THE ART OF WAR IN THE MIDDLE AGES 70
The Fall of the English Empire in France
The Fall of the English Empire in France
The fall of the empire which Henry V had established in France was therefore due, from the military point of view, to the inadequacy of a purely defensive system to meet all the vicissitudes of a series of campaigns. The commanders who had received the tradition of Agincourt and Poictiers disliked assuming the offensive. Accustomed to win success by receiving the enemy’s attack on a carefully chosen ground, and after deliberate preparations, they frequently failed when opposed to officers who refrained on principle from assailing a position, but were continually appearing when least expected. In the open field or on the march, in camp or the town, the English were always liable to a sudden onslaught. They were too good soldiers to be demoralized, but lost the old confidence which had distinguished them in the days when the French still persisted in keeping up their ancient feudal tactics.
A fortunate chance has preserved for us, in the pages of Blondel’s Reductio Normanniae a full account of the disastrous field of Formigny, the last battle but one fought by the English in their attempt to hold down their dominion beyond the Channel. The narrative is most instructive, as explaining the changes of fortune during the later years of the Great War. The fight itself, though destined to decide the fate of all Normandy, was an engagement on a very small scale. Some five thousand English, half of them archers, the remainder billmen for the most part, with a few hundred men-at-arms, had been collected for a desperate attempt to open the way to Caen. In that town the Duke of Somerset, commander of all the English armies in France, was threatened by an overwhelming host led by King Charles in person.
To draw together a force capable of taking the field all the Norman fortresses had been stripped of their garrisons, and such reinforcements as could be procured, some 2000 men at most, had been brought across from England. The relieving army succeeded in taking Valognes and forcing the dangerous fords of the Douve and Vire, but hard by the village of Formigny it was confronted by a French corps under the Count of Clermont, one of several divisions which had been sent out to arrest the march of the English. Clermont’s troops did not greatly exceed their enemies in number: they appear, as far as conflicting accounts allow us to judge, to have consisted of six hundred ‘lances garnis’ (i.e. 3000 cavalry) and three thousand infantry.
The obligation to take the offensive rested with the English, who were bound to force their way to Caen. Nevertheless Sir Thomas Kyriel and Sir Matthew Gough, the two veterans who commanded the relieving army, refused to assume the initiative. The old prejudice in favour of fighting defensive battles was so strong that, forgetting the object of their expedition, they fell back and looked for a position in which to receive the attack of Clermont’s troops. Finding a brook lined with orchards and plantations, which was well calculated to cover their rear, they halted in front of it, and drew up their men in a convex line, the centre projecting, the wings drawn back so as to touch the stream.
Three bodies of archers, each seven hundred strong, formed the main-battle; on the flanks of this force were stationed two battles of billmen, not in a line with the centre but drawn back from it, while these corps were themselves flanked by the small force of cavalry, which was formed close in front of the orchards and the brook. Clermont did not attack immediately, so that the archers had ample time to fix their stakes, according to their invariable custom, and the whole force was beginning to cover itself with a trench, when the enemy at last began to move. Through long experience the French had grown too wary to attack an English line of archers from the front: after feeling the position, they tried several partial assaults on the flanks, which were repulsed. Skirmishing had been going on for three hours without any decisive result, when Giraud, master of the royal ordnance, brought up two culverins, and placed them in a spot from which they enfiladed the English line.
Galled by the fire of these pieces, part of the archers rushed out from behind their stakes, and with the aid of one of the wings of billmen charged the French, seized the culverins, and routed the troops which protected them. If the whole of Kyriel’s force had advanced at this moment the battle would have been won.
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