The Hundred Years War (26 page)

The one important action of 1423 was at Cravant. The Dauphinists had gathered a new army which included a large Scots contingent under Sir John Stewart of Darnley, the Constable of Scotland, and Italian and Spanish mercenaries. They marched on Cravant, a little town on the right bank of the river Yonne which was a key stronghold on the frontier of ducal Burgundy ; if it fell, Dijon, Philip’s capital, would be exposed to attack—though the enemy’s primary objective was to relieve isolated Dauphinist garrisons cut off in Champagne and Picardy. The defenders, mainly local gentry, put up a determined resistance but by July had already eaten their horses—‘there was neither cat nor dog, rat nor mouse that was not eaten up’, relates the chronicler Jean de Wavrin.

The Earl of Salisbury marched as quickly as he could to relieve them. At Auxerre he was joined by a Burgundian contingent and a council of war was held in the cathedral, where they drew up a joint order of the day which has survived. There was to be an English and a Burgundian Marshal, the advance guard was to be half English, half Burgundian, discipline was enforceable on pain of death, and no prisoners were to be taken until victory was certain. Archers had to bring the usual pointed stakes, and everyone had to furnish himself with two days’ rations. At night everyone must pray as devoutly as possible. Salisbury pressed on, although the weather was so hot that when they halted men-at-arms lay face downward on the ground in their armour to cool off. In all he had about 4,000 troops.

When Salisbury reached Cravant on Friday 29 July the Dauphinists were waiting on the other side of the river, on the crest of a hill about a mile and a half from the town. However they then came down to the bank, and to attack them the English would have to cross the river, an operation which could easily end in disaster. Salisbury gambled on the garrison coming to his assistance and, covered by archers, waded across the river in front of the town. At the same time Lord Willoughby led an assault on the main bridge. Salisbury’s detachment crossed safely and was soon engaged in savage fighting, while at the bridge Willoughby’s men had an even hotter reception from the Scots. At last the Dauphinists began to falter, whereupon the garrison, although weak from lack of food, charged them from the rear as Salisbury had hoped. The enemy army disintegrated and to escape had to run the gauntlet between the town and the river bank ; 1,200 were slaughtered, including many Scots. Sir John Stewart, who had lost an eye, was taken prisoner.

By 1424 the Regent, Bedford, felt sufficiently confident to strike south and complete the conquest of Maine and Anjou, although he knew that the enemy had gathered another army and was intending to launch a full-scale offensive He assembled 10,000 troops at Rouen and sent the Earl of Suffolk to retake Ivry which had fallen to the Dauphinists. Suffolk captured the town quickly enough but the garrison held out in the citadel, expecting to be relieved by the Dauphin’s new army. Before the army could reach Ivry, Bedford came up with the main body of his troops and the citadel surrendered. The enemy commanders—the Duke of Alençon, the Count of Aumale and the Viscount of Narbonne, had too many unfortunate memories of Agincourt to want a battle, but their Scots allies insisted on fighting. They compromised, deciding to capture some towns while avoiding a pitched battle in the field. On 14 August they appeared before the English town of Verneuil on the Norman border with prisoners tied to their horses’ tails ; the townsmen, thinking these were English captives and that Bedford must have been defeated, promptly opened their gates, only to discover that the ‘prisoners’ were Scots. Meanwhile Bedford had left Ivry for Evreux, where reconnaissance troops informed him that the enemy had taken Verneuil. Next day he set out for Verneuil, so sure of himself that he ordered 3,000 Burgundians to leave him and return to the siege of Nesle.

On 17 August the Regent drew up his army on the road from Damville to Verneuil where it emerged from a forest on to the plain in front of Verneuil. He had about 9,000 men. He used the same formation employed at Poitiers and Agincourt, with his men-at-arms at the centre and archers on the wings ; the men-at-arms were in two ‘battles’, the right commanded by himself, the left by Salisbury. He also posted a reserve of 2,000 mounted bowmen a quarter of a mile behind. As an added refinement, he fortified his baggage-train, laagering the wagons in a hollow square still further back; the horses were tethered head and tail, three or four deep, in a circle round the square to serve as an extra barrier. The Dauphinist army was further down the road towards Verneuil, about 17,000 troops formed into two divisions of dismounted men-at-arms linked by archers, their wings being protected by mounted men-at-arms who were meant to deal with any flanking attacks by English bowmen. One division was commanded by the Count of Aumale ; the other, consisting of 6,000 Scots, was under the Earls of Douglas and Buchan who sent a message to the English that they intended to give no quarter.

Neither side wanted to attack. From dawn until about 4 o’clock in the afternoon both armies sweltered in their armour beneath a blazing sun without moving. At last Bedford ordered his men to advance. After kneeling and kissing the ground and shouting ‘St George ! Bedford !’ they did so at a slow steady pace, giving deep, deliberate roars of defiance. Simultaneously some mounted Dauphinist men-at-arms charged the archers on Bedford’s right flank, riding through and past them until they were stopped by the bowmen in reserve; many English turned and ran. Bedford’s division continued to march grimly towards that of Aumale, which was also advancing, shouting ‘Montjoie ! Saint Denis !’ The two gleaming masses of faceless steel robots, war-cries booming hollowly from beneath their helmets, met with a loud crash to begin a hand-to-hand combat whose ferocity astounded even contemporaries. Wavrin, who fought in the battle himself, remembered how ‘the blood of the dead spread on the field and that of the wounded ran in great streams all over the earth’. For three-quarters of an hour English and Dauphinists hacked, battered and stabbed each other without either side gaining any advantage. The Regent, swinging a two-handed pole-axe, did fearsome execution and killed many men—‘He reached no one whom he did not fell.’ (Such weapons smashed open an expensive armour like a modern tin can, the body underneath being crushed and mangled before even the blade sank in.) Finally the enemy began to falter, to give ground; suddenly they turned to lumber away as quickly as their armour would permit towards Verneuil, where many were driven into the moat and drowned, including Aumale himself.

On the left the gallant Salisbury had been almost overcome by the Scots. Moreover 600 Italian cavalry had swept past him to plunder the baggage laager ; the archers in the reserve were still dealing with the Dauphinist men-at-arms who had broken through on the right, and the Italians, despite a brave resistance by the pages, started to rifle the wagons and drive off the horses. Luckily the reserve managed to repel the enemy men-at-arms and came up to beat off the Italians. They then ran forward to help Salisbury, taking the Scots in flank with a loud yell
(‘un merveilleu cri’).
Meanwhile Bedford had reassembled his weary but triumphant division. He returned to smash into the Scottish rear, overwhelming them. The English troops nursed a particular hatred for their northern neighbours, very few of whom escaped alive; among the slain were Archibald, Earl of Douglas with his son James, Earl of Mar, and John Stewart, Earl of Buchan. Bedford wrote later : ‘The moste vengeance fell upon the proud Scottes, for thei went to Dog-wash the same day, mo than 1700 of cote Armoures of these proude Scottes.’ In addition, over a thousand Dauphinist French were killed including the Viscount of Narbonne, which brought total enemy casualties to more than 7,000. The most important prisoners were the Duke of Alençon and Marshal Lafayette.

Yet although the English had lost only a thousand men, there had been a moment at the beginning when they were nearly beaten. Many had fled from the first Dauphinist charge, shouting that it was all over. A captain called Young was afterwards found guilty of running away and taking 500 men with him ; he was hanged till half dead, then drawn and quartered.

Verneuil was seen as a second Agincourt and the Regent’s prestige soared. The Dauphinists had been completely broken as a fighting force in the field ; the way lay open for an advance on Bourges and perhaps the final reckoning. However, Bedford, true to his brother’s example, preferred the less spectacular but more solid gain of completing the conquest of Anjou and Maine, and began a methodical reduction of enemy strongholds. An additional advantage was the end of the threat of Scots intervention ; the flower of their best fighting-men had fallen. (Ironically, the Dauphinists were not altogether sorry for this ; their chronicler, Basin, tells us that the disaster of Verneuil was offset by being rid of the Scots whose insolence was intolerable.)

At this moment of triumph the Regent’s position was suddenly undermined by events outside France which threatened to ruin his relations with Burgundy. Humphrey of Gloucester, a frivolous and irresponsible intriguer, fell in love with Jacqueline of Hainault, Countess in her own right of Hainault, Holland and Zeeland, who had deserted an unsatisfactory husband and taken refuge in England. After obtaining a dubious dispensation from the deposed anti-Pope Benedict XIII (who still lived at Avignon), Gloucester married her and styled himself Count of Hainault, Holland and Zeeland, which in 1424 he invaded with an army of 5,000 men. The expedition was a farce and ‘ambitious Humphrey’, having made a fool of himself, had to return to England within the year, where he tried to get up a further invasion. Nothing could have been better calculated to infuriate Philip of Burgundy who wanted Jacqueline’s territories for himself. When Philip visited Paris in the autumn of 1424 he shouted insults at Bedford and informed him that he had made a defensive treaty with the Dauphin. Only the influence of Philip’s sister, Bedford’s wife—together with a fear that a complete rupture might provoke his brother-in-law into going to Gloucester’s assistance—prevented the total collapse of the Anglo-Burgundian alliance.

Philip of Burgundy was never an easy ally. During his visit to Paris he mortally offended the Earl of Salisbury. Philip, a notorious lecher with thirty mistresses, made outrageous advances to the nineteen-year-old Countess of Salisbury (Chaucer’s granddaughter), who was a famous beauty. Salisbury was so angry that he swore he would never again serve in the field with Philip but would go to Hainault and fight for Gloucester.

By the end of 1425 Gloucester had stirred up more trouble, this time in England. Here although he was titular Protector the real government was the Council, which had refused to recognize him as Regent and which was dominated by the Chancellor, Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester. Beaufort, a half-brother of Henry IV (being a bastard but legitimized son of John of Gaunt by Catherine Swynford), was one of the most formidable ecclesiastics in English history and regarded himself as the man best fitted to rule England. Inevitably he quarrelled with Gloucester, who hated him for taking away the Regency. Duke Humphrey tried to raise the London mob against Beaufort and there was very nearly civil war. In October 1425 Beaufort wrote desperately to Bedford, imploring him to return to England as quickly as possible—‘If you tarry, we shall put this land in peril with a battle. Such a brother you have here.’ He also reminded him that ‘the prosperity of France stands on the welfare of England’. In consequence the Regent was out of France from December 1425 until March 1427, fifteen months when he was too busy reconciling his brother and his uncle to attend to matters across the Channel. Although the reconciliation was reasonably successful, Bedford must always have been worried that Gloucester and Beaufort would come to blows again.

During his stay in England Bedford had difficulty in obtaining money from Parliament for fresh troops. The endless expense of the War was now making it unpopular with the English, who in any case thought that the occupied territories should pay for it. As expeditionary forces grew smaller, fewer and fewer Englishmen took part.

On the other hand a greater proportion of the aristocracy was serving in France. Unlike the previous century when many commanders came from the lesser gentry and even humbler backgrounds, in the fifteenth century senior officers were predominantly noblemen—the Earls of Salisbury, Warwick, Suffolk, Lord Talbot and Lord Scales, to name only the most famous. There was an excellent economic reason why they should be greedy for the profits of war : because of the agricultural depression the income from many baronial estates was lower than it had been for decades.

Nevertheless, if there were no more Robert Salles or Nicholas Hawkwoods, men from the higher gentry continued to rise in rank and fortune through the War. It is reasonable to suppose that, like the magnates, they were driven by dwindling revenues. A good example is Sir John Stourton of Stourton in Wiltshire. Born in 1399, the son of a Speaker of the House of Commons and the head of an ancient West Country family, he was at the siege of Rouen in 1418 and took part in many other campaigns; by 1436 he was raising over a hundred bowmen to bring to France. In 1438 he was appointed a Privy Counsellor, henceforward attending Council meetings where he played a key role in planning military operations; he recommended campaigning in Normandy rather than Guyenne because it was nearer, though his real reason may have been that he had lands in Normandy (admittedly these have not been identified). A member of several important embassies to the French, for nearly two years he was also keeper of the unfortunate Duke of Orleans—the poet, who had been a prisoner since Agincourt—whom he kept at Stourton from 1438-1439 and whom complained of his strictness. Later he was one of the Guardians of Calais. In 1448 he was created Baron Stourton and he survived the troubled political world of the 1450s, dying in his bed in 1462. Plainly this strenuous career was not without financial reward. Much of it must have come from loot and ransoms. Leland says that French prize-money paid for the splendid castle at Stourton (demolished in the eighteenth century, but built on the site of what is now Stourhead) with its two courtyards—‘the front of the inner court is magnificent and high embattled, castle like’. It is more probable that Lord Stourton simply renovated and extended the house of his ancestors, but undoubtedly he could have afforded to build a new one. He bought an imposing mansion near the capital, Stourton House at Fulham—next door to the palace of the Bishops of London—and also built most of the priory church of the Augustinians at Stavordale in Somerset.