Blood Cries Afar, page 9
The middle bailey was guarded by a ditch 30 foot wide and a strong wall; it was no less formidable than the first defences. The French were keen to keep up the momentum that they had just created and did not allow themselves to be daunted by this broad moat and staunch rampart. They immediately launched themselves on a follow-up attack. A group of sergeants scouted around the edge of the ditch in the standard practice of searching for a relative weak point in the defences. They found one. Almost inevitably, given his misfortunes in war, it had been created by King John. A year earlier he had a building added to the middle ward. William the Breton describes the building’s upper storey as consisting of a chapel and the lower one a latrine,’against religion’, he complains, appealing to spiritual outrage. At a shallower part of the ditch Peter Bogis and some comrades scrambled unseen down and across the moat until they were directly beneath the chapel window. Bogis, standing on the shoulders of a companion named Ralph, with considerable agility was able to reach the window and pull himself up. Remarkably the window had been left unbarred and Bogis climbed into the chapel. An alternative version puts forward the idea that Bogis, presumably of slight build, actually clambered up the latrine chute and opened up the window from the inside. Either account should not be dismissed: during the First World War, one of the most powerful fortresses in the world was taken in a very similar manner.142
From the window Bogis lowered a rope to his men and pulled them up. Once inside, the band of Frenchmen began to break down the door to the interior of the ward. The noise of their efforts alerted the defenders who feared they were about to be subjected to a mass break-in by the enemy. As before, in their panic they decided to abandon this ward also, and so they fired it (although it is possible that they may have intended only to burn the building the French were in). Then they hurried back to the strongest part of the castle – the inner bailey which housed the keep. As the French troops outside the castle watched this drama, they feared that Bogis and his group had been engulfed by flames. They had in fact taken shelter in a vault used as an armoury and survived the blaze. To the undoubted cheers of their onlookers, Bogis and his men emerged from the smoke to cut the ropes of the drawbridge and lowered it to their fellow soldiers. The French troops rushed across.
The inner bailey was enclosed by a 500ft wall eight feet thick. It was less a wall than a series of seventeen D-shaped towers, or convex buttresses, providing tremendous strength and the capability for withering flanking fire. The keep itself, surrounded by its own ditch 50 feet across, was the same thickness as the wall. De Lacy was left with less than 180 men to defend it, a sufficient number under his experienced leadership, although fatigue would have been a further factor with which to contend. However, like the middle bailey, this part also suffered from a major design flaw. The gate-house, though well positioned at an awkward point for attackers, had no drawbridge; instead the ditch was spanned by a bridge hewn out of the rock itself. Thus the weakest part of the inner ward – its entrance – could not be protected by the wide ditch. That noted, any approach across this bridge might expect to encounter the deadliest barrage to repel it. The most intense action of the whole siege now led to its climax.
Philip sent forward a siege machine known as a cat. The cat, catus, also known as a sow, scrofa, was a reinforced roof on walls – in effect, a huge, mobile shield – under which soldiers and engineers could approach a stronghold’s walls to damage its fabric or to undermine it. The French mining operation met with effective resistance. Roger de Lacy now ordered a counter-mine to be excavated; this opened up on the French mine where the French miners were attacked and forced to retreat, their work only partially completed. By early March an enormous petraria, called ‘Chadaluba’, was brought to bear on the walls, discharging its artillery of large stone blocks against the ramparts. The wall, weakened both by the effects of Philip’s miners and, ironically, by de Lacy’s counter-mine, collapsed when struck by the petraria for the third time. The besiegers, seeing the creation of this breach, hurled themselves forward. They scrambled up and over the tumbled masonry and stormed the breach in force.
Despite the hopelessness of the situation, de Lacy and his men fought on. Even now they disdained what would have been the most honourable of surrenders. However, overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers, they were soon under physical restraint and led away in chains. They were lucky not to have been slaughtered on the spot: the laws of war placed the fate of victims of a successful storming in the hands of the victor. According to the anonymous chronicler of Béthune, de Lacy met with a relatively lenient, if ignominious treatment. Each day throughout the long siege, when called upon to yield up the castle, de Lacy defiantly replied that he would never surrender the fortress, even if he were dragged out by his feet. His heroic defence did indeed end in this dishonourable manner.143 He and his garrison were shackled in irons. King Philip had finally taken Château Gaillard.
Both the Anonymous of Béthune and Roger of Wendover provide alternative endings to the siege. Both agree that the English were, at the last, starved out (Philip’s early strategy). The Anonymous states that the garrison capitulated after exhausting their food supply, which included their horses. Wendover claims that de Lacy and his men, ‘preferring to die in battle to being starved’, mounted their warhorses, rode bravely out of the castle in a daring sortie, and killed many of the enemy before they were eventually overcome, and then only with great difficulty. These two accounts offer plausible scenarios; but it must be considered that they cover the siege in only a few lines, and the details concern themselves with only the siege’s finale.144 William the Breton, despite his faults, was an eyewitness to these dramatic events.
In the warm afterglow of victory following the brief outburst of triumphalism meted out to de Lacy, Philip afforded a genuinely magnanimous treatment to the enemy commander who was detained prisoner on parole in France. De Lacy was one of the few men King John placed consistent faith in: he contributed £1000 toward paying his ransom to secure his release from France; on his release he made him sheriff of Yorkshire and Cumberland, entrusting him to help defend the volatile north from Scottish incursions.145 John had recognised the great, if ultimately futile, service de Lacy had rendered the English crown by his lengthy defence of Château Gaillard; it was the king’s own fault not to have profited from de Lacy’s defence. By the time of the siege’s conclusion at the end of the first week in March, de Lacy had been left with some auxiliaries, 120 men-at-arms and 36 knights. Only four defending knights were killed during the siege.
For six months, Philip’s army, estimated at between 2300 and 2500 strong on the Normandy frontier at this time, was preoccupied with this siege; but John had failed to secure any advantages from this situation. Powicke ponders whether the garrison would have performed even better in a less ‘complicated’ castle; he questions whether the castle’s defences were too restrictive; if its ‘elaborate arrangements’ were ‘mutually injurious’; or, indeed, if it was too scientifically advanced for its defences to be fully understood and exploited by its garrison.146 These are valid questions; however, de Lacy was an experienced commander and, over the course of the siege, would have studied, analysed and exhausted all of the castle’s defensive potential. What is curious is that such a justly renowned castle, rightly considered as the apogee of castle-building, should have, in John’s chapel and the bridge of rock, such serious design flaws in its innermost defences. Whatever the possibilities might have been, the English and French forces had played their part in perhaps the most epic siege of the entire Middle Ages. Its consequences were soon apparent to all.
The Collapse of Normandy
John heard the news of Château Gaillard’s fall on the day he was making his hunting arrangements for his return to the duchy. But John was never to return to Normandy as its duke. Philip immediately established his grip on the region by repairing the castle’s ruined defences so that they were, in the words of William the Breton, ‘more solid than they had ever been’. Given Philip’s eye for detail and his mastery of siege warfare, this is wholly credible. This was the castle that symbolised control of Normandy. The implications of its loss were grasped straightaway by the duchy’s inhabitants; within three months it was totally subjected to French rule. Philip, ever the cool customer, did not let success go to his head. His gaze was set on Rouen, the capital of Normandy, and which lay farther down the Seine.147
Rouen prepared for the siege: resources and supplies poured in while the defences were made ready. The city’s strong walls and triple ditch made it a formidably strong objective (as Henry V discovered during his six-month-long investiture of it between 1418–19). Its Angevin loyalties were reinforced by those who had fled to the city before the Capetian advances. All the time negotiations prompted by the Papacy continued apace, but these were little more than diplomatic formalities and they achieved nothing. It was during these talks that William Marshal, in an act of realpolitik, paid homage to Philip for his Norman lands while still serving his English lord.
Contrary to what might have been expected, Philip did not make straight for the city but instead directed his army to the west: a strategy which was to reap great reward at minimal cost. John’s preparations for war, initiated at Oxford just after Christmas, were now tardily coming to fruition. If Rouen held out against a besieging French force then Philip could expect to face another relief expedition from England, this time larger than the one he had confronted at Château Gaillard and while deeper in hostile territory. Rather, he determined on the piecemeal territorial conquest of Normandy, leaving its capital isolated and increasingly surrounded, and hence reducing its strategical value. On 7 May he took Argentan and the satellite castles of his next objective, Caen. Intelligence gathered from Norman deserters revealed Falaise to be deeply demoralised, a condition not unsurprising giving Château Gaillard’s recent loss. The stronghold of Falaise withstood the French forces for only a week, despite the extensive defence excavations John had recently carried out there; Lupescar, its commander, bowed to the tide of events and went over to Philip, taking his mercenaries with him. It is possible that Lupescar’s actions were in part prompted by financial incentives offered by the townspeople of Falaise who did not wish him to resist the French king: they feared the material and personal damages that a siege would inflict on them, a telling effect of Philip’s ruthlessness at Château Gaillard. With Falaise gone, Caen soon followed without a fight; with it went Bayeux, Lisieux, Coutances, Barfleur, Cherbourg and lesser places. In the first week of May, Breton forces under Guy de Thouars, burning with revenge for Arthur’s murder, had broken through Normandy’s southwestern defences and destroyed Mont Saint-Michel, a task which had to be completed quickly as the tides that transformed the rock into an island gave them only limited opportunities to do so. They then moved on to sack Avranches, linked up with French forces and joined Philip at Caen. Here Philip divided his army into two. Guy de Thouars, the Count of Boulogne (erstwhile ally of John), William des Barres, a large body of French knights and the mercenaries who had changed sides at Falaise completed the subjugation of south-western Normandy where castle after castle fell in rapid succession, a sure sign of military and political momentum. Philip, meanwhile, now turned to Rouen.
Philip must be given full credit for his strategy. The successful sweep south west and link-up with the Bretons left, as Philip intended, the ducal capital exposed and friendless. The political and psychological effects of this were as important as the explicitly military ones. Prince Louis attempted a similar approach during his invasion of England in 1216–17 when he was confronted by Dover Castle: he temporarily abandoned the difficult siege of this castle to first subdue lesser ones around it. John, too, tried this for London in 1216. In eastern Normandy all that was left of John’s defences were Arques, Verneuil and Rouen itself; these decided to act in unison during the crisis. They saw clearly that the writing was on the wall in one form or another. The duchy’s records of government had already been shipped to England before the end of May; and the indecent haste with which Falaise and Caen had capitulated had done nothing to stiffen the resolve of the remaining Angevin pockets. They felt the acute vulnerability that Philip had designed for them.
At Rouen we witness another example of why Philip Augustus had such a reputation for the subjugation of strongholds. Force and logistical expertise were not the only ingredients of his poliorcetic success. Before the gates of Rouen, he played on the defendant’s fears, self-interest and common sense to come to an agreeable conclusion. Faced with the might of Philip’s conquering army, the leading figures of the capital’s community considered, as Falaise did, not only the mortal dangers they faced but also the financial threats that a siege would entail. Rouen’s civic and trading riches rested in large measure on its privileges and rights; if John could no longer guarantee these then Philip might instead; but he would only be predisposed to do so if the city submitted quietly without forcing him to expend French blood and treasure. Philip, ever cautious and calculating, had been alert to such sensibilities throughout the Normandy campaign and had confirmed the liberties of the places now under his control. This had happened at Falaise, the fate of which was so influential on decision making in Rouen. If resistance failed, the capital’s jealously guarded and coveted privileges could be revoked and instead granted to rivals.
Rouen’s military commander, John’s ‘trusty and well-beloved’ Peter des Préux, assessed the long-term hopelessness of the situation. He knew that only direct intervention from England could save the situation and harboured doubts that King John would provide the deus ex machina. Peter, who had enjoyed a close friendship with Richard the Lionheart, knew John’s character and had less faith in him than his predecessor; John, conversely, had relied heavily on Peter and his brothers over the years in keeping Normandy secure. Rouen could look to its own formidable defences for a while if it so wished, but the balance of gains and losses made this option an unattractive one. Des Préux and the castellans of Arques and Verneuil made a truce with Philip on 1 June, in which all three agreed to surrender if help was not forthcoming within 30 days. They wrote to John in supplication and could not have been overly surprised by the tone of John Softsword’s reply: they were not to expect any help from him and they were to act as they saw fit. This was not an exhortation to arms that would steel his subjects’ nerves to counter Philip’s threats, for the French King had added psychological intimidation to the incentives for surrender. Philip had explained to the citizens, governors and castellans of the towns and castles in his path that they should accept him as their lord now that John had abandoned them (not least by fleeing to England at Christmas). Wendover writes: ‘he begged them as a friend to receive him as their lord since they had no other; but he declared with an oath that if they did not do so willingly, and dared to vie against him, he would subdue them as enemies and hang them all on the gibbet or flay them alive.’148 After Château Gaillard, few doubted this threat. Hostages had been offered to Philip and their safety, along with that of the city, was put before faith in John. On receiving John’s reply, de Préaux did not even wait for the truce to expire; on 24 June the strong fortresses of Arques, Verneuil and the capital of Normandy, considered invincible by many, surrendered to the French king. John had already lost Maine and Anjou. Now, too, Normandy was lost.
This was a momentous occasion in English history. Nicholas Vincent has recently summed up its significance: ‘it fatally tarnished the military and political reputation of King John and set the Plantagenet kings on the road to harsher taxation, failed attempts to recover the duchy and, in the aftermath of this failure, the breakdown in relations between kings and barons that resulted in Magna Carta. King John’s road from Normandy to Runnymede was a straight one.’ David Carpenter has judged that ‘The Capetian Conquest of Normandy was a turning point in European history. It made the Capetian kings dominant in western Europe, and ended the cross-Channel state.’149 The French were in command of the northern seaboard. Paris, at times within just a day’s ride of English forces in the twelfth century, was now safe. And England lay under threat of invasion.
3
WAR, POLITICS AND THE FIRST INVASION ATTEMPT, 1205–1213
The Impact of the Loss of Normandy
John’s loss of Normandy was as disastrous to England as Philip’s conquest of the duchy was beneficial to France.150 The long-standing Capetian goal to obtain control of the northern seaboard and expel the English from Normandy had been spectacularly achieved. The tables had been decisively turned: now it was England that was under threat from invasion, and it immediately went on invasion alert. Of course, the new geo-political reality did not preclude further English campaigns into French territory – these were still mounted on a large scale – but a real psychological and material blow had been delivered to the English. For over a century, the duchy had been viewed primarily as a strong forward post on the continent for invasion into France; in strategic terms, it was an offensive asset. Now, however, the English believed that they had lost a defensive asset, a large buffer zone that had kept the French from operating on the shores just across the channel. The gains also further secured their access to the Flemish coast, not least because now they could more safely assemble and move ships along the coast. Implicit in Richard’s continental campaigning was an understanding of this. But the disaster had implications far beyond geo-politics; the consequences for domestic politics, royal finances and, above all, military considerations, are the subject of this chapter.
Relations Between the Powers in the Early Thirteenth Century
In the brief survey of the relationships between European powers that follows, the dealings between England and France with the Empire and the Papacy were dominated by two overriding concerns: for England, all efforts were concentrated on regaining the lost territories in France; for France, the wish was to consolidate and expand gains on her home territory, an objective that could be aided by taking the offensive to England itself. Invasions of England remained an active option of French policy exercised into the eighteenth century, and threatened (as we have seen in chapter one) into the nineteenth. English dreams of recovery in France began fading after the Hundred Years War, despite the long drawn out and optimistic claims of royal titles over the centuries; invasions by Edward IV and Henry VIII did little to keep these dreams alive. In reality, such campaigns and assertions of sovereignty were used more to apply political and diplomatic pressure in pursuance of much more modest objectives. The loss of Calais in 1558 during Queen Mary’s reign finally put paid to the hereditary hopes of the English crown (but not the claims).
