Blood Cries Afar (40 page)

The following day brought more intense military activity. The relief squadron from Dover appeared on the scene under the command of Raoul Plancöet, Hugh Tacon and Jean de Beaumont. The English flotilla prepared to engage with them with great bluster and display. A cog bore down on the French to attack but pulled away at the last moment; this evasive manoeuvre was so precipitous that the cog veered disastrously into one of its own ships, sinking it with the loss of its entire crew. The biographer of William Marshal believes the defeat was far greater, and that the French ‘destroyed our navy’. The blockade had largely been broken. The rest of the English ships followed behind for a short while as the French squadron entered Wincheslea. Louis’s army was impressively reinforced and now stood at 3000-strong. The garrison at Rye realised that they could not hold against such odds and deserted the castle; Louis found it ‘full of wine and meat for which his men had great need’. Louis placed it under the command of Baldwin de Corbeil, who had just come over with the fleet from Boulogne.

The royalists put into operation either an urgent attempt to retake Rye or to relieve it. William Marshal had left Gloucester on 17 February, passed through Oxford and Reading, and met with his council at Dorking where an impressive muster of their troops was arranged, a significant statement of intent and indeed of confidence. On 28 February the council sent a letter from here to the people of Rye forbidding them from giving any hostages to Louis or entering into terms with him, promising them immediate help. And what help it was: the army comprised the Earls of Chester and Ferrers, the Count of Aumale, Richard Fitzroy, Walter de Lacy, Falkes de Bréauté, Engelard de Cigogné, and an appropriately large army of knights, sergeants, crossbowmen and Welsh archers. Even the King and legate were to follow.
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The intent was surely for a decisive showdown with Louis. But by the time this huge host arrived at Rye, Louis had flown. He had gone to Dover and set sail for home on 27 or 28 February.

Louis had left his nephew Enguerrand de Coucy to represent him in England, ordering him to make for London and ‘on no account leave it’.
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This hints that Louis saw the royal resurgence as a real threat and that it was time to revert to the baronial plan that placed London at the heart of its strategy. However, Louis was probably hopeful that some minor trouble in Ireland around this time would escalate into a serious diversion for the Marshal.

Louis was absent for eight weeks and he was sorely missed: the Anonymous says ‘the need for him in England grew acutely.’
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Without his reassuring presence as a sign of commitment to the cause, some who had wavered crossed into the royalist camp. Within the week following Louis’s departure, William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, and William Marshal the Younger deserted the barons and Louis, a move long in the making; these close comrades had clearly been waiting for the opportune moment for further opportunism. This was a serious blow to the anti-royalist party and it played a part in a string of some 115 defections, mainly from Wiltshire, Somerset, Dorset and Berkshire.

There is no doubt that the status of crusade enhanced the royalist cause. The Barnwell annalist believes it was important as it eased the way back to the King for the Earl of Salisbury and others who were now ‘fighting against pagans’ as ‘crusaders’ in ‘the army of Christ’.
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The barons had long ceased to derive any benefit from their branding moniker as ‘The Army of God’, not that there was much in the first place. Historians have arguably placed too much emphasis on this positive development for the king’s men: Christopher Tyerman, who has made a study of England and the crusades, judges that ‘the crusade made a definite, though not precisely definable, contribution’ to the royalists’ cause, adding that it remained very much a second-class crusade.
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If the tangible, practical effects were real but limited, taking up the cross could only have boosted the morale, cohesion and psychological outlook of the royalist camp. But as David Carpenter has wryly and accurately noted: ‘The defections in March and April were highly regional and it is difficult to believe that the men of Berkshire and Wiltshire were simply more pious than those in the north.’
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As I am forever telling my students, to understand the truth of the situation we have to pick up the stone and see what is underneath. There we will nearly always find self-interest scurrying or wriggling busily about in pursuit of its ends. Castles; patronage; money; office; all were strong motivating forces. When knights felt they were only receiving crumbs from Louis’s French table they looked elsewhere for their dinner. Wendover captures this well: ‘There was great deal of wavering amongst the barons over which King to commit to, the young Henry or the lord Louis.’ He gives as the reason for their agonising the way in which many had been so ‘contemptuously treated by the French’. Louis, he says, had ignored his oath and the barons’ complaints to keep possession for himself the lands and castles won in the war, despite baronial help, and handed these out to his own French followers. But against this the barons did not want to face the disgrace of returning to allegiance to the King ‘like dogs returning to their vomit’.
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We have seen the divisions in the anti-royalist camp over the spoils of war, as when William Marshal the Younger complained and successfully contested the leadership of the army from Adam de Beaumont and resented Louis putting Marlborough Castle in the hands of Robert de Dreux instead of his. The Earl of Salisbury lacked castles for his power base, and so was on the look-out for some. He contested the ownership of Trowbridge Castle with the rebel Earl of Hereford, Henry de Bohun, who had Louis’s favour (and who, in turn, was a partisan of Louis for the same, castle-seeking motives). William Marshal, however, could offer Longsword the castles of Salisbury and Sherborne, and the office of Sheriff of Wilthsire and also Somerset and Devon. The regent was keen to buy Longsword over, not least because he valued the Earl’s military ability.
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A notable character of these
reversi
, as they are called in the records, was that many of the men now changed sides for the last time and so Wendover believes that ‘thus Louis’s party was in large measure broken up.’
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However, the original core of rebelling barons stayed largely constant to their cause. The desertions were serious, but not decisive.

On the military front, the royalists were now also making strong gains. The Anonymous says that the English ‘chevauchéed across the land and took many castles’.
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The sources lack detailed accounts of this military activity, leaving the historian to stitch together a rather scratchy narrative lacking in meaty details of combat and drama, in contrast to the full-bloodied descriptions they give for the end of the war. The Earl of Salisbury and William Marshal the Younger wished to prove themselves to their new lord. They quickly took Knepp Castle in Sussex, probably on 4 March, which fell immediately; it was in the hands of Roland Bloet, a brother to one of the Marshal’s knights. The defecting duo then set up camp in Hyde Abbey and laid siege to the castles of Winchester on 6 March while the regent went to take Farnham during the week of 7–13 March. Its constable, Ponces de Beaumeis, was thrown into prison by des Roches and suffered there for many months, says the Anonymous; the garrison were luckier, being granted safe conduct to London. On the first day of the siege of Winchester, little was achieved, but an attack was made on the second day. The main castle was under the command of Peter Letart, one of the Count of Nevers’s men. When moving about, the besiegers ensured that they maintained tight formation in case of a surprise attack. At one stage of the siege when the royalists were called away, Letart commanded some of the garrison to sortie into the town which they plundered and burned: ‘They were angry, because the townsfolk had harboured their enemies and given them assistance … The townsfolk paid a heavy price.’ The sudden return of the royalist troops pushed the raiding party back into the city’s two castles. The Earl of Salisbury was investing Wolvesesy, the smaller of the city’s two castles and the one belonging to Peter des Roches. Wolvesesy was assailed for eight days, its defenders given no rest either by day or by night until it surrendered on 12 March. The Earl then went to assist his great friend William who was besieging the royal castle. The barrage of arrows and projectiles made the garrison ‘greatly dismayed and afraid’, says the Marshal’s biographer, but the strong fortifications, recently repaired and improved by Louis, withstood it all. At this point the Marshal turned up with his great army, filling the whole area. They expected the castle’s surrender, but still it held out. In mid-March, William Marshal the Younger and William Longsword were directed by the regent away from Winchester to Southampton, one of the most important ports in the country, which was comprehensively plundered: ‘such was the booty taken in the town that the poor folk who wished to take advantage and had their minds on profit were all made rich by the wealth they took from their enemies.’ Having installed their own governor and constable, they returned to Winchester. At the end of the second week of March they were before Portchester where a month-long siege began. The
History of William Marshal
says Rochester was taken at this point while not mentioning Portchester; this may be the result of some confusion or a reference to the operations of King John’s bastard son Oliver in Kent in the third week of April or to the vaguer movements of Philip d’Albini. The siege of Portchester falls in a pattern that suggests the royalists’ strategy was to advance along the coast to disrupt communications with France and deny safe ports to the French.
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In accordance with this strategy, d’Albini took Chichester before 16 April and Portchester by the 27th; both castles had their defences destroyed. The confusing movements of troops to and from sieges continued. At the end of March, the younger Marshal went to besiege his coveted prize of Marlborough, which he took after an ardous siege of about three weeks. Winchester finally surrendered and its garrison was offered a safe conduct back to London. Odiham was also taken in the south. In the midlands, Falkes de Bréauté raided and retook Ely, where he took prisoner Adam de Nulli, a soldier greatly favoured by Louis for his steadfast service. When Louis heard the news of these setbacks in France he felt the blow of the royalist resurgence, the Anonymous announcing rather obviously that ‘he was not all happy’. The Barnwell annalist paints a gloomy picture for the French Prince: ‘little indeed would have remained for Louis in England had he put off his return beyond the promised time.’
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He was back in England on 22 April. The war was about to enter its most dramatic and epic phase that would bring about its end.

For all the defeats his army had suffered, there was nothing that could not, in theory, be won back by Louis – as he immediately set about demonstrating. William Marshal seems to have recognised this by the destruction of the castles he had retaken, excepting Farnham and Marlborough (which his son would not have countenanced anyway) when he learned of the French Prince’s return. Louis still had the hardcore baronial faction that had begun the war in the first place. It is likely that the Earl of Surrey, William de Warenne, had been contemplating defecting back to the royalist cause, but Louis’s return kept him in the fold. Louis had been active in France both in attending to his domestic concerns there and in building up reinforcements. He could not expect any overt help from his father. On 21 April Philip had received a letter from Honorious III thanking him for his behaviour in the whole affair; the pope would have been aware of Louis’s presence back in his father’s country. Louis’s force comprised ‘few knights’ according to the Anonymous, but we are not told how much treasure he had with him to fund the war.
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The chronicler Robert of Auxerre depicts a more substantial force with many mercenaries and infantry and the biographer of William Marshal says Louis came to England ‘with his large, warlike contingent of men’.
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Unlike Louis’s first arrival in England, the Anonymous does not provide detailed numbers, rather giving an overall figure of just over 140 knights, a still sizeable force, with some powerful figures. He announces only that ‘I will name the greatest men who travelled with him.’ There are a number of familiar figures and some new ones: the Count of Brittany and his brother Robert de Dreux, Raoul Ploncöet, the Viscount of Melun, the Count of Perche, the Count of Guînes, the Lord of Béthune, the Seneschal of Flanders called Hellin de Waverin, the castellan of Beaumeis, Guillaume de Fiennes, Adam de Beaumont, Jean d’Osny and others ‘all of whom I cannot name’. They brought with them a powerful new siege machine: the trebuchet. This was at the cutting edge of weapons technology and it provoked much discussion, ‘since few had been seen in France’.
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Louis wanted this machine to finally break the resistance of Dover. At Calais on the evening of the Friday before Easter, Louis had the horses put on board his ships; he and his men embarked the next day before sunrise. They had a good wind and a calm sea. But they raised a storm in England.

Louis arrived to a fluid situation that had put his men on the defensive. William Marshal hoped to maintain the royalist momentum by sending a force to Mountsorrel near Leicester to besiege Saer de Quincy’s castle. This was an impressive force, which included the Earls of Chester, Ferrers and Aumale, Brian de Lisle, Robert de Viuexpont, William de Cantelupe and the ubiquitous Falkes de Bréauté; with them was a large force, many from the abandoned castles of the Easter truce; they were augmented along the way north by garrisons from royal castles. The regent stayed at Winchester and accepted the castle’s surrender just before Louis landed; the garrison that had capitulated at Marlborough ‘felt ashamed and dejected’ because they had not held out longer for their lord.
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Louis’s nephew, Enguerrand de Coucy, had, in early March, sent troops from London to the siege of Lincoln. But before the opposing armies clashed in major engagements in the decisive arena of the northern midlands, Louis went on the warpath in the south.
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