Richard & John: Kings at War (83 page)

John must have been well informed by his spies of what was afoot, for on 14 April he ordered twenty-one coast towns to send all shipping to the Thames estuary to prevent a French landing. On 17 April he issued his ‘last chance’ proclamation, calling on all rebels to submit by 24 May (one month after Easter) or forfeit their lands and possessions forever.
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Forced marches took him from Hampshire to Windsor and thence through Surrey to Rochester and Dover, where he arrived on 25 April. For three weeks he ranged up and down the coast of Kent, awaiting the arrival of the French and Guala. Dover was ordained as a grand mustering point for all shipping, to be fetched from as far away as Yarmouth and Lynn (King’s Lynn). At this stage John entertained a grand design of setting sail with the assembled flotilla and blockading Louis in Calais, where he was assembling a mighty armada to be piloted across the Channel and into the Thames estuary by a notorious pirate called Eustace the Monk.
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But from the evening of 18 May a ferocious gale howled in the Channel. Giant waves smashed into John’s armada at Dover, engulfing, overwhelming, smashing and shattering his ships. It was a critical blip in the weather on which so much hinged, for at the first sign of calmer seas Louis cleared from Calais (on the evening of the 20th). Next morning the watchers on the shore at Thanet saw his ships in the distance and notified John. The king himself then looked on gloomily as the French passed the mouth of Pegwell Bay in safety. He gave the order to march, trumpets sounded, and his soldiers formed up ready but the final order never came.
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As with so many of John’s actions, this one remains mysterious. Perhaps he was, to use a modernism, ‘in denial’ - an inference strengthened by his initial pretence that the sighted ships were some of his own storm-tossed vessels. Perhaps he was distracted because a messenger had brought him word that Guala had just landed at Romney. Three more rational motives have been suggested: that William Marshal advised him against offering battle; that the mercenaries were unreliable both because their pay was in arrears and because many of them were Louis’s subjects; and that a foreign invasion was certain to swing Englishmen over to his side long-term. But the most likely explanation is that, when faced with an imminent and decisive encounter, John as commander always ducked the issue. He had turned aside from London in December 1215 and he turned aside from a trial of strength with Louis now.
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He performed his old trick of simply riding away in silence when he was deeply frustrated and was three miles down the road from Sandwich to Dover before most of his men knew he had gone. Leaving Dover under Hubert de Burgh, well fortified and provisioned, he sped through Sussex to Winchester where, at a safe distance, he awaited the drift of events.
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John derived what comfort he could from the presence of Cardinal Guala, who at the very first meeting with the English king at once pronounced Louis excommunicate and rode, resplendent in scarlet robes on a white palfrey, at the king’s side to Canterbury. Guala explained his mission to John. Innocent had given him extraordinarily wide-ranging powers as legate, and he was specifically charged to fill the void at the highest level of the hierarchy left by Langton’s suspension; as far as John was concerned, the legate was to give him every assistance so as to put down the rebellion and speed him on his way to the crusade.
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On 29 May, at Winchester Guala passed formal sentence of excommunication against Louis and his followers, and in the months to come would extend the same anathema to the Scots and Welsh rebels.
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But Guala’s bell, book and candle methods were something in the nature of a papal bull against a comet, for Louis and the barons treated the papal interdict with the same contempt, openly expressed, that John felt for religion and all its works in his secret heart. In the context of the ferocious civil war in England in 1216, ‘how many divisions has the Pope?’ had a compelling resonance, especially since Louis’s arrival electrified the waverers and won new converts to the barons’ cause. Many who had only just beaten John’s May deadline for surrender immediately apostasised at news of the latest development for, they reasoned, how could this deeply unpopular king prevail against the combined might of France and his own barons? Many others who had remained neutral and sat on the fence for fear of the consequences now thought they saw clearly which way the wind was blowing and jumped on Louis’s bandwagon. Among the host of defections from John’s camp were Hugh Neville and Warin Fitzgerald, hitherto considered solid king’s men, and the earls of Arundel, Surrey and York. The most shattering blow to John’s cause was the apostasy of his half-brother William of Salisbury, one of his most trusted commanders.
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At first Louis swept all before him. From the moment of his landing at Stonor, he seemed a veritable dynamo. He began by issuing a manifesto to the English Church expressing the utmost contempt for Guala, whom he described as a venal cleric bought by John’s gold. He promised religious toleration and special consideration for the secular clergy, always provided they accepted the legitimacy of his claim to the throne, which he now reiterated without any of the frills and obfuscations used at Melun. He had the early satisfaction, on marching for Canterbury, of turning the detested Guala out of his lodgings helter-skelter; the legate hastened after John to Winchester.
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Louis proceeded to Rochester, which capitulated within a week; observers were not slow to remark that this supposedly mighty fortress had taken John two months to crack but now it had fallen to a doughtier warrior. On 2 June Louis entered London, to the acclamation of the people, there to receive the homage of barons and citizens and the awed deference of the clergy. He took a solemn oath on the Gospels that he would restore the golden age of just laws and the ancient English constitution, and called on all magnates who had not yet paid homage to do so rapidly, or leave the country - or face the obvious consequences.
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After just four days in the capital, Louis took his army on the hunt for John - the prince may have been reckless but he did not believe in shirking battles. But John had quit Winchester the day before, on 5 June, leaving Savaric de Mauléon to conduct the defence. Louis’s rapid sweep through Surrey was something of a walkover: the castles of Reigate, Guildford and Farnham surrendered in quick succession so that the French were in sight of Winchester by the morning of 14 June. Savaric de Mauléon did not stay to try conclusions but withdrew, not before setting fire to the suburbs - whether on his own initiative or in obedience to John is unclear. The blaze quickly got out of hand and had gutted most of Winchester by the time the French marched in, but Savaric had left a strong garrison in the chief keep at the west end of the city, which held out for ten grim days in face of Louis’s siege engines, until Savaric returned with permission from John for the defenders to surrender.
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John seemed to be in headlong retreat and the French unstoppable but now, once more, the weathercock of war in this ever-oscillating conflict turned round again to give the English king respite. Louis’s problems were twofold: he proved inept at siegecraft and he had no real idea how to scotch the growing Anglo-French conflict within his own army. The siege of Odiham was a case in point. From Winchester Louis quickly ‘ate up’ the garrison at Porchester, but at Odiham a tiny garrison - no more than three knights and ten men-at-arms - held him at bay for a week. Although the gallant defenders were then allowed to march out with full honours, Louis’s ineptitude at pressing the siege did not inspire confidence.
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Meanwhile his army was riven with jealousies and rivalries as French and English notables vied with one another for the same places, positions and prizes. William Marshal junior, the apostate son of the earl of Pembroke, claimed the right to be marshal of Louis’s army - a position that really should have gone to Adam de Beaumont, his chief French captain; so as not to alienate the English Louis was obliged to give Marshal what he wanted. Not satisfied with this signal honour, the greedy young William Marshal threw a sulk when he further claimed the castle of Marlborough but was turned down by Louis in favour of his own cousin Robert of Dreux. By not alienating the barons and giving them most of what they wanted, Louis managed to disillusion his own compatriots, who began to drift away back to the continent in dribs and drabs, convinced that the English campaign was a waste of French blood and treasure from which only the English barons would benefit.
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While Louis was thus engaged, the barons in London, now much more confident, sortied into Essex and East Anglia and visited on these areas some of the same rapine and destruction they had recently suffered at the hands of John.
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Another party ventured into the East Midlands to pen John’s men up more closely in the seemingly impregnable castles of Nottingham and Newark. Gilbert de Gant and Robert de Ropesley, leaders of this expedition, did not achieve as much as was expected from them, managing to sack Lincoln city but without taking the citadel.
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A third detachment, under Robert de Ros, Peter de Brus and Richard de Percy, were more successful in Yorkshire, and meanwhile Alexander of Scotland opened the siege of Carlisle and sent marauding forces into Northumberland and Durham.
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By mid-July Louis had a spotty control of England from the Channel to the Cheviots, but worryingly many major centres still held out for John. Most of the royal castles remained inviolate, and at least four of John’s lieutenants had humiliated their besiegers in one way or another: Engelard de Cicogne in Windsor Castle, Hubert de Burgh in Dover, Philip Oldcoates in Durham and Hugh Balliol in Barnard Castle.
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The burghers of the Cinque Ports had taken an oath to Louis but were in the field against him, causing particular damage by their harrying of French shipping. There was even a band of guerrillas operating in Sussex and Kent against the French under a leader code-named Willikin of the Weald (William of Kensham).
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William Marshal senior and Ranulph of Chester had the West Midlands in a secure royalist grip. John, typically, for ever hankering after the near West Country, spent most of June and July roaming the hunting lodges of Wiltshire and Dorset. He seems to have settled in for a war of attrition, holding out olive branches to Louis while he tried to suborn his supporters and detach the rebel barons by lavish promises - usually total amnesty and full restoration of lost estates.
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Trying to second-guess Louis’s strategy, John concluded that the French prince’s next step must logically be an offensive against the West Midlands. He therefore began to advance northwards towards the end of July, moving from Sherborne (Dorset) to Bristol, Berkeley, Gloucester, Tewkesbury, Hereford and Leominster. Ever restless, ever the optimist, ever the pursuer of the chimera, he put out feelers for an alliance with the Welsh princes, but there were no takers. The peripatetic existence continued in August: Radnor (Wales), Clun, Shrewsbury, Whitchurch, Bridgnorth, Worcester, Gloucester.
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But still the expected French attack did not come. Unknown to John, Louis had decided that he must take Dover to regain his credibility so had shifted the theatre of operations east, not west. There were strong rumours that Philip Augustus had sent over a message taunting his son with being a strategic ignoramus: he was trying to unlock England without using the key (Dover).
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Louis decided on an all-out assault on John’s two vital strongholds at Dover and Windsor, reasoning that the blow to the king’s prestige if these two fell would have a multiplier effect. While he himself directed operations at Dover, he sent the counts of Dreux and Nevers, with some of the leading barons, to deal with Cigogne at Windsor. They proved spectacularly incompetent and still had nothing to show after two months of investment.
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Louis did not fare much better at Dover, to the point where desertion rates in his army reached critical levels.
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Finally, on 8 August, there was a ray of sunlight on the horizon for him when Alexander of Scotland succeeded in reducing Carlisle. The euphoric Alexander sent word that he was marching south to meet Louis at Dover. But it took a month for the two armies to meet. Alexander wasted time on the way south by turning aside for an abortive siege of Barnard Castle, in the course of which Eustace de Vesci was killed. Other barons who were ineffectively besieging the citadel at Lincoln used the excuse of Alexander’s advent to break off an investment they had no idea how to conclude successfully. It was a large host that arrived in Canterbury from the north in the second week of September, but even the reunited army had no clue how to reduce Dover Castle, still stubbornly held by Hubert de Burgh.
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By the beginning of September the see-saw civil war, already nearly two years old, once more seemed to be favouring John. Relations between the French and the rebel barons had not improved; many apostates were returning to their previous loyalty to John, including the earls of Salisbury and York, surely two of the most short-term trimmers in history, as well as William Marshal’s son, despite the high honour Louis had done him. None of the royalist castles had fallen, and every day there were more reports of desertions in the French army. John had managed to win over the comte de Nevers, commanding the rebel forces at Windsor, as a double agent. Even the small things seemed to be going against the rebels, as when Geoffrey de Mandeville was killed in a pointless joust with a French knight.
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John sensed the changing pulse of events and by now had a clearer picture of French strategy and Louis’s military limitations. He decided to go over to the offensive and relieve Dover. Forced marches took him from Cirencester on 2 September via Burford, Oxford and Wallingford to Reading on the 6th. He feinted towards Windsor, causing momentary panic in the rebel besiegers there, then struck due east, having learned that the king of the Scots was returning homewards.
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John was hoping for a brilliant stroke whereby he would rout the Scots in East Anglia and then turn south to deal with Louis at Dover. Having dallied at Reading - some said this was to get proper intelligence from Nevers at Windsor
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- he made another of his lightning moves on 15 September, taking his armies at an incredible speed for a medieval host through Walton-on-Thames, Aylesbury and Bedford to Cambridge. Nevers and his confrères used this excuse to save face and raise the vain siege of Windsor; they pretended to be ‘pursuing’ John and did indeed come close to overhauling him; whether through luck, treachery or simple incompetence John ended up in Stamford while the pursuers bivouacked in Cambridge.
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