2). HenryV (1413-22)

Pre-reading task: What is the name of the most glorious battle in English history fought by Henry V?

Hehry V was a boy of 12 when his father seized the crown of England and founded the royal House of Lancaster. At Henry IV's coronation his heir was created Prince of Wales, and it was in the Principality that the future hero of Agincourt gained his first experience of warfare, in defence of his father's throne.

A separate royal establishment was set up for Prince Henry at Chester in 1400. The 15-year-old prince took part in a battle for the first time at Shrewsbury, in 1403, helping to defeat Hotspur, but most of his early fighting was against the patriot Owen Glendower, whose Welsh rebels troubled the English successfully for eight years.

As he grew up, Prince Henry also played a part in English political affairs, and he became a dominant force on his father's governing council. There were disagree­ments between the King and his energetic heir: the Prince was rumoured to be im­patient for Henry IV to abdicate, or die, and in 1411, when he was 23, the prince was summarily dismissed from the council. Two years later, however, Henry IV died, and his son had the power he desired, as King Henry V.

Shakespeare's history plays followed tradition in showing Henry V becoming a changed man on his accession to the throne. Earlier writers described him as 'a new man' once he became King. The roistering and potentially troublesome prince gave way to a thoughtful and determined king, who begun his reign by making gestures of peace towards former - and possible future -enemies of his House. He had the remains of Richard II reburied with great splendour at Westminster, and he restored to favour the heirs of several nobles regarded as opponents by his father, including the Earl of March, son of the deposed King Richard's rightful heir. It was Henry V's intention to unite the English and rally them to the cause of a glorious war with France. His policy suc­ceeded: apart from a religious uprising early in 1414 and one abortive coup among the aristocracy, he was untroubled by rebellion at home.

The threat from the religious reformers, known mockingly as Lollards, who followed the teachings of the 14th-century radical John Wycliffe and roamed the countryside in groups, was put down with great severity. Henry V was deeply pious (he had spent the night of his accession in meditation in Westminster Abbey) but he was merciless in his response to the Lollards, and the per­secution begun under his father, with burnings of heretics, was ferociously carried on. Even one of Henry's own former friends, Sir John Oldcastle, the original for Shakespeare's Falstaff, was sentenced to death, though Henry made efforts to save him.

The weak situation of the French king, Charles VI, who suffered bouts of mental illness, gave Henry V the opportunity to revive the old claim of the English monarchs to the throne of France. After complex negotiations with the powerful rival factions in France, the Burgundians and the Armagnacs, and having reassured himself of the legality of his claim, Henry made pre­parations for an invasion of France.

Whatever the morality of the enterprise, Henry's generalship was outstanding. On 11 August 1415 his army crossed the Channel, and by the end of September they had taken the town of Harfleur. This early success seemed unlikely to be repeated when the exhausted, disease-ridden and, by then, hungry English force met the far larger French army near Agincourt, on 25 October. But through Henry's skill and the power of the legendary English longbowmen, the result was a swift and astonishing rout of the French. The flower of France's chivalry fell that day, while England's casualties were remarkably low, and the victory at Agin­court on St Crispin's Day passed into history as a national triumph which made a hero of Henry V. One of the earliest Agincourt songs has been preserved: it begins 'Our King went forth to Normandy, With grace and might of chivalry'.

In fact, Agincourt had been no more than the first step towards Henry's ambition of the reconquest of France. Over the next five years the King of England needed all his skills as a diplomat, as well as a soldier, to carry out his purpose. He won over the Holy Roman Emperor to his cause, and he made the most of the continuing rivalries in France, between the Burgundians and the Annagnacs.

With the support of Duke John of Bur­gundy, Henry landed in France again in the summer of 1417, and after a series of arduous sieges he made himself master of all Normandy by the spring of 1419. In July of that year his ambitions seemed to receive a check, when the warring Burgundian and Armagnac parties united, in the face of his conquest, to defend Paris. But trouble flared between them again, and when the Duke of Burgundy was murdered, with a wound to the head, their hatred was confirmed. The Burgundians now turned to Henry for al­liance, and so arose the saying that Henry V entered Paris through the hole in the Duke of Burgundy's skull.

By May 1420 the English king was in the ascendant and able to impose his demands on the French king - though not on his heir, the Dauphin, who was carrying on the fight from his territories south of the Loire. By the Treaty of Troyes, it was agreed that Charles VI should continue to rule in his lifetime, but on his death Henry V of England should succeed to the French crown. To seal the arrangement, Henry married Charles's daughter, the Princess Catherine, at Troyes Cathedral.

The couple returned to England to a rapturous welcome, and in February 1421 the new Queen was crowned. They went on a royal progress through England, and before long Queen Catherine was pregnant with the child who was to become Henry VI, inheritor of the thrones of England and France. But Henry V's success was not yet complete.

In June of that year he returned to the wars in France, fighting the Dauphin, who had the backing of the Armagnacs. There were victories for the English king; in May 1422 the Dauphinist stronghold of Meaux, on the Marne, fell. But that was to be his last achievement. He was already ill, and by July he was too weak to sit on his horse, but had to be carried in a litter. Early on 31 August 1422, he died in the Bois de Vincennes. He was 35 years old and had reigned for nine years: in that short time he had established himself as one of England's most famous kings.

(from “Kings and Queens of Great Britain” by Josephine Ross, L. 1982)

C+He [Henry V] came to the throne at a moment when England was wearied of feuds and brawl and yearned for unity and fame. He led the nation away from internal discord to foreign conquest; and he had the dream, and perhaps the prospect, of leading all Western Europe into the high cnampionship of a Crusade. Council and Parliament alike suddenly showed themselves bent on war with France. The Commons were thereupon liberal with supply. The King on his part declared that no law should be passed without their assent. A wave oi reconciliation swept the land. The King declared a general pardon. He sought to assuage the past. He negotiated with the Scots for the release of Hotspur’s son and reinstated him in the Earldom of Northumberland. He brought the body, or the reputed body, of Richard II to London and reinterred it in Westminster Abbey with pageantry and solemn ceremonial. A plot formed against him on the eve of his setting out for the wars was suppressed, by all appearance with ease and national approval, and with only a handful of executions. In particular he spared his cousin, the young Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, who had been named as the rival King, and through whose family much that was merciless was to follow later. So, in 1415, Henry V set out for France. Even in the mediaeval age, national unity tended to be a consequence of foreign war. But only as long as the foreign War was won and didn't cost too much in gold or in lives. Also, in this particular case, the English King had lucrative, and family, possessions and titles in France, and like his forebears, he wished to fight to maintain or increase them. Moreover, the French had aligned themselves with the Scots, and even with the Welsh.And Henry V appeared to believe in a sence of divine support, if not right. He seemed convined that it was his task to conquer France and then lead soldiers from both nations on the great Crusade to recover Jerusalem. And so Henry claimed his right to the throne of France. The French were weak froom civil conflict between the Burgundians and the Orleanists, the Royalists. The latter offered Henry a large part of Aquitaine, 850,000 crowns and Catherine, the daughter of King Charles VI. Henry was also negotiating with the Burgundians to let him enter France in safety, and he promised that he would take their side against the Orleanists if they would support his claim to the throne.

C+The English army of about 10,000 fighting men sailed to France on August 11, 1415 ... and landed without opposition at the mouth of the Seine. Harfleur was besieged and taken by the middle of September. He [Henry V] now invited the Dauphin to end the war by single combat. The challenge was declined. The attrition of the siege, and disease, which levied its unceasing toll on diese mediaeval camps, had already wrought havoc in the English expedition. The main power of France was now in the field. The Council of War, on October 5, advised returning home by sea.

But the King, leaving a garrison in Harfleur, and sending home several thousand sick and wounded, resolved, with about 1000 knights and men-at-arms and 4000 archers, to traverse the French coast in a 100-mile march to his fortress at Calais, where his ships were to await him. All the circumstances of this decision show that his design was to tempt the enemy to battle.

When the two sides came face to fece, it was at a field called Agincourt. The English saw the terrible odds. Facing them were perhaps 20.000 French cavalry and footsoldiers. One chronicler says there were, eventually, 60,000 French soldiers, but it would not have been possible to organize them all as a fighting force in that small area.

Henry tried to negotiate a withdrawal at one point. He offered to give back Harfleur and the considerable numbers of French prisoners he'd taken. The French wanted one more concession: Henry would have to renounce his claim to the French throne. He refused. And so, on the feast of St Crispinian and St Crispin, the brotherly patron saints of shoe-makers, Henry V led the advance to the French lines. To his right, his vanguard was commanded by the Duke of York; to his left, his rearguard was led by Lord Camoys.

С+ Тhе French stood in three dense lines, and neither their crossbowmen nor their battery of cannon could fire effectively. Under the [English] arrow storm they in turn moved forward down the slope, plodding heavily through a ploughed field already trampled into a quagmire. Still at thirty deep, they felt sure of breaking the line. But once again the long bow destroyed all before it. Horse and foot alike went down; a long heap of armoured dead and wounded by upon the ground, over which reinforce­ments struggled bravely, but in vain. Now occurred a terrible episode-The French third line, still intact, covered the entire front, and the English were no longer in regular array. At this moment the French camp-followers and peasantry, who had wandered round the English rear, broke pillaging into the camp and stole the King’s crown, wardrobe and Great Seal. The King, believing himself attacked from behind issued the dread order to slaughter the prisoners. Then perished the flower of the French nobility, many of whom had yielded themselves to easy hopes of ransom. Only the most illustrious were spared. The desperate character of this act supplies what defence can be found for its ferocity. The alarm in the rear was soon relieved, but not before the massacre was almost finished.

The English lost perhaps fewer than 300, the French, maybe 6000, including slaughtered prisoners. The English army was so weakened by the campaign that it struggled to reach the safety of Calais. By the following month, November, Henry V returned to England. He was the hero the nation had longed for. The account given in Henrici Quinti Regis Gesta describes his triumphant progress.

*He took his journey by way of the sacred thresholds of the churches of Canterbury and of St Augustine's Canterbury, to his manor at Eltham, proposing to honour the City of London on the following Saturday. The citizens, hearing with the greatest joy the news of his approach, prepared themselves and the City. And when the desired day dawned, the citizens went out to meet the King at the brow of Blackheath. The mayor and twenty-four aldermen in scarlet, and the rest of the lesser citizens in red cloaks with red and white hoods, to the number of about 20,000 horsemen. And when the King came through the midst of them at about ten o'clock, and the citizens had given glory and honour to God, the citizens rode before the King towards the city and the King; followed.

But Henry’s own ambitions were not realized and for the next two years he set out to overcome Normandy by siege and steady attrition. An agreement was reached that Henry would marry Catherine, the daugnter of the mad Charles VI, and on Charles's death, Henry would become King of France. Henry and Catherine were married in June 1430.

But by now Henry was desperate for a conclusion to the war. He took just one day’s honeymoon before be returned to the conflict. Exhausted, and vulnerable to disease, he was dead two years later. The hero, the wise and true Englishman, Henry V, left a united England and a miserable France. But the cost of victory had to be paid long after the bells finished chiming, and the new King, Henry VI, was but nine months old.

(from “This Sceptred Isle” by Christopher Lee, L. 1990)