Louis: The French Prince Who Invaded England (23 page)

Once Louis returned to England in April 1217, Blanche took personal control of the back-up campaign in France. She was no wilting flower, remaining at home and writing begging letters: she saddled up and spent the late spring and summer riding through Artois, visiting the various lords and towns there in order to drum up money and men from those who owed allegiance to Louis. The sudden personal appearance in their midst of a determined liege lady and future queen, and the force of her exhortations, were too much for most of her targets and in time Blanche was able to raise enough to equip a further fleet. And not content with her gains in Artois, she was also brave enough to face down the king himself.

The bare fact of the situation is that Blanche somehow succeeded where Louis and his other supporters had failed, and persuaded Philip to hand over some of the contents of his royal treasury. However, the details of how she achieved this vary according to the points of view of different chroniclers. William the Breton’s fairly terse account does not actually mention Blanche by name: he says merely that a new army was assembled. The Anonymous of Béthune’s
History of the Dukes
is similarly brief but does note that the troops were raised by ‘my lady Blanche, wife of Louis … to send them to England to help her lord’. Roger of Wendover is more explicit: ‘The king was afraid to give assistance to his excommunicated son, as he had been often severely rebuked by the pope for granting his consent. He laid the burden of the business on the wife of Louis, who was not slow in fulfilling the duty imposed on her.’ But this does not really tell us how, with all the odds stacked against her, Blanche could have succeeded in persuading Philip – all-powerful king for the last thirty-seven years and one of the most authoritative figures in Europe – to go against all his protestations to date and to part with his gold. The answer lies in a combination of the force of Blanche’s personality and the depth of her devotion to her husband. This is neatly illustrated in an entertaining scene from the Minstrel of Reims (never afraid to overdramatise when the situation calls for it) in which he depicts Blanche marching into the throne room and asking the king bluntly whether he is prepared to let his son and heir die in a foreign country while he sits by and does nothing. When Philip remains unmoved by this, Blanche declares dramatically that she has no choice and that she will pawn her three sons – his heirs – to anyone who will give her enough money to support her husband. And on that note, she storms out. ‘When the king saw her leave,’ says the Minstrel with unusual understatement, ‘he knew that she meant what she said.’ Philip calls her back and tells her that she can have as much of his treasure as she needs, to do with as she wills.

In the end, then, honour was satisfied all round. Philip managed to stay on the right side of the pope – just – as he could claim that he was not giving any money to Louis, but only to Blanche, and that it was up to her to decide what to do with it. In turn, Blanche received the funds she needed to raise and equip a force and a fleet. Her willingness to risk papal displeasure in so doing was a testament to her relationship with Louis: it would have been all too easy for her to sit in her apartments, secure in her position as the mother of the heirs to the throne, and await the outcome of the campaign from a distance. Some royal wives, subject to arranged marriages and without any particular attachment to their husbands, might have done just that. But the commitment to each other which Louis and Blanche had shown since their earliest days together as children was as strong as ever, and she would not give up on his cause while there was any chance that she could do something about it.

* * *

Blanche’s recruitment drive would, of course, take some time, and she was busy with her campaign all through the spring and early summer. Meanwhile, as we have seen, Louis landed at Dover in April 1217 to the news that Winchester, Southampton, Marlborough and Mountsorrel castles were all under siege from Henry’s forces, the regent having broken the truce while he was away. ‘The Marshal heard about Louis’s return,’ says the
History of William Marshal
, ‘and he was not one bit pleased when he did.’ No doubt he had been hoping that Louis’s temporary strategic withdrawal back over the Channel was a precursor to a full-scale retreat, and that he would not return, but here was the prince again: reinforced, furious and prepared to reconquer the ground he had taken once already.

Louis hit the ground running. He now needed to fight on several fronts, so he deployed his troops accordingly, dividing his army as he done to great effect on previous occasions. He himself would storm across the south of England, while a second force commanded by Saer de Quincy, Robert Fitzwalter and Thomas the count of Perche would head northwards towards Mountsorrel. Dover Castle, looming behind him still, would have to wait; Louis arranged another truce with Hubert de Burgh, who was safely installed once more behind the great walls, and set off.

Determined not to have to cover the same ground a third time, Louis now adopted more ruthless tactics. Burning Sandwich behind him as a punishment for defecting to Henry’s camp in his absence, he and his force rode through Canterbury, Malling (where he met his chancellor Simon Langton for an update on events during his absence in France) and Guildford, where he was reinforced by troops from the garrison he had left in London during his absence. He reached Farnham by 27 April, only four days after landing back on English soil, but thanks to the lightning nature of his operation so far his baggage train could not keep up and had only just reached Guildford. This means that he was without his heavy siege machinery; nonetheless, he managed to take the outer bailey of Farnham, although the keep held out against him.

At this point Louis received word that although Mountsorrel was still holding (and, it was hoped, would continue to do so until the force commanded by Saer de Quincy got there), Winchester, Southampton and Marlborough had all fallen. Louis needed to be in several places at once; he took the decision to leave Farnham and ride immediately for Winchester, as he could not allow such a major city or its two castles to be refortified against him. There was also the tantalising prospect of a great prize: William Marshal was there and had young Henry with him, and if Louis could capture the boy then the war would be over once and for all. Capturing or killing the regent would also put a serious dent in the Henrician camp, so all was to play for. Louis made off at speed.

It would appear that the threat of an angry and determined Louis appearing over the horizon was enough to effect a change of heart in William Marshal. Instead of garrisoning Winchester he chose to flee from it (burning it behind him, much to the dismay of the luckless citizens who had been rebuilding following John’s decision to fire the city the previous year) as he withdrew to Marlborough. Under the circumstances this was probably a wise decision; given Louis’s record of military successes, the mood he was probably in, and the damage which had been inflicted on the royal castle at Winchester as Marshal had besieged it, staying to put up a fight was a risk not worth taking.

And so Louis arrived once more at Winchester to find it a smoking ruin, just as he had done the previous year. This time he needed to make sure he could hold on to the city more permanently, which was not likely with the royal castle in ruins and all but indefensible (the
History of the Dukes
tells us that ‘a large part of the wall had been knocked down by miners’), so he oversaw some speedy repairs. This is where having engineers in his ranks as well as knights and sergeants paid off: he was able to organise everything very quickly and efficiently. The two sources that mention the rebuilding of the castle give differing accounts of how this was carried out: the
History of the Dukes
says that ‘he had great timbers of oak put in all the holes in the wall’, while the
History of William Marshal
seems to imply something more permanent:

Within a period of a very few days he had rebuilt the tower and the high walls magnificently, with stone and lime, and had restored all the fallen masonry and repaired the damage to the walls to the point where they were fine and solid, just as if they were completely new.

These accounts are not necessarily contradictory, as the wooden timbers put into the holes in the wall which the Anonymous mentions might well have been scaffolding allowing masons access to repair the stonework. Louis must have given his orders for the rebuilding and the re-garrisoning quickly, as he remained in Winchester only from 30 April to 4 May, the feast of the Ascension. At that point he left Hervé the count of Nevers in charge and rode back to London in triumph. He had regained the whole of the south in a whirlwind two weeks, and with it the favourable military position he had enjoyed the previous year; the fate of England was still very much in the balance.

* * *

While Louis was reconquering the south Saer de Quincy was riding northwards to Mountsorrel in Leicestershire, together with Robert Fitzwalter and Thomas, the young count of Perche. De Quincy was particularly keen to relieve the siege as the castle there actually belonged to him along with the surrounding lands and associated revenues. It was being defended for him and for Louis by one Henry de Braybrooke, along with ten knights and an unspecified number of sergeants, ‘who courageously returned stone for stone and weapon for weapon on their assailants’, according to Roger of Wendover. But the attacking force was a numerous and high-profile one led by the earl of Chester, the earl of Derby, the earl of Aumale and others, including Falkes de Bréauté, so the defenders were hard pressed.

Roger of Wendover is scathing on the subject of de Quincy’s force as he moved north: the ‘wicked French freebooters and robbers’ are ‘the refuse and scum of that country’, he says, and they pillage towns on their way. However, it was clearly more than de Quincy’s reputation was worth to break Louis’s word – Roger notes specifically that the abbey of St Albans escaped any attack as Louis had accepted a sum of money previously from the abbot to ensure its safety.

As de Quincy and his host of seventy knights and other men neared Mountsorrel, the earl of Chester sent out scouts, who reported back to him. According to the
History of William Marshal
:

Once they heard tell of the mighty army that was making every effort to attack them, in order to do them harm and capture them, they did not dare stand their ground and meet them, for, given the huge force they faced, they thought that Louis in person was among them, and that is why they left.

Louis’s name cast a long shadow in England in 1217; it had already caused William Marshal to retreat from Winchester and now, in the expectation of Louis’s presence, Chester destroyed his siege machinery and retired to Nottingham. Mountsorrel was relieved without further bloodshed.

As Saer de Quincy, Robert Fitzwalter and the count of Perche basked in their success, they were contacted by one Hugh d’Arras, who was part of the force led by Gilbert de Gant that had been besieging Lincoln Castle for some time in Louis’s name. The city of Lincoln had fallen into their hands some months ago, but the castle, with its separate defences, was holding out. Gilbert de Gant was now of the opinion that the castle would fall if they could make one final push with an increased force. He asked de Quincy to bring his army to Lincoln.

Lincoln Castle was being held by Nicola de la Haye, one of the most remarkable women of the thirteenth century. She had inherited the castellanship of Lincoln in 1169 on the death of her father (she had no brothers), and was now, in 1217, in her mid-sixties. Twice widowed, she had always been actively involved in her own affairs even when her husbands were alive; in 1191 she had personally commanded the defending force when Lincoln was besieged for a month during a conflict between King Richard and the then Prince John (she and her husband were supporters of John, even then). She was still the castellan in 1216 and, as we have seen, had staved off the first approach by the invaders by purchasing a truce from Gilbert de Gant when he attempted to occupy the city.

When King John had visited Lincoln later in 1216 Nicola made a show of presenting him with the keys to the castle, explaining that she was too old and could not endure the burden any longer, but John responded by entreating her to keep it in his name. One of his last acts that autumn had been to appoint Nicola to the position of sheriff of Lincolnshire: the appointment of a woman to a shrievalty was unprecedented and shows the high regard which John had for her capabilities in a time of war. It is true to say that many of the male candidates who might have been eligible for the position were actually siding with the French against him, but no doubt he could have found a man to act as sheriff if he had really wanted to. Indeed, Nicola’s son had by then reached adulthood, but it was his mother and not he who was appointed.

Nicola’s son Richard de Camville died in March 1217 but this did not stop her from carrying out her duties; even after the town fell – the citizens being unprepared and untrained to defend it – she and her garrison staved off every attempt on the castle as it was bombarded from the south and east by siege machinery all through March, April and early May. She refused all requests to surrender.

But by early May the garrison were exhausted and hungry, so Gilbert de Gant felt that his time had come. Saer de Quincy, Robert Fitzwalter and the count of Perche agreed, and their force moved off to join those already at Lincoln. Even without Louis’s auspicious personal presence they felt confident that the castle could be taken.