Agincourt (38 page)

Despite its prestigious absentees, the list of the nobility in the French army on the eve of Agincourt reads like a roll-call of the chivalry of France. There were four royal dukes, Orléans, Alençon, Bourbon and Bar (the duke of Brabant would arrive the next morning), the counts of Vendôme, Eu, Richemont, Nevers, Vaudémont, Blammont, Salm, Grandpré, Roussy, Dammartin, Marle and Fauquembergue, and innumerable lords. All the great military officials of France were also there: Constable d’Albret and Marshal Boucicaut; both the admirals, Clignet de Brabant and Jacques de Châtillon; the master of the crossbowmen, David de Rambures; and the grand-master of the king’s household, Guichard Dauphin. Every
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from the northern provinces had come, each with his assembled host, together with all the militias, crossbowmen and gunners who could be spared from their towns.

It has sometimes been suggested that the French had too many men and that this was the cause of their defeat. This was not the greatest dilemma facing their strategists, but rather that so many of those men wanted to play a leading role in crushing the English. Which prince of the blood royal would willingly command the rearguard when he had the opportunity to win fame and glory in the vanguard? What is more, it is easy to understand why those who had been assigned a particularly honourable role in previous plans resented what might appear to be a demotion in the latest version. There were not just personal tensions between the princes, but political and territorial ones. Why should Arthur, count of Richemont, and his five hundred Bretons accept a role on the wing, for instance, when he was the younger brother of the duke of Brittany and sole representative of the duchy? Should he not have a place in the vanguard? And what of Philippe, count of Nevers, whom the first plan had relegated to the rearguard? The youngest brother of John the Fearless, had he not defied his sibling to be present and should this not be rewarded? Marshal Boucicaut had knighted him earlier that very evening—was he not to be allowed to win his spurs by taking his place in the front line? On the other hand, one can well imagine that dyed-in-the-wool Armagnacs, like Charles d’Albret, Guichard Dauphin and, of course, Charles d’Orléans himself, would not want to see a party of Bretons or Burgundians in pole positions. Might they not, at a crucial moment, desert to their English allies?

Although it is by no means absolutely clear what battle order was finally agreed—which in itself is an indication of the competing claims and resulting confusion—it seems that the basic plan was similar to that decided upon a few days earlier. Again there would be two main divisions, a vanguard and a main battle, composed of men-at-arms fighting on foot and flanked by men-at-arms on both wings. And once more there was to be a cavalry force entrusted with the specific task of riding down the English archers in the opening moments of the battle. The only major changes were that the bowmen, who had previously been deployed in front of the wings, were now placed behind them, effectively curtailing any role they might play in the battle. This time, too, there was to be a proper rearguard, which was to be mounted and was to include those men-at-arms judged to be less proficient horsemen than those chosen for the elite company, as well as the valets of the great lords fighting on foot in the main body of the army.
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After much argument and many expressions of bad feeling, with every leader of consequence insisting that it was his right to lead the vanguard, they came to a conclusion that was fair but foolish. They would all take their places in the front lines. The vanguard would consist of Constable d’Albret, Marshal Boucicaut and all the other royal officers (except Clignet de Brabant), the dukes of Orléans and Bourbon, the counts of Eu and Richemont (the latter winning his promotion from the infantry wing on the former plan), and Philippe d’Auxy, sire de Dampierre, who was the
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of Amiens. The command of the main battle was to belong to the dukes of Alençon and Bar, who were to be accompanied by the counts of Nevers, Marle, Vaudémont, Blammont, Salm, Grandpré and Roussy. The counts of Dammartin and Fauquembergue were to share the leadership of the rearguard, together with the sire de Laurois, captain of Ardres, who had brought the men from the borders of Boulogne to the battle. The unfortunate result of these arrangements was noted by Pierre Fenin, a chronicler from Artois who was writing in the 1430s: “all the princes were placed in the vanguard, leaving their own people without leaders.”
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There is some confusion in the chronicles as to the composition and function of the two wings at each end of the vanguard. Most are agreed that one wing (the herald of the duke of Berry says it was the left) was once more to be entrusted to the command of the count of Vendôme, whose company consisted of six hundred officers of the royal household. These included Charles d’Ivry, the grand-master of the waters and forests of France, who had been one of the ambassadors to England earlier in the summer, Guillaume Martel, sire de Bacqueville, the bearer of the oriflamme, Gui, sire de la Roche-Guyon, the dauphin’s chamberlain, “and all the chamberlains, esquires of the stables, buttery, pantry and other officers of the king.” If neither the king nor the dauphin was to be present, at least both men would be represented by their loyal servants. It is nowhere explicitly stated that Vendôme’s wing was mounted and the probability remains that it fought on foot, as originally planned.
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Greater confusion surrounds the other French wing. Berry herald tells us that it was also composed of six hundred men-at-arms and was again led by Arthur, count of Richemont, as in both previous battle plans. The monk of St Denis, on the other hand, attributes its command to Guichard Dauphin. Most sources place both men firmly in the vanguard, so it may be that this wing was at one of its extremities and absorbed into the larger force. In either case the company must have fought on foot.
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All the chronicles were agreed that there was also an elite force of between eight and twelve hundred mounted men-at-arms, who had been specifically chosen from among the best horsemen in the army to ride down and destroy the enemy archers. There is also unanimity in ascribing its leadership to Clignet de Brabant, who had been the first choice of the royal council at Rouen for that role. His second-in-command this time was not the seneschal of Hainault, but Louis de Bourdon, who had been promoted from his previous position leading the attack on the English baggage train. The two men were both experienced Armagnac captains, had often worked together and, in doing so, had acquired a certain notoriety: in 1413 they were accused of pillaging the countryside around Paris at the head of groups of armed men and were ordered to desist and return home immediately. Clearly skilled and professional soldiers, their role during the battle of Agincourt would do nothing to improve their chivalric reputations.
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The likelihood would seem to be that, as originally envisaged in the earlier plans, the cavalry force was stationed somewhere towards the rear of the French lines. When the signal to attack was given, the company would divide along pre-allocated lines to ride round the infantry and launch itself on the archers on both English wings. And, as we have seen, it was the French expectation that this action would begin the battle.

One of the strengths of the English army was that everyone lived and fought within the company and under the leadership of the man who had raised the retinue. By the time it came to battle, they had bonded into tightly knit units, and there was a sense of esprit de corps that gave them a fighting edge. Every soldier knew his place within his own retinue and within the chain of command that led directly to the king himself.

The French had no such formal structure. Though there were groups who fought together as a unit, like the men of the royal household or the town militias, most of the petty nobility were both independent and independently minded. Even members of the same family did not necessarily fight side by side: Jean, sire de Longueval, for instance, fought in the main battle in the company of Robert, count of Marle, but his brother Alain in the vanguard, in the company of Jehan, sire de Waurin, the father of our chronicler.
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The situation was further complicated by the continuous stream of new reinforcements arriving even during the course of the battle, risking a chain of command so stretched that it might break under the pressure.

The elite cavalry squadron had commandeered somewhere in the region of a thousand men-at-arms “supplied by men [taken from] all the companies.”
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Inevitably, those chosen for such roles would be the more experienced and best-equipped men-at-arms, who were most likely to be the career soldiers of the petty nobility. The rearguard became the dumping ground—le Févre refers to “all the surplus soldiers” being placed there—which probably contributed to the lack of leadership, the confusion and the irresolution that afflicted this division of the French army during the course of the battle.
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Indeed, it seems that the French had such a “surplus of soldiers” that they actually sent some away before the battle began. The monk of St Denis reports a highly partisan story that the citizens of Paris had offered to send six thousand men, fully armed, to join the royal army, with the proviso that they should be placed in the front rank if it came to battle. (If such an offer was really made, it is unlikely that it came with a condition of this kind.) Nevertheless, it was rejected with disdain: “the help of mechanics and artisans must surely be of little value,” one Jean Beaumont is supposed to have said, “for we shall out-number the English three to one.”
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The monk used this dubious anecdote as an excuse for some pious reflections on the pride of the French nobility, who deemed it unworthy to accept the help of plebeians and had forgotten the lessons of Courtrai, Poitiers and Nicopolis. If the story is true, it is more likely that the rejection of the Parisian citizens was due to fear that they would simply march straight to the assistance of the duke of Burgundy, rather than against the English.

Nevertheless, there is other evidence to suggest that “plebeian forces” were indeed rejected or deserted before battle began. Four thousand of the best crossbowmen, according to the monk, who ought to have begun the assault on the English, could not be found at their post at the moment they were needed, having been sent away, they claimed, because the nobles said that they were not needed. One might be inclined to suspect this story too, except that the four thousand archers and fifteen hundred crossbowmen who were, according to Waurin, assigned to the vanguard were nowhere in evidence during the battle. Waurin’s own explanation for their absence echoes that of the monk: there was not room on the narrow battlefield between the woods of Azincourt and Tramecourt for anyone other than the men-at-arms, so the bowmen could not be used. Indeed, fifty crossbowmen, who left Tournai in response to the royal summons to assist Harfleur on 17 September, returned home on 18 November without having reached Harfleur or been at the battle of Agincourt.
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The heavy rains that had fallen almost the whole night through finally gave way to the chill and damp of a pale and watery dawn. It was the morning of 25 October 1415, a day celebrated in the Church calendar as the feast of Saints Crispin and Crispinian, the patron saints of shoemakers, saddlers and tanners. Though it is unlikely that anyone in the French army felt that this was an inauspicious day to commit to battle, with hindsight the chroniclers collectively shook their heads and groaned.

Legend had it that Crispin and Crispinian were two brothers from Rome who came to France as Christian missionaries at the turn of the third century and settled at Soissons. There they had plied their trade as shoemakers until they were martyred for their faith on the orders of Emperor Maximilian. As was so often the way with medieval stories of martyrdom, the brothers miraculously survived several gruesome attempts to put them to death: the torturer’s tools would not hurt them, the river Aisne would not drown them and the oil would not burn them. In the end, the executioner had to resort to the more prosaic but successful method of beheading them. The previous year, in May 1414, an Armagnac force had been responsible for the brutal sacking of their home town of Soissons and the execution of its highly regarded captain, Enguerrand de Bournonville, by Jean, duke of Bourbon, who was now one of the leaders of the vanguard at Agincourt.
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The cobbler-martyrs of Soissons were about to get their own revenge in spectacular style.

As soon as first light dawned, the French arrayed themselves in their companies and took up their allotted positions on the battlefield. “The number of them was really terrifying,” the chaplain observed, and the vanguard “with its forest of spears and the great number of helmets gleaming in between them and of cavalry on the flanks . . . was at a rough guess thirty times more than all our men put together.” (The chaplain’s thirty was probably a scribal error for three, which still made the French vanguard eighteen thousand strong. Though this, too, was an exaggeration, he was certainly right that the French van alone outnumbered the entire English army.) “Compared with our men,” he added gloomily, even the rearguard “were a multitude hardly to be counted.”
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Henry V had been up before dawn, calmly preparing his own soul before he organised his army to face their foes. Leaving off his helm, he had put on all his other armour, which, unlike his men’s rusting pieces, was “very bright,” and, over this, a splendid surcoat emblazoned with the combined arms of England and France. Thus arrayed for the battle that was to decide the fate of his claim to France, he had made his way to his makeshift chapel to hear lauds, the first service of the day, followed by the customary three masses with which he always began each day. Having given God his due, he then made ready for the field. He put on his royal helm, a bascinet bearing a rich crown of gold, which was studded with jewels like an imperial coronet and, even more provocatively, was adorned with fleur-de-lis in reference to Henry’s claim to the throne of France. With that curious mix of regality and humility that he had made peculiarly his own, he did not then mount a great dashing charger, but a small grey horse, which he rode quietly and without the use of spurs to the battlefield. There he rode hither and thither, without the customary use of trumpets to announce his presence, drawing his men together and deploying them as he saw fit.
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