Henry V & the Conquest of France

A King Forged in War – The Southampton Plot – Henry Invades France – The Siege of Harfleur – The Battle of Agincourt – Chivalry Be Damned – The Western Schism –The Battle of the Seine – The Siege of Rouen – Chivalry Be Damned: Part 2 – The Murder of John the Fearless – Before the Gates of Paris – France Conquered: the Treaty of Troyes – The Bloody Flux, an Infant King, & a Welsh Courier

Henry V was 26 years old when he succeeded his father on 9 April 1413. Henry V has been immortalized in three of Shakespeare’s histories as “a paragon of English spirit and chivalry” (though his actions during the Siege of Rouen hint at a different story). Henry’s fame comes from what he accomplished: he led two successful invasions of France, secured the French throne for England, and made England the strongest nation in Europe. When he took the throne, his mind was already bent towards, and conditioned for, war. He had trained under the fiery Harry Hotspur in the early years of the Welsh revolts, and after fighting against his tutor at the Battle of Shrewsbury (where he took an arrow to the face), he spearheaded his father’s subjection of rebellious Wales. He was trained in war, and particularly adept at medieval sieges, and his greatest ambition was to carry that prowess across the Channel and restore England to the glory of bygone days. 

Upon taking the throne, Henry faced three principal challenges: he needed to restore domestic peace, heal the “Western Schism” in the Catholic Church, and lead England on its recovery of European prestige. Moving to restore peace to a clique-ridden England, Henry had Richard II honorably reinterred at Westminster Abbey, brought Edmund Mortimer into his favor, and restored lands and titles to those families who had lost them during the reign of Richard II. Domestic peace was threatened by a failed Lollard uprising in January 1414; Lollards (followers of John Wycliffe, a forerunner to the 16th century Protestant Reformation) under the leadership of Henry’s old friend John Oldcastle rebelled against the government. Their rebellion itself wasn’t surprising, since they had endured religious suppression since the days of Richard II. Their uprising came to nothing, however, and the rebellion’s collapse marked the end of the Lollards’ blatant political influence. A second rebellion, called the “Southampton Plot,” took place in July 1415 when a cabal developed to overthrow Henry and place Richard II’s heir, Edmund Mortimer, on the throne. Henry’s agents sniffed out the plot, and Henry had Lord Scrope and Richard of York, the Earl of Cambridge, executed for their participation in the plot. In order to bring about Catholic unity during the Western Schism, Henry made overtures to Sigismund, the Holy Roman Empire. Their machinations would culminate in the Council of Constance and the eventual healing of the papal schism. Henry’s main focus after bringing peace to England, however, wasn’t papal unity but a strengthened England. He set his sights on France and resolved to earn a name of much renown. In this he would succeed. 

Henry had a number of reasons for reinitiating war with France. First, it would strengthen popular support for his rule; people love war, and if he were successful, his reign wouldn’t be so fraught with subterfuge and revolt. Second, a successful war would bring loads of money into England, not least of all Henry’s treasury. The acquisition of revenue-rich lands and money made by extortion or by ransoming captured French knights would bring in a pretty penny. Furthermore, a number of Norman lords had promised to gift their lands to Henry when they died; but if France possessed Normandy, those grants would be forfeit. France, as it stood, was in no shape to resist an English onslaught. The country’s nobility had been torn between two competing factions, the Armagnacs and Burgundians, and their rivalry weakened the French monarchy. Making matters worse for the French, their king, Charles VI, was prone to mental illness, and his son the Dauphin looked unpromising. Before launching an invasion of France, Henry needed a pretext for that invasion, and he used French support for the Welsh uprising during his father’s reign as an excuse. He revived the English claim to the French throne and began making demands of France: first he demanded they return Aquitaine to England in fulfillment of the 1360 Treaty of Calais; he then demanded a number of former Angevin territories, namely Normandy, Touraine, and Maine; and then, in a spirit of arrogance, he demanded French territories that the English had never possessed! On top of all this he demanded a 2-million-crown payment as well as Charles VI’s daughter Catherine as his bride. Henry likely never expected the French to agree to these demands, but that may have been the point; Henry salivated at the chance to invade France, and if his demands were too steep, Charles wouldn’t foil his ambitions by agreeing to his terms. As he made these demands, Henry began preparing for the coming invasion: he sought friendship with John the Fearless, the Duke of Burgundy, leader of the Burgundian faction; his navy patrolled the Channel in an effort to deprive France of her maritime trade; he gathered funds for his army via large-scale borrowing and parliamentary taxation; and he aroused the national spirit of patriotism so that the nobles and populace would stand behind the forthcoming invasion. 

The Siege of Harfleur

The invasion would commence at the tail end of summer 1415. Henry’s aim was to bring France to her knees by systematically reducing French strongholds. These captured strongholds would contain permanent English garrisons who could bring the surrounding countryside into submission. Once territory was seized, tax collectors would follow on the heels of the army, extorting the French populace so that the conquered would, ironically, pay for the English victories against them. Henry’s invasion force of around 12,000 men landed in northern France on 13 August 1415, and by the 18th they had laid siege to the port city of Harfleur. A French relief convoy carrying guns, powder, arrows, and crossbows was seized by the English besiegers, and then Henry commenced his bombardment of the city’s walls. Twelve cannons unleashed hell upon the stonework, and Henry readied his men for an assault on the walls; but before the assault could commence, the French commander inside the city promised that he would surrender the city if no help came by the 23rd of September. Henry agreed to the terms, and he and his men bunkered down outside the walls. No help came, and the French garrison surrendered on September 22nd. The captured French knights were released on parole so that they could gather their ransoms, and those townsfolk who refused to swear allegiance to Henry were exiled. The capture of Harfleur was a victory, but nearly a third of Henry’s men had died of dysentery during the month-long siege. Since winter was approaching, Henry knew he would need to solidify his gains and find a place to weather the winter. He decided to move most of his army (around 8500 men) to English-held Calais, from which they could be reinforced and resupplied before the 1416 campaign began. The rest of his army would remain in the smaller port of Harfleur, keeping it under wraps until they, in turn, could be reinforced out of Calais next spring.

On October 8th Henry led his Calais-bound troops out of Harfleur and began the long march through hostile lands towards English-held territory. They weren’t alone: a French army called up by Charles VI during the siege of Harfleur had arrived, and instead of investing Harfleur, they decided to shadow the English march. The French commander, Charles d’Albret, the Constable of France, determined to outmaneuver the English force—which was wildly outnumbered by the French—and destroy them in the French countryside; then he could turn the weight of his army against the ragged English garrison at Harfleur. With this aim, d’Albret mirrored the English as they marched along the River Somme, and it wasn’t long before the English were trapped and outnumbered. They would have no choice but to turn and fight. The night before battle, Henry ordered his men to be silent so as to prevent enemy raids from sniffing them out. Anyone who broke silence, he swore, would have an ear cut off. The next morning, October 25th and the Feast of St. Crispin, he gave a speech before his assembled forces, defending the justness of their cause and bolstering their morale by reminding them of previous glories at Crecy and Poitiers. Some French sources tell us that Henry informed his archers that if they were captured by the French, their captors would cut two fingers off their right hands so that they could never again fire a bow; whether this is apocryphal or historical is unknown, since most captured archers would be outright killed since they were of low means couldn’t fetch a ransom. Shakespeare, in his play Henry V, puts words in Henry’s mouth that have traveled down the ages: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; for he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother…” 

the longbowmen behind their palings

Henry arranged his 1500 men-at-arms and 7000 longbowmen across a 750-yard stretch of a narrow pass between the woods of Tramecourt and Azincourt. He divided his men into three divisions: the vanguard was under the command of the Duke of York, the main body was led by the king himself, and the rearguard fell under Lord Camoys. Sir Thomas Erpingham marshaled the longbowmen. The men-at-arms and knights in plate and mail were stacked shoulder-to-shoulder four deep in the center of the line, perhaps with some archers positioned before them with orders to fall back when the French approached. English and Welsh archers, positioned on the flanks, drove wooden palings (or stakes) into the ground so as to force enemy cavalry to veer off. The opposing French forces greatly outnumbered those of Henry: one chronicler puts French numbers at 8000 men-at-arms, 4000 archers, 1500 crossbowmen, and two wings of cavalry numbering 600 and 800 respectively. Counting the feudally-raised peasantry in the wake of the professional soldiers, the French likely numbered anywhere between 30-50,000. The commander of the force, the Constable d’Albret, divided his army into three lines (or “battles”). D’Albret would command the first line of men-at-arms, with attached cavalry wings leading the charge. The second line fell to the Dukes of Bar and Alencon and the Count of Nevers; the third was put under the command of the Counts of Dammartin and Fauconberg. The inexperienced knights and men-at-arms saw the English, especially the longbowmen, as inferior. They burned in their hearts to throw their weight against their outnumbered opponent, to avenge the loss of Harfleur and to put the marauding English in their place. They also thought of the ransoms they could bag if they captured Henry and his entourage. They begged to be put in the vanguard of the coming battle despite the vehement warnings of the more seasoned soldiers who knew just how lethal English archers could be.

a rain of steel

The two sides stared across the open land between the two forests for several hours. The Constable was waiting for more contingents of his army to catch up, and Henry could do nothing but wait for the inevitable. His men were running low on food, exhausted from marching 260 miles from Harfleur, and to make matters worse, dysentery was making its rounds. Soldiers dressed in plate and mail defecated in their armor and sweated under the autumn sun, miserable and half hoping to die just to be put out of their misery. The Constable, giving in to the eagerness of his professional troops, decided to initiate the battle before reinforcements could join. The French cavalry charged towards the longbowmen behind their palings, determined to knock them out of the game so that the French men-at-arms, outnumbering their English counterparts at least six-to-one, could tear through the English swordsmen like a scythe through wheat. But the longbowmen stood firm, and their arrows did their work. They let loose volley after volley. French horses tumbled, riddled with arrows, throwing knights this way and that. Fallen knights were stampeded by the horsemen galloping behind. The shrieks of dying horses and the moans of knights crushed beneath their armor filled the air. Dying horses and knights struggling in the mud littered the field. The cavalry charge faltered before it could reach the hedge of stakes, and the horsemen turned and retreated, charging back across the field spiked with arrows. Knights who had been thrown from their horses and who had somehow survived the charge now had to face the panicked charge back towards their own lines. More men were stampeded in the retreat, the arrows continued to fall, and the horses’ hooves churned up the muddied battlefield. The panicked horses cut through the French infantry who had been coming up behind them. The infantry managed to wither the stampeding horses and continued their steady march towards the English men-at-arms readying themselves to defend every inch of ground. And the arrows kept falling.

The thick mud, churned like butter, would prove fatal t the advaning French soldiers. A witness to the event, a French monk of St. Denis, records that the men-at-arms advanced under “a terrifying hail of arrow shot,” and as they advanced through this rain of steel they had to close their visors and lower their heads not only to protect themselves from arrows but also to keep their eyes on their feet (it made it easier to dodge fallen horses and stricken knights). Mud clung to their armor, which already weighed about 50 pounds, slowing them to a trot. Those who made it to the English knights and men-at-arms managed to push the enemy a few steps back, but the longbowmen on the wings fired point-blank into the flanks of the French. The French men-at-arms were so exhausted and encumbered by mud and armor that if they slipped and fell in the mud, it would be nigh impossible to get up; those who didn’t drown in the mud seeping into their helmets were easy prey for the enemy, especially the lightly-padded and quick-footed longbowmen who could rush forward and thrust their “mercy knives” through the downed enemy’s visors. 

the Agincourt bottleneck

Struggling both to see and breathe in closed helmets, and surrounded by the dead and almost dead, French morale faltered. The next French line pushed through the muddied field of blood, but because of the narrow terrain, the reinforcements only pressed against the ranks of those already engaged; the French troops were squeezed like an accordion absent any hope of inflating again. The longbowmen fired into the cramped French soldiers, each arrow likely finding a mark. So packed were the French that some soldiers suffocated in their own armor before even getting close to the enemy. When King Henry heard that his youngest brother had been wounded in the groin, he and his household guard surged forward. He stood watch over his brother in the first rank of fighting until he could be dragged to safety. Henry, ever the warrior, relished the moment to be back in the thick of it. At one point he received an axe blow to the head, which knocked off a piece of the crown affixed to his helmet. He handled himself well in the melee, but as the day was wearing on, he had to return to commanding his army. 

The fighting lasted three hours, at which point the French lost their stomach for the carnage and retreated back to the main French ranks. Leaders of both the first and second French lines were killed or captured, and the English Gesta Henrici describes three heaps of the slain lying around English standards. The French had been unable to penetrate the English lines despite their numerical superiority; the archers (and the muddy terrain) had devastated their numbers in turn. The only French success had been a raid on the lightly defended English baggage train, during which they stole off with a number of Henry’s treasures, including one of his crowns. Though the act has been credited to the French cavalry rear guard, some historians speculate that it may have been done by opportunistic brigands who had been shadowing Henry’s army. The raid happened either at the beginning of the battle or in its aftermath; chroniclers differ in the telling. After the battle ended, Henry looked across the field of dead to the French position. It seemed to him that they were regrouping and planning another attack. Henry worried that his prisoners, numbering into the thousands and actually outnumbering their captors, would use a renewed French assault as an opportunity to seize weapons and scatter the exhausted and dysentery-ridden army. Fearing all would be lost in such a scenario, he ordered all but the wealthiest and most high-ranking of their captives to be executed. The English knights were appalled, though whether their disgust was born from a sense of chivalry (Henry was, quite plainly, violating the rules of war) or from their consideration that dead prisoners don’t fetch good ransoms, is unknown. Henry threatened to hang anyone who disobeyed, and the English went about the grisly work. Only the most profitable captives, such as the Duke o Orleans, survived, and the grisly and rote execution of their brethren cowed any rebellious sympathies. Following the massacre the French retreated; though it’s likely they did so because they knew they were beaten, it’s also possible that any remaining morale faltered at the sight and sounds of their brothers-in-arms being executed en masse. It was as if Henry was saying, “This is the fate which awaits you,” and the French believed it.

the aftermath of Agincourt

French sources tell us between 4,000 and 10,000 French died, whereas the English lost only 1600. English sources report 1500-11,000 French dead but number English deaths at no more than 100. The lowest casualty ratio has France losing six times more men than England. Edward of Norwich, the 2nd Duke of York and grandson of Edward III, died during the fight. France suffered far grimmer noble casualties: she lost three dukes, eight counts, a viscount, and an archbishop, along with her Constable, Admiral, and Master of the Crossbowmen. The bailiffs of nine major northern France towns were killed, many along with their sons. One historian tells us that the battle “cut a great swath through the natural leaders of French society in Artois, Ponthieu, Normandy, [and] Picardy.” The Armagnacs, who stood solidly with the French king, suffered depleted ranks after the Battle of Agincourt, and the terrified and outraged people of France blamed the Armagnacs for a defeat on par with Crecy and Poitiers. The Burgundians seized the opportunity presented by a foe weakened in both leadership and popularity, and within ten days of the battle, their leader, John the Fearless, had mustered their armies and marched on Paris. Meanwhile Henry managed to bring his beleaguered (albeit victorious) army safely to Calais. He returned to England in mid-November and received a triumph in London. Englishmen and foreigners outside France saw Henry as a conquering hero. His victory at Agincourt established the legitimacy of the Lancastrian line in England and won him foreign support for further campaigns into France. His soaring reputation earned him a visit from the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund and, eventually, a footnote in the history of the Church. Sigismund worked to detach Geneva from her naval alliance with France, and he and Henry worked together to end the Western Schism. The Schism began during the reign of Edward II when three men simultaneously claimed to be the true pope; they were driven by politics rather than religion, and Christendom suffered. Henry and Sigismund worked together, and the Council of Constance (1414-1418) ended the Schism by deposing or accepting the resignation of the factious papal claimants and electing Pope Martin V. 

By late spring of 1416, the French had besieged English-held Harfleur by both land and sea. The English garrison’s commander pleaded Henry for help: their supplies were cut off, their soldiers were suffering, and they wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer. Henry was engaged with Sigismund, trying to win his support, so he delegated the task of relieving Harfleur to the Duke of Bedford. Bedford got to work, spending the early summer accumulating ships and seamen to board them. On 14 August the relief force set sail and by nightfall had reached the Seine Estuary outside Harfleur. Sunrise revealed a French fleet of 150 ships anchored midstream in front of Harfleur. The French outnumbered the English, and they had eight Genoese cataracts. The Genoese sailors (and their ships) were the finest in Europe, and the higher decks of the cataracts enabled the French to rain arrows and bolts down on any English ships that got too close. Despite these odds, Bedford had hope: the French fleet was arranged in an irregular formation, and the lighter English vessels could navigate the estuary’s sandbars, unlike the cataracts. Despite some misgivings he initiated battle, and the Battle of the Seine lasted seven hours. Bedford was triumphant: the French fleet was scattered, Harfleur’s port was now open to resupply and reinforcements, and the English had captured three of the Genoese cataracts and ran a fourth aground. English casualties numbered twenty ships with their crews lost. Bedford ordered half the English victors to relieve the starving Harfleur garrison, and the rest conveyed a wounded Bedford back to England. Word of the victory spread throughout England, and it reached Henry the same day that he and Sigismund rode together to the Canterbury Cathedral to join hands in an alliance and hear Te Deum sung. It was truly a great day: not only had Harfleur been relieved, but the Battle of the Seine undid the devastation of the late Battle of La Rochelle and made England master of the Channel once again. 

France after Henry V's conquest

Henry invaded France again in 1417, capturing Caen and Normandy. With these territories captured, Rouen, the heartbeat of northern France, was cut off from Paris. Henry besieged the city, which fell after a six month siege in January 1419. Though Shakespeare has praised Henry’s chivalry, his conduct at Rouen speak otherwise: when 12,000 French civilians were exiled from the city so as to conserve supplies for the French garrison and aristocracy, Henry refused to let the civilians pass through his lines. All 12,000 were pinned between the besiegers and the besieged, stretched throughout No Man’s Land and left to starve. By August 1419 Henry’s army was encamped outside the walls of Paris. In a stroke of luck John the Fearless, leader of the Burgundian faction in France, was murdered by supporters of his rival, the Dauphin of France; his successor, Duke Philip, made overtures to the English, and Henry and Duke Philip joined hands in the so-called Burgundian Alliance. What better way for the Burgundians to get vengeance on the Dauphin than to make friendship with his archenemy? Charles VI, now at the mercy of not only the English but also a vast swathe of France’s fractured nobility, didn’t need a seer to tell him the future: he sued for peace. The resultant Treaty of Troyes made  Henry’s reputation beyond even that of Edward III: whereas the former king had just captured, Henry had conquered. The treaty marked the height of English power in France, for it named Henry as regent of France for the remainder of Charles VI’s life and rendered the Dauphin disinherited. At the death of the French king, the throne would pass to Henry or his first male offspring. Henry married Charles’ daughter, Catherine of Valois, and the two would soon have a son, the future Henry VI, who would be heir to the French throne after the death of his father. The treaty was signed on May 21st 1420 and all England rejoiced. They had finally conquered their archenemy, and now England, rather than France, was preeminent in Europe. 

Not all of France welcomed the terms of Troyes, and the disinherited Dauphin led a spirited resistance. Following his marriage and bedding of the French king’s daughter, Henry returned to France to deal with the stubborn Dauphin and his supporters. From June to July 1420, Henry’s army besieged and captured Montereau Castle, one of the Dauphin’s premier strongholds, and from July to November he besieged Melun. As the next two years passed, more and more Dauphin strongholds succumbed to Henry’s forces. In May 1422 Henry won his last victory at the Siege of Maeux, where he contracted dysentery. He died aged 34 years on 31 August 1422 at the chateau of Vincennes. He was succeeded by his nine-month-old son with Catherine of Valois, Henry VI. The very next month Charles VI died, and Henry VI became the king of not only England but also France. The widowed Catherine secretly married (or had an affair with) a Welsh courtier, Owen Tudor, and she would be the grandmother of a boy named Henry Tudor, who would become one of the most widely-known kings of England, putting a screeching halt on the Wars of the Roses and inaugurating the infamous Tudor Dynasty. That day would be long in coming, but its seeds would be generated with an infant king who would succumb to madness, lose France, and see the kick-off of one of England’s most profound and devastating periods of revolution.