Читать книгу Battles of English History - H. B. George - Страница 12

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For nearly forty years after the death of the Black Prince the English pretensions against France lay dormant. Something like friendly relations existed from time to time between the two countries: Richard II. even contracted a marriage with a French princess, though he was deposed before his child bride was grown up. Cordial peace however was impossible: the English possessions in Guienne were a standing temptation to French ambition and patriotism: the English claim to the French crown was a standing provocation. That claim had by no means been forgotten: the glories of Crecy and Poitiers had made a deeper impression than the slow failure of the following years, the burden of which had fallen much more heavily on Guienne than on England. To the English mind the pretensions of their kings to the throne of France had become a national rather than a personal matter. It was England that considered herself entitled to dominate over France, rather than an individual claiming an inheritance for himself. Richard II. had been succeeded by his cousin the duke of Lancaster, who reigned by a perfectly valid national title, formally voted by Parliament, and substantially accepted by the country as a whole. He was, as it happened, the heir male of Edward III., heir according to the theory embodied in the Salic law which France had made her rule of succession: but he was not the heir of Edward III. according to the theory which alone could render valid Edward III.'s claim to France. What is commonly said in relation to Edward is strictly true of Henry V.: if his contention was based on a sound theory, it held good in favour of some one else. There is no trace of this being recognised in England: Henry V. was the lawful king of England, lawful successor of his great-grandfather, and might reasonably urge his great-grandfather's pretensions.

The state of France at the date of the accession of Henry V. was deplorable. The king, Charles VI., had long been mad; his occasional lucid intervals, when he was supposed to resume the reins of government, only served to make confusion worse. The queen was one of the worst of women, without the great abilities which went some way towards atoning for the wickedness of Catharine de Medicis or her namesake of Russia. The Dauphin was a dissolute and reckless boy. All good government was lost: for power was disputed by two bitterly hostile factions, each of which used it in turn for its own purposes. One was headed by the duke of Burgundy, cousin of the king, son of the boy who was taken prisoner at Poitiers beside his father king John. The other, which bore the name of Armagnacs,[32] was headed by the young duke of Orleans, the king's nephew, between whom and John of Burgundy there was an irreconcilable blood-feud. The statesmanship of France was not ill-represented by the Dauphin's insult to Henry V., in sending him a present of balls at his accession, with a message implying that he deemed the young king, perhaps the ablest man of his age, little better than a child. Shakespeare makes much of the story that the archbishop of Canterbury urged Henry to undertake war with France, in order to divert his attention from ecclesiastical affairs at home. Whatever weight this may have had, the opportunity was obvious, and Henry was very well competent to use it.

In August 1415 Henry V. landed at the mouth of the Seine, with a well-equipped army of about 30,000 men. No better point for an invasion could be chosen: there was a good harbour for his base, and almost the shortest distance from the sea-shore to Paris is straight up the Seine. Before however he could advance Harfleur must be taken, and this cost an unexpectedly long time. More than a month elapsed before the town surrendered; and then it is suggested that dysentery, which was raging alike inside and outside the walls, was largely answerable for the surrender. The siege was conducted entirely by battering, like a siege of three or four centuries later: probably the comparative slowness and inadequacy of the cannonade was more or less balanced by the inferiority of the defensive works to those of later times. When the town had fallen (or was on the point of falling, for the date is not quite certain), Henry sent a message to the Dauphin, offering to settle the dispute by single combat with him, as his father was incapacitated. The proposal is altogether in the style of chivalry, and was doubtless considered the right and proper thing to do: but seeing that the Dauphin was a weak and debauched lad, and Henry in the very prime of vigour, there was nothing really high-minded about it. Henry deemed himself bound to wait for an answer, and during the interval resolved on his course of action. His army had been frightfully reduced by illness as well as by the losses in the siege: we are told that 5000 men had to be sent home invalided, besides the large number who died. A garrison was also wanted for Harfleur; altogether the king could not move with above a third of his original force. The accounts given from the English side, which are numerous and unusually circumstantial, vary only slightly: and one French writer, who expressly says that he saw the English army, agrees pretty closely with them. French writers in general had only hearsay to guide them, and had every motive to exaggerate the English numbers. Of men-at-arms Henry had left from 800 to 1000, of archers five or six thousand, besides other foot-soldiers who were probably about half as numerous. Whatever the number was, it had suffered no material change before the battle of Agincourt.

With such an insignificant force, offensive operations were out of the question. Prudence obviously suggested, while honour forbade, a direct return to England. Henry determined to march through the coast districts of Normandy, and so gain Calais. Doubtless he was encouraged to take this venturous course by his knowledge of the distracted state of France, and in particular by the fact that, while he had now been six weeks in the country, no attempt had been made to disturb him, though there was by this time a hostile army gathering at Rouen. About October 8 the English army started, carrying with them provisions for several days, with no waggons to delay their march, and under strict orders that there should be no plundering. Henry aimed at crossing the Somme as his great-grandfather had done, by the ford of Blanchetaque below Abbeville: but on coming within a few miles he was informed that it was very strongly held by the enemy. One French writer says that this information was false, and that it was the cause of the subsequent disaster, as otherwise Henry would have reached Calais without fighting. True or false, Henry believed it, and marched up the Somme, finding bridge after bridge broken, and naturally feeling that the chance of a French army barring the road was hourly increasing. At length, on October 18, fords were found near Nesle, and the English made their way safely across. Two days later Henry received a message from the dukes of Orleans and Bourbon to the effect that they proposed to fight him before he reached Calais, and asking him to appoint a meeting-place. Henry's reply was that of a general, not of a knight-errant: he was marching straight to Calais, and they might meet him where they pleased.

The proceedings of the French as reported are somewhat difficult to interpret. We are told, and there is no reason to disbelieve it, that D'Albret, the Constable of France, had been against attempting to relieve Harfleur: the tradition of the great defeats at Crecy and Poitiers, and of the success which had attended the subsequent policy of not fighting in the open field, might well account for this. For the same reason, doubtless, the army under his command was withdrawn behind the Somme on the news of Henry's march having begun, though why the river was not better guarded it is difficult to imagine. On the other hand we are told that the king of France came to Rouen with the Dauphin, after the fall of Harfleur, and that all the chief nobility of France came thither at his summons. So numerous were their forces, and so confident were they, that they refused the offer of a contingent from the city of Paris of 6000 men, one of them saying, "What do we want of the assistance of these shopkeepers, since we are three times as many as the English?" Most of these nobles must have marched with the Constable: it can only have been from his army that the challenge to Henry, above referred to, can possibly have been sent. Then an unintelligible story is told, of a royal council having been held at Rouen on October 20 (this date is clearly impossible), at which it was decided to fight a battle, and orders were sent accordingly to the Constable. But the same account goes on to speak of summons for all who were fit to bear arms to join the Constable's army, which from the nature of the case would have fought and (as was assumed) destroyed the English, long before any fresh troops could reinforce what was already far larger than necessary. Then follows a statement that an invitation was sent to the duke of Burgundy's son, who was only prevented from joining by his father's express orders, and that he never to his dying day forgot the humiliation of being kept away from the battle. Seeing that the youth in question was afterwards duke Philip called the Good, whose co-operation with Henry V. put France, officially speaking, into the hands of the latter, it is scarcely possible to accept this as true. Equally out of keeping with the prevalent feeling of the French at the time is the story that the king and the Dauphin wanted to join the army, and were prevented by the old duke of Berri, the king's uncle, who said, remembering Poitiers, "Better lose the battle than the king and the battle too." Why, if there was anything of an army in Normandy, and the council at Rouen were so bent on a battle, no attempt was made to harass Henry's march, when the Constable was ready to stop him in front, does not appear. From the English accounts, one of which was written by Henry's own attendant chaplain, it is perfectly certain that their march was nowhere really impeded by encountering enemies. The whole conduct of the French, alike in strategy and in the tactics of the actual battle of Agincourt, was ill judged: the explanation doubtless being that the great nobles could not be controlled effectually by the Constable.

When Henry crossed the Somme, the French army was apparently at Bapaume, twenty miles to the northward. Why they made no attempt to attack the English, who marched past them in a line parallel to the river, but a few miles to the north-east of it, can hardly be conjectured. At any moment, during two or three days, the Constable might have fallen upon them, and the English if defeated must have been destroyed, for the Somme would have been at their back. Perhaps the Constable thought it wiser to let Henry go to Calais unimpeded, and only moved in deference to positive orders from the king. Whatever the reason, it was not till Henry was passing him that he moved: then he marched in the same direction, the two routes gradually converging towards each other. On October 24, just after crossing the little river Ternoise, called in the English narratives the river of swords, Henry came almost into collision with the French, whose swarming bands covered the country on his right, and almost in front. The French halted, as if to tempt him to attack. Henry knew better than so to throw away his best chance: having the advantage of the ground, he halted and formed his line for battle. The general feeling in the English army, if one may trust Henry's chaplain, was one of deep despondency. Nor was this unreasonable, seeing that they must cut their way through an army several times the size of their own, unless the enemy threw away his advantage. The king alone was cool and confident. When Sir Walter Hungerford in his hearing uttered a wish for 10,000 more archers, Henry uttered the famous rebuke which Shakespeare[33] has immortalised.