The Hundred Years War - Desmond Seward [72]
The new English lords benefited from more than the mere revenues of their estates. There were the salaries and profits of office, the exploitation of taxes, indemnities and money for safe conducts, together with the usual protection racket of the pâtis. And there were ransoms and plunder from campaigning elsewhere in France. The latter benefited every English soldier not just the magnates ; the contemporary chronicler Adam of Usk tells us that after Henry’s victories loot from France was on sale all over England.
The Duchy of Normandy was governed through its traditional institutions. However, the eight baillis were all Englishmen, though their officials were mostly Normans. The great offices of Chancellor, Treasurer-General, Seneschal and Admiral were likewise held by Englishmen. Assisted by a surprisingly loyal native bureaucracy, they were to milk Normandy dry by cruel taxation and forced loans, and by manipulating the currency (undervaluing it, calling it in and then re-coining and re-issuing it), to make the duchy pay for as much of the English war effort as possible. There was a resistance, guerrilla bands in woods and caves led by dispossessed seigneurs and recruited from peasants who found the pâtis intolerable ; the English called them ‘brigands’ and hanged them when they caught them. Yet the duchy was held by astonishingly few troops. It is known that in 1421 Henry’s garrisons amounted to about 4,500 men, later reduced to as little as 1,500, while the new English seigneurs maintained perhaps 2,500 further troops at scattered strongholds. These soldiers were commanded by an all powerful Lord-Lieutenant and paid by the proceeds of the pâtis. Despite the harshness of its regime English Normandy was to endure for thirty years, and an entire generation of Normans knew no other rule.
King Henry had a special affection for this new Guyenne, possibly because he saw himself as the heir of William the Conqueror. He was constantly referring to ‘our Duchy of Normandy’ with obvious pride. He tried to make himself popular with his new subjects, being careful not to over-Anglicize the administration, and he encouraged trade and commerce by issuing licences and letters of protection. He also attempted to stop his troops looting.
The possession of Normandy gave strategic advantages. Not only was it a springboard from which to control the food route of the lower Seine and throttle Paris, but occupation of its coast secured communications with Bordeaux while the Channel became a second instead of a front line of defence so that the southern English counties were safe from any threat of invasion. At the same time the loss of both the French royal docks at Rouen and the Norman ports meant the end of any French navy. Squadrons from Henry’s own new fleet patrolled the Channel constantly, exploiting the situation and seizing French merchant ships.
But Henry V saw the acquisition of the duchy as only a step towards conquering his entire ‘heritage’. France was ill prepared to meet such a threat, with her nobility hopelessly split between Burgundians and Armagnacs. Poor King Charles was crazier than ever. Two Dauphins had died prematurely while a third, the future Charles VII who had been born in 1399, was an unpromising youth, mentally immature and physically unprepossessing.
Horrified by the English advance, Duke John of Burgundy tried to negotiate with the Armagnacs who had the Dauphin under their thumb. Although the Burgundians had captured Paris in 1418 after an uprising in which their supporters had killed thousands of Armagnacs, a preliminary meeting at Corbeille in the summer of 1419 between Duke John and the Dauphin and his Armagnac advisers seemed to establish a measure of agreement.
In fact the Armagnacs were plotting revenge. At a second meeting on 10 September, on the bridge over the Yonne at Montereau, they hacked the Duke of Burgundy to death as he knelt in homage; it seems that the Dauphin may have given the signal for the first blow.