CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
For Henry V, Agincourt was just the beginning. The euphoria that had greeted his victory did not start or end with the London pageant. Even before the king returned to England, his brother John, duke of Bedford, acting as his lieutenant, had summoned a meeting of Parliament at Westminster. Since many of those who would normally have taken their places in either the House of Lords or the House of Commons were still with the English army in France, it was a severely depleted gathering that met in the Painted Chamber of the Palace of Westminster on Monday, 4 November 1415. The king’s half-uncle Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, gave a rousing opening address on the theme “as he has done to us, so let us do to him,” reminding those present that Henry had laboured continually to preserve peace, law and justice, but that he had been unable to regain his rights in France except by going to war. God had given him victory to the exaltation of his crown, the comfort of his lieges, the fear of his enemies and the perpetual profit of his realm. Now it was the duty of his subjects to enable him to complete what he had begun by granting him aid for a second expedition.1
Parliament responded with a generosity that was unparalleled in its history. The collection of the second of the two-tenths and -fifteenths that had been granted in 1414 was brought forward from February 1416 to December 1415, so that the king could pay his returning troops and redeem the jewels he had pawned as security for their wages. Yet another new tax of a tenth and fifteenth was approved for collection in November 1416. And, most extraordinary of all, the House of Commons granted Henry customs duty on all imports and exports, including wool and wine, for the rest of his life. This was a remarkable public demonstration of trust in, and approval of, Henry’s kingship, for the right to grant taxes was a privilege that the Commons guarded closely as its main bargaining counter for receiving concessions from the king. There was only one precedent for a life grant of the wool levy and that had been extracted under duress by the autocratic Richard II. Though there may have been some arm-twisting by Henry’s ministers in the background, and it was arguable that this depleted Parliament lacked proper authority since large swaths of England were unrepresented, there was no denying the fact that the Commons had made the life grant voluntarily, confident in the knowledge that Henry V would spend the money wisely and in the furtherance of their own best interests. It was, in effect, a vote for the continuation of the war in France.2
Henry’s clerical subjects were just as eager to acclaim his achievement and prove their loyalty. The northern convocation voted him a tax of one-tenth on the value of all benefices in that province and the wealthier southern convocation voted him two. Important steps were also taken to ensure that Henry’s victory could not be forgotten or passed over. At the king’s personal request, Henry Chichele, the archbishop of Canterbury, decreed that henceforth 23 April, the feast of St George, “the special patron and protector of the [English] nation . . . by whose intervention, we unhesitatingly believe, the army of the English nation is directed against enemy attacks in time of wars,” was to become a double festival in the Church calendar. This meant that, like other saints’ days, it would remain a public holiday but additionally it would now become a day when people ought to go to church, as they did at Christmas. Less well known than this enhancement of the status of England’s patron saint was a similar order enforcing the holding of public holidays on the festivals of three Welsh saints, Winifred, David and Chad. This was a gracious and politically astute acknowledgement of the role played by the Welsh archers and their patron saints in achieving the victory of Agincourt.3
Henry and his archbishop also ensured that the anniversary of the battle would be publicly celebrated with special masses and Church services. Since the cobbler saints of Soissons, Crispin and Crispinian had failed to exert themselves on behalf of the French at Agincourt and therefore might be considered to have given their blessing to their opponents, their feast day was shamelessly appropriated by the English. The king himself had immediately incorporated a mass in their honour into his daily religious observance, but as the preparations for a second campaign began the archbishop now ordained that their feast should be celebrated with increased reverence throughout the realm. Three masses were to be dedicated to each of the two saints on every anniversary of the battle, together with a further three in honour of the very English St John of Beverley.4 The shrine of St John at Beverley Minster in Yorkshire had been a centre of pilgrimage since Anglo-Saxon times and his banner, like the French oriflamme, had been carried into battle by Yorkshire recruits to the royal army since 1138. (It is not known whether it accompanied Henry V to France in 1415.) In more recent years (perhaps to counterbalance a growing cult at York surrounding Archbishop Scrope, who had been executed by Henry IV in 1405 for his part in the Percy rebellion and was therefore revered by those hostile to the new king), St John, himself a former bishop of York, had been promoted as a Lancastrian patron. His shrine was said to have exuded holy oil when Henry IV landed in England to usurp Richard’s throne, a miracle which, Archbishop Chichele informed convocation, had been repeated even more spectacularly on 25 October during the very hours that the battle of Agincourt was raging. As that day also just happened to be the Feast of St John’s Translation, it was self-evident that the saint had striven on behalf of the English and should be venerated accordingly.5 Agincourt had become part of the English Church calendar and no one in England or Wales would be allowed to forget either the anniversary of the battle or the part that God and his saints had played in securing their victory.
Significantly, these innovations were not introduced in the immediate heady aftermath of victory but months later, in the midst of preparations for a second campaign whose objective was no less than the reconquest of Normandy. Instead of being purely pious acts of gratitude and thanksgiving for past support, they therefore became important tools in the propaganda war preceding a far more ambitious and long-term campaign. The king’s subjects were not merely being reminded that God and his saints favoured their cause, but also being taught that it was their religious duty, as it was the king’s, to carry out the divine plan to recover England’s lost rights and inheritances.
The English chaplain’s eyewitness account of the Agincourt campaign was also part of this propaganda offensive. Written in the winter months preceding the launch of the second expedition in July 1417, it portrayed Henry as the humble instrument of God’s will and his victory as the culmination of God’s plan. It ended with a prayer for the success of the new campaign that was nothing short of a rallying cry to the king’s own subjects and his allies in Europe. And may God of His most merciful goodness grant that, just as our king, under His protection and by His judgement in respect of the enemies of his crown, has already triumphed twice, so may he triumph yet a third time, to the end that the two Swords, the sword of the French and the sword of England, may return to the rightful government of a single ruler, cease from their own destruction, and turn as soon as possible against the unsubdued and bloody faces of the heathen.6
The chaplain’s Gesta Henrici Quinti has been aptly described by its editors as both “an illustration and a justification” of Henry’s aims as king. It follows the party line to such an extent that it frequently echoes the arguments and phraseology of the official documents by which Henry sought to woo other rulers into supporting his war in France. The idea that a united England and France could lead the way for a new crusade, for instance, was one that appealed to Henry personally, but also had extra resonance at this particular time because the council of Constance was still in session. The principal objectives of this gathering of clerical and lay representatives from all over Europe were to remove the rival claimants to the papacy from office and end the thirty-year schism that had caused so much damage to the Church.7 Christian unity was the theme of the moment. The council also provided Henry with a ready-made forum in which to make his case. Before embarking on the Agincourt campaign, and again when preparing for his conquest of Normandy, he circulated copies of the treaties of Brétigny and Bourges, together with transcripts of the diplomatic negotiations that had taken place in his own reign, “that all Christendom might know what great acts of injustice the French in their duplicity had inflicted on him.” In February 1416 letters written under the privy seal on “affairs intimately concerning the king” were also dispatched to the Emperor Sigismund and various German dukes, earls and lords. Henry knew the value of choosing an appropriate messenger and it was no coincidence that the person appointed to carry those letters through Europe was the man who held the newly created post of Agincourt herald.8
Although Henry’s intention to invade France for a second time had been announced even before his return from his first campaign, it would take him eighteen months to complete his preparations. In this respect, the organisation for the Agincourt campaign provided a blueprint for the much larger operation that would culminate in the invasion of Normandy in 1417. It was particularly important to the king that he had the continuing support of those who had rallied to his banner two years earlier: in the build-up to renewed war, he could not afford to have the veterans of Agincourt feel disappointed or aggrieved. Henry was never lavish in the granting of titles, but two loyal servants received promotions for their good service. Sir John Holland, who had served with a courage and distinction beyond his years, was rewarded by having the final vestiges of his father’s attainder for treason swept away.9 Within a year of Agincourt, he had been restored by the king’s grace to the title of earl of Huntingdon, been made a Knight of the Garter and been appointed lieutenant of the fleet. Henry’s confidence in him would be amply repaid by decades of loyal and successful military service as one of the chief defenders of English interests in France. The king’s half-uncle Sir Thomas Beaufort, earl of Dorset, who had commanded the fleet during the invasion and held Harfleur, despite French attempts to retake it in 1416, was elevated to the rank of duke of Exeter.10
There was bureaucracy to conquer, too. The payment of wages was a potential bone of contention between the king and his soldiers because the accounting process was unavoidably complex. According to the terms of the indentures of service, all wages were supposed to have been paid quarterly in advance, but the situation was complicated by the fact that the first half of the first payment was made before the expedition set sail and its objective had been secret. The king had therefore paid his retinue leaders at the Gascon rates, which were half as much again as those for France. Their payments for the second half of the first quarter therefore had to be adjusted accordingly. To add to the confusion, jewels and plate, rather than cash, had been pledged for the payment of the second quarter’s wages, and most of the army had returned to England before the end of that quarter and at different times. The retinue leaders had not only paid their men for the first quarter, but had also, in most cases, advanced the wages due for the second quarter in cash from their own funds. To recoup this money, the leaders had to present their paperwork at the exchequer. By this means, the king’s clerks could compare the numbers they had promised in the original indentures against the actual numbers they had produced, as revealed by the muster lists drawn up at various points in the campaign and by the official lists of the sick who had received permission to return home from Harfleur. Together with the certified lists drawn up by each captain, noting who had been killed, captured, fallen sick or left behind in the garrison of Harfleur, this evidence theoretically made it possible to work out the wage bill proportionately to the length of service performed.11
In order to settle the thorny question of how this could all be arranged fairly and amicably, the king held a meeting in his secret chamber at the Tower of London with his treasurer, the keeper of the privy seal, the archbishop of Canterbury and Sir Walter Hungerford. In answer to a series of questions put to him on behalf of the exchequer, the king decided to ignore the different dates at which the retinues had mustered and disbanded and fix the dates for the start and end of the campaign at 6 July and 24 November 1415. This created an accounting period of 140 days, which conveniently meant that each man-at-arms would receive a round £7 and each archer £3 10s for his services on the campaign. All those who had been killed, died or fell sick and returned home (but only so long as they did so with the royal licence) during the first quarter were to receive their wages for the whole of that quarter. Similarly, all those who had been killed at the battle of Agincourt were to be paid in full as if they had taken part in the entire campaign. The only ones not to receive wages were those who had mustered in England but had been left behind for lack of shipping.12 Though it is tempting to see these rulings as an attempt to impose a relatively simple accounting solution to a complex financial problem, there is no doubt that the king’s decisions were also dictated by a wish to be generous to those who had served him well and, in some cases, had paid for it with their lives.
Still, those who had indented to serve directly with the king soon discovered that they could not always expect full and prompt repayment of the money they had expended in his service. Eight years after the battle and a year after Henry V himself had died, Sir John Holland, despite being high in the king’s favour, was still owed £8158 (the equivalent of $5,437,633 today) for wages for the Agincourt campaign. And he was by no means alone. In 1427, for example, the duke of Gloucester and the earl of Salisbury petitioned Parliament, claiming that they had suffered “very great personal loss and damage” because they had paid their men in full for the whole of the second quarter, whereas the Exchequer had knocked forty-eight days’ pay off their own payments in line with the king’s decision that the campaign had ended early.13 In other words, they were having to stand the loss themselves.
Although it was expected that the higher nobility would, to a certain extent, bankroll the king’s military campaigns, those lower down the social scale also sometimes found themselves with unpaid wage bills. Sir Thomas Strickland, who carried the banner of St George at Agincourt and served continuously in France from 1417 to 1419, claimed to have received no wages at all, except for the first half-year, and had therefore sold off the silverware that the king had given him in pledge to help fund his continuing military service. In 1424 he petitioned, “for the sake of God, and as an act of charity,” that he should be allowed the £14 4s 101/4d value of the silver against the arrears he was owed, a plea that was granted. Ten years later, the widow of John Clyff similarly claimed for £33 6s in outstanding wages due to him and his company of seventeen minstrels for the Agincourt campaign. Unlike Strickland, she had returned the king’s jewels, which were valued at more than £53, to the crown; nevertheless, she received only £10 towards her claim.14 The problem extended further down the chain of command, especially when it was unclear who was ultimately responsible for paying wages. The leader of each retinue was legally bound by the terms of the indentures he had signed with his men to pay them their due, but what of those companies who, through no fault of their own, had lost their leaders before the campaign began? The men who had indented to serve with Richard, earl of Cambridge, and Henry, Lord Scrope, for instance, had no redress against the estates of their executed leaders because these had been forfeited to the crown. The difficulty of establishing responsibility for payment was illustrated by the case of Henry Inglose, a man-at-arms who had indented to serve with Sir John Tiptoft. In March 1417 Inglose was driven to sue Tiptoft in the Court of Chivalry, accusing him of having refused to pay him the wages due to himself and his men for the Agincourt campaign “against his own express promise and against the whole noble custom of arms.” On the face of it, relying on the indentures, Tiptoft’s obligation was clear. The difficulty arose because, having recruited his thirty men-at-arms and ninety archers, Tiptoft was then appointed seneschal of Aquitaine and departed for Bordeaux before the campaign began. Henry Inglose, Sir John Fastolf and others of his retinue did not go with him but were ordered by the king to join his invasion of France. Who, then, was responsible for paying their wages? Inglose could have pursued his case through the ordinary courts but chose instead to go before the Court of Chivalry, which was presided over by the constable and marshal of England and had jurisdiction over all disputes concerning arms. Although this choice was probably determined by the technical nature of the case, Inglose was taking a substantial personal risk: if he was unable to prove his case by means of witnesses and evidence, the constable could compel him to do so in person by fighting a judicial duel to the death.15
If it was sometimes difficult to obtain payment for wages, there were other compensations available. Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, was granted the castle and lordship of Lanstephan, which had been forfeited by the Welsh rebel Henry Gwyn, “who was killed at Agencourt in the company of the king’s adversaries of France.” As the king could not afford to redeem the jewels he had given as security to his friend Henry Lord Fitzhugh, he gave him possession of all the lands held in chief by the son and heir of John, Lord Lovell, during his minority, so that he could offset the income against the wages owed to him and his company. Another royal knight Sir Gilbert Umfraville was similarly granted a valuable wardship in lieu of his wages for the campaign, and Sir Roland Lenthale was rewarded with the wardship and marriage rights of the son and heir of Sir John Mortymer “in consideration of his great expense on the king’s last voyage.” (Conversely Sir Walter Beauchamp and John Blaket, who presumably had received the money due to them, were both pursued in the courts for non-return of the king’s jewels: when Beauchamp failed to respond to several court orders, the local sheriff was ordered to seize lands to their value from him.)16
A rather less expensive way of rewarding loyal service, but nevertheless one that was much sought after and highly prized, was admission to the Order of the Garter. This prestigious chivalric order could never exceed twenty-six members, yet in the five years after Agincourt, thirteen of the new appointees were veterans of the battle. Five of them—Sir John Holland, Thomas, Lord Camoys, who had commanded the left wing, the earls of Oxford and Salisbury and Sir William Harington—were admitted in 1416 alone.17
Most knights and esquires could not aspire to such heights of chivalry, but there was another, equally effective way of rewarding their prowess. This was to turn a blind eye to the unauthorised assumption of coats of arms by Agincourt veterans. On 2 June 1417 Henry ordered his sheriffs to proclaim that no one, “of what estate, degree or condition soever he be,” was to appear at a muster for the new campaign wearing a coat of arms to which he was not entitled either by ancestral right or official grant, on pain of being stripped of his assumed coat of arms and barred from taking part in the expedition. The sole exemption to this was for “those who bore arms with us at the Battle of Agincourt.” The interpretation of this clause has been much debated and for many years it was assumed that anyone who had fought in the battle was automatically raised to the nobility. This gave rise to Shakespeare’s famous lines in which Henry V promised his men before the battle
For he, today that sheds his blood with me,
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile
This day shall gentle his condition.
Though a number of esquires were knighted during the Agincourt campaign, there was no explosion in the assumption of coats of arms and the ranks of the nobility were not immediately swelled by hordes of ambitious archers, so we can safely dismiss this interpretation. The most likely explanation of the exemption is that it allowed those who had unofficially changed their coat of arms in consequence of taking part in the battle to bear these arms as of right in perpetuity. John de Wodehouse, for example, changed the ermine chevron on his coat of arms to one of gold (or, in heraldic terminology) scattered with drops of blood, and later adopted the motto “Agincourt.” Sir Roland de Lenthale similarly added the motto “Agincourt” to his coat. Rather more imaginatively, Richard Waller commemorated his capture of Charles d’Orléans by adding the duke’s shield to the walnut tree that was his family crest.18
As for Charles d’Orléans himself, he and the other important French prisoners had endured the humiliation of defeat, capture and being paraded through the streets of London for the delectation of an English audience, followed by incarceration in the Tower of London to await the king’s decision on their fate. This brought about a particularly poignant reunion for Arthur, count of Richemont, with his mother, the dowager Queen Joan, whom he had not seen since she left Brittany to marry Henry IV when he was a child of ten. Richemont was now twenty-two and, to his mother’s annoyance and grief, he failed to recognise her among her ladies when he was brought into her presence. She too must have experienced some difficulty in recognising her son, for his face had been badly disfigured by wounds received at Agincourt. The meeting was not a happy one, and though Joan covered up her disappointment by giving him clothing and a large sum of money to distribute among his fellow-prisoners and guards, he never saw her again throughout the seven long years of his captivity.19
The terms of his imprisonment were not harsh, even by modern standards. As befitted their aristocratic status, the French prisoners were permitted to live as honoured guests in the households of their captors and were free to ride, hunt and go hawking as they pleased. The more senior ones were allowed to stay in the king’s own palaces at Eltham, Windsor and Westminster, and were provided with state beds purchased for their own use. They were not separated or isolated, but generally kept in groups or at least allowed contact with each other. They were even allowed to make their captivity more comfortable by bringing over their favourite servants, horses and possessions—Marshal Boucicaut shared his captivity with his personal confessor, Frère Honorat Durand, and his barber, Jean Moreau, while one of the duke of Bourbon’s first demands was that four of his falconers should be sent over to him. Generous sums were also allocated for their living expenses, though this was not entirely altruistic: these expenses were then added to the ransoms they were required to pay to obtain their freedom.20
It was only in times of particular danger that their liberties were curtailed. In June 1417, when Henry was about to invade France for a second time, all his French prisoners were temporarily sent out to more secure custody in the provinces: Charles d’Orléans was sent to Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire (a particularly insensitive choice, since his first wife’s first husband, Richard II, had been murdered within its walls), Marshal Boucicaut and the counts of Eu and Richemont were transferred to Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire and Georges de Clère, the sire de Torcy, and a number of other prisoners were taken to Conwy and Caernarvon castles in north Wales. Even in these more remote places, the prisoners were generally allowed to take exercise outside the castle walls. When Charles d’Orléans and Marshal Boucicaut were held at Pontefract Castle, their jailer, Robert Waterton, regularly allowed them to visit his manor of Methley, six miles away, where the hunting was particularly good. In 1419, however, during the crisis following the murder of John the Fearless, there were rumours that Charles d’Orléans had been in contact with the Scottish duke of Albany, and Henry moved swiftly to clamp down on his privileges. He was not to be allowed to leave the castle under any circumstances, not even to go to “Robertes place or to any disport, for it is better he lack his disport than we were deceived.”21
For all the comforts of their captivity,22 it was still captivity. Less important prisoners, who had not crossed over to England, were being ransomed and set free in a steady stream throughout the weeks and months following the battle. At Boulogne, the city authorities dispensed wine to celebrate the return of those released from English prisons; from the beginning of November this was happening on almost a weekly basis, and the returnees included the mayor of Le Crotoy and Jehan Vinct, son of a former mayor of Boulogne. By the following June, some prisoners from England were also beginning to make their way home. On 3 June 1416 a safe-conduct was issued on behalf of Jean, sire de Ligne, a Hainaulter who had been captured at the battle by the earl of Oxford, together with his eldest son, Jennet de Poix, and David de Poix. This allowed the sire de Ligne to be released on licence so that he could raise the money for his ransom; his arrival at Boulogne was celebrated on 14 June, but this was premature, for he was under oath to return to England by 29 September. If he had raised the requisite sums, he could then expect to be set free; if not, then he would have to return to captivity.23
While it was customary for those released on licence to provide hostages as pledges for their return, the temptation not to go back must have been strong. This did happen on occasion. As we have already seen, the earl of Douglas and Jacques de Créquy, sire de Heilly, both broke their oaths so that they could remain at liberty.24 Henry V’s prisoners from Harfleur and Agincourt were more honourable. When Arthur, count of Richemont, was allowed to go to Normandy in the company of the earl of Suffolk in 1420, he refused to be complicit in a plot to rescue him: “he replied that he would rather die than break the faith and the oath that he had given the king of England.”25 Raoul de Gaucourt was also released on licence in 1416 and again in 1417, yet, despite feeling that Henry V had not honoured his promises to him, he returned to captivity each time. Uniquely, because the whole matter later became the subject of a court case before the Paris Parlement between himself and the heir of Jean d’Estouteville, we have de Gaucourt’s first-hand account of his attempts to secure his freedom. His negotiations began with the king, who, instead of simply demanding a sum of money as the joint ransom for de Gaucourt and d’Estouteville, asserted that seven or eight score of his servants and subjects “were being very harshly treated as prisoners in France, and that if we desired our liberation, we should exert ourselves to obtain theirs.” As these Englishmen were not as valuable as the two defenders of Harfleur, Henry suggested that he would take the opinions of two English and two French knights as to how much more they should pay to make up the difference. He also mentioned that he had lost some of his jewels in the attack on the baggage train at Agincourt, “which it would be a great thing for us if we could recover,” and demanded two hundred casks of Beaune wine, which would also be taken into the final account.
Troubled by this unusual arrangement, de Gaucourt and d’Estouteville consulted Charles d’Orléans, the duke of Bourbon, the counts of Richemont, Eu and Vendôme, and Marshal Boucicaut, who gave it as their unanimous opinion that they should agree to the king’s conditions if only to avoid the prospect of a long detention in England. Even though de Gaucourt “was by no means cured of my severe complaint,” he received his safe-conduct from the king on 3 April 1416 and set off for France, where he managed to secure the liberation of all except twenty of the English “gentlemen, merchants and soldiers” who were being held prisoner. The jewels “were already dispersed, and in different hands,” but de Gaucourt succeeded in finding the king’s crown, coronation orb and golden cross containing the fragment of the True Cross, “as well as several other things which he was anxious to recover; in particular, the seals of the said King’s chancery.” He purchased the wine and, taking the seals with him, returned to England believing that he had done everything demanded of him.26
Henry, however, proved implacable. He declared that he was perfectly satisfied with the diligence that de Gaucourt had displayed, but that everything should be conveyed to London before he would authorise his release. The Frenchman therefore hired a ship, paid off the outstanding ransoms of the English prisoners, provided them all with new clothes and liveries and delivered them and the king’s jewels to the Tower of London. A week later, a second ship carrying the casks of wine arrived. Once again, de Gaucourt and d’Estouteville thought they had fulfilled all the king’s conditions and sought their release, but Henry left London without giving them an answer. Four and a half months later, without consulting them, without their knowledge or consent, and without compensating them, he ordered that the English who had been living at de Gaucourt’s expense in the Tower should all be set free.27
On 25 January 1417, the same day that de Gaucourt had received his safe-conduct for his ship “with twelve or fourteen mariners” bringing back the prisoners and wine, he was also given licence to return to France. This was to allow him to complete his arrangements, but also because he had been entrusted with a special mission to the French court. In a secret meeting between the duke of Bourbon and Henry V, the king had said that he might be prepared to give up his own claim to the throne of France if Charles VI agreed to accept the terms of the Treaty of Brétigny and renounce all his rights to Harfleur. Bourbon had suggested that this offer was so reasonable that he would even do homage to Henry himself, as king of France, if Charles VI rejected it. Raoul de Gaucourt was chosen to convey Henry’s terms and to urge Charles VI and his advisors to accept them. But it was another futile task. The offer was bogus. A second invasion of France was imminent and as Henry informed Sir John Tiptoft on the very day de Gaucourt’s licence was granted, “I will not abandon my expedition for any agreement they make.”28
All de Gaucourt’s efforts had come to nothing. Although he had saved the dukes of Bourbon and Orléans the 40,000 crowns (around $4,443,600 today) which Henry had demanded from them as security for his return by 31 March, peace between England and France was no nearer. He was personally 13,000 crowns out of pocket in his attempts to secure his and d’Estouteville’s release, yet they were still the king’s prisoners. What is more, when Henry gave orders on his deathbed that certain of his French prisoners should not be released until his infant son came of age, de Gaucourt’s name was one of them. It would be ten years after the battle of Agincourt before he finally achieved his freedom and only then because his ransom was needed to offset that demanded by the French for the release of John Holland, earl of Huntingdon.29 His later career proved Henry’s wisdom in keeping him captive. On his final return to France, de Gaucourt devoted himself to the service of the dauphin and fought in every military campaign against the English. Appointed captain of Orléans and governor of the Dauphiné, he distinguished himself both on and off the field, was an early champion of Joan of Arc and, with her, raised the English siege of Orléans and attended the dauphin’s triumphant coronation at Reims. He lived long enough to see the reconquest of both Normandy and Aquitaine, and, by the time he died, in his eighties or early nineties, he had the satisfaction of knowing that he had been one of the chief architects of the final expulsion of the English from France.30
Another of Henry’s prisoners who later played a leading role in the restoration of the French monarchy was Arthur, count of Richemont. Prior to his capture at Agincourt, and despite his brother the duke of Brittany’s alliances with England, he had been an active supporter of the Armagnac cause. While in captivity, he was persuaded by Henry V to change his allegiance so that he then became an active supporter of the Anglo-Burgundian alliance. He agreed to become an ally and vassal of the English king and, as we have seen, was therefore permitted to return to France on parole, so long as he remained in the company of the earl of Suffolk. Absconding after Henry’s death, he married Margaret of Burgundy, John the Fearless’s daughter and widow of the dauphin Louis de Guienne, a year later. In 1425 the dauphin Charles, as yet uncrowned and unanointed, offered him the post of constable of France, and in a second spectacular political volte-face the count of Richemont returned to his Armagnac roots. His reforms of the French army and his victories over the English at the battles of Patay (1429) and Formigny (1450) paved the way for the reconquest of Normandy.31
The brother and stepson of the duke of Bourbon—Louis de Bourbon, count of Vendôme, and Charles d’Artois, count of Eu—similarly took up arms against the English after their respective releases in 1423 and 1438. After twenty-three years in captivity, and now aged forty-five, Charles d’Artois had his revenge for his lost youth by becoming the French king’s lieutenant in both Normandy and Guienne.32 The duke of Bourbon himself never had that opportunity. In July 1420 he was offered terms that might have obtained his release, though Raoul de Gaucourt’s experience did not augur well. He was allowed to return to France on licence to find a hundred thousand gold crowns for his ransom, on condition that he also persuaded his son, the count of Clermont, to join the Anglo-Burgundian alliance, and provided important hostages, including his second son. All his efforts to meet these terms proved unavailing and although Henry V died while he was still at liberty, unlike the count of Richemont he did not consider his obligations at an end. He returned to England, where his captivity did not prevent him fathering an illegitimate daughter, and died at Bolingbroke in 1434. Even in death he did not return home, for he was buried in the Franciscan church of London.33
Marshal Boucicaut, too, would never see France again. At forty-eight years of age when he was captured at Agincourt, he was already one of the oldest prisoners and, having spent all his life from the age of twelve in arms, he was now forced to end his days in involuntary retirement. This most pious of men, who reserved hours each day for his devotions, and every Friday wore black and fasted in memory of Christ’s passion, had commissioned a Book of Hours in 1405-8. Twenty-seven miniatures of saints with special relevance to his life adorn the book. Ironically, the first and most important was dedicated to St Leonard, the patron saint of prisoners. Though it had been included in memory of the marshal’s brief captivity after Nicopolis, it proved to be a prescient choice. All Boucicaut’s efforts to obtain his release were in vain. He offered Henry V sixty thousand crowns as a ransom, but this was rejected out of hand. The pope tried to intervene on his behalf, sending ambassadors to England to offer forty thousand crowns and promising that Boucicaut would give his oath never to fight against the English again. Henry remained obdurate. Despairing of ever obtaining his freedom, Boucicaut added a codicil to his will a few weeks before he died, leaving a few tokens to his fellow-prisoners and the rest of his small estate to his brother Geffroi. On 25 June 1421, this internationally famous paragon of chivalry died in the obscurity of Robert Waterton’s manor house at Methley in Yorkshire. It was the passing of an age and of the great Boucicaut name. The marshal’s wife had died while he was in prison, he had no children and both his nephews, who inherited the estate from their father, died childless, too. His body, however, was taken back to France and buried, with honour, close to his father, the first marshal Boucicaut, in the chapel of the Virgin behind the choir of the Church of St Martin at Tours.34
The fate of Henry V’s most important prisoner was equally pathetic. Charles d’Orléans was still legally a minor when he was captured at Agincourt. He celebrated his twenty-first birthday within days of landing in England and would spend the next twenty-five years of his life in captivity. His younger brother Philippe died in 1420, his only child Jeanne in 1432 and his wife Bonne of Armagnac at about the same time. Helpless to aid either his own cause or that of France, he could only watch from the sidelines as Henry V invaded France and conquered Normandy. The assassination of his father’s murderer, John the Fearless, by the dauphin in 1419 might have been a cause for rejoicing, but it was short-lived. As a sixteenth-century prior remarked, when showing John the Fearless’s skull to François I, “It was through this hole that the English entered into France.”35 The murder drove Philippe, the duke of Burgundy’s son and heir, into open alliance with the English and led directly to the Treaty of Troyes, by which the dauphin was disinherited for his crime and Henry V, having achieved his long-held ambition of marrying Catherine of France, was legally recognised by Charles VI as the rightful heir to his crown.
Ironically, Henry V never became king of France, for Charles VI outlived his son-in-law by almost two months. Henry V’s son was only nine months old when he inherited the crowns of England and France, and it was in neither the English nor the Burgundian interest to procure Charles d’Orléans’ release. Until 1435, when Philippe, duke of Burgundy, abandoned his English alliance and made his peace with the dauphin, whom he now recognised as Charles VII, the only people who actively championed Charles d’Orléans’ cause were his bastard brother Jean, count of Dunois, and Joan of Arc. It would take another five years before all sides came to the conclusion that Charles was more valuable as a potential peacemaker between England and France than as an impotent prisoner. He was formally set free in a ceremony at Westminster Abbey on 28 October 1440.
A month later, aged forty-six, he married for the third and last time. His fourteen-year-old bride would give birth to three children, one of whom would eventually succeed to the throne of France as Louis XII, but Charles himself had lost his appetite for politics. He retired to live quietly at his chateau at Blois, where he spent his time much as he had done in captivity in England: reading his impressively large library of books on philosophy, theology and science, pursuing his interest in clocks and other mechanical devices and writing the urbane and witty love poetry of which he had become a master craftsman during his years of enforced leisure.36
Though most of Charles d’Orléans’ poetry belonged firmly in the courtly love tradition and should not be read as autobiographical, his personal plight surfaced occasionally. Seeing the coastline of France while on a visit to Dover, for instance, inspired a plea for the peace that would allow him to return home:
Peace is a treasure which one cannot praise too highly.
I hate war, it should never be prized;
For a long time it has prevented me, rightly or wrongly,
From seeing France which my heart must love.37
In another of his poems, “Complainte,” he looked back to the causes of the French defeat at Agincourt and regretted that France, which had once been a pattern to all other nations for honour, loyalty, courtesy and prowess, had sunk into pride, lethargy, lechery and injustice. He urged his countrymen to return to the virtues that had once inspired its great Christian heroes, Charlemagne, Roland, Oliver and St Louis, so that the saints would forgive them and once more rally to their cause.38
Charles d’Orléans’ poetry was part of an enormous literary response generated by the battle. The defeat was such a cataclysmic event that contemporaries often could not bear to refer to it by name. In fifteenth-century France “la malheureuse journée” (the unhappy or unfortunate day) was understood to mean Agincourt and needed no further explanation.
Alain Chartier’s long poem, Le Livre des Quatre Dames, for instance, was written within two years of the battle and in direct response to it, but never mentions it by name. Disguised as a courtly love lyric, the poem is in fact a thinly veiled attack upon those whom Chartier considered responsible for the defeat. In it he describes meeting four ladies, all weeping copiously, who ask him to judge which of them is the most unhappy. All of them have lost their lovers at Agincourt. The first lady’s was killed “on that accursed day,” the second’s was captured and now languishes in an English prison. The third lady claims that her fate is worse still: she waits in suspense, like a tower which has been mined but must fall in due course, for she does not know what has happened to her lover or whether he is dead or alive. Each one blames those who fled the field for the defeat and their personal loss. It is obvious that the fourth lady, whose lover survived, is the most unhappy. She bewails having given her heart to “a disgraced and cowardly fugitive, who stands condemned for dishonourable conduct”: in his selfish anxiety to preserve himself, he had abandoned his comrades to death and imprisonment. “He polished up his bascinet and put on his armour, only to run away,” she complains. “Alas! What a day!”39
Chartier was a Norman cleric and lifelong Armagnac who became secretary to the new dauphin, Charles, in 1417. Like Charles d’Orléans, he also wrote a number of works denouncing French knights for their moral failings and urging them to practise the ancient chivalric virtues so that victory against the English would one day be theirs:
One ought to consider more worthy of honour and praise the military commander who has the wisdom to know when, if necessary, to withdraw his army and keep it intact rather than risking its destruction through excessively rash contempt for danger, neglecting moderation and caution in the vain hope of acquiring a reputation for chivalric valour. I do not need to look for ancient examples from times past to prove what I am saying; something we have seen recently and in our own day serves as a better lesson. Let us remember in our hearts the case of the unhappy battle of Azincourt, for which we have paid dearly, and grieve still for our woeful misfortune. All the weight of that great disaster presses upon us and we cannot free ourselves from it, except by acting promptly, showing a wise perseverance and reining in our rash impatience with the safety of caution.40
In her Letter Concerning the Prison of Human Life, which she finished on 20 January 1417, Christine de Pizan also advised patience and fortitude, doling out measured words of comfort to Marie, duchess of Bourbon, whose son-in-law and cousins were killed at Agincourt, and whose husband, son and brother-in-law were all English prisoners. The French dead, she declared, were all God’s martyrs, “obedient unto death in order to sustain justice, along with the rights of the French crown and their sovereign lord.” After Henry launched his second campaign and the English advance through France appeared unstoppable, Christine’s resignation gave way to indignation and a nationalism that was all the more ardent for being the adopted identity of this Italian-born writer. Her growing hatred of the English culminated in her premature celebration of Joan of Arc’s successes. “And so, you English . . . You have been check-mated,” she crowed. “You thought you had already conquered France and that she must remain yours. Things have turned out otherwise, you treacherous lot!”41
In England, the delight that greeted the victory at Agincourt found expression in a host of political songs and popular ballads. Adam of Usk, for instance, introduced an eight-line Latin epigram into his chronicle with the words, “This is what one poet wrote in praise of the king.” Though obviously a scholarly production, the tone was unashamedly populist.
People of England, cease your work and pray,
For the glorious victory of Crispin’s day;
Despite their scorn for Englishmen’s renown,
The odious might of France came crashing down.42
This Latin epigram was one of many produced after the battle and comes from a long tradition of such work in chronicles. There is, however, a piece that stands out from the rest not only because it survives in an independent manuscript, complete with musical notation, but also because the verses were composed in English. The Agincourt carol was written in Henry V’s lifetime for three voices: the six verses were to be sung in unison by two voices, but the Latin chorus, “To God give thanks, O England, for the victory,” opened with a single voice, progressed to two-part harmony for the second phrase and was then repeated with variations by all three voices. Like the English verses sung at the London pageant, it managed to lavish praise on the king while attributing his success to God.
Deo gracias, anglia, redde pro victoria
Our king went forth to Normandy, with grace and might of chivalry;
There God for him wrought marv’lously,
Wherefore Englond may call and cry:
Deo gracias, Anglia, redde pro victoria.
Deo gracias, Anglia, redde pro victoria.
He set a siege, forsooth to say,
To Harflu town with royal array;
That town he won and made affray,
That France shall rue till Domesday:
Deo gracias.
Then went him forth our King comely;
In Agincourt field he fought manly;
Through grace of God most marvellously
He hath both field and victory:
Deo gracias.
There lordës, earlës and baron
Were slain and taken and that full soon,
And some were brought into London
With joy and bliss and great renown:
Deo gracias.
Almighty God he keep our king,
His people and all his well-willing,
And give them grace withouten ending;
Then may we call and safely sing:
Deo gracias anglia.43
The Agincourt carol was probably a production of either Henry’s own royal chapel or a religious house and has been preserved in ecclesiastical archives. Undoubtedly many popular ballads in English and French must also have been composed for the gratification of the Agincourt veterans of all ranks. The minstrels in the retinues of the great lords, many of whom had accompanied the English army to France, were expected to celebrate the deeds of their patrons and Agincourt was the ideal topic for courtly and chivalric gatherings. It was also a gift for the wandering minstrels who earned their living by going from one knightly household to another to perform. By their very nature such compositions were ephemeral: they were part of the oral tradition of ballad-making and were never written down. Though no examples have survived, their impact on the popular imagination cannot be ignored. They ensured that news of the king’s victory reached the more remote rural communities, encouraged a feeling of national pride and unity and were a powerful recruiting agent for Henry’s new campaign. Indeed, it might be argued that they preserved the place of Agincourt in the national consciousness for centuries to come.
As the last vestiges of English power in France were slowly but inexorably eradicated, people looked back to the glory days of Agincourt with nostalgia. Ballads, chronicles and plays in English written for an increasingly literate bourgeoisie preserved the memory of the victory and served as a rallying cry for future wars in France. Just as the English chaplain wrote his Gesta Henrici Quinti in the build-up to Henry V’s second invasion of Normandy, so The First English Life of King Henry the Fifth was written in anticipation of the launch of Henry VIII’s war against France. As late as the 1940s, Winston Churchill, who was then prime minister, asked Laurence Olivier to make a film of Shakespeare’s Henry V (omitting the Cambridge plot, since it suggested there had been dissent) to prepare the nation psychologically for the D-Day landings in Normandy, which were to liberate Europe from Nazi occupation.44
It has often been claimed that Agincourt had little or no impact on the course of history: it did not result in lands changing hands or in dramatic political changes, and, longer term, the English obsession with their rights in France proved to be a costly and ultimately futile distraction from more important issues. By reigniting the war with France, Henry V committed his country to decades of warfare and heavy taxation to pay for it; he has even been blamed for sowing the seeds that would lead to England itself being torn apart by civil strife in the Wars of the Roses. While there is a kernel of truth in all these hoary chestnuts, they are by no means the whole story.
It is useful to speculate, for instance, on what might have happened had Henry lost the battle of Agincourt, as everyone but the king himself expected him to do. If the French cavalry had succeeded in riding down and destroying his archers, then his tiny force of men-at-arms would not have been able to withstand the weight and numbers of the French advance on foot. The English army would have been swiftly overwhelmed and annihilated. Henry and his brother Humphrey, together with the cream of the English aristocracy and gentry, would have been killed or captured. In either case, the consequences for his own country would have been catastrophic. Henry had only been king for two years, and the remarkable changes he had wrought in that time could not have been sustained without him. Clarence would have become king and he had neither the tact nor the ability to unite and lead a country in the way his brother had done. He also lacked a legitimate son and heir, which would have again exposed the Lancastrian dynasty to other and better claims to the throne. The machinery of government at national and local levels would have descended into chaos without the great office holders of state and the members of Parliament, sheriffs and justices of the peace, whose sons would have been too young to take their place. The security of the realm would have been greatly endangered since the military resources of the kingdom had already been stretched to their furthest limits to provide the army for the Agincourt campaign. Backed by the victorious French, the Scots and Welsh rebels would undoubtedly have taken advantage of the situation to invade, plunder and even take control of the border regions.
Many estates, both great and small, would have been thrown into administration because their heirs were underage, with all the opportunities that provided for the unscrupulous and ambitious to line their own pockets at the expense of the future stability and economic success of the property and those dependent on it. The necessity of finding ransoms for those captured would also have been a heavy financial burden on the entire country, since a lord’s ransom would ultimately have had to be paid by taxes on his tenants. Had Henry himself been taken prisoner, the ransom demanded would have been as ruinous as that demanded by Edward III for Jean II of France after his capture at the battle of Poitiers in 1356. And would Clarence, seeing an opportunity to seize power, have dragged his feet in collecting the money, just as Prince John had done when his brother, Richard the Lionheart, was captured on his return from crusade? Defeat at Agincourt would certainly have caused political, economic and social disaster in England—it might even have precipitated the country into civil war.
Henry’s victory laid the foundations for the resurrection of an English empire in France. The conquest of Normandy in 1417-19 could not have been achieved so rapidly had not so many French officers of the crown, including local baillis and castellans, as well as a whole swath of the military profession, from princes to militiamen, been killed at Agincourt. Henry’s successes in the field were arguably less important than the dauphin’s assassination of John the Fearless in 1419 in bringing about the Anglo-Burgundian alliance that eventually forced Charles VI to disinherit his own son, marry his daughter to the English king and accept his new son-in-law as his heir. Nevertheless, Agincourt played a vital role in establishing that Henry had a moral right to the throne of France. God had approved his demand for the restoration of his just rights and inheritances in spectacular fashion. He had won the trial by battle.
Perhaps more importantly, Henry had proved beyond all doubt that he was also the true king of England. God had chosen to bless him with victory at Agincourt despite the fact that he was the son of a usurper. There could have been no more effective demonstration to the world that the sins of the father would not be held against this son. Henry V clearly enjoyed divine approval. And with God on his side, who could stand against him?