Desmond Seward - The Warrior King and the Invasion of France

The

Warrior
King

and the

Invasion of France

DESMOND SEWARD

PEGASUS BOOKS
NEW YORK LONDON

THE WARRIOR KING AND THE INVASION OF FRANCE

Pegasus Books LLC
80 Broad Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10004

Copyright 1988 by Desmond Seward

Preface to the New Edition copyright 2014 by Desmond Seward

First Pegasus Books hardcover edition November 2014

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ISBN: 978-1-60598-644-9
ISBN: 978-1-60598-725-5 (e-book)

Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

For Michael and Daphne Dormer

It was Mr Michael Dormer who first suggested that I write this book. I am most grateful to him.

I am indebted to Count and Countess Pierre de Montalembert, and Count Artus de Montalembert, for valuable information about memories of the Hundred Years War in Normandy and Maine and for permission to reproduce the photograph of their chteau of Lassaye. I owe special thanks to Susan, Viscountess Mountgarret for help with research, for reading the typescript, for much photography, and for driving me to many sites in France associated with Henry V and his campaigns. I am also indebted to Peter Drummond-Murray of Mastrick for reading the proofs.

In addition I would like to thank the staffs of the British Library and the London Library for help and guidance on innumerable occasions, and also the honorary librarians of Brookss, Mr Piers Dixon and Mr John Saumarez Smith.

I am the scourge of God

Henry V

I am an Englishman, and am thy foe

Thomas Hoccleve, The Regement of Princes

O n 19 October 1449 a cheering mob opened the gates of Rouen, the capital of Normandy, and Charles VII of France once disinherited dauphin, now King Charles the very victorious rode in to wild rejoicing. Rouen had been occupied by the English for thirty years. Within less than a year they would be driven out of Normandy altogether. It was the end not only of an English Normandy but of an Anglo-French dual monarchy. In particular it was the end of one mans dream. The man was Henry V, who left an unhappy legacy when he died in 1422, a legacy that is still with us.

No one would deny the uneasy relationship between the French and the Anglo-Saxons. The former tend to distrust anyone who speaks English. Among the earliest and not the least reasons why this ingrained suspicion developed was the behaviour of English troops in France during the second half of the Hundred Years War, a war revived by Henry. No doubt French troops behaved as badly but they were in France as Frenchmen, not as invaders who spoke a foreign tongue. The English had taken advantage of a civil war to conquer all north-western France. It was as if a French king had allied with the Yorkists during the Wars of the Roses, occupied south-eastern England, installed a French garrison at London and had himself declared heir to the throne, while at the same time turning Kent into a separate Anglo-French principality where he confiscated 500 estates and gave them to Frenchmen, besides settling 10,000 colonists at Dover. The humiliation and the atrocities would never have been forgotten. The French have long memories too.

Henry V is one of Englands heroes. The victor of Agincourt was idolized during his lifetime, his memory inspired one of Shakespeares most stirring (if scarcely greatest) plays, and the Victorians considered him a perfect Christian gentleman: He was religious, pure in life, temperate, liberal, careful and yet splendid, says Bishop Stubbs, merciful, truthful, and honourable, discreet in word, provident in counsel, prudent in judgement, modest in look, magnanimous in act, a true Englishman. In our own century Sir Winston Churchill could write of the gleaming King.

That brilliant historian of the medieval English, the late K. B. McFarlane, thought Henry the greatest man that ever ruled England. His achievements were remarkable. At home not only did he tame the Welsh, destroying Owain Glyn Dr, but he restored law and order to a hitherto strife-torn realm; across the Channel he conquered a third of France, married the French kings daughter and was recognized as heir and regent of France. So powerful is his spell that almost every English historian who studied him succumbs, bemused by his genius and dynamism, blind to any shortcomings. They attribute any criticism by French scholars to anglophobia.

Nevertheless his conquest of France was as much about loot as dynastic succession, accompanied by mass slaughter, arson and rape French plunder was on sale all over England. It was very like the Norman conquest of England in reverse although lasting a mere thirty years. Just as William the Bastard had done, he seized the lands of the great nobles, and of many lesser nobles too, giving them to his soldiers. For three decades English interlopers, often sporting French titles, lorded it over hundreds of French estates some great counties, others modest manors. They were, however, always in danger, dependent on English archers for survival. He not only evicted noblemen from castles but ordinary people from their homes. Countless Frenchmen of all classes emigrated from the territory conquered by him. When reproached with killing so many Christians in France, he answered, I am the scourge of God sent to punish the people of God for their sins.

The misery inflicted on the French by Henrys campaigns is indisputable. Any local historian in north-western France can point to a town, a chteau, an abbey or a church sacked by his men. Life in the countryside became a nightmare. When the English raided enemy territory they killed anything that moved, destroyed crops and food supplies and drove off livestock, in a calculated attempt to weaken their opponents by starving the civilian population. Occupied areas fared little better because of the ptis or protection racket operated by English garrisons; villages had to pay extortionate dues in food and wine as well as money, failure to deliver sometimes incurred executions and burnings.

Yet Henrys ambition was inspired by something more complicated than mere desire for conquest. It was a need to prove that he really was King of England. His father had usurped the throne and, as the Yorkists would demonstrate during the Wars of the Roses, there were others with a better right to it in law. If he could make good his great-grandfather Edward IIIs claim to France he would show in trial by battle that God confirmed his right to the English crown.

During the nineteenth century French patriotic historians reacted violently to the Hundred Years War, producing a portrait of Henry as distorted as the English icon. They saw fifteenth-century Anglo-Saxons as the first Bodies. English historians responded to this xenophobic outburst with equal chauvinism, together with a cool assumption of objectivity (although few writers can have taken less pains to hide their dislike of the French than the venerated Wylie and Waugh in their massive study of the kings reign). Even today English and French differ in their judgement. Harriss believes Henry had grasped that the French crown could only be securely held by one whom the French people accepted as King in the same measure as Englishmen did... given the years, energy and luck, he might have reshaped the development of both nations just, as in brief space, he had restored the fortunes of England.