The Handy Military History Answer Book. Samuel Willard Crompton

Чтение книги онлайн.

      Illustration of Edward III defeating the French atCalais from Jean Froissart’s Chroniques, c. 1410.

      There must have been more to this war than dynastic struggle, or else people would never have stayed with the conflict. Is that correct?

      Yes. The dynastic conflict between the English and French was the initial reason for the Hundred Years’ War, but to sustain the bad feeling and desire for blood, there had to be more. By about 1350, England and France were locked in a struggle that was economic, social, and dynastic.

      How severe did the Hundred Years’ War become?

      The major armies were bad enough, but the mercenary forces that attended them were even worse. On both sides, the monarchs employed thousands of mercenary soldiers who preyed on the civilians. France suffered much the worst of this, as so much of the fighting was on its side of the English Channel.

      By the 1370s, both England and France were on the verge of bankruptcy, and social disturbances began in earnest. In France, a rebellion known as the Jaquerie nearly toppled King Charles V; in England, the major disturbance came in the form of Wat Tyler’s Revolt. In both instances, the established order eventually prevailed, albeit at an enormous cost in money, arms, and men.

      Did anyone see that the time had come to end this fratricidal conflict?

      Various Popes mentioned the fact, and numerous churchmen waxed indignant about how the two nations should combine to fight the Ottoman Turks. England and France were locked in a life-or-death struggle, however, and things only became worse when Burgundy exerted all of its power on behalf of the former.

      The dukes of Burgundy had long been uneasy subjects of the French crown. Many of their subjects identified with Germany, or the Holy Roman Empire. By the 1420s, Burgundy was firmly in the English camp, with disastrous results for France. The single worst day of the Hundred Years’ War had already come and gone, however.

      Why did King Henry V (ruled 1413–1422) invade France in 1415?

      He did so for all the usual reasons: to compel the French to come to terms and to extort treasure from the French nobles. Something about Henry V appealed to his men, however, and he was depicted as a hero in Shakespeare’s play of that name. Henry V was young and a risk taker. He came to France with fewer than 8,000 men, and after the Siege of Harfleur, his force was reduced to fewer than 5,000 troops. Rather than be evacuated by ships, however, Henry chose to march over land, across Northern France, to one of the Channel Ports.

      The French knew all about their previous failures at Crecy, Poitiers, and elsewhere. What they never believed, however, was that the humble English longbow man could have caused all this destruction. In each case, the French argued that something else was the reason for their failure. Therefore, on hearing that Henry V was marching with a small army, King Charles VI (ruled 1380–1422) summoned all the noblemen of France and commanded them to strike the English while they were en route to Calais.

      How did France lose the Battle of Agincourt?

      Saint Crispin’s Day—October 25—dawned muggy and overcast, with rain showers threatening. This would have been the perfect time for the French to wait and slowly starve out the English. The French knights were impatient—to say the least—and their leader, the Constable of France, ordered an attack at around 9 A.M. Just then the skies opened up, making for terrible visibility and lots of mud.

      The French attack progressed along a narrow front, too narrow, as it turned out. The English longbow men did not have to see special targets; they simply poured one volley after another into the mass of French knights. By the time a handful of knights got close to the English lines, their foes were ready for them: these were either killed or captured on the spot. The French made one last attempt, circling around to get at the English supply wagons, but this, too, was foiled. By noon, the French had pulled back, and the English were able to assess their victory, which, in every term imaginable, was simply stunning.

      Couldn’t the French have tried again, on another day, to defeat the English?

      Not really. When an army is pummeled to that extent—roughly 10,000 men killed, wounded, and missing out of a total of 25,000—the fighting spirit shrivels. Besides, if the English had contrived some special magic on Saint Crispin’s Day—as many believed—doubtless they would do so again. The French army returned home, and King Henry V headed for the safety of English-held Calais.

      To say that Agincourt was a French disaster is to minimize its importance: both sides remembered the battle for centuries. Equally important, Henry V now held the whip hand in any negotiations with the French. Two years later, under the Treaty of Troyes, he married the French king’s daughter and when their son—the future Henry VI—was born in 1421, it seemed likely that there would, indeed, be one solid realm of England and France combined.

      Was the Hundred Years’ War finally over after the Battle of Agincourt?

      It should have been. We would, therefore, have called it the Ninety Years’ War. But the tide still had one or two cycles to go through.

      In 1429, the English pressed their campaign relentlessly. King Henry V was now dead—from natural causes—and the English nobles fought on behalf of his nine-yearold son, King Henry VI. The English had an overwhelming sense of moral superiority by this point: one had to look a long way back to find, or see, any battle they had lost. The French, at this point, had no king; King Charles VI had died a few years earlier. They had a crown prince—the dauphin—who was in residence at the fortified town of Chinon on the Loire. The English, meanwhile, had invested the city of Orleans on the Loire. It was perhaps the third most important town in France, and if it fell, it was easy to see the English taking the heartland of the Loire River valley. But in the very days and weeks when it seemed that Orleans would fall, the French gained new, sudden inspiration from a most unlikely source: a seventeen-year-old girl.

      Who was Joan, before she became famous?

      Born around 1411, Joan was called Joan of Arc because of her family. She was from the little village of Domremy, in the province of Lorraine, close to the border of the Holy Roman Empire. Her father was a successful innkeeper, and it is a mistake to call her a peasant; rather, she belonged to the rather small middle class of that time. Even so, she was young and female, both of which argued against her becoming a factor in the Hundred Years’ War.

      Joan was an exceptionally religious girl, even by the standards of that time, and at the age of fourteen she began to have visions of the Catholic saints Michael, Margaret, and Catherine. These visions—or apparitions—told her to be a good girl, to stay close to God, and to be ready when she was called upon. During the winter of 1428–1429, Joan’s visions increased in number and intensity. Joan was told that it was her task to rescue Charles, the dauphin, and to bring him to the cathedral city of Rheims to be crowned and anointed with holy oil.

      How on earth was a seventeen-yearold supposed to accomplish this?

      We must say—right at the outset—that Joan had an enormous amount of faith. Without telling her parents, she went to the local fortress commander—Robert de Baudricourt—and asked him to give her a cavalry escort to take her to the dauphin. De Baudricourt thought her crazy and bothersome, but when she came back for the third time, he did just as she asked. Tradition has it that she spoke some secret to him, something which neither she nor anyone СКАЧАТЬ