The Perfect King (46 page)

On
17
July the English army began the march eastwards, towards Paris. They travelled in three divisions. The first, the vanguard, was under the nominal command of the prince of Wales, assisted by the earls of Warwick and Northampton. The main body of men was under the king's own direct control. The
rear was commanded by the recentl
y consecrated bishop of Durham, Thomas Hatfield. With such an enormous force approaching, the first town in their way - Valognes - had no option but to submit, the inhabitants begging only that Edward spare their lives. Edward made a show of granting to all the Normans who accepted his kingship that he would indeed spare their lives and property. But in reality his word alone was not sufficient to control the urges of his men, who looted the town and burnt it as they left. The same happened at the next town they came to, Carentan, which was also subjected to looting and burning despite the king's attempts to save the property of men whom he considered his subjects. After Carentan he knew that, wherever the English army went there would be destruction unless the most strenuous and time-consuming efforts were made to keep the troops in order. In most cases, this was counter-productive. For the French towns in his path, his approaching army was simply a tide of misery.

The inhabitants of the next town on die way to Paris, Saint-Lo, realised in advance what was likely to happen to them, and decided to resist. With a French army in the vicinity, commanded by Robert Bertrand, they prepared to defend their homes. They broke down the bridge and barricaded the streets. But their decision was a naive one. When the size of the English army became clear, Bertrand realised his position was suicidal, and withdrew to Caen, leaving the inhabitants of Saint-Lo to defend their homes as best they could. Had the English been a mere raiding party of a couple of hundred men, perhaps the townsmen could have held them back. But fifteen thousand fresh soldiers was impossible. Edward's carpenters repaired the bridge and the army smashed through the gates and barricades and swarmed over the town, seizing whatever they wanted and killing anyone who got in their way. When the news was spread that the three skulls hanging above the gates belonged to three Norman knights who had been executed against the terms of the truce for supporting Edward in
1343,
the inhabitants were doomed. Overt statements that rapes took place are relatively rare in chronicles - killing could be considered chivalrous, rape never - but at Saint-Lo, in le Bel's wo
rds, 'several pretty women of th
e town and their daughters were raped, which was a great pity'. The wealthiest men - cloth merchants - were seized, bound and dragged off, to be shipped back to England and ransomed. As the first town that had actively resisted him, Edward did not say a word to try and prevent the destruction. Instead he gave the order for the whole town to be burnt. He might have lost the power to save those prepared to accept him, but he could still demonstrate what horrors would be inflicted on those towns which resisted.

Edward made his men rise early, before dawn. Each morning they were ordered to move out to a certain destination. On the
23rd
they were ordered to Torigny, but a change of plan switched them to Cormolain. The next day's march took them to Fontenay le Pesnel, then Cheux. On
26
June, Edward arose, heard mass before sunrise, and ordered the army to advance on Caen.

Edward knew that Caen would be the site of the first important
battle
of his campaign. Inside the secure walls of the old town and its castle were the forces of the count of Eu, the lord of Tancarville, the bishop of Bayeux and a substantial population, probably in excess of twelve thousand people. There were also about three hundred mercenary Genoese crossbowmen. Outside, waiting for Edward, was a large contingent under the command of Robert Bertrand, including many townsmen of Caen who had insisted on meeting the English in the open, bravely trying to minimise the damage to their town.

The English approached at about
three o'clock in the afternoon.
Edward drew up his men in
battle
formation. Seeing the thousands of pennons approaching, the men of Caen realised that they had totally misjudged the scale of the invasion, and fled back within the old town. Fearful though they may have been, their retreat was also a sensible tactical move, strengthening further the town's defences. The French numbered between two and four thousand soldiers and perhaps four thousand adult male citizens; this made it a daunting task to storm the town, as the walls were strong, and seven thousand men (not to mention a few thousand women) could easily defend them for a long period. The king's confessor mentioned in a letter that when he first saw Caen,
he thought it was impregnable.

Edward could not afford to think in terms of impregnability for he did not have time for a long siege. He noted that the two great abbeys built by the Conqueror - the Abbaye aux Hommes (where the Conqueror himself lay buried) and the Abbaye aux Dames — lay outside the walls, so that a complete destruction of the town need not destroy his ancestors' burial place or his religious foundations. When the bishop of Bayeux refused even to answer his letter offering to spare the lives of the inhabitants if the town surrendered, and failed also to permit the return of Edward's messenger, the destruction of the town became his determined path.

As it happened, the vanguard had run ahead of his decision-making. As the last of Bertrand's soldiers desperately made for the safety of the old town, the foremost of the troops under the prince and the earl of Warwick had followed them and attacked. A battle ensued in which the archers in the vanguard were confronted by large numbers of men-at-arms. In order to save his valuable archers, Edward sent a message to the earl of Warwick to order them to retreat, but, in the vicious chaos which followed in the streets of the old town, the earl also became drawn into the fighting. Realising there was nothing to do but engage fully, Edward ordered an attack. Everything centred on the bridge between the new and old towns. A contingent of Welsh spearmen, seeing the low tide allowed them to cross the river on foot, jumped in and bravely waded towards the defenders on the far bank, attacking the bridge from the rear. More English piled into the fray until the defenders lost heart and fell back, leaving their compatriots on the bridge to be killed. Some knights took refuge in the upper storeys of the gatehouse. They saw what happened to those caught in the streets. Even the wealthy were killed by the English troops who were (in Froissart's view) 'men of little conscience'. No one was being ransomed. The knights in the gatehouse only survived when one of their number happened to recognise the arms of Sir Thomas Holland amidst the melee, and pleaded with him to take th
em prisoner, so that their lives would be saved.

When the dust settled, more than five thousand Frenchmen lay dead in the streets and in the fields around the town, hacked down as they tried to flee. One hundred and seven knights were taken prisoner along with about one hundred and twenty esquires. Three hundred Genoese archers lay dead, their crossbows all useless after they ran out of bolts. As the town had resisted, a large number of women were systematically raped. Some of the English knights tried to prevent some of the rapes and killings. But Edward did nothing to prevent any of it. He was set on destroying everything, ruthlessly eliminating every obstacle between him and Philip. When he was told that he had lost several hundred soldiers, some killed in the ransacking of the town by citizens throwing stones down from their upper windows, he gave the order to kill everyone within and to burn the town. Only the insistence of Sir Godfrey de Harcourt persuaded him that he had destroyed enough already, that he needed to remain focused on his real ambition, which was to meet Philip in
battle
, reassuring him with the words 'without more killing we will still be l
ords and masters of this town'.

Edward accepted Harcourt's advice. It became a pattern for him to insist on the most stringent, horrific punishments for those who had dared oppose him, and only to relent when one of his own men begged him to show mercy. This campaign was not about mercy. It was about him being seen to be 'terrible to his enemies', demonstrating that Philip and the French, and the pope and die College of Cardinals, had to regard him not as the son of Edward II but as the greatest warrior in Christendom, and king of a commensurately great kingdom, capable of re-enacting the most glorious exploits of Arthur or anyone else from history they cared to mention. The self-doubt which he had experienced as a teenager still seems to have been pushing him on, to prove himself, to live up to the prophesies of greatness.

After the battle of Caen Edward spent five days in the town, preparing for the
battle
s that lay ahead. He sent out troops to devastate the countryside around. When he received the capitulation of the citizens of Bayeux, terrified that theirs would be the next city destroyed, Edward told the city's representatives that he would accept their submission only when he could guarantee their safety, with the obvious implications that Phili
p had failed to do exactly that.
He ordered twelve hundred reinforcement archers to be levied in England and despatched to him in Normandy
together with their equipment.
And he held a council of all his nobles. King Philip had taken possession of the sacred war banner - the Oriflamme - from the Abbot of Saint-Denis on
22
July and was marching to Rouen.

Edward's decision - presumably supported by his nobles - was to go straight for Philip. On
31
July he ordered the army to break camp and head towards Rouen. On either side of the main army rode the marshals, devastating everything, so that a broad trail of incineration and destruction fourteen miles wide was left behind Edward wherever he went. That night he encamped at Troarn, the next at Rumesnil. The following day he marched into the city of Lisieux. On
5
August he was at Le Neubourg, twenty-five miles from Rouen. On that day two cardinals sent by the pope to discuss a new peace initiative were
allowed into Edward's presence.
Their suggestion was that Edward should accept Philip's offer to restore the counties of Ponthieu and the duchy of Aquitaine to be held on the same terms as Edward II had held them, as feudal tenements of the French king. Edward must have been hard-pressed to retain a diplomatic front. These men were still treating him as if he was a supplicant, the king of a
little
country, a weak country, unable to question the military and ecclesiastical might of France. Did they not realise he had invaded France and was actively trying to engage the French king in combat? Did they think this was merely to regain his father's territorial possessions? Did they not realise that he did not care whether the pope placed England under an interdict? Where were their letters of authority? They had none, they admitted. He dismissed them from his sight, and gave orders to advance to Rouen.

Edward knew that the French army was growing larger every day. At the beginning of August Philip had crossed the Seine and had briefly headed towards Edward, but then had come news of the landing of the second English army in Flanders, under Hugh Hastings, and intelligence that the Flemings had provided a large force to invade France from the north-east. Philip hastened back to Rouen, uncertain of what to do. As the cardinals wasted Edward's time, Philip ordered the destruction of the bridge over the Seine at Rouen, thereby cutting himself off from Edward. He also sent troops ahead to guard the next bridge upstream, at Pont de 1'Arche, and the next at Vernon, and so on, giving him enough time to gather an even bigger army, hoping to sweep around through Paris and crush the English. This posed the question: would Edward attack the capital? His baggage wagons were only able to move slowly, about half the speed of the men, but a large contingent could certainly have reached it sooner than Philip, and could have perhaps burnt the suburbs. But it was a very risky move. To get drawn into street fighting in the largest city in northern Europe, against a massive and hostile population, was to ris
k being overpowered by numbers.
The capital had been defended with barricades, compounding the difficulties. Nor would burning the capital of France have helped him reach the northern bank of the Seine. If Philip moved his army to guard the city, Edward would face an impossible series of obstacles between himself and safety. For good reasons, then, Philip gambled that Edward would not actually attack the capital, though he might threaten it. If Philip could bring another army against Edward from the south, and bring his main force through Paris to attack Edward from the east, he would force Edward back towards Normandy, if not destroy him. In view of this, Philip ordered the huge army under the command of his son, the duke of Normandy, to give up the siege of Aiguillon and begin the long march north.

This decision may have raised a smile in the English camp. It would certainly have raised a fantastic cheer in Aiguillon itself. The town had been besieged for over four months by Duke John, and he had sworn not to rest until he had overrun it. For the three hundred English men-at-arms and six hundred archers within, life had become very difficult. Only the remarkable antics of Sir Walter Manny and his indomitable comrades had prevented the town falling to the huge French army at the gates. Indeed, at times it seems that Manny regarded the enemy's presence as simply a form of entertainment to break the monotony of the siege, making daily sorties to destroy the French bridge being built over the river, and later to forage for supplies. On one of these sorties Manny and his men had found themselves cut off by a French foraging party six times the size of his own. In the ensuing fight, Manny's horse was killed underneath him, and his men were all cut down, but when a rescuing party from Aiguillon reached the skirmish and fought their way through to him, they found him carrying on the fight completely surrounded by Frenc
hmen, and 'fighting most valiantl
y'.