hail, flower of the English and of the world, knight of Christ!”27 Accompanied by an ever-growing train, Henry now approached the tower at the entrance to London Bridge, which marked the city boundary. Here two gigantic allegorical figures bearing the royal arms had been erected side by side, “like guards outside the gate.” The male was armed with an axe in one hand and a lance, from which dangled the keys of the city, in the other; the female wore a scarlet mantle and “adornments appropriate to her sex.” To the chaplain, viewing this display with barely concealed wonder, “they were like a man and his wife who, in their richest attire, were bent upon seeing the eagerly awaited face of their lord and welcoming him with abundant praise.” (The more martial Adam of Usk was merely struck by their size, admiring the breadth of the enormous axe, “by which . . . an entire army might be slaughtered,” and the physical bulk of the woman, which “was in truth fit not only to spawn gigantic demons, but also to bring forth the towers of hell.”) From every rampart of the gatehouse tower hung the royal coat of arms and blazoned across its front wall was the legend “City of the King of Justice”; trumpeters and horn-players stationed within and on the tower made the place ring with their fanfares to welcome the king.28
As the royal party approached the drawbridge at the centre of the bridge, they saw that two large wooden pillars or turrets had been erected and hung with linen cloth, skilfully painted to give the appearance of marble. On one stood the figure of an antelope (the king’s personal badge) with a shield of the royal arms round its neck and a royal sceptre cradled in its forefoot. On the other stood the lion of England holding the royal standard in its paw. At the far end of the drawbridge, and straddling the route, was another tower of similar construction whose centrepiece was a statue of St George, fully armed except for his triumphal helm and his shield, which were displayed on either side of him. His right hand rested on the hilt of his sword, in his left he bore a scroll with the legend “Honor and glory be to God alone!” and on his head he wore the ancient symbol of victory, the laurel crown. A multitude of angel choirs—little boys dressed up in white robes and wings, with gold-painted faces, and laurel leaves wound through their hair—sang the anthem “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord” as the king approached.29
Another choir, this time of Old Testament prophets, “with venerable white hair, in tunicles and golden copes, their heads wrapped and turbaned with gold and crimson,” was waiting for the king at Cornhill, where the water storage tower had been draped in crimson cloth and cunningly disguised as a great pavilion. Here again, the arms of St George, St Edward and St Edmund, the saints under whose patronage the campaign had been fought, were prominently displayed, together with those of England and of the king himself. As Henry rode past, the “prophets” chanted Psalm 98, “O sing unto the Lord a new song: for he hath done marvellous things,” and released a huge flock of little birds, “of which some descended on to the king’s breast, some settled upon his shoulders, and some circled around in twisting flight.”30
The water storage tower at the entrance to Cheapside, which had been filled with wine, had been similarly draped with cloth and adorned with shields bearing the arms of the city. Beneath its awnings stood the twelve apostles and, rather less obviously identifiable, the twelve martyrs and confessors of the English royal line, “girt about the loins with golden belts, with sceptres in their hands, crowns upon their heads, and their emblems of sanctity plain to see.” These, too, greeted the king by sweetly singing the appropriate verse from Psalm 44, “But it is thou that savest us from our enemies: and puttest them to confusion that hate us.” Then, in a deft biblical allusion that would not have been lost upon Henry V, they offered him wafers of bread, mixed with wafers of silver, and wine drawn from the spouts of the water tower, just as Melchizedek, king of Salem, had done for Abraham, when he returned from his victory over the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah.31 (Though they had already been lectured on the subject of their national vices and moral failings by Henry, one wonders how his French prisoners must have reacted to being equated so publicly with the most notorious of all biblical sinners.)
Queen Eleanor’s stone cross in Cheapside, which had been erected as one of a series across the country to mark the places where her coffin had rested on its final journey to Westminster Abbey in 1290, was masked entirely by an elaborate wooden castle, three storeys high, complete with towers and a bridge leading to a gatehouse. A vast archway had been built on either side to link the castle with the buildings on each side of the street, and over both arches were inscribed the words “Glorious things of thee are spoken, city of God.” As the king approached, a choir of singing maidens, clad in white and dancing to the sound of drums and stringed instruments, emerged from the castle, just like the ones who had greeted David on his return from slaying Goliath. The chaplain approved mightily of this display, noting with satisfaction that Goliath was a highly appropriate representation of the arrogant French. The virgins hailed Henry with a specially written song of congratulation, beginning, “Welcome Henry ye fifte, Kynge of Englond’ and of Fraunce.” This was particularly significant for two reasons: it was the only piece in the entire pageant to be performed in English and it was also the only one to address the king himself as the conquering hero. Every other tableau had relied on quotations in Latin from the Bible, especially the Psalms, and had ascribed the victory to God. Lest even this moderate bit of praise for the king’s role be considered blasphemous, it was tempered by the singing of the Te Deum by a second host of little boys, dressed as angels and archangels, who showered the king with gold coins and laurel leaves.32
The “castle” contained one more surprise for the king. “Six citizens, magnificently dressed, came out of its iron gates carrying two basins made of gold and filled with gold, which were offered to the king.” The basins themselves were said to have been worth five hundred pounds, and between them they held a thousand pounds, a most acceptable gift from the Londoners to a king whose campaign had left his cup of glory overflowing, but his coffers decidedly empty.33
More virgins were waiting at the other end of Cheapside, standing in a series of niches contrived out of the tower encircling the other water cistern. Crowned with laurels and wearing girdles of gold, these maidens held golden chalices from which they gently blew roundels of gold leaf upon the king’s head. At the very top of the tower stood the figure of a golden archangel, surmounting a canopy painted to resemble a cloud-bedecked sky, beneath which sat a sun, enthroned in splendour, and emitting dazzling rays.34
And . . . so great was the throng of people in Cheapside, from one end to the other, that the horsemen were only just able, although not without difficulty, to ride through. And the upper rooms and windows on both sides were packed with some of the noblest ladies and womenfolk of the kingdom and men of honour and renown, who had assembled for this pleasing spectacle, and who were so very becomingly and elegantly decked out in cloth of gold, fine linen, and scarlet, and other rich apparel of various kinds, that no one could recall there ever having previously been in London a greater assemblage or a more noble array.
At the epicentre of this maelstrom of extravagant pageantry and noisy demonstrations of popular joy rode the quiet, almost incongruous figure of the king. He had deliberately dispensed with all the usual trappings of triumph and royalty, just as he had done when making his formal entry into Harfleur. He wore no crown and bore no sceptre; his only concession to his regal status was his gown of purple, a colour associated only with emperors, kings and prelates. He was accompanied by just a small personal retinue and followed by a group of his most important prisoners, including Charles d’Orléans, whose twenty-first birthday would fall the following day, the duke of Bourbon and Marshal Boucicaut. Not one of them could, or would, have adopted a similarly humble attitude if their situations had been reversed.
A lesser man might easily have been seduced into joining the celebrations, if only by acknowledging the excitement and gratitude of the crowds, but Henry remained impassive throughout. “Indeed, from his quiet demeanour, gentle pace, and sober progress, it might have been gathered that the king, silently pondering the matter in his heart, was rendering thanks and glory to God alone, not to man.”35
The celebrations drew to an appropriate end with services at both St Paul’s and Westminster Abbey, where the king made offerings at the shrines of St Earconwald and Edward the Confessor, respectively, before retiring to his palace at Westminster. The following day, Sunday 24 November, in accordance with the king’s command, a solemn requiem mass was held at St Paul’s for all those, on both sides, who had been killed in the battle of Agincourt.36 The remains of the duke of York were then carried to Northamptonshire and interred, as he had requested, in the choir of his new foundation, the collegiate church of St Mary and All Saints at Fotheringhay; building work had only just begun, under the supervision of Stephen Lote, the king’s chief master mason, so the duke’s premature end meant that his church would be built around the simple marble slab, with his figure engraved in brass upon it, which marked his final resting place. It would be left to his heir, several decades later, to complete the rebuilding of the church he had begun.37
Similar obsequies were taking place in towns and villages, churches and abbeys all over France. Despite the scale of the disaster, news of the defeat had been relatively slow to filter out to the regions. Disbelief must have played a part. The people of Abbeville, for instance, were so sure of a French victory that they prematurely held a celebratory civic feast as soon as the expected news reached them: a sad little marginal note was later added in the town accounts against the sum expended that the rumour “was not true.” At Boulogne, where the whole town had been in a state of high tension for weeks and had deployed messengers throughout the vicinity to pick up any news they could find, they knew on 25 October that battle had been joined but had to wait till the following day to learn its outcome. Their first response was to protect themselves, for Boulogne lay on the English route to Calais and the garrison had been severely depleted when, on the orders of Constable d’Albret, the sire de Laurois had led a large force to join the French army. Letters were immediately dispatched to neighbouring Montreuil begging for crossbowmen to reinforce the town, to the king, the dauphin and the duke of Berry at Rouen, asking for provision to be made to secure the frontier, and to Philippe, count of Charolais, at Ghent, seeking “comfort and aid.” Perhaps surprisingly, reinforcements did pour into Boulogne not only from Montreuil but also from as far afield as Amiens, Hesdin, St Riquier and St Laleu, continuing to arrive for several days after Henry had sailed for England.38
Other reactions to the French defeat were less altruistic. At Mantes, for instance, which lay between Rouen and Paris, guards were posted at the town gates so that “the men fleeing and returning from the host of the king should not pass through the town save in groups of 20 to 30 at a time.” The town of Amiens was equally pragmatic in looking after its own. Messengers were sent to the battlefield to recover as much as possible of the town’s property, which had been requisitioned for the army’s use by their bailli. Among the items they managed to retrieve were three large cannon, two smaller ones, some battered shields belonging to their crossbowmen and scraps of tents. The town elections, which were traditionally held on 28 October, had to be abandoned in the general chaos caused by the influx of wounded and dying.39
All the towns of the region now looked to the king and the dauphin to provide them with some sort of leadership in the aftermath of the disaster. They were still at Rouen, together with the dukes of Berry and Anjou, and the large force that had been held in reserve to protect them. Now, more than at any other time, the dauphin should have provided a rallying point for those who had survived the battle, but when the shocking news was brought to him, he proved incapable of taking any decisive action. His paralysis was unhelpful but understandable. Until he knew for certain that Henry V had left France, there was every possibility that further military action might take place; his councillors were urging him to retake Harfleur, not merely to restore French pride, but to pre-empt its governor, the earl of Dorset, carrying out a strike against Rouen.40 On the other hand, no one knew how John the Fearless would react in this crisis.
In the end, the dauphin’s fear of the duke of Burgundy proved greater than his fear of the English. Ten days after the battle, the duke had at last set out from Dijon at the head of the Burgundian army that he had promised to send against the English. He had no intention of avenging the deaths of his two brothers at Agincourt, or even of belatedly going to the aid of his country. He was heading for Paris. The English had wiped out the Armagnac leadership for him and there was now no one standing between him and the control of the government of France. It was a chance not to be missed. In a further act of defiance, he took with him the Parisian leaders of the bloody pro-Burgundian coup in 1413, including Simon Caboche himself, all of whom were still under royal interdict. The dauphin responded by ordering that no prince of the blood should be allowed to enter Paris with an army and that all the bridges and ferries into the city should be removed.41
By 21 November the duke was at Troyes, some eighty miles south-east of Paris, with an army whose ranks were daily swelling as they were joined by the Burgundian veterans of Agincourt. The dauphin could no longer ignore the threat. Abandoning Rouen and the northern regions to their fate, he fled back to Paris, taking his father and the duke of Berry with him. Even now this hapless young man managed to offend his natural supporters by passing through St Denis without paying his respects at the abbey, as custom demanded. Bereft of his Armagnac councillors and protectors, most of whom had died or been captured on the field of Agincourt, he sent an urgent summons to Charles d’Orléans’ father-in-law, Bernard, count of Armagnac, inviting him to come to Paris and take up the late Charles d’Albret’s role as constable of France. Confident that his champion would soon arrive from Aquitaine with a host of seasoned Gascon men-at-arms in his train, the dauphin defied John the Fearless’s demands for a personal audience and declared his intention of taking up the reins of government himself.
It was not to be. Although Bernard d’Armagnac set off promptly, by the time he arrived in Paris on 27 December, the eighteen-year-old dauphin had been dead and buried for more than a week. Although he had been persuaded to effect a perfunctory deathbed reconciliation with the wife he had abandoned, she left Paris almost immediately to return to her family. Her father, the duke of Burgundy, learnt of his son-in-law’s death only when he heard the Parisian bells tolling for his passing.42
The shock of the disaster at Agincourt had failed to unite France, so it is perhaps not surprising that the death of Louis de Guienne also had no impact on the internal quarrels that were tearing the kingdom apart. His successor as dauphin was his seventeen-year-old younger brother Jean de Touraine, who had been brought up in the court of the duke of Burgundy’s sister Margaret, countess of Hainault, and had recently married her fourteen-year-old daughter. The duke was determined that this dauphin would not reject his authority. Ignoring demands from Paris that the new heir to the throne should be returned to the capital, John the Fearless temporarily disbanded his army and withdrew to Brabant and Flanders, where he could keep a watchful eye on the dauphin and issue orders in his name.43 He was, however, merely biding his time before launching another and more deadly assault on Paris. And in Bernard d’Armagnac, to whom the standard of Armagnac leadership had passed from the captive Charles d’Orléans, he had found an opponent as implacable, ruthless and opportunistic as himself. The civil war between Burgundian and Armagnac was by no means over. It was as if the battle of Agincourt had never taken place.