Louis: The French Prince Who Invaded England (11 page)

The advantages of the deal for the papacy were clear: Innocent would gain more territory and influence, and the arrangement also allowed him to express his disapproval of Philip’s plan to involve Louis in the campaign to the detriment of his vow to mount a crusade against the Albigensians. And the benefits to John were immediate: with England now a papal fief, Innocent could not countenance an attack on it by a hostile French king, so he cancelled the whole invasion and promptly threatened Philip with excommunication if he went ahead with it regardless. Philip, so newly reconciled with the pope after years of conflict, and statesman enough to recognise when he was outmanoeuvred, was not inclined to embroil himself in another quarrel so soon, so he accepted. But he was understandably furious. Roger of Wendover tells us: ‘The French king was much enraged when he heard this, and said that he had already spent sixty thousand pounds in the equipment of his ships, and in providing food and arms, and that he had undertaken the said duty by command of our lord the pope.’

But stalking up and down swearing would serve little purpose; action was necessary. Philip might not be able to attack England, but he could take out his anger on those of his liegemen who had betrayed him. In order to adhere to the letter of the law he summoned Ferrand of Flanders to appear before him as his vassal – but gave him only one day to do so. When Ferrand unsurprisingly failed to show up, Philip launched an attack on his lands, ‘destroying every place he came to by fire, and putting the inhabitants to the sword’ according to Roger of Wendover, and authorised Louis to do the same. Louis, taking out frustrations of his own at the destruction of his chance of a crown, responded with alacrity, and Ferrand sent an appeal for aid to John.

Given England’s position across the Channel from Normandy and the rest of mainland Europe, the Anglo-Norman kings had always maintained a small number of ships to convey them and their effects back and forth. But this was not a navy in the proper sense of the word, and when Henry II or Richard I required large numbers of ships for military purposes they had to hire or commandeer them. Richard, with his extensive programme of overseas travel, had a small number of ships built during his reign, but credit for the establishment of a proper navy must go to King John. His loss of Normandy meant that the Channel became his frontier, so armed ships were a necessity and by 1204 he had a fleet of forty-five galleys patrolling the east and south coasts. From then onwards ships were built and fitted out specifically for royal military use, and by 1213 John had around a hundred of them at his disposal. He responded to Ferrand’s appeal by sending a fleet across the Channel.

On 30 May 1213 the English ships under William Longsword, earl of Salisbury (who, as an illegitimate son of Henry II, was John’s half-brother) arrived at Damme, where they were fortunate enough to find the French invasion fleet at anchor, sparsely guarded as most of the men were engaged in Philip and Louis’s raiding parties inland. Roger of Wendover takes up the tale:

When the chiefs of the English army learned this, they flew to arms, fiercely attacked the fleet, and, soon defeating the crews, they cut the cables of three hundred of their ships loaded with corn, wine, flour, meat, arms and other stores, and sent them to sea to make for England; besides these they set fire to and burned a hundred or more which were aground.

Describing the same incident, the author of the
History of William Marshal
tells us of ‘ships at sea burning and belching forth smoke, as if the very sea were on fire’.

Some of the English knights became overconfident and disembarked, mounted, to pursue the Frenchmen who were fleeing; however, Philip and Louis were not all that far away and they were able to launch a surprise counterattack. The English retreated to their ships and out to sea. Surveying the damage and calculating how risky it would be if more ships were to fall into English hands, Philip gave orders for the rest of his fleet to be burned. The ships were torched, flames visible for miles around and the stench of burning tar hanging in the air; and Louis watched as his plans to invade England turned to smoke and ashes.

* * *

Philip returned to Paris, leaving Louis in Flanders to continue taking revenge on Ferrand and his lands; through the summer and autumn of 1213 he captured, sacked and burned a number of towns. To modern eyes this may seem unpalatable, but the world of the thirteenth century was a very different place. The wealth and power of nobles were based on their lordship over lands or towns, and over the people who laboured in the fields or in urban industries. In order to hurt an opposing noble you had to damage his wealth-producing resources, as this would prevent him from raising the funds to equip a military force to fight against you. Therefore the ravaging of the countryside, the burning of crops, the killing of livestock and the sacking of towns were all acceptable methods of waging war, and, indeed, were more common than battles. But this meant that non-combatants were not safe: if you consider a peasant family to be not so much people in their own right as units of wealth-production for their lord, then by killing them you logically further deprive that lord of funds. Of course, this was not exactly fair for the peasants or townspeople who were considered little more than economic resources, who could lose their livelihoods or their lives through no fault of their own, but this was of little moment to the kings and nobles who were concentrating on other concerns. To them, acting in a way which we might consider cruel was not only acceptable, it was necessary: you had to be brutal when the occasion demanded it or you would not be respected and feared. So in burning the towns in the county of Flanders, Louis was acting very much as a man of his times. He did nearly get a taste of his own medicine at the town of Bailleul, however, when the fires set by his troops took hold so quickly that he and his companions were nearly burned, becoming trapped in the narrow streets before escaping at the last moment.

Campaigning was difficult in the winter due to the difficulty of finding food for men and fodder for horses. Louis took a break from his operations, and was in Paris in February 1214 when he heard the news that King John had disembarked at La Rochelle, a port in Poitou, intent on working with his allies to crush France once and for all. This was a threat to be taken seriously, so Philip and Louis called on all those who owed them military service, mustered their forces and rode south-west together; but then the catastrophic news reached them that the other part of the coalition – Otto, Ferrand and Renaud – were massing their forces further north. Surrounded on all sides, France was very much in danger of being crushed.

Fortunately Philip had what none of the other major players had: a grown son who could be entrusted with the command of an army. The king split his forces and took his share of the men back north, leaving Louis in charge of the southern campaign. Their armies divided largely along generational lines with Louis and his companions staying together and their fathers, including the count of Dreux and the count of St Pol, riding with Philip. But Louis had one wise old head in his camp – Henry Clément, the marshal, who had trained him as a boy.

Meanwhile, John was making a dangerous alliance with a powerful Poitevin noble, Hugh IX de Lusignan. For a number of years he had been John’s enemy since John had taken Hugh’s betrothed Isabelle of Angoulême and married her himself, but now in a strange twist John offered his daughter by Isabelle, Joan, in marriage to Hugh’s son. Hugh decided to throw in his lot with the English king, and the betrothal took place on 25 May 1214 (Hugh junior was at this point in his mid-twenties; Joan was four), whereupon Hugh and many other Poitevin nobles joined John in the insurrection.

John’s next move was to approach the well-fortified and strategically important city of Nantes, a port which straddled the River Loire and was the seat of the dukes of Brittany, and threaten it in an effort to force the new duke to submit to him. The succession of the dukedom of Brittany in recent years had been complicated. Constance, who had been duchess of Brittany in her own right, had remarried after the death of her husband Geoffrey, son of Henry II, in 1186 and had borne more children, so the murdered Arthur and the imprisoned Eleanor had three younger half-sisters. Due to her captive state Eleanor had been overlooked as Arthur’s heir following his death, so the duchy passed to Alix, eldest of the three younger sisters, who had recently married; her husband therefore became duke of Brittany in right of his wife, and it was he with whom John attempted to negotiate. Unfortunately for John the husband in question was Peter de Dreux, Louis’s cousin and boyhood companion.

Peter refused absolutely to surrender Nantes to the English king, despite the fact that any siege might endanger his twelve-year-old wife, and despite the fact that his elder brother Robert was at that time a prisoner in John’s custody, having been captured during a skirmish, and was liable to be used as leverage. The taking of hostages of noble or knightly rank was a common feature of conflicts in the early thirteenth century: ostensibly this was because the ‘brotherhood’ of chivalry was international, so anyone of knightly rank or above was entitled to certain privileges, but of more practical import was the fact that it would be foolish to kill a nobleman if you could capture him and offer him up for ransom instead. Such hostages were normally treated reasonably well, but it was only two years since John had hanged twenty-eight sons of Welsh chieftains, many of them children, handed over to him by Prince Llewelyn of Wales, so Peter can have been under no illusions that his decision to remain loyal to Louis might cost his brother his life. His courage won him a reprieve, however, and John decided against a full-scale siege of Nantes and withdrew. Instead he headed back along the River Loire, taking Ancenis on 11 June and Angers on 17 June before turning his attention to the fortress of La-Roche-aux-Moines.

This was a castle which had been recently built by William des Roches, the seneschal (an officer appointed by the king to oversee justice and administration) of Anjou, in order to defend the route from Nantes to Le Mans. John arrived there on 19 June 1214 and demanded surrender, but the garrison refused. He brought in siege machinery and bombarded the castle for two weeks, even erecting a gallows outside the walls and threatening to hang the entire garrison, but still they held out.

Louis, meanwhile, was on the Breton border with his army when news of the siege at La-Roche-aux-Moines reached him. This presented him with a major dilemma. Should he ride towards John’s forces and engage him, thus committing himself to a set-piece battle in which he risked all his troops? Or should he wait to see the outcome at La-Roche-aux-Moines and then seek to head John off elsewhere before he could march to join his allies in the north? Each course of action had its own particular disadvantages. Pitched battles were a rarity in the Middle Ages (the Capetians had not fought one since Philip’s grandfather Louis VI engaged Henry I of England at Brémule in 1119, and even William the Conqueror fought only two in his lifetime) as they were a huge gamble – a commander risked everything on one throw of the dice, and external influences such as weather or luck could sway the outcome one way or the other. Warfare was therefore characterised more by ravaging and sieges than by battles. If Louis were to engage John he could risk his entire army, not to mention his own life. But if he did nothing John might subdue La-Roche-aux-Moines and then move on to the next castle, and before long find himself master of many of the major strongholds. His position would then be strengthened beyond challenge.

Louis was a warrior at heart so his decision, supported by Henry Clément, was to attack John’s forces. He gave the order to advance and set off, ‘as ardent as lightning’, according to William the Breton, ‘riding at the front of his cavalry squadrons, with every hour which delayed the onset of combat seeming long’.

At La-Roche-aux-Moines John heard that Louis’s force was advancing towards him, and at first he welcomed the idea of a battle as he had a vastly superior number of men at his disposal (William the Breton puts it at triple the number Louis had with him). However, many of John’s men were mercenaries, fighting for money and less willing to risk their lives in battle than they were to besiege a castle, and many of the others were Poitevin nobles who had defected to John’s cause. Siding with the English might have seemed a good idea while the French monarchy was miles away, but when it came to a choice of actually taking up arms against the heir to the throne, the risks seemed too high and they wavered.

Unsure of how much of his army he could now rely on, and wary of being caught between the arriving force and a potential attack from the castle garrison sallying forth, John dropped the siege and fled, departing with such speed that he left behind his camp, most of his baggage, his siege machinery and many of his men. Roger of Wendover says that John ‘retired in great annoyance from the siege’, while William the Breton says he ‘was vanquished by fear and thought of nothing but flight’; whatever the exact truth, John escaped, making such good time that he turned up some 70 miles (110 km) away only two days later, but much of his army had not yet crossed the river when Louis’s host arrived. Many of John’s men were killed, drowned or captured, and Louis seized much booty from the camp, collecting the armour, weapons and goods which had been abandoned.

Although there had been no battle as such, Louis’s decisive action had annihilated the southern threat, meaning that Philip could deal with their enemies in the north without worrying about John’s army suddenly appearing behind him. He too was persuaded that a pitched battle would settle the outcome, and he faced up to his enemies on 27 July 1214 at Bouvines, a village a few miles south-east of Lille. Among others he had with him Odo III, duke of Burgundy; Walter III de Châtillon, count of St Pol; Robert II, count of Dreux, and his brother Philip de Dreux, bishop of Beauvais; and Guérin, bishop of Senlis. Ranged against him were Otto, Renaud, Ferrand and William, the earl of Salisbury. The allies were confident – the Minstrel of Reims has them deciding even before the battle which bits of France they will award themselves after their victory – but despite a scare when he was unhorsed in the battle, the day belonged entirely to Philip. The battle was both bloody and claustrophobic, as some excerpts from the
Philippide
, William the Breton’s eyewitness account, show: