The Hundred Years War - Desmond Seward [68]
In 1416 the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund arrived in England to stay at Westminster, his object being to make peace between England and France in the interests of church unity. His real business was to heal the Papal schism, which ended with the election of Pope Martin V in 1417. However, he concluded a treaty of mutual help and alliance with Henry. This so impressed Duke John of Burgundy that he decided to ally with the English himself, and in October of that year he travelled to Calais to meet Henry. The Duke promised to become the Englishman’s vassal, acknowledging him as King of France and promising to help him depose Charles VI.
Henry V did not restrict himself to diplomacy. He began to build up a formidable navy and by the end of 1417 there were thirty-four King’s Ships, compared with six in 1413. Some were surprisingly big, such as the Holy Ghost of 740 tons. In 1430 a Florentine sea-captain saw Henry’s great cog, the Grace Dieu, at Southampton. He reported : ‘... truly I have never seen so large and splendid a construction. I had the mast measured on the first deck and it was about 2 1 feet in circumference and 195feet high. From the galley of the prow to the water was about 50 feet and they say that when she is at sea another corridor is raised above this. She was about 176feet long and about 96 feet in the beam.’ The fleet included seven captured Genoese carracks and about fifteen ballingers—oared sailing-barges—as well as the cogs. Henry also ordered another large ship to be built at Bayonne. He engaged a rich merchant, William Soper, to help him construct a naval base at Southampton, like the French Clos des Galées at Rouen, with a dock and a storehouse. At Hamble nearby there were other storehouses and wooden fortifications behind which the ships could shelter. The Keeper of the King’s Ships was responsible for building and refitting, and also for supplying equipment and paying crews, and even for providing vessels for patrols and transport.
The benefits of Henry’s maritime policy were quickly apparent. When the French blockaded Harfleur in the summer of 1416, the Duke of Bedford inflicted a crushing defeat on the Franco-Genoese fleet, capturing several enemy vessels and relieving the beleaguered port. The following year, off the Chef-de-Caux, the Earl of Huntingdon destroyed what remained of the French navy, taking four carracks and the enemy commander, the Bastard of Bourbon. Henceforward English patrols sailed the Channel un-challenged, giving Henry the command of the sea-routes necessary for his campaigns.
By 1417 the King had obtained fresh subsidies from Parliament besides borrowing money, and was ready to renew the struggle. Among many preparations for war was a quaint but eminently practical instruction to the sheriffs in February 1417, which ordered them to have six wing-feathers plucked from every goose and sent to London for the fletchers to flight arrows. The expedition, which sailed in July, was about the same size as that of 1415, 10,000 soldiers carried in something like 1,500 ships. However, this time Henry had a different objective—he intended to conquer and subdue France, region by region, with a war of slow, thorough sieges, and he would begin with Normandy. As before he concealed both his aims and his destination. Instead of disembarking at Calais or Harfleur, on 1 August the English landed at the mouth of the river Touques, between the modern resorts of Deauville and Trouville.
There was no one to oppose him. The civil war was raging as fiercely as ever and the new Constable, the Count of Armagnac, dared not leave Paris because of a Burgundian army waiting outside. If the English could conquer lower Normandy they would not only acquire a useful supply-base, rich in provisions and forage, but they would cut the Normans