Descent into Madness: the Early Reign of Henry VI

A Monkish King – John of Bedford vs. the Dauphin of France – The Battle of Cravant – The Battle of La Brossiniere – The Battle of Verneuil – The Height of English Power in France – Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans – Orleans & Patay – Charles VII Crowned at Rheims – The Burning of a Witch – The Burgundian Alliance Collapses – A Divided Country – The Death of Suffolk – The Battle of Formigny – Cade’s Rebellion – The Battle of Castillon – The End of the Hundred Years’ War – A King Gone Mad – “Rise, Richard of York!”

Nine-month-old son of Henry V ascended the throne of England in 1422, and when his maternal grandfather King Charles VI of France died a month later, he became King of France as well. Because he was an infant, the English government fell on the shoulders of his uncles John, Duke of Bedford, and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. These brothers of the late king were tasked with the governance of the realm, each to his own sphere: Duke Gloucester would be Regent in England, and Duke Bedford would carry on the war with France. Though Henry V had conquered not only Paris but the French throne, the disinherited Dauphin Charles led a fierce resistance. Central France remained in the hands of those who were distant from the battlefields and secure in their loyalty to a French France, and Bedford’s main task was to subdue those hostile territories and bring the Dauphin to heel. As the infant king grew into a boy, the war in France soured, and the Dauphin began to regain ground. By the time Henry was able to take the reigns of government, he leaned towards peace rather than war with France, and his cabinet managed to find peace but at the cost of all occupied French territories minus Calais and the Channel Islands. The pinnacle of English greatness in France came to a screeching and final halt with the reign of the conqueror’s fragile son. This loss of English power and prestige, coupled with the loss of revenues from conquered French lands and thousands of career soldiers suddenly unemployed, wouldn’t make him popular. Many Englishmen would be itching for a new king, a better king, a king who would be like the famous kings of centuries past—and they would be willing to practice violence to achieve it. 

The English hoped that Henry V’s son would be a man after his father’s heart, but in many ways he was the negative image of his father, unconcerned with warfare and focused on piety. He cared for only one thing, his devotion to God, and this rendered his reign impotent. As the Bishop of St. Albans from 1452-1465 tells us, “Henry was his mother’s stupid offspring, not his father’s, a son greatly degenerated from his father, who did not cultivate the art of war… [He was] a mild spoken, pious king, but half-witted in affairs of state.” A modern historian echoes this medieval sentiment, writing that Henry VI “displayed qualities that would have done credit to a monk, but not to a Medieval King. He was gentle, naïve, chaste, prudish and pious, and constantly engaged in meditation and prayer.” He didn’t just act like a monk; he dressed like one, too. It was his custom to wear a long and solemn gown with a rolled hood, over which he wore a black coat that reached below his knees. He wore simple black shoes or boots, deigning not to wear any shoes with pointed toes (which was the secular style at the time). When custom dictated he wear his crown, he atoned for the act by donning an uncomfortable, scratchy, and itching hair shirt beneath his clothes. He attended worship two to three times a day and complained that the duties of governing interrupted him from his devotions. His court was far more liberal than he liked, and he distanced himself from women due to his harsh views on sex and nudity. When some bare-breasted dancers began a show for the king, he averted his eyes and fled into his chamber, muttering, “Shame, shame…” He encouraged his younger visitors to pursue virtue and eschew evil, and he spent his leisure time reading the scriptures and old histories. When he and his court entered the sanctuary, he ordered his courtiers to enter such sacred space absent swords or spears; and then he ordered that they be silent rather than engaging in conversation with those around them. Church services, which brought the king’s court all into one place, provided a window of opportunity for political maneuvering—but mixing Secular and Sacred was unthinkable to the king. He encouraged his young visitors to pursue virtue and eschew evil, and he took pride in founding two colleges devoted to higher learning: Eton College, which gave free education to seventy up-and-coming scholars, was founded in 1440, and the very next year King’s College at Cambridge opened its doors to a handful of poor scholars (it turned out to be pretty popular). 

His generosity showed itself at his table: he and his court ate small portions and insisted leftovers be given to the poor. These overtures to the less fortunate were made repugnant by Henry’s giving spirit run wild, for his unshackled generosity with both the royal treasury and English justice meant higher taxes on the poor and a dreadful fear that justice in everyday courts might not be served.  In the first instance his unrelenting remissions of fines and penalties squeezed the exchequer, for much of royal revenue (then as today) relied on monetary payments from those convicted by the state. In the second instance, Henry made it a point to spare the lives of not just criminals but also traitors, and in his “forgiving spirit” run amuck, he even pardoned nobles who traitorously—and treasonously—conspired against him. Instead of nipping rebellious buds at the root, he allowed a treasonous spirit to settle and burn in the hearts of those who had a better pedigree to the throne. He detested bloodshed in all its forms, and on a road outside St. Albans he had a rude awakening to England’s barbaric punishments and practices. The disemboweling of criminals was a much-loved English past-time, bringing whole neighborhoods and communities together, but Henry would have none of it. He insisted that executions be more humane, not to mention seemly, and he loathed how often the bodies of criminals were dishonored. It was on the road outside St. Albans that he saw a quarter of a man who had been impaled for treason. Once executed, the criminal’s body had been sawed apart and pieces sent throughout the troubled areas, a warning to anyone who would find some sort of inspiration in the traitor’s martyrdom. Henry averted his eyes at the sight, shouting, “Take it away! Take it away! I will have no man so cruelly treated for my account!” How could people rest easy when not only their taxes but also government-sponsored injustice were on the rise? 

Henry VI’s impotence at government led to a tense and often fractured state, the perfect breeding ground not just for treason but for an unrestrained civil war. Into this volatile mixture came one of the most headstrong and ruthless women of the late medieval age: Margaret of Anjou. Had Henry been less pious and more manly, perhaps civil war could’ve been avoided; when his domineering wife began manipulating the government (she was French, did we mention that?), civil war crept closer. All hope of diplomatic resolutions were lost when the heirless king went bat-shit crazy, opening the door for the man who would swing the hammer blow on a nation ready to implode… But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. 

Years before it became apparent that Henry VI would not be like his father, as people hoped, the infant’s king’s uncle John, Duke of Bedford, the Regent of France, carried on Henry V’s legacy and chewed away at the Dauphin’s insurrection. Bedford’s directives came straight from the late king, for whom keeping the throne and finishing the subjection of the Dauphin and his Armagnac supporters was a paramount concern. Bedford was royally tasked with forcing all of France to recognize the recent Treaty of Troyes and, to this effect, the Burgundian Alliance was to be preserved by any means necessary. Losing the support of the Burgundians would leave the English garrisons scattered across hostile territory. Furthermore, the most high-ranking prisoners from the war (notably the Duke of Orleans) were to remain in chains until the infant king came of age, and no treaty could be made with the Dauphin that didn’t establish Normandy forevermore as an English possession. 

The war in central France was a toss-up the year after the conquering king died: the English were victorious at the Battle of Cravant on the Yonne River, but the French carried the day at the Battle of La Brossiniere. On the eve of the Battle of Cravant (fought on 31 July 1423), the French and English forces eyed each other across the waist-deep water of the Yonne River. The Dauphin’s French army, under the command of Sir John Stewart, the Earl of Buchan, and supplemented with a large contingent of Scottish allies, numbered double the Earl of Salisbury’s army and their Burgundian allies. The Scottish archers opened fire on the English across the river, and Salisbury replied with arrows from 1000 longbowmen, Burgundian crossbowmen, and withering fire from forty veuglaires (light artillery pieces). The hail of arrows and artillery rendered the French formations disordered, and Salisbury, a veteran of Harfleur and Agincourt, seized the opportunity and led an assault across the river, taking his men-at-arms through the waist-deep water as longbowmen provided covering fire. Another English force crossed a nearby narrow bridge and divided the Dauphin’s army. The French fell back, but the Scottish allies held their ground—and on that ground they died. 3000 Scottish soldiers died at the bridgehead and along the riverbank, and 2000 prisoners were taken, including the French leaders; Salisbury’s forces only lost around 1600 men. 

England’s victory at Cravant was countered by France’s victory at the Battle of La Brossiniere (26 September 1423). In September the enigmatic John de la Pole of England led a chevauchee out of Normandy; his 2000 soldiers and 800 archers cut a swath through Maine and Anjou as they rooted out Dauphin supporters. His army became laden down by loot, which included a herd of 1200 cows and numerous hostages, before he turned back towards friendly territory in Normandy. A French army of around 6000 shadowed de la Pole, and they set a trap for the English at the chemin gravelais, an ancient road that connected Anjou and Normandy. When the trap was sprung, the English were not arrayed for battle but in marching order, guarding their baggage train burdened with loot. As the French ambushers revealed themselves, de la Pole’s men acted quickly: they drove palings into the ground to prevent against cavalry charges, and the infantry moved to the front as the convoy of wagons were dispatched to the rear. The French attacked the English in the flank, and the resulting hand-to-hand combat was a butchery against the English. Between 1200-1400 English soldiers were killed, and when the line of march broke, another two to three thousand were slain during the French pursuit. Only 120 of John de la Pole’s men escaped death or capture; de la Pole suffered the latter.

Fortune favored the English the next campaign season, and Bedford became a symbol of the late beloved king at the Battle of Verneuil (17 August 1424), popularly known as the “second Agincourt.” When Duke Bedford laid siege to the Dauphin stronghold of Ivry, a Franco-Scottish army marched to relieve the beleaguered fortress; but before they could arrive, Ivry surrendered to the Duke. The Franco-Scots decided to attack English strongholds on the Norman border, and their first target would be the lightly-garrisoned Verneuil. The town was recaptured by a simple ruse: a party of Scots, leading some of their fellow countrymen as prisoners, approached the town’s gates. They pretended to be English soldiers and claimed that Bedford had defeated the Franco-Scots in battle. Eager for news and trusting the disguised Scotsmen, the paltry garrison opened the gates—and the Scots made quick work of them. On 15 August Bedford received word of Verneuil’s capture, and he immediately set off to recapture the town. He neared Verneuil just two days later. The French wanted to abandon the town, but their Scottish allies convinced them to make a stand. The Franco-Scots deployed a mile north of the town on an open plain cut through by a road. The French arrayed themselves into a division on the left side of the road and would be supported by Milanese cavalry; the Scots were on the right and supported by Lombard cavalry. Though the Franco-Scottish army was under a single commander, the second-tiered leaders over the French and Scots respectively disavowed cooperation. This would be their downfall. 

Emerging from the woods, Bedford organized his men into two divisions to match the layout of the enemy. As was custom, men-at-arms were situated in the center with archers in the wings and out front. A strong reserve of 2000 archers guarded the baggage train. Bedford would command the division facing the French; the Earl of Salisbury, hero from the Battle of Cravant, would lead the fight against the Scots under the Earl of Buchan, whom he had bested at Cravant (Buchan had been wounded in the eye, captured, and then ransomed). The armies, assembled by dawn, stared each other down across the field, each wanting the other to attack. Bedford sent a herald to the Earl of Douglas, asking for terms of battle; Douglas replied that the Scots would neither give nor receive any quarter. At 4PM Bedford ordered his men to advance across the field. As they plodded forward, the Dauphin’s allied Milanese cavalry cut through the archers on Bedford’s right. Once Bedford’s troops were within arrow range, he ordered a halt and directed the archers to drive their palings into the ground; but because the ground had been baked under the summer sun, the archers wrestled to get the stakes implanted. The French opposite them, inspired by the struggling longbowmen and acting out-of-sync with the Scots on the opposite side of the road, charged forward. 

The Battle of Verneuil

The Scots didn’t follow, though the Lombard cavalry pushed through the archers on Bedford’s right. A number of the English panicked and fled before Bedford could reassert order (a Captain Young, leading half a thousand men, would later be found guilty of cowardice for retreating and would be drawn and quartered as punishment). Bedford’s men-at-arms charged into the fray against the oncoming French, at which point the Scots under Buchan advanced on the English division under Salisbury. The Lombard cavalry swept around the English forces and attacked the baggage train. The hottest part of the battle centered on the French and English men-at-arms; historian Desmund Seward notes the melee was “a hand-to-hand combat whose ferocity astounded even contemporaries.” A veteran of the battle reported how “the blood of the dead spread on the field and that of the wounded ran in great streams all over the earth.” For forty-five minutes Frenchmen and Englishmen “stabbed, hacked and cut each other down on the field of Verneuil without either side gaining any advantage in what is generally considered to be one of the most fiercely fought battles of the entire war.” Bedford wielded a two-handed pole-axe and cut down many Frenchmen; a veteran recounted how Bedford “reached no one whom he did not fell.” Seward reports that Bedford’s battle-axe “…smashed open an expensive armor like a modern tin can, the body underneath being crushed and mangled before even the blade sank in.” The French began to give ground, and then they broke, high-tailing it back towards Verneuil. Bedford’s men gave chase, and many French soldiers drowned in Verneuil’s moat as they tried to force their way through the narrow gates.

All the while Salisbury remained engaged with the Scots. Buchan fought like a dog, desperate to get vengeance on the earl who had bested him at Cravant. Bedford called his men off the pursuit of the routing French and directed them to support the melee against Buchan and Douglas. The reserve, which had fought against the Lombard cavalry when they raided the baggage train, were fired up and hurried to Salisbury’s aid, charging the unsupported Scottish right wing. Bedford’s winded and blood-soaked soldiers pushed against the Scottish right flank, and the Scots were virtually surrounded. They fought to the death, as the Earl of Douglas had prophesied. Any Scots attempting to surrender were cut down, and the Battle of Verneuil ended only when the very last Scottish soldier was slain. Bedford so decimated Scottish troops allied to the Dauphin that The Army of Scotland never again set foot in France (though disassociated Scots continued to fight with the Dauphin against their archenemy). 

It’s been estimated that the Franco-Scottish army suffered around 6500 casualties, 4000 of those being the Scots who were cut to pieces on the field. For her part England lost only around 1600, including “two men-at-arms and a very few archers.” So many Armagnac leaders were slain on the field that the Dauphins’ resistance was, for the time being at least, crippled. Bedford seized on his victory and carved a swath through the Dauphin’s fragile territory. It was under Bedford that English power in France reached its peak: English-controlled France stretched from the Channel inland to the Loire (with the exceptions of Orleans and Angers), and from Burgundy in the east to Brittany in the west. Bedford’s conquests were glorious, but they came with a price: the victory stretched not only England’s resources but also her armies. Wider swathes of territory were overseen by smaller garrisons, which decreased English control across the board. The Dauphin and his Armagnacs, despite the crippling blow at Verneuil, remained firm in their resistance, and as English control wavered, their ranks grew stronger. 

Joan of Arc

From his capital at Bourges, the Dauphin led an expedition across the Loire River. The English drove his forces back and systematically took the towns and fortresses along the Loire that had remained loyal to him. By 1428 they were laying siege to one of the Dauphin’s most loyal (and defensible) strongholds. Whoever possessed the city of Orleans commanded the Loire Valley; Bedford knew that if Orleans were captured, the Dauphin’s cause would be made all the more desperate. But an English Orleans was not to be. The tide turned against the English when a spirited peasant girl, claiming to be in cahoots with God, set her sights on relieving besieged Orleans. To this day Joan of Arc is regarded not only as the savior of the Valois Dynasty but also the savior of France, and in 1920 the Catholic Church made her a saint. This peasant girl heard heavenly voices ordering her to save France, and she persuaded a number of royal officials, and finally the Dauphin himself, of the authenticity of her divine mission. She was given command of an army, and in 1429 she marched to Orleans. The city was holding out against the English besiegers. Orleans had more cannon than the English, and French artillery killed Salisbury, who had been directing the siege. The English had built a ring of small fortresses around the city, concentrated in areas where the French could ferry supplies behind the walls. Joan of Arc raised the morale of the French troops and led an attack on these English redoubts, forcing them lift the siege. Inspired by the “Maid of Orleans,” the French took numerous English strong points on the Loire and broke through English archers at the Battle of Patay in June 1429. Though Joan of Arc is often credited as the architect of the victory of Patay, the fact is that she and her forces were hardly present at the battle: as the battle opened, the French vanguard burned through the English longbowmen and Joan and her troops hurried to catch up. By the time they reached the field of battle, a French victory had been grasped. 

These strings of victories helped Joan convince the Dauphin to march to Rheims to be crowned Charles VII. Though a number of cities opened to the Dauphin on his parade towards the traditional coronation site for French kings, Paris remained in English hands and was as well guarded against the French as Orleans had been against the English. The Dauphin’s coronation as King Charles VII of France won him broad support as the embodiment of French royal sentiment, and patriotic fervor burned in the hearts of those who had toiled under English rule. Joan of Arc’s career came to a swift end at the siege of Compiegne, during which a number of Burgundians allied to the English captured her and sent her in chains to the English. Joan was tried by an ecclesiastical court headed by the pro-English Pierre Cauchon, and she was executed as a witch on 30 May 1431. Though the English earned themselves a bad reputation by executing her, they really had no other choice. If they didn’t find her guilty of witchcraft, they would be giving credibility to her claim that God was fighting on the side of the French. English losses at Orleans, Patay, and other recent skirmishes soured the stomachs of the English people, and it wouldn’t help matters for them to fear they were in God’s crosshairs. 

English power in France suffered another blow in 1435: John, Duke of Bedford, died. He had been the only thing keeping the fragile Burgundian Alliance afloat, and his passing marked the alliance’s death-knell. Bedford’s younger brother, the Duke of Gloucester, who had been made Regent of England, was unpopular with the Burgundians. At Bedford’s death, Philip, the Duke of Burgundy, excused himself from the alliance and signed the Treaty of Arras, restoring Paris to Charles VII of France. When King Henry of England, now about a decade and a half old, heard the news, he burst into tears. He could read the times as well as anyone: England’s days of dominance in France were coming to an untimely and inglorious end. His father’s glories were unraveling under his watch, and there was nothing he could do to stem the tide. 

For the next decade and a half, the tide of war turned steep against the English, and discontent blossomed at home. Disgruntlement on the home front would be marshaled behind the Duke of Gloucester (Regent of England during Henry’s minority) and Richard, Duke of York. When Henry assumed royal power in 1442, it wasn’t surprising that he sided with the party opposing continued war in France. Henry’s henchmen—Cardinal Beaufort and the Duke of Suffolk—wanted diplomatic peace at all costs; the cost of the war was skyrocketing, and the French armies had become something out of English children’s nightmares. England’s dominance on the battlefield was eclipsed by a professional French soldiery armed with the finest gunpowder artillery (and tactics) the west had ever seen. English possessions in France weren’t being nibbled away; they were straight up dissolving as, time and again, the English, absent the brilliance of Bedford, were bested on the battlefield. Beaufort and Suffolk hoped to hammer out a peace with the French that would enable them to save Aquitaine and Normandy. If war dragged on, they feared, England’s men would wither under the French onslaught, and everything would be lost; better to secure a future in France now, no matter the cost. The two warring nations made a series of truces as they tried to stay on top of the war. Charles VII used these truces as “breathing room” to reorganize his armies and centralize his government, but Henry and his supporters sought to fashion a number of permanent treaties. France was focused on taking back her rightful land by force; England hoped to capitalize on the past and hoped the French wouldn’t notice. 

Margaret of Anjou

Hoping to cool tempers between the two countries, Beaufort and Suffolk in 1445 managed to hammer out a marriage between Henry VI and the French-born Margaret of Anjou. Margaret was a niece-by-marriage to Charles VII and the daughter of Rene, the Duke of Anjou and King of Jerusalem (the latter if in name only). Much of English society hated the marriage (for marriages, if anything, were political statements). Henry was cozying up to the enemy, giving away Maine and Anjou in the process, and in the eyes of many it rendered the last generations of war a waste. Remember not only that France was England’s most longtime and infamous enemy; remember, too, that the wars with France had been going on since the days of Edward III. It’d been going on for a hundred years (the longest war for the United States is the ongoing War in Afghanistan, which is in its sixteenth year; the war with France lasted six times longer). Though the marriage inflamed widespread unhappiness, Beaufort and Suffolk thought it was the most prudent course for England’s survival in France. The 16-year-old Margaret entered the royal house meekly—but she soon became a dragon. Stubborn, strong-willed, and defiant in the face of all who stood in her way, Margaret dominated her pious husband whose devotion to sacrament far outweighed any interest in ruling. With a savvy political mind and a good dose of ingenuity, she manipulated her husband and used him as a ladder for her own political ambitions.  

Spearheading discontent towards Henry’s cabinet and the spineless overtures being made to France lie the Duke of Gloucester and Richard, Duke of York, who stood next in line to the throne. Both Henry’s supporters and the opposition hit a milestone year in 1447 when their respective leaders, Gloucester and Beaufort, died. Beaufort had enjoyed the privileged ear of the king, and Suffolk filled the vacancy. Richard, Duke of York, became a cornerstone of the opposition movement. He waited for the right moment to strike, and for him 1449 was a golden year. The French king, embracing Fabian tactics like the legendary du Guesclin, seized town after town. Brittany fell to his armies, and Rouen—where Joan of Arc had been burned at the stake as a witch—came back under French rule. The year was bad across the Channel, too—at least for Suffolk. It came out that Suffolk had been secretly conniving with the enemy and helping them plan on invasion of England, and the end of the year saw the noose tightening around his neck. “Treason” was the talk of the town and in the taverns. In January 1450 Suffolk was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower. The Commons of Parliament impeached him, but it was Henry’s intervention that saved his neck (for a time). Suffolk’s punishment would be banishment for five years, but once his ship set sail for Calais, Suffolk would never again touch dry land (at least while alive). The ship was intercepted by the Nicholas of the Tower, Suffolk was seized, and he was forced to endure a hasty mock trial. The verdict was treason and the sentence death: they cut off his head at the gunwales, and his body later washed up on the beach near Dover. With Suffolk dead, the Duke of York rose to prominence before the people. 

The loss of Suffolk was just the beginning of Henry’s awful year: the war on the Continent continued to sour, and it was encroaching on England. The coastal regions of Kent and Sussex suffered French raiders, and Henry’s order to emplace warning beacons along the coastline convinced people that a French invasion was likely. In April news reached England of yet another disastrous defeat on the Continent: the French defeated the English at the Battle of Formigny, and the gates to Normandy opened to the French conquerors. The loss of Normandy made the people of England riotous. Henry and his cabinet were failing, and riots broke out across England. Anger and discontent found an outlet in a man named John (or Jack) Cade. Likely an Irishman by birth, Cade had fled England after murdering someone and wound up fighting against the French. He had returned to England and settled down in Kent, and like most people of his standing, he loathed the taxes that were increasingly being raised to pay for the humiliating clubbing they were receiving in France. The revelation that Henry’s leading cabinet member had been conniving with the French solidified suspicions that the king’s cabinet was treasonous against England. Henry, obsessed with his piety, had left the government in the hands of greedy, misguided men. The loss of Normandy was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. As societal emotions flared and riots broke out across the nation, Cade became the centerpiece of resolute unrest. When Suffolk’s headless body washed up on the shores of Kent, rumor spread that Henry was planning on punishing Kent for the abominable act. Cade wrote and distributed a manifesto entitled The Complaint of the Poor Commons of Kent that was affirmed not only by commoners but also by many lords and nobles. Cade presented fifteen complaints towards Henry’s government and five demands from said government. The first complaint centered on the situation the people of Kent feared most: reprisals for acts of which they were wholly innocent. Cade called for inquiries into corruption and the removal of corrupt high officials. He charged the king for refusing to impeach his favorites even though they were guilty of treason. Cade alleged that Henry’s cabinet was guilty of extorting the people, rigging elections, and manipulating the king to achieve their own ends. 

Cade had to go to London to present his case, and in May he and his followers set off for the capital city. He dispatched runners to the surrounding counties to raise aid and more manpower. By early June, Cade had assembled 5000 men at Blackheath, just twenty miles southeast of London. These men weren’t so much an army as they were a rabble, consisting mainly of peasants with little or no military experience. There were exceptions, of course: higher-ranking strata of society (artisans, a knight, eighteen squires, and two members of Commons, for starters) partook in the assembly. A number of soldiers fresh off the boats from France joined the fray, bringing their own grievances to bear against London. This rabble marched towards the capital, and reaching Southwark, just south of the Thames, they assembled at the southern part of London Bridge. Cade ordered the ropes of London Bridge to be severed so that the bridge couldn’t be raised against him. He strutted to the London Stone—a wedge of oolitic limestone that likely hailed back to Anglo-Saxon or even Roman times—and struck it with his sword, declaring himself Lord Mayor. He then proceeded to implement tribunals to judge (what the rebels perceived to be) the corrupt officials in the city. The Lord High Treasurer and William Crowmer were convicted of treason and beheaded; their heads were put on pikes and paraded through the city streets before being displayed on London Bridge. While parading, the rebels held the severed heads aloft in such a manner that it appeared they were kissing, a gross insult that carried much more weight then than it would today. 

The Battle of London Bridge

Cade’s presence in the city gave way to chaos as the rabble, despite orders to the contrary, began looting the city. The Londoners who had been sympathetic towards the mob turned against them as they were firmly lodged in their crosshairs. When Cade managed to lead his men back across London Bridge to their headquarters in Southwark, the people of London barricaded the route back into the city. The next day, July 8th, Cade’s rebels tried to push their way back into the city but were met by stiff resistance from the Londoners. The skirmish, called the Battle of London Bridge, lasted until eight the next morning when the exhausted and demoralized rebels hurried back into Southwark. One chronicler puts the death toll at forty Londoners and two hundred rebels killed. Henry hoped to put a stop to the madness by issuing pardons for the aggrieved rebels and instructing them to return home. Cade knew that those rebels whose anger hadn’t been satiated by blood now knew they were no match for London, and his rabble dispersed. Cade joined them but was caught a few days later after a skirmish with the future High Sheriff of Kent, Alexander Iden. Cade suffered mortal wounds in the skirmish and died en-route to London for trial. Cade’s Rebellion—England’s largest domestic uprising in the 15th century—gave witness to the atmosphere of the time and unknowingly prophesied an even more turbulent future with many more severed heads. 

Meanwhile France recaptured Caen, and the next year Bordeaux and Bayonne were transferred back to French hands. The final official blows of the last humiliating phase of the Hundred Years’ War came at the English defeat at the Battle of Castillon in 1453. The Hundred Years’ War, which began with such hope during the reign of Edward III more than a century earlier, came to a humiliating close. Of all of Edward III’s glories and, more poignantly for Henry VI, the glories of his father, all that remained in English hands was the port of Calais and the Channel Islands. Maine and Anjou and Brittany, Aquitaine and Normandy—all of it was gone. Henry’s sanity couldn’t bear the strain of the loss, and in the summer of 1453 he snapped: he developed a physical rash and a frenzied terror, and when it subsided he was left withdrawn, unable to speak or lift his head or even move a muscle in his body. His eyes glazed over, and he was ignorant of all that went on around him. He had to be carefully tended and fed. When his pregnant wife Margaret gave birth to their first son, Edward, at the end of the year, he gave his son a single nonchalant glance. He didn’t even recognize his wife. Royal physicians tried a host of remedies—drugs, baths, bleedings, and purgatives—but nothing worked. The king wouldn’t wash or dress on his own, and it didn’t escape anyone that his symptoms closely resembled those of his maternal grandfather, Charles VI, whose bouts of insanity had earned him the nickname “Charles The Mad.” 

Though historians are generally confident that Henry had inherited some sort of genetic propensity towards madness, his contemporaries could only suspect as much, for the science of genetics was not yet around. The French blamed Charles VI’s insanity from an incident where he suffered a number of sledgehammer blows to his helmet during a tournament, after which he became psychotic and deranged. In 1392 the French king’s hair and fingernails fell out, and he suffered bouts of fever and incoherence. At one point Charles leapt off his horse and killed four of his own bodyguards before he could be restrained; pinned to the ground, he was speechless as his eyes rolled side to side. For the next two days he was in a coma, and when he heard that he had killed four of his own men, he wept. His mental health continued to deteriorate, and when four of his men the next year were burned alive in their costumes during a freak accident at a ball, Charles succumbed to another plague of insanity. A surgeon drilled holes in his skull, hoping to heal him by removing pressure from his brain. After the surgery he made a slight recovery, but he relapsed again two years later. In 1397 he sensed his mind getting cloudy and, acquainted with the symptoms leading to relapse, insisted that his dagger be removed. He didn’t want anymore of his men losing their lives to his blind rage. A number of churchmen and university doctors, believing the king was suffering sorcery, put him through a gauntlet of exorcisms, during which Charles begged to die. His delusions worsened: he claimed that his name was George and denied being a king or having a wife and child; he ran room to room until collapsing from exhaustion; and at one point he was secluded in a dark and shuttered royal apartment, attacking any servants or doctors who dared enter. He smashed the furniture and urinated on his clothes, and in brief moments of clarity, when he beheld his condition, he was filled with shame not only for what he had become but also for the hell through which he was putting his daughters. He went through a period believing he was made of glass and that if people came too near, he would break; he demanded that iron rods be inserted into his clothing to prevent him from breaking. For months in 1405 he refused to change his clothes, bathe, or be shaved; he was infested with lice and covered with rashes. At one point the doctors hoped to startle some sense into him, and they staged a prank: a number of men blackened their faces and hid in the king’s room, and when he entered they all jumped out (presumably shouting “Boo!”). Somehow it worked, and the king agreed to be washed, shaved, and dressed. All was better—for a few weeks. These cycles continued until his death, and now they were showing up in his grandson, Henry VI of England. Henry’s court had reason to be concerned.

Henry VI and his incapacitating sickness

Historians generally believe that a connection exists between the two kings’ separate madness. One of the leading suspects is porphyria, a rare hereditary disease with painful symptoms that seem manifest in the lives of the two men: inflammation of the bowels, painful weaknesses in the limbs, and even the loss of feeling are all symptoms of the disease. Severe attacks can result in visual and auditory disturbances, delirium, and advanced senility. Other suspects include schizophrenia, typhus, or encephalitis. The latter can give rise to impulsive, aggressive behavior. But  no matter the cause of Henry’s illness, the kingdom needed a man behind the wheel during his episodes of madness, which could last months. The kingdom needed a Protector, and that position fell squarely on the shoulders of the Duke of York. With the birth of the Prince of Wales, York’s climb to the throne had become much steeper. If he could not seize the throne by direct succession, his best grasp at it would be in a political coup—and being named Protector was like a gift of gold thrown in his lap. For all his mischief, York never grasped the crown for which he fought; he died in battle in 1460. His son Edward took up his cause, and the Yorkists (as they are known) deposed Henry VI. Edward of York realized his father’s dream, but Henry’s supporters didn’t take their ousting coolly. They put up a spirited fight, but their deposed king became a captured king in 1465. The war between the disinherited Lancasters and the upstart Yorks continued unabated, and in 1470 Henry was again able to take the throne. This was but a blip in his fate, however, and the very next year he lost his throne (for the second time), was imprisoned, and executed. The kingdom, in the eyes of many, was now firmly held by a Pretender to the Throne; but Margaret of Anjou wouldn’t back down. Just because the kingdom wasn’t her husband’s didn’t mean that it wasn’t hers. 

Henry’s madness, and all that would come from it, doesn’t mark the end of his story; rather, it’s when his story steps into another. His madness and York’s ascendancy mark the end of the Era of the Hundred Years’ War and the genesis of a dynastic struggle that would decimate the English nobility. The Wars of the Roses began and ended with upstart Houses: the star-on-the-rise House of York challenged the incumbent House of Lancaster; the House of Lancaster fell, but the House of York’s victory was short-lived. The House of York went the way of its enemy under the swords of Henry Tudor, whose family’s dynasty would mark the end of the medieval era and the beginning of the modern world.