A Great and Glorious Adventure (34 page)

From early 1414, Henry began to prepare for war. Ships were impressed and purveyors travelled all over the kingdom buying up stores and equipment while captains and individuals were arrayed and
indentured. By now, the system was that captains and leaders of retinues contracted either with a magnate or directly with the crown to provide a certain number of men of a certain type (archers,
men-at-arms, gunners, artisans) at an agreed rate of daily pay. This had not changed in fifty years: thirteen shillings and fourpence for a duke; six shillings and eight pence for an earl; four
shillings for a knight banneret; two shillings for a knight; one shilling for an untitled man-at-arms; and sixpence for an archer. As the shilling-a-day man-at-arms did exactly the same job as a
two-shilling knight – stand in line with the infantry – there was a powerful incentive to do well and get knighted. For the first six months of a campaign, the rule was that the captain
was paid half the total sum for his contingent on sealing the indenture – a piece of parchment on which the agreement was written twice and then torn across, with the captain keeping one part
and the employer the other. Subsequent disagreements or accusations of forgery could be resolved by matching up the tears. It would then be agreed how subsequent six-month periods would be funded.
In this campaign, indentures were for one year to begin with, which indicates that Henry expected a long war, but in 1414 the crown did not have the funds for more than a few months, never mind the
initial six months; and even when in
November 1414 Parliament granted the king a double subsidy – in effect, agreeing that the country would go to war – some of
the leaders of retinues and captains were given jewels from the royal treasury as security, while the soldiers were paid from the contingent commander’s own pocket. Presumably, Henry was
hoping for an early victory, or at least enough loot and ransom money to redeem his jewels and fund the campaign beyond the first six months – a considerable gamble by the ruler of around
three million going to war against sixteen million. But then Henry had right, and God, on his side.

Although neither Richard II nor Henry IV had changed the basic structure of English armies, the proportion of archers to men-at-arms had steadily increased since Crécy in 1346. Archers
had shown their worth. They were flexible and could act as light infantry if necessary, while, when mounted, they could act as light cavalry and reconnaissance troops – and they were, of
course, considerably cheaper than men-at-arms. By now, the accepted order of battle was three archers to one man-at-arms, and, although not every retinue or contingent was composed of soldiers in
that proportion, the king’s officials ensured that overall the mix was the right one. Altogether, there were around 250 persons who contracted to provide a retinue of troops, varying in size
from those of the great magnates such as the dukes of Clarence and Gloucester, brothers of the king, who were to produce 960 and 800 respectively, down to the more humble gentry, who might provide
ten men or less, and in some cases just the contractee himself and one archer.

In addition to the retinues – themselves far more numerous than in any previous English army – there were large numbers of men, mainly archers, who enlisted directly with the crown,
rather than joining a retinue. These men would, of course, have to be formed into sub-units under selected commanders and would have to train together and be instructed in the army’s standard
operating procedures. The assembly area for the army was laid down as being Southampton, and ships for the voyage were collected there and in other southern English ports, while the retinue
commanders held their own musters and then marched to Southampton when ordered. Originally, the king had intended to concentrate the army by 1 July 1415, but inevitably things took longer than
hoped. The duke of Gloucester held his muster near Romsey on 16 July and took under
command 190 men-at-arms and 610 archers from fifty-six sub-retinues, while the duke of
Clarence in the New Forest enlisted his 800 from sixty-nine separate units.
³⁹
Altogether, there were probably around 12,000 soldiers –
9,000 archers and 3,000 men-at-arms – ready to embark for France, the largest English army assembled since the time of Edward III, but the total number would have been much greater than just
the combat troops. Henry had also enlisted a company of 120 miners from the Forest of Dean, and there were seventy-five artillerymen, numerous bowyers, fletchers, farriers, blacksmiths, armourers,
bakers, butchers, and a plethora of servants, grooms, clerks and pages, to say nothing of churchmen and surgeons.

The chroniclers generally say that 1,500 ships were needed to transport the force, although some historians consider that to be yet another exaggeration. Altogether, the number of men to be
embarked may have been in the region of 14,000, not counting the ships’ crews, and in addition there were horses, baggage carts, stores, rations for both men and horses, siege engines,
cannon, ammunition for the guns and resupplies of arrows for the archers. Stores included large numbers of tents, and rations included salted meat and fish, ale, flour for bread, and beef on the
hoof, along with their drovers. Given the number of men, horses, cattle and all the accompanying baggage to be transported, a huge number of ships would indeed be needed; and, given also that both
Thomas of Walsingham, generally recognized to be one of the most accurate of contemporary historians, and the anonymous writer of
Gesta Henrici Quinti
,
⁴⁰
who accompanied the expedition, give a figure of 1,500, there seems no reason to doubt it, particularly as the vagaries of wind and weather would preclude any idea of
shuttling the force to France using fewer ships.

With such huge numbers of men, animals and ships being concentrated, it was impossible to hide that these were warlike preparations, and the French embassies that were still coming and going
almost to the last moment were fully aware of what was going on and reporting everything back to their masters. If Henry could not hide the fact that he was assembling an invasion force, then he
had to conceal its destination. Apart from a very few trusted senior commanders and one or two ships’ captains, nobody knew where the invasion force was headed. Most observers and
participants, French and English, assumed that the landing would be at
Calais, which was strongly held by the English and represented the shortest way across the Channel;
others thought the king might repeat the route of Edward III’s expedition of 1346 and land somewhere on the Cotentin peninsula in Normandy, or that of the Black Prince in 1356 and launch the
invasion from Bordeaux. It was not until very late in the day that ships’ crews were informed of their destination, and that only when all troops and stores were on board.

Meanwhile, the last opposition to the Lancastrian inheritance was snuffed out. When the king was at Portchester, supervising the final arrangements for the expedition, the young earl of March
sought an audience and reported the existence of an assassination plot by unreconstructed Ricardians. As the beneficiary of Henry’s murder would presumably have been the earl, the rightful
successor to Richard II by strict primogeniture, this seemingly selfless act was probably motivated by March’s realization that the plotters were incompetent, had no chance of succeeding, and
would have been considered to have shown very bad form indeed at the outset of an expedition against the hated enemy, France. The ringleaders of the Southampton Plot, including yet another
disaffected Scrope, were rounded up and executed after a hasty trial presided over by the king’s brother.

The embarkation of the men and the loading of stores took three weeks, and, on 7 August 1415, King Henry and his immediate staff boarded
Le Trinite
, the largest ship in the fleet at 500
tons with a crew of 300, and hoisted a signal for all ships to concentrate off Southampton. Four days later, on Sunday, 11 August 1415, the fleet set sail for France. The destination: Harfleur.

Today, there is very little left of medieval Harfleur, and the odd section of crumbling wall and the sluggish stream of the River Lézade that remain are subsumed in the suburbs of the
sixteenth-century port of Le Havre. It was a sensible choice for Henry and his army. Harfleur was situated at the north of the mouth of the River Seine and its capture would allow the king the
options of striking up the Seine straight for Paris, or west and then south for Rouen and Normandy, as well as giving him a port through which to receive reinforcements. It would also allow him to
blockade a major French trading route and – equally important, given that the balance of power at sea had tilted towards the French – would eliminate a nest of pirates and prevent
French galleys from getting out to sea from the shipyards at Rouen. Good choice it certainly was, and Henry hoped to capture it without too much delay, but in the event it
would not be as easy a task as he thought.

The crossing from Southampton took three days and, on 14 August, the first ships hove to off what the English still called Saint-Denis Chef du Caux,
⁸³
on the coast six-and-a-half miles due west of Harfleur. An amphibious operation, whether of the fifteenth or twenty-first century, is at its most vulnerable during the landing
phase, but the French made no attempt to oppose Henry. They must have known from fishermen that the invasion force was on its way, and, had they had any sort of coastal watch like that in England,
they could easily have identified the landing area and caused carnage among both the disembarking troops as they struggled up through the surf and the horses and cattle as they were winched over
ships’ sides and then swam to dry land. As it was, Henry’s men went unmolested for the three days that it took to get the force ashore. It was at this time that the king issued strict
orders concerning the behaviour of the troops. The usual practice of slaughtering, burning and looting was to cease: Henry was the legitimate king of France and he was not going to ill-treat his
own subjects. No man of the cloth or any woman was to be molested unless they had a weapon and were obviously of aggressive intent, and churches and other sacred places were to be respected.
Prostitutes were forbidden to approach the army’s encampment and, if found in the lines, were to have their left arms broken before being expelled. The prohibition was presumably a security
measure rather than a moral stricture.

On 18 August, an advance party under the duke of Clarence marched off to surround Harfleur, just too late to prevent a reinforcement of 400 men-at-arms from slipping in through the south-eastern
gate, but in plenty of time to intercept a slow-moving convoy of gunpowder and crossbow quarrels from Rouen. Harfleur was around three miles in circumference. It was surrounded by a thick, high
wall in good repair with a number of towers, and the three gates, on the north-east, south-east and south-west corners, were well protected by stout barbicans that had been reinforced
by tree-trunks, driven into the ground and lashed together, with packed earth behind.
⁸⁴
There was a deep, stone-lined moat, two spear
lengths wide (twenty feet) according to one chronicler,
⁴¹
to make mining difficult, and a series of banks and ditches on all approaches. The land
round about was flat and marshy, and the French soon broached the ditches and flooded much of the countryside. The garrison, now of 700 men-at-arms, was led by a competent commander, the sire de
Goucourt, who had commanded the reinforcements and who had ample guns and sufficient rations to withstand a siege of at least a month, by which time he would surely be relieved from Rouen, only
fifty miles or two days’ forced march away.

As we have seen, cannon had made no great impact during the campaigns of Edward III and the Black Prince: they may have been used at Crécy and there were some present at the siege of
Calais, but they had contributed little to the end results. Under Henry IV, however, the science of artillery had progressed, and indeed both defenders and attackers at Harfleur used guns.
Eventually, guns and gunpowder would force the abandonment of the entire medieval system of defence and fortification, one which relied on high walls and moats, and, although that time was not yet,
guns were to play an increasingly important part in the war from now on. Henry V had appointed the first Master of Ordnance,
⁸⁵
whose duty it was to
supervise the manufacture of cannon and the storage of guns and ammunition in the Tower of London. At this stage, most shot was still stone balls, to be replaced by iron later in the war, and
cannon barrels were still made of bars of iron held together by hoops of the same material. The powder was unreliable as the type of saltpetre used was slow-burning and the practice of
‘graining’ – whereby the right combination of saltpetre, sulphur and charcoal was mixed, liquefied and then dried out to produce a faster-burning propellant and hence a higher
muzzle velocity – was not yet standard. Guns were still dangerous to their crews and there were some spectacular self-inflicted disasters, when the gunners put in too much powder and only
succeeded in bursting the barrel and killing themselves. But, if all went well, they could discharge projectiles
of up to 200 pounds in weight and knock holes in walls
(eventually); and they could, if correctly positioned, fire over walls and cause considerable damage to houses and people within. Guns were still heavy, awkward and of limited range, so, while
useful in a siege, they had yet to fully develop as field artillery.

Once Henry had surrounded Harfleur with the army on land and the fleet blockading any approach from the sea, and had stationed men in small requisitioned boats in the rivers that criss-crossed
the area, he was ready to begin his siege. But that was the last thing he wanted to do, for it would cost time, men and money, so he called upon the garrison to surrender what was, after all,
legitimately part of the duchy of Normandy and therefore Henry’s rightful inheritance, with a promise that, if they did so, they would not be harmed or plundered. Not surprisingly, the French
declined and the siege began. The first problem was to get the English guns close enough to the walls to cause damage, and, having decided that the main point of attack would be the eastern wall
and the south-eastern gate, the men-at-arms began to dig trenches to allow them to move the guns under cover from enemy crossbowmen and cannon positioned on the town walls. This was a difficult and
unpleasant task given the very high water table and the flooding of much of the area, but eventually the guns were able to begin a bombardment against the south-east barbican and the adjacent
walls. In order to protect the guns from counter-battery fire from the walls, an ingenious system of thick wooden planks that were reinforced with iron and hinged was devised. Mounted in front of
the guns, they were raised to allow the guns to fire and then lowered to protect against retaliation. The enemy were not idle. By night, they repaired the damage as far as they could by placing
tubs full of earth or sand – to be known as gabions in a later war – in any breaches and they covered the streets in earth and animal dung so as to absorb the fall of shot and thus
reduce the likelihood of stone balls landing inside the town and disintegrating into showers of deadly splinters. Mindful of the risk of a full-scale escalade, de Goucourt ordered barrels of
sulphur and quicklime to be placed along the walls as a blinding agent to be thrown down on attackers, and tubs of oils, pitch and other flammables to be positioned for use against belfries or
other siege engines that might try to come up against the walls.