The Hundred Years War - Desmond Seward [96]
Bedford ordered a careful investigation into the royal finances. This revealed that the deficit for 1433 was nearly £22,000, and that £57,000 had been spent on war; total debts amounted to £64,000—almost three times the annual revenue. He at once cut down the pay of officials, including his own, and begged Parliament—unsuccessfully —to vote a yearly sum which would remove the threat of state bankruptcy. The agricultural depression and a decline in overseas trade had lessened the yield from taxation, and diminished revenues were a far greater threat to the Lancastrian dual monarchy than any Joan of Arc.
The War was much more expensive than it had been in Edward III’s time. Armour and weapons were increasingly elaborate, while large numbers of the new big guns had become indispensable for siege warfare both in attack and defence. Moreover the maintenance of garrisons was a constant drain : Calais alone cost nearly £17,000, half the government’s total revenue. It required a peace-time strength of 780 men, raised to 1,150 in war-time. Again and again Captains of Calais had to pay starving troops out of their own pockets; there was a mutiny in 1431 and another in 1441. There must have been similar mutinies in many garrisons. A significant number of men deserted and became brigands.
Yet there was no difficulty in finding soldiers if one had the money to pay them. Every English magnate possessed his own private army, recruited from what has been described as ‘a new and potentially dangerous type of semi-noble’ who had acquired a little wealth and status during the War and who was paid wages. Such armies were often surprisingly large; in 1453 the Earl of Devon, waging a personal war in the West country against Lord Bonville (a former Seneschal of Guyenne), is said to have mustered 800 horse and 4,000 foot. Troops like this were far from untried ; violence was part of everyday life under the weak régime of Henry VI, and readers of The Paston Letters will know how often great men had recourse to armed robbery and intimidation. Even so, the best pickings were still to be had in France.
A partnership document between two of the new semi-nobles, the esquires John Winter and Nicholas Molyneux, has survived from 1421. They swore in a church at Harfleur to be ‘brothers in arms’. Should one be taken prisoner the other must ransom him, providing the money needed did not exceed 6,000 gold saluts (£1,000). If it were more, the one who remained free was to surrender himself as a hostage for the other to go home and raise the additional money. More optimistically they promised to share ‘all the profits [from war] which by God’s grace they shall gain’, and to send them back to London for safe-keeping in a coffer at a church in Cheapside of which each had a key; ‘in which coffer shall be kept such gold, silver and plate as each or both of them may wish to keep to purchase lands in the realm of England’. When they retired everything was to be divided between them. If one were killed, the survivor was to inherit the whole, but must allow a sixth to his brother’s widow and pay for his children’s schooling, allowing them £20 a year for life. The partnership prospered. As late as 1436 they were still sending money home to buy manors and even bought a pub—the Boar’s Head in Southwark (something of a medieval Claridges), which Winter seems to have managed. Molyneux obtained a lucrative post at Rouen—Master of the Chambre des Comptes—and when Normandy fell was able to salvage something from the wreck.
The year 1434 began well for the English, the Earl of Arundel operating with considerable success in Anjou and Maine as far as the Loire. Lord Talbot—who had been exchanged for Poton de Xaintrailles—was even more successful, taking Gisors, Joigny, Beaumont, Creil, Clermont and Saint-Valery. But Lord Scales and Lord Willoughby failed to overcome the indomitable garrison of Mont-Saint-Michel.
Then Bedford received a letter from the Provost of Paris, saying that unless he came back soon the