Hundred Years War, Volume 4 by Jonathan Sumption

Author:Jonathan Sumption [Jonathan Sumption]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571274550
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2015-02-24T16:00:00+00:00

The departure of the promised French embassy was delayed by the Dauphin’s coup d’état. On 12 April 1415, Dorset Herald arrived in the French capital with a letter from Henry V pressing the French government to nominate its ambassadors. It was shortly followed by another in which the English King complained about the length of time which the French apparently expected to spend in England. ‘Delay is the enemy of peace,’ he said. But the reality, as Henry knew, was that delay was also the enemy of war. He had no intention of allowing diplomacy to unwind the spring that he had coiled. The patent insincerity of his call for more talks must have been obvious to the French, who were receiving detailed and accurate reports about the English King’s preparations. But on the approach of any great war those threatened have a way of taking refuge in wishful thinking. Judging by his son’s chronicle even the King’s councillor Jean Jouvenel professed to find ‘humble’ and ‘gracious’ sentiments in the English King’s letters, although he had been among the first Frenchmen to realise with appalled fascination what a formidable personality his countrymen were now up against.31

On 16 April 1415, just days after his takeover of power, the Dauphin presided over a council meeting to discuss the coming crisis with England. They resolved upon a last-ditch attempt to stop the coming invasion. In spite of the poor auguries the decision to send a new embassy to England was confirmed. In May a great council gathered in Paris to consider the ambassadors’ instructions. The Duke of Berry was allowed to return to the capital to give it the benefit of his half a century of experience of dealing with France’s ‘ancient enemy’. Seven notable emissaries were nominated. Their leader and spokesman was Jean de Berry’s chancellor, Guillaume de Boisratier Archbishop of Bourges, who had led the embassy of December 1413. His colleagues included Pierre Fresnel Bishop of Lisieux, whose experience of English and Scottish affairs went back more than thirty years; the Master of the Royal Household Louis Count of Vendôme; one of the Dauphin’s household officers, Charles lord of Ivry; and the indispensable Gontier Col, who has left us one of the most graphic accounts of a great diplomatic occasion to survive from the middle ages. On 4 June they rode out of Paris with the usual cavalcade of men-at-arms, clerks, heralds and servants, some 350 mounted men altogether. None of them can have been optimistic about the outcome of their mission. Behind them in Paris plans were being made to recruit troops throughout the realm. In Calais humbler diplomatic agents were negotiating with Philip Morgan an extension of the truce to cover the embassy’s time in England. The English agreed to extend it to 15 July but no further. This was just two weeks before the projected sailing date of Henry V’s expedition.32

The French ambassadors landed at Dover on 17 June 1415. Henry V had appointed Winchester as the venue for the negotiations.

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