Blood Cries Afar (35 page)

Louis had not finished his triumphal progress yet. From Winchester he went to the south coast and the old Roman camp of Portchester, taking it and giving the castle to Nevers. At the beginning of July he moved on to Odiham, a small town belonging to des Roches. Despite its minor castle with a minimal garrison of only three knights and ten soldiers, a spirited defence was put up in the face of a barrages and assaults. The garrison commander was Engelard de Cigogné, one of the foreigners complained about in clause 50 of Magna Carta. On the third day of the siege, the garrison sortied out and caused substantial losses among the French. The garrison held out for a full week before surrendering on 9 July. As they emerged from the castles with their horses and armour – their defence ensured them honourable terms – the French were amazed at their paucity of numbers and were filled with admiration for them.

It was while at Odiham that John’s chief forester Hugh de Neville offered Marlborough to Louis. The French Prince in turn handed it over to his relative Robert de Dreux. The Anonymous goes into considerable detail about the handover of Marlborough. De Dreux headed there with a considerable force which included Enguerrand de Coucy, Robert de Béthune and Baldwin of Belvoir. When they approached the town they feared a trap: the gates were shut, men armed the battlements and other soldiers moved around in the woods. At first they decided to return to Louis but, gathering their courage, they instead made camp for the night. As they were leaving in the morning, de Neville sent a messenger to them to arrange details of the handover. The castellan then turned up and handed over the keys to the castle. De Dreux garrisoned it with ten knights under Jean de Lisdain and returned to the host. The Anonymous judges the garrison as insufficient to protect the castle, perhaps with the benefit of hindsight, as it was soon to be retaken by the royalists.

Again, William Marshal the Younger complained about Louis’s disposition of his victories, claiming the castle for himself in vain. Instead, Louis sent the young Marshal further west to capitalise on another defection, this time that of Walter de Beauchamp, Sheriff of Worcester. The younger William occupied the city, much to his father’s annoyance: ‘the impertinence of his heir’s incursion into a region so near his own command was apparently too much for the old Earl.’
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William Marshal senior, who was at this time holding down the Marches for John, warned his son to quit the city. There may have been paternal care in the warning, as a royalist force under Earl Ranulf of Chester and Falkes de Bréauté retook the city on 17 July. It is likely that William Marshal saw the benefit of a division in family loyalties, as it meant a foot in both camps in very uncertain circumstances.
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Louis was back in London by mid-July where his cause received more fillips. Pope Innocent III died of fever at Perugia on 16 July; when the news reached London the French were delighted. The Barnwell Chronicler reports that the rebels and French were hopeful of a positive change. The new pope, Honorius III, was a less stringent character but no less supportive of John. More immediate was the knowledge that his forces under Robert Fitzwalter, William de Mandeville and William of Huntingfield were experiencing similar successes in the east of England, especially in Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk. The details of this campaign are less clear and largely absent in the chronicles. Wendover, the much and wrongly maligned chronicler, reports that the army found Norwich deserted; it was occupied and used as a base from which the freshly installed garrison could impose the new order’s authority in the region, not least through taxation to assist the war effort. A more brutal way of raising war funds was achieved successfully at Lynn, a coastal town of the Wash. The town was attacked and seriously damaged and many inhabitants were taken away as prisoners for ransoming. The expedition left garrisons in strongholds before returning to London weighed down with great amounts of booty.

Gilbert de Gant came to Louis in London with more good news from further north, Gilbert presenting his lord with the sword of Lincoln. Louis rewarded him by creating him Earl of Lincoln. He gave orders to Gilbert and Robert de Ropsley to subdue the region and to hem in the royalist garrisons of Newark and Nottingham, as John’s men had been making incursions from the castles to harry and destroy baronial land and property. Louis’s captains took control of Lincolnshire and its principal city, imposing taxation across the region, but Lincoln Castle would not fall to them. Its castellan, the formidable lady Nichola de la Haye, negotiated a bought truce. The castle was to be besieged later for the duration of war and was to play a central role at the war’s end. The two rebel commanders then went on ravage the area of Holland and impose further taxes on its people. York and Yorkshire also fell into Louis’s control, due to the advance of Robert de Ros, Richard Percy and Peter de Brus. Further north again, King Alexander had, as mentioned, moved south with his host to besiege Carlisle and into Northumbria to ravage royalist lands up to Durham. ‘All these provinces’, says Wendover, ‘were subdued and swore allegiance to Louis.’
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These victories were rendered all the sweeter by John’s money problems; despite Guala’s imposition of taxes on the clergy, the King was losing money fast. The author of
The History of William Marshal
makes the point: ‘I should inform you at this point that, when the King ran out of resources, very few of the men stayed with him who were there for his money; they went their own way with their booty in hand.’
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And then there were the desertions of as many as a sixth of John’s household knights, the core of his army, including men such as Robert of Ropsley and Hugh de Neville. Stephen Church, in his valuable study of John’s household knights, describes this as ‘a remarkable picture of disloyalty from the rank and file … These were the men who … had a special relationship with the King … Yet when John’s position became seemingly untenable, or when the lands of the household knights came under threat, these men who had supped the king’s wine, eaten his food, received his
benevolentia
, rejected their master and chose to look instead after their own and their families’ interests.’
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Ties of family; the need to protect their own lands; following the lead of their lords and, crucially, the expectation that John was no longer in a position to offer sufficient rewards for their service now that Louis was in the ascendan – all of these factors contributed to Louis’s hugely successful initial thrust.

The months of June and July had produced significant and telling victories which left Louis in control of more than one-third of England, including some of its most important and prosperous regions and centres, with strong allies entrenched in areas from the south coast up to and including Scotland. This could only encourage further waverers to come over to Louis’s winning side. But this picture is incomplete: Louis had not done enough to force a definitive outcome. Just as the barons had held out precariously against John, so now John was holding out against the rebels. Not everything had gone Louis’s way.

On the diplomatic front, Louis’s ambassadors to the papal court failed to win any concessions from the dying Innocent III. The military impact of this, like the excommunication, was slight, but it showed that the Papacy did not regard Louis’s victories as being a
fait accompli
which merited a new response. Wendover thinks the diplomatic mission to be worthy of several pages in his chronicle. Louis also entered into fresh talks with Guala in mid-July, but again nothing came of them. Ironically, on the political front, the flocking of barons to Louis’s banner – peaking at two-thirds of the total by the summer’s end – increased the friction in the Franco-rebel camp. As exhibited by William Marshal the Younger’s attitude, jealousies and suspicions increased: the more that barons offered their allegiance to Louis, the less land and spoils were available to Louis’s Frenchmen.

The great swathes of territory dominated by Louis, tightly concentrated across the whole south-east and in pockets beyond, can lead to a slightly misleading impression of his position. Strong as it was, there were weaknesses in it. While victory brought men to his cause, he was actually losing some at the same time. The Count of Holland had earlier taken the cross and, unlike John, intended to fulfil his crusading vows, and so he left with his men to make his preparations for the Holy Land. Over two months of assembling at French ports and subsequent campaigning was enough for some of Louis’s other troops: Hugh Havés and his men wished to return home to Artois after Winchester. From London they made to the coast along the Thames and ‘reached the sea with great joy’, but here had to outrun a royalist naval squadron trying to intercept them.
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The biggest block to Louis’s momentum, however, setting limits to his expansion, was John’s system of royal castles. Medieval warfare centred around sieges, none more so than this conflict. When Louis failed to take John’s strongholds, the lands that he took around them remained vulnerable: hence Gilbert de Gant’s operations against Newark and Nottingham. Alexander’s depredations in the north failed to win the castles of Philip de Oldcoate and Hugh de Balliol who, between them, pretty much held all the castles of Northumberland; Barnard Castle and Durham Castle remained in loyal hands. Newark, Nottingham and Lincoln marked the extent of Louis’ secure control into the northern midlands. While in the otherwise strongly consolidated south-east, two large thorns remained stuck in Louis’s side: the powerful royal fortresses of Windsor and Dover. These defiant islands of resistance indicated, just like London did for the rebels, an enemy that remained unbroken. The chronicler’s statement after the siege of Rochester in 1215 that none now placed their faith in castles was completely inaccurate. While some of his troops were occupied in small-scale warfare and raiding, John had been ensuring that the majority were securing his castles: while Louis was busy in the field, a contemporary wrote that John ‘laid in good supplies of knights, provisions and arms in the castles of Wallingford, Corfe, Wareham, Bristol, Devizes and others too numerous to mention’.
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John was playing a longer game in the hope that events would turn for him. It was not a heroic or perhaps even advisable course to take, but it suited John and it greatly discomfited the rebels in the meantime. The most significant centres of resistance were Lincoln, Windsor and Dover. Lincoln enjoyed an arranged truce until August; its fate will be discussed in the next chapter. Windsor and Dover were priorities for Louis and we shall cover his operations against these two castles shortly.

But first it is necessary to look briefly over John’s other activities in leading the resistance against the invaders lest the impression be given that he had remained relatively passive. A study of government records reveal his movements from this time.
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While Louis was at Winchester and moving through Hampshire, John was doing the rounds of his castles in Wiltshire and Dorset ensuring that they were fully readied for war. As well as his instructions to Bayonne for naval actions, granting safe-conducts and appealing to the de Broase family as mentioned above, he was issuing specific orders to his castellans across the land. One feature of these orders was castles such as Richmond and Bolsover that could not be held should be destroyed; instructions were actually sent out for the destruction of the frontline Castle of Newark before being cancelled shortly afterwards. He also granted his men permission to submit, temporarily of course, to the French
tenserie
payments when militarily prudent to do so; in allowing this, John was recognising that in many cases he knew help to his men might be a while in coming. The King was probably expecting Louis to continue his advance into John’s western and south-western territory, as perhaps signalled by William Marshal the Younger’s occupation of Worcester in mid-July, and so he had concerned himself with the border defence of this area. Just after the middle of July, John left Sherborne and headed northwards to reach Leominster on the 31st, having passed through Bristol, Berkeley, Gloucester, Tewkesbury and Hereford. His proximity to the border facilitated his talks with Welsh princes as he tried to elicit their support; on 2 August he crossed into Wales at Radnor to pursue these further. His itinerary thereafter until 19 August was Clun, Shrewsbury, Whitchurch, Bridgenorth, Worcester, Gloucester and Berkeley. From Berkeley Castle on the 19th he wrote a letter which explained these movements: he believed Louis intended to besiege Hereford and Worcester.

In fact, Louis had returned to London four weeks earlier to consolidate his position in the southeast and to oversee operations against Windsor and Dover. One historian has therefore put John’s activity in the west down to poor intelligence;
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this may well have been the case, but throughout the war both sides generally had a very good idea of the enemy’s troop movements – indeed, responsive strategies were commonly devised around these – and so it is worth considering if John was consciously avoiding a decisive encounter to concentrate on keeping his existing strongholds rather than winning back lost ones.

Although Louis had returned to London, he was still taking the fight to the enemy. An army of barons left London to ravage Cambridgeshire and capture the weak royal castle of the shire’s principal town – a rare example of a royal castle falling to force – and seized the twenty soldiers garrisoning it. They continued to rampage throughout Norfolk and Suffolk, pillaging the countryside and churches and extorting ransoms from Yarnmouth, Dunwich and Ipswich before subjecting Colchester and its surrounding areas to the same treatment. It was a profitable little
chevauchée
that no doubt raised morale further through full bellies, full pockets and a tangible military gain.

Dover and Windsor were harder nuts to crack. Louis had returned from his westward advances to concentrate on these hugely important strategic fortresses. Dover dominated the south coast and it was here that Louis arrived on 25 July to oversee a full investiture of the castle and ensure, according to William the Breton, ‘free access to England’, necessary for logistical support and reinforcements.
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Matthew Paris offers an interesting anecdote that shows how the wise Philip Augustus recognised Dover as ‘the key to England’ when he took his son to task for not prioritising Dover from the very start of the campaign.
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Philip, the master castle-breaker and conqueror of Château Gaillard, was making a very pertinent military point, which Louis appreciated. Windsor, which severely curtailed any movements by Louis to the west and midlands, was laid under siege by Robert de Dreux and the Count of Nevers within a couple of days. The invasion forces entrenched for their first lengthy sieges of the campaign. Both were to be dramatic and violent.