Blood Cries Afar (44 page)

The greatest damage and loss of life was not at the Battle of Lincoln itself, but in the savage sacking of the city afterwards. The
History of William Marshal
does not sully the regent’s great victory by offering an account of this terrible event, but Wendover, ever aware of the sufferings of noncombatants and being geographically extremely close to events, does. In a passage entitled ‘Of the plunder and pillage of the city’, he gives us a vivid account of what happened when the royalists had secured their victory:

After the battle was thus ended, the king’s soldiers found in the city the wagons of the barons and the French, with the packhorses, loaded with baggage, silver vessels, and various kinds of furniture and utensils, all which fell into their hands without opposition. Having then plundered the whole city to the last farthing, they next pillaged the churches throughout the city, and broke open the chests and store-rooms with axes and hammers, seizing on the gold and silver in them, clothes of all colours, ornaments, gold rings, goblets and jewels. Nor did the cathedral church escape this destruction, but underwent the same punishment as the rest, for the legate had given orders to knights to treat all the clergy as excommunicated men … This church lost eleven thousand marks of silver. When they had thus seized on every kind of property, so that nothing remained in any corner of the houses, they each returned to their lords as rich men … Many of the women of the city were drowned in the river, for, to avoid shameful offence [rape], they took to small boats with their children, female servants and household property, and perished on their journey; but there was afterwards found in the river by the searchers, goblets of silver, and many other articles of great benefit to the finders.
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The Barnwell chronicler confirms the atrocities. The spoils of victory were, as ever, money and women.

Lincoln was a devastating blow to the Anglo-French party, the most decisive of the war that had started back in 1215. The poem of the battle lauds the victory as ‘O famous day, to be venerated through our age!’ Powicke says ‘within a few hours the cause of Louis had suffered a crushing defeat’; Carpenter calls the Battle of Lincoln ‘one of the most decisive in English history’ with the result that ‘England would be ruled by the Angevin, not the Capetian dynasty.’
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But Louis was not finished yet.

G
reat as the royalist victory at Lincoln was, it did not the end the war. Although the French historian Petit-Dutaillis’s judgement that the Battle of Lincoln was more important in terms of morale rather than material advantage underestimates the significance of the battle, it was not a killer blow.
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The wheel of fortune had turned before and could turn again.

In the immediate aftermath of Lincoln, there was a flurry of activity as the protagonists responded to the dramatic events. Lincoln Castle had suffered terrible damage from the enemy’s siege engines and, seeing the way the wind was now blowing and hoping to catch the breeze to its full advantage, ‘the Earl of Salisbury emphasised his conversion to the king’s party by advancing close on £400 towards the repair of the fortress.’
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While Louis remained ignorant of events, the royalist high command, already gathered at Lincoln, held a council of war to decide what to do next. As to be expected, there was a difference of opinion. Some wanted to proceed to London and besiege it at last, an expression of new-found confidence after their victory at Lincoln; others thought the priority should be Dover, which Louis was still besieging. The Marshal, ‘who knew most about war and had seen most of it’, says his biographer, told his captains to secure their prisoners in their castles (for the profitable ransoms that would follow) and ordered a muster at Chertsey, which took place in the royal presence on 6 June. The day after the battle, news reached them that the garrison at Mountsorrel had fled, leaving the castle empty; its castellan, Henry de Braybrooke, had been at Lincoln and may have been captured there. Two days later, on 23 May, it was granted to Ranulf Earl of Chester, who had it destroyed, so that it did not create further problems for him in the region. Greater reward was in store for Ranulf: he was granted the earldom of Lincoln county. Others also received their dues: Brian de Lisle, for example, was given Knaresborough. It was for such rewards that many fought the war.

The French who escaped from Lincoln had a rough time of it as they fled to the security of London. The footsoldiers suffered especially badly, Wendover saying that most of these were killed. In comparison with the mobile cavalry, who nonetheless still incurred losses, they were less able to escape from ambushes laid for them on their journey. As the French hurried through the towns on their way to the capital, they were set upon by townspeople with swords and clubs. No doubt they were exacting revenge for the depredations of the Franco-baronial armies that had occurred during their ravaging and northward marches; with revenge came their own plundering and the opportunity to either profit or at least gain compensation for their own losses.

There was also a sense of nationalist outrage at work here at the imposition of French rule and violence in the country. Many historians, especially modernists, discount any sense of national identity at such an early date in English history, some even adhering to the extreme position of Ernest Gellner that nationalism came with industrialisation in the nineteenth century. The matter of national identity and nationalism encompasses a certain degree of obfuscating semantics on the subject. My research supports that of Patrick Wormald, John Gillingham and others influenced by Adam Smith’s more primordial approach, which recognises clear signs of identification with the nation in the Middle Ages, even stretching back to the Anglo-Saxon period.
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Thirteenth-century England meets with John Breuilly’s conditions for patriotism, which he places in the early-modern period. He posits nationalism as a form of politics that arises to oppose the state which is manipulated to advance the interests of the ruling elites: this is manifest in the baronial response to King John’s policies and Magna Carta. The effect of war on nationalist feeling has also been well documented, but more for the early-modern period onwards.
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Such feelings in England had been nurtured by the wars against the Celtic fringe in the twelfth century, as John Gillingham has indicated. Breuilly concurs that such military factors are crucial in the formation of nationalism, and argues that the lack of ideology in English nationalism is explained by the fact that ‘there has been no foreign presence which would generate nationalist opposition.’
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But this is exactly what we have in 1216–17 with the French military occupation of England for over a year (and a reflection of just how much this important event has been overlooked or simply not known about). We have seen how at Lincoln the Marshal urged his men to fight for their country, ‘
pro patria
’ as Wendover says, and how his biographer mocked the foreign invaders. We have seen this patriotic call too in 1213. And when England was again threatened by French invasion in 1264, patriotic and anti-alien sentiment was once more employed successfully to mobilise huge numbers of the common folk against the enemy.
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As Alfred Smyth has shown, the Viking invasions fostered a real sense of national identity in Anglo-Saxon England, precisely because they posed a foreign threat.
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Patriotism clearly existed in early thirteenth century. It was not new, but the loss of Normandy in 1204, the oppressions of John, the break with Rome and, above all, the French invasion of England: all mark out this period as one of central importance in the development of English national identity.
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Some 200 French and baronial knights escaped from Lincoln and made it to London. On 25 May Louis heard the news of the disaster at Lincoln as he was pressing the siege of Dover. Unsurprisingly, the sources agree that Louis took the news badly. The
History of William Marshal
says ‘Louis was full of anger and rage once he heard how his men had been defeated so badly in Lincoln, how so many had been taken prisoner there, and how the Count had been killed.’ Wendover has Louis sneeringly telling those who had escaped that the fault was theirs: had they stood and fought, their companions would have been saved from capture and death. William the Breton attempts to soften the blow by blaming the defeat at Lincoln on a sneaky ambush by the English and their superior numbers, thus excusing Simon de Poissy and his knights for ‘prudently’ escaping to London. He says that ‘vexation, sadness and lamentation burst through’ the French camp.
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Louis’s instinctive reaction on hearing the news was to return to London and secure it; besieging the capital was an option discussed at the royalist war council at Lincoln. The Marshal’s biographer says Louis ‘gave up the siege and went to London as quickly as possible, for he had every fear that the King’s men might take it by surprise, or by force, or that they would come and launch an attack on him’.
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However, as the reliable Anonymous of Béthune informs us from his more knowledgeable position in the south, Louis did not leave immediately. Before raising the siege and, much to his dismay, dismantling his powerful trebuchet, Louis and his advisers held a new council at which it was agreed that they should stay at Dover until Sunday.
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This was a risky strategy: as the Marshal’s biographer hints at, as well as the possibility of a quick move on London by the royalists, there was a danger that news of the defeat could dishearten the Londoners who might then go over to Henry; in 1215 the city had easily gone over to the barons and there was some danger it could just as easily switch allegiance.
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As we shall see in a moment, this was a real threat. If London was lost, then so was Louis’s whole campaign. But Louis held his nerve: he was waiting at Dover for reinforcements.

That Sunday was a clear day and the sails of the transport ships could be seen across the Channel. The next day, 29 May, the English could also see them and when they set sail, so, too, did the English; the French gave chase but to no avail. As they turned back to head into Dover, the English ships made a quick about turn and attacked the rearward vessels of the French, capturing eight of them. This seems to have been a successful naval employment of the feigned retreat of cavalry charges, most famously executed by William the Conqueror down the coast at Hastings in 1066. Despite the size of the French fleet – some 120 ships – the reinforcements they carried were few, ‘all sergeants, merchants or sailors; of knights, there were only eighteen of them,’ says the Anonymous.
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When Louis went down to the shore to meet them, he was angered and dismayed at how little help had materialised. It could only have made the still fresh wound of Lincoln ache the more.

Louis held another council that evening where it was decided that he should go back to London the next day. He wrote a number of letters, which were sent to France with Guy d’Athies to his father informing the King of the changed situation, and to leading barons, seeking their help. He also sent back the ships that had just arrived, possibly in anticipation of them being used for transporting over more substantial reinforcements. The ships that were already in the harbour from earlier were burned; Louis was leaving Dover and he did not want to leave anything of use to the enemy. It is safe to assume that as soon as he left, Hubert de Burgh’s garrison burst out from their incarceration within the castle to be met by local supporters, no doubt followed soon after by Willikin of the Weald. Louis spent the night in Canterbury and on Thursday 1 June was back in London.

The Anonymous says that he was received here with great ceremony; but how different and more melancholy it must have been compared to his first triumphal arrival there a year before. The atmosphere soon turned even sourer. The royalists had marched through Windsor and Staines and were now not far off mustering at Chertsey; what is more, they had opened up secret talks with the chief men of London. The sack of Lincoln would have played heavily on the Londoners’ minds; the sack was, after all, not merely a plundering opportunity but a measured exercise in psychological pressure for the capital: this is what happens to those who defy us. This was the royalists’ stick; their carrot was a reassuring confirmation of the city’s liberties. The negotiations did not remain secret for long as Louis soon heard of them. His response was to secure all but one of the gates of the city – probably in the form of blocking them up – and to demand a renewal of the city’s homage to him; he ‘had little trust in the burghers of London’ and thus ‘dared not leave the city’.
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Louis stagnated in the capital for the month of June, little better off than when the rebels had taken the capital in 1215 only to find themselves on the defensive and holed up there by the autumn. The chroniclers capture this stagnation in affairs by their jump from the Battle of Lincoln in May to the last battle at the end of August; the exception is the well informed Anonymous of Béthune who thus becomes even more valuable for this period, backed up by government papers. While Louis stewed in London trying to arrange reinforcements, the Henricians went from strength to strength. The number of
reversi
, men returning to the royal camp, serves as a barometer for the changing political and military climate: from the Battle of Lincoln to early August, over 150 abandoned Louis and submitted to the king, including such major rebel figures as the Earl of Warenne (by 22 June), Reginald de Braose (by 24 June), the Earl of Arundel (by 14 July), and John de Lacy, Constable of Chester (by 9 August).
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In the deteriorating situation the rebels found themselves, the pronouncement of a total amnesty and restoration of their lands as they held them before the war encouraged many to make the return to the English royal fold. While the majority of barons remained loyal to Louis, this was still a significant and indicative setback.