Louis: The French Prince Who Invaded England (22 page)

At this point the
History of the Dukes
takes up the story. Instead of trying to get a large force through to the capital, potentially losing many of his troops and leaving himself isolated on the coast, Louis sent individual men on foot to try and slip through the cordon and make it to London, to ask his barons there for help ‘as he was in a great deal of trouble and surrounded by the English’. Some of these lone messengers succeeded in their task, and a relief force was sent out; avoiding the direct route blocked by William of Kensham, it instead travelled via Canterbury to Romney, on the other side of Rye from Louis’s position at Winchelsea, and managed to send a message across the Channel to Boulogne.

We will recall at this point that when Louis had landed on the English coast the previous May, he had sent his fleet back to France; a large number of the ships were still moored together at Calais and at the ready. A fleet of some 200 ships was organised within a short space of time, and it set sail. Most of them went straight to Dover, with a harbour big enough to hold them, where the castle was still in Hubert de Burgh’s hands but Louis’s men controlled the port. One ship, however, that captained by Eustace the Monk, managed to evade the English fleet at Rye ‘thanks to the hardiness of his sailors’ and sail direct to Winchelsea to give Louis the news. There they were forced to wait for another two starving weeks (Louis and all who were with him were in great distress, says the
Chronicle of the Kings of France
) as the winter storms of a cold February made it too dangerous for the French fleet to sail around from Dover.

The English fleet knew by now that the French would be attempting to sail around past them as soon as the weather permitted, so a naval engagement loomed. During the two-week hiatus Eustace the Monk and his men spent their time constructing a ‘castle’ on their ship, in order to make it bigger than any in the English fleet and therefore to give them the advantage of height in any potential engagement (missiles or arrows shot downwards being much more effective than those aimed upwards), while Louis had two petraries built on the shore.

The sentries posted by the French, however, proved to be less than efficient and one night a group of English soldiers raided and were able to destroy the modified ship. Louis, says the
History of the Dukes
, was furious and hauled Adam, the viscount of Melun, before him to explain why the security had been so slack. The viscount apparently replied (either bravely or foolhardily, if Louis were really as angry as portrayed) that his men were so hungry that they could not stand watch properly, and that he doubted that there were even four knights in the host who were in a fit state to do so. Louis, says the
History
, retorted that in that case he would stand guard himself. Clearly he was not about to let his English conquest end here in ignominy if he could help it, however hungry he was.

Eventually the weather subsided and the French ships were able to sail out from Dover. In order to reach Winchelsea they had to pass the English fleet at Rye; Philip d’Albini’s ships left their blockade of the port to sail out into open water to engage them. The potential battle turned into an anti-climax; a combination of over-ambition and contrary winds saw some of the English ships run into others, causing enough chaos and confusion for the French to slip round them. They arrived in Winchelsea without loss and just in time for the starving men there.

Louis now found himself with some 3,000 troops at his disposal, more than enough to mount an attack on the castle at Rye to secure it ahead of his projected return in a few weeks; they marched and the garrison fled. Louis entered the castle and was able to seize the stores of provisions to feed his men. Then he was finally able to take ship for France, sailing at the end of February 1217.

As he landed back on home shores and saddled up for the ride to Paris, Louis would have been aware that this was not exactly the victorious homecoming he had envisaged. Admittedly, he had not been beaten and was not returning in disgrace, but it was not exactly a victory parade either. All he could hope for was that Philip would be able to supply him with enough men and resources to go back and finish the job properly.

He was to be disappointed.

Louis spent some eight weeks in France, during which time Philip ostentatiously refused to offer him any money or troops or even to discuss the English campaign. William the Breton is quite clear on what he sees as the reason for this: ‘King Philip, fearing excommunication, gave no aid to his son … like the most Christian man he was, he would not speak with him.’ Philip, indeed, was busy protesting his loyalty to the papacy; in a letter of 21 April 1217 Honorius thanked him for his sentiments.

It would appear, however, that the double game which Philip may have been playing when the invasion was first planned was still continuing. He did not offer any troops, but nor did he stop Louis from raising them himself. He may not have been entirely straight with the pope, either: Honorius wrote to him urging him to recall his son, but Philip managed not to receive the letter until after Louis had left the court again and then was able to reply sorrowfully that he had not been able to speak to his son about the matter.

And so it was left to Louis to find more willing men himself. Again he was unable to raise the royal banner to claim service from those who owed it to the crown; he had to resort to personal exhortation. Most of those who were likely to support him most wholeheartedly were already doing so, so his additional gains were few.

It might have been tempting, at this point, for Louis just to give it all up. It was almost a year since his first invasion and the euphoria of his early gains; since then he had been bogged down in sieges and resistance, and the current state of affairs – particularly given that new recruits had not exactly flocked to his banner – indicated that this was going to continue for some time. Meanwhile his wife and family were in France, where he could be enjoying court life while reconciled with the Church and planning further campaigns in the south against the Cathars. But he would not give up. With dogged determination he embarked from Calais on 22 April 1217 with both Dreux brothers, the count of Perche, the viscount of Melun, some 140 additional knights and a troop of mercenaries, to finish what he had started.

* * *

Of course, Louis’s trip to France had been something of a gamble and the situation had, as might have been anticipated, deteriorated during his absence. Without him there to hold everything together in person and to act as surety for the cause, the earls of Salisbury, Arundel and Warenne, along with William Marshal junior, had taken advantage of the situation to desert his cause for Henry’s. These were the men who had been notable waverers anyway, and Louis still had the core of his baronial force, but it marked a symbolic shift, setting a precedent for others to follow, as well as losing him men and resources.

Meanwhile Guala had been scuttling round in his attempts to whip up a crusading fervour against Louis, doing all that he could to suppress the oaths that the barons had sworn to him and announcing that anyone who opposed Henry was ‘an enemy of God and the Church’. And most seriously of all, despite the moralising tone of the Henrician camp, who claimed to have God on their side, they had during Louis’s absence broken the terms of the truce, launching attacks behind his back and against their sworn word.

William Marshal is often held up as a paragon of chivalry, but as we saw in an earlier chapter, ‘chivalry’ was not quite the same concept in the early thirteenth century as it later became. Marshal needed to adopt a win-at-all-costs attitude, and he did. Nevertheless, breaking an agreed truce in an age when a man’s word was his bond was no light undertaking, and could seriously affect the chances of another being granted in future, so we find that the author of the
History of William Marshal
feels he has to offer justification. Keen that his hero should not be seen to break his word or to act in an unknightly manner, he is insistent that Louis broke the truce first, although he does not say how or why other than to imply that Louis’s decision to travel to France was against the temporary peace in some way:

Then Louis decided to return to France. Once the Marshal saw and knew that Louis had no intention of keeping the truce, indeed that he had broken it, he said: ‘He can know this for a fact, that it will never be kept by our side. We shall never ask him for anything, there will be no further bargaining, and it will be every man for himself.’

It was with this rather thin justification that Falkes de Bréauté was allowed to attack and take Ely and Philip d’Albini Rochester, as well as destroying the castles of Chichester and Portchester; Marshal himself, together with his son and with William Longsword, earl of Salisbury, assailed Farnham and Odiham. In retaliation, the French and barons based in London and awaiting Louis’s return sent a further force to Lincoln, where they already held the city, to make another attempt on the castle.

Louis would not have been aware of all the details as he sailed towards Dover on 22 April 1217, thankfully in calmer weather than when he had first arrived a year earlier, but as he approached English shores he saw the town there on fire – it had been attacked by a force led by William of Kensham and John’s illegitimate son Oliver – so he realised he might be heading into an ambush and switched course for Sandwich. He landed there the following day and went straight for Dover overland. However, news soon reached him that Winchester, Southampton, Marlborough and Mountsorrel (in Leicestershire) were all under siege from Henry’s forces.

Louis faced a battle on many fronts. Militarily and strategically he was more than a match for the Henrician faction, especially now that he was back in the country to lead his campaign personally from the front, with a refreshed force (albeit a modestly sized one) of reinforcements. He had the energy, the determination and the skill to start all over again if he needed to. But politically his ground had shifted enormously in the half a year since John’s death, and this was to prove a huge factor in the campaign.

Contradictory as it may seem, the death of John was actually one of the worst things that could have happened to Louis. When he first invaded he had been the saviour, the just and Christian prince from overseas who would liberate England from the evil tyrant and ensure peace and the rights of the nobles. But now, without any particular change in the military situation, his position had shifted and he could be depicted by William Marshal, Guala and other adherents of young Henry as the foreign bully-boy who had invaded and was seeking to take the crown from an innocent and defenceless child.

Marshal and particularly Guala made the most of the propaganda value of this: the barons’ complaints had supposedly been against John personally, not against his whole dynasty, so now that John was gone, why substitute him with a foreign prince? Why not return to the fold of the boy king who accepted their charter and who promised a clean slate, a new beginning? The proclamation of a crusade by the legate exacerbated Louis’s problems: he had been put more or less in the same position as the Cathars against whom he had been fighting in the Church’s name, and that must have hurt.

Again, the temptation arose to turn round and go back to France, especially when more of the English nobles started to slip away from him. But Louis was not about to give up so easily on the oaths he had sworn or on a conquest he had planned and started to execute, and which could still be completed. As far as he was concerned he was the king, having been elected and acclaimed by the nobles of England; Henry was the usurper, the son of a man who had dispossessed not only himself but his heirs as well. This was going to be difficult, but the prize would be worth it.

And unknown to William Marshal and the rest of the Henrician party, Louis had a secret weapon: his wife.

CHAPTER SIX

FIGHTING BACK

B
LANCHE HAD NOT
been idle during Louis’s campaign in England. Firstly, she attended to the principal duty of a future queen consort: in September 1216 she gave birth to a third son, Robert, who joined seven-year-old Philip and two-year-old Louis in guaranteeing the royal line of succession. But the job of a royal or noble wife at this time was not only to provide heirs, important as this was: it was to support her husband in all matters, including running his estates and organising his finances in his absence, and, where necessary, raising money and troops for him.

Louis’s return to France in the spring of 1217 must have both pleased and dismayed Blanche. On the one hand, she was able to see her husband for the first time in nearly a year, and to show off the new addition to the family; but on the other hand she expected and wanted Louis to succeed in his quest for the English crown, so to see him return without it would have been disappointing. Being an intelligent woman who had been brought up in two royal courts, she was no doubt also reasonably well versed in the basics of military strategy and would have grasped immediately the implications of King Philip’s refusal to offer further financial support or even to speak to his son on the matter.