Henry V by Dan Jones

Author:Dan Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781804541913
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

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IF THINGS ARE MESSY IN ENGLAND, however, affairs are far worse across the Channel. For the French, 1413 has been another dreadful year. The summer saw Paris convulsed by a new round of rioting and murder, stirred up by John the Fearless. In league with a powerful faction of butchers, the duke encouraged a populist rising known as the Revolt of the Cabochiens. Thugs wearing white caps took control of the streets of Paris for many weeks, storming the Bastille, and even breaking into the royal residence at the Hôtel Saint-Pol. After four months of bloody mayhem, the revolt was eventually put down by the Armagnacs. But John the Fearless escaped the capital, and is now holed up in Flanders, plotting his next move.

Meanwhile, in the south, things are little better. The duchy of Guyenne has been overrun since 1412 by the English expeditionary army originally sent under Henry’s brother Thomas, duke of Clarence. Thomas has returned to England, but many of the troops who went out with him have not: they are lodged in and around Bordeaux, under the command of Thomas Beaufort.

During their time in Guyenne, the English have repeatedly ravaged the countryside, extorted huge cash payments from the Armagnac dukes and captured valuable prisoners. The soldiers who have enjoyed eighteen months robbing and plundering the pleasant south-west are coming to view France as a place where an enterprising English soldier might go and make a fortune. They share this realisation with the hundreds of independent English mercenaries who are elsewhere in the French kingdom, hiring themselves out to both sides of the civil war.

Finally, Charles VI, whose insanity lies at the root of all France’s calamities, shows no sign of either regaining his wits or dying. His eldest surviving son, the dauphin Louis, turns seventeen in January 1414, and is coming to be seen as an alternative figure around whom a stable government can rally. But he alone cannot bring an end to the violent hatred that exists between the Burgundian and Armagnac factions. In fact, he is personally torn between the factions. Although he is married to John the Fearless’s daughter, he is coming to fear and even hate his father-in-law. Yet he does not share the Armagnac leaders’ unquenchable thirst for revenge on John the Fearless at any cost. In early 1414 Louis is ensconced in Paris among the Armagnac dukes. But over the course of the year he will test the limits of their trust as he tries to broker a peace deal.

All of this presents a situation that, if agonising for the French, promises significant opportunity for Henry. French politics is certainly changeable, and it is hard to know where one stands from one month to the next. But at the same time, vast amounts of French military resources are being wasted every month as the king’s subjects fight among themselves, and there are two alternative courts in France whom the English can play off against one another. As a boy he saw Richard II come tantalisingly close to achieving a long-term settlement to the Hundred Years War.

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