Blood Cries Afar (24 page)

The ordinary French soldier also had his gains. When the trumpets sounded the return from the pursuit, the troops could revisit the battlefield to scour for booty. The enemy had been scattered, the prisoners had been secured and the wounded were being attended to – now the profits of war had could be harvested by the survivors.
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William the Breton’s eye for detail is revealed in the following scene depicting the aftermath of the battle, when soldiers scavenged amongst the corpses of men and horses:

Here someone takes a
destrier
; there a sturdy rouncey offers its head to a stranger and is tied with a rope. Others take abandoned weapons from the field; one grabs a shield, another a sword or a helmet. Someone else leaves happy with some leggings while yet another is pleased with a breastplate and a third gathers clothes and armour. Happier still and in a better position to withstand the caprices of fortune is the one who can seize the horses laden with baggage or swords hidden under their bulging covers …

This business-like picture captures the reality of a battle’s anti-climactic conclusion. The spoils of war would certainly be impressive as seen here: golden vessels, precious implements, silken vestments and various other forms of booty meant that some wagons were so laden they required sixteen horses to pull them. Nor should it be overlooked that the wagons were often of considerable value themselves. One wagon, however, was not taken as war booty: Emperor Otto’s
caroccio
. This was axed ‘into a thousand pieces’ and burned so that no trace of it remained. The wings of the eagle were repaired and Philip sent this imperial symbol to King Frederick of Sicily, Otto’s rival claimant to the title of Holy Roman Emperor, a tacit semiotic message to Frederick as to whom he owed his new-found security and his gratitude.

Just as Philip had prayed for victory before battle, so now he would have given thanks to God for his stunning success. With the company commanders having been recalled from the hunt (they no doubt had hoped to come upon Otto) and rested in their tents, the question of prisoners was dealt with. Philip had the captured allied leaders summoned to him. Those from his own kingdom were his own liege men and, as they had conspired against the King, were guilty of high treason; the custom of the land permitted beheading for these. However, in the event, all the prisoners were spared their lives; prison or ransom was to be their fate. In chains and ropes the captives were bundled onto carts and transported to scattered prisons. In total, over 300 prisoners were taken: a catalogue of prisoners drawn up in August records that 110 knights were taken to Paris, sixteen were placed in the safekeeping of great lords and the most important three came under the charge of officials of the royal household: Count Ferrand of Flanders was assigned to Barthélemy de Roye; Count Renaud of Boulogne to Jean de Nesle; and Earl William of Salisbury to Count Robert de Dreux.
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The prisoners carted to Paris were incarcerated in two
châtelets
that guarded the bridges linking the Île-de-la-Cité with the banks of the Seine. Others were imprisoned in the Grand Châtelet, from where three later escaped. Ferrand remained in the donjon of the recently completed Louvre until he was set free in 1226. Salisbury was soon released by negotiations; it had always been Count Robert’s intention to exchange him for his son who was held by King John, a transaction that John did not initially accede to (Philip of France had rewarded Count Robert with his important prisoner with this transaction in mind). The harshest treatment was handed out to Renaud de Dammartin, Count of Boulogne. He was no longer to be a constant source of trouble for the French King: he was taken to the castle at Péronne and shackled in chains. Thirteen years later, still in chains, he died.

The day after Bouvines Philip headed back to Paris. Public rejoicing had already begun throughout France. The common people lined the route of the king’s return to the capital, cheering their monarch and heaping insults on the Count Ferrand and the other prisoners. Official celebrations were organised everywhere in the kingdom, but especially in the capital, where unrestrained revelries lasted day and night for a week. Unsurprisingly, the mood in the Angevin royal camp in Poitou was one of shock. When John heard of the news ‘he was thrown into despair’, records Wendover. ‘Since I have become reconciled to God, and submitted myself and my kingdom to St Peter and the Roman Church’, bewailed John, ‘nothing has gone right for me, and every misfortune has befallen me.’
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John, however, remained prepared to continue the fight from his position south of the Loire. John had ordered his justiciar in England, Peter des Roches, to arrange 300 Welsh reinforcements to be sent to him by the end of August. He was right to feel the need for them. Philip, with characteristic alacrity, marched his army of up to 2000 knights and accompanying infantry south into Poitou in a major show of confidence and strength, halting at the Castle of Loudon with John only fifteen miles away. Although the size of the French victory at Bouvines is hard to overestimate politically, John’s position in Poitou was not entirely hopeless. The barons of the region were wary of the possible consequences of an overly strong Capetian monarchy; as Baldwin points out, Philip’s arrival south to join his son Louis did not intimidate John’s Poitevin allies as much as he may have hoped.
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Certainly, Philip did not carry through the threat implicit in his action, despite the assertions of some French historians that Philip was poised to conquer Poitou.
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The French King was not prepared to put his spectacular gains at risk in another battle: in addition to the very real advantages won at Bouvines was the enormously enhanced prestige of Philip’s reputation as soldier, victor and King, which had practical power applications of its own. An unnecessary encounter and possible minor defeat would have blemished his aura of conquering hero. Worse, the wheel of fortune could turn dramatically against him: on 1066 Harold of England marched from decisive victory at Stamford Bridge to utter defeat three weeks later at Hastings, the great earlier triumph becoming a footnote in history. Prompted by Pope Innocent III, eager for peace in Christendom so that he could launch another crusade, the two sides came to terms at Chinon on 18 September in a truce that was to last five years from the following Easter. This truce merely extended the one of Thouars in 1206. Baldwin believes that it reveals an actual weakening of King Philip’s position south of the Loire. With the exception of the loyal Angevins Aimery de Craon and Juhel de Mayenne, Philip’s document was not underwritten by any notable baron of the Loire region. Unlike in 1206, John’s co-signatories now included the leading Poitevins, with the Counts of La Marche and Eu and the families of Thouars, Lusignan and Larchevêque: ‘Faithful to their reputation, the Poitevins preferred to stand with a distant and weaker suzerain.’
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Against this must be set the submission of Viscount Aimery of Thouars and other Poitevin barons to Philip and, argues Gillingham, ‘Philip’s relative lack of interest in this part of the world.’
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Put into context, Poitou simply was not as important as the north: ‘Philip was always more interested in invading England than in completing his takeover of the continental lands of the Angevins. This was because the threat to Normandy came from England not from southwest France.’
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This threat, it may be added, could be turned on its head regarding England: as we have seen, Philip’s conquest of Normandy gave him a vital stretch of northern seaboard from which he could menace John’s kingdom. Thus the stalemate in Poitou was deliberately anti-climatic and not worth Philip’s wholehearted attention. Both he and John had experienced enough antagonistic relationships with the Papacy and neither had much to gain from reviving such troubles at this immediate juncture by rekindling the conflict. Philip, with an eye to events in England and his hoped for enterprise, was, according to Ralph of Coggeshall, more interested in the 60,000 marks offered to him by John, an indication of how weak contemporaries judged John’s position in Poitou.
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The truce allowed John to hold the line south of the Loire for the time being.

Much has been written about the consequences of Bouvines, one of the most significant battles in European history, but it was how it was fought – and won – that altered the course of subsequent events. If the French forces had not been so well ordered and so well led; if the coalition army had not been so precipitate; and, above all, if Philip of France had been killed or captured, as was so nearly the case: the whole future of Europe might have been radically different. As Painter noted, ‘If Bouvines had been won, John would have been the dominant power in western Europe.’
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John’s continental policies and alliances, so expensively fostered, would have come to fruition; Otto IV would have remained Emperor; the barons in England would have recovered their lands in France; Philip Augustus would not have been the instigator of France as the leading power in Europe; Magna Carta may never have happened; and there would have been no invasion of England. Thus ‘Bouvines deservedly ranks among the world’s decisive battles.’
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As it was, John’s position had in reality collapsed and his great financial outlays had been for nought. It was the King of France who was now Western Europe’s pre-eminent monarch. Capetian France was secure in itself and more threatening than ever to England. England prepared for the worst. In late August John sent his word to his formidable justiciar and serving regent, Peter des Roches, to munition Dover Castle and make ready for his return. Des Roches had already organised defence measures for the Marches, where a sudden spate of Welsh incursions indicate that the news of John’s crushing defeat had reached home, and the Welsh were the first hostile element to capitalise on it. With John far away with his army in Poitou, there was a real alarm that Philip might undertake a rapid invasion. By early September des Roches was prudently engaging men to keep a discreet vigil on the coasts; he also seized foreign merchant vessels that may have been carrying French men and horses.
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Des Roches and the country waited tensely for John’s return.

France, in contrast, settled down to enjoy the new political dawn. Flanders was now effectively under French control
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and Aquitaine could be safely dealt with later; John’s own troublesome subjects in England held promise for help in a favourable outcome here. Just as John’s problems were mounting precariously, so Philip’s were subsiding; as the Anonymous of Béthune wrote: ‘After this, no one dared to wage war against him, and he and the whole of his land lived in great peace for a long time.’
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Bouvines was Philip’s last – and greatest – direct combat involvement, a fitting end to his successful military career. He had no need to continue his role as general in the field: his son Louis, a more martially inclined man than his father, had proven his worth and now took the lead in active military matters.
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Bouvines granted Philip the luxury of becoming an administrative king; he could safely retire from the rigours of campaigning.

The year 1214 therefore witnessed a remarkable change in European politics, and deserves to be regarded as one of the watersheds in history. Bouvines had changed everything. Contemporaries, such as the Anonymous of Béthune, realised this. But in 1214 the now largely forgotten engagement at La Roche-au-Moine was considered by many, such as the Minstrel of Reims, to be nearly as significant as Bouvines. We must remember that without Bouvines, La Roche would be hailed as a major Capetian victory, as it was at the time. A century after these dramatic events, which saw John’s plans totally crushed on his two fronts, one French chronicler wrote of these two great Capetian victories as having occurred simultaneously, as if divinely synchronised. He says that Philip and Louis sent out messengers at the same time to pass on news of their success. These messengers, one from the south and the other from the north, met at Senlis. Having shared their joyous news, ‘they raised their hands to Heaven, giving thanks to the Lord whom by wondrous coincidence, had granted the father and son to triumph over their enemies at the very same moment.’
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John, however, was on the eve of the most intensive warfaring period of his life. He and his allies had failed decisively on the continent. His two great armies, one in the north-east and the other in the south-west, had been seen off one at a time by the French: better coordination of troop concentrations, more prudence at Bouvines and better luck on that historic battlefield (Philip, remember, was fortunate to have survived) might have changed everything. But it had all gone so completely wrong; the fortunes of war had turned comprehensively against him. John left La Rochelle in early October, never to return to France. On his journey back to England he must have been filled with foreboding. He had left his kingdom in a state of political unrest; his shattered foreign policy would only add fuel to the fire. On his return in mid October he prepared for civil war.

T
he state of John’s mind as he sailed back from La Rochelle in mid-October 1214 can be easily imagined. Even if he had come to terms with the massive defeat at Bouvines – and the defeat did not stop him conducting government business and making plans for the future – he knew that he was returning to a kingdom that was approaching boiling point in terms of political discontent; the heat had been rising before he had left England and the Bouvines disaster could only fan the flames of opposition. Following his allies’ defeat, John had sent secret instructions back to England to put his castles in a state of readiness in expectation of the trouble to come. In his absence, the justiciar Peter des Roches – soldier, bishop and chief administrator – had done nothing to cool things down. Incessant demands on the baronage for service and money were made all the more grating to them by the elevation of this foreigner over them. His lack of popularity can be gauged by a contemporary rhyme that was not designed to be flattering: ‘The warrior at Winchester, up at the exchequer / Sharp at accounting, slack at the scripture’.
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John had increasingly reacted to his own distrust of his countrymen by importing men from France, especially Poitou, and placing them in high office at the expense of English candidates. This abuse of patronage, as the disaffected regarded it, was compounded by the physical reinforcement of foreign mercenaries in the realm, adding to the perceived threat of arbitrary government. The political events in England leading to Magna Carta and civil war have been much studied and need not detain us for long here in what is a military study of events. That said, the political context needs addressing briefly, as do the reasons for the personal animosity of the leading rebels against their king, so that we have an understanding of the motivations that compelled men to take up arms in a civil war.
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