Agincourt

My Family, the Battle and the

Fight for France
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081JJ_TXT.indd 2 20/08/2014 16:20
Agincourt
My family, the battle and the
fight for France
Ranulph Fiennes
081JJ_TXT.indd 3 20/08/2014 16:20
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company
1
Copyright Ranulph Fiennes 2014
Appendix Tobias Capwell 2014
The right of Ranulph Fiennes to be identified as the Author of the Work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without
the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise
circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published
and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
Hardback isbn 978 1 444 79208 9
Trade paperback isbn 978 1 444 79209 6
Ebook isbn 978 1 444 79210 2
Typeset in Sabon MT 12.25/16 pt
by Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk, Stirlingshire
Printed and bound by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
Hodder & Stoughton policy is to use papers that are natural,
renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in
sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected
to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
338 Euston Road
London nw1 3bh
www.hodder.co.uk
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To Anton and Jill, for the very best of friendships
and for all our work together down the years.
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081JJ_TXT.indd 6 20/08/2014 16:20
vii
Contents
Foreword 1
1. The French Connection 5
2. The rise and rise of Eustace de Fiennes 15
3. Geoffrey de Mandeville and other fickle Fienneses 29
4. Intermarriage, bribery, temerity and indecision 41
5. Friends and Lovers 59
6. Wool, wine and war 71
7. The Buying of Broughton 95
8. So much Christian blood spilled 105
9. When men of good breeding think nothing
of killing 115
10. Fair stood the wind for France 137
11. The actions of the tiger 161
12. Fiennes to the fore 181
13. A family at war 199
14. A Vaste Multitude Yielded Up in Death 217
15. La Mort de Fiennes 237
16. Another Fiennes loses his head for losing the War 257
Postscript 287
Appendix: The Arming Of An English
Man-At-Arms, c.1415 289
Acknowledgements 299
Bibliography 301
Index 305
081JJ_TXT.indd 7 20/08/2014 16:20
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081JJ_TXT.indd 9 20/08/2014 16:21
Authors Note
To avoid using phrases like my ancestor tediously
often in the text, the names of my ancestors and their
close families are displayed in italics, for clarity.
081JJ_TXT.indd 10 20/08/2014 16:21
1
Foreword
W
hile in Brussels in 2013 negotiating with Belgiums
great explorer, Alain Hubert, for his help over the
removal of heavy snow vehicles and my team of five men
from Antarctica, his wife took me to the Central Square and
showed me a magnificent statue of my ancestor, Godfrey de
Bouillon, the first King of Jerusalem, and to this day a hero
of the Belgian people.
On the way back to the Huberts Polar Foundation we
passed along Fiennes Street, a reminder of the importance
of my family in medieval times in the complex world of war
between the French and the English.
Only a week later, back in England and with key Belgian
support assured, I received a phone call from the editor of
Hodder, part of the global French publishing group Hachette,
to ask if I would be interested in writing a book about the
Anglo-French Wars to coincide with the six hundredth anni-
versary of Agincourt, the great battle of 1415 made famous
in Shakespeares Henry V.
Why me? was my immediate reaction. Surely a military
historian would be a more apt choice for such a story? You,
replied my editor, have the distinct advantage over most histo-
rians because of your direct Anglo-Norman ancestry whose
members, during the Hundred Years War, commanded both
the French and the English armies and were closely related
081JJ_TXT.indd 1 20/08/2014 16:21
2
Agincourt
to the kings and queens at the very nerve centre of all the
Anglo-French wars. In fact it is undeniably arguable that your
family members both started and later lost the war!
Throughout this book I have put the names of my ancestors
and their close families in italics.
So, with no polar expedition on the immediate horizon,
I visited Martin Fiennes at Broughton Castle, where our
family have lived since Norman times. He and his father,
Nat Fiennes, the twenty-first Lord Saye and Sele, had helped
me five years previously to delve into the extensive family
records held in the castle attics, and at that time, although
no professional archivist, I had found the study fascinating.
This opportunity to search further into the medieval Anglo-
Norman wars and our familys involvement therein was, to
me, a gift from the gods.
Where most historians use the term English to describe
the medieval Anglo-Welsh armies, I have sometimes called
them British. The various mongrel armies that opposed them
across the Channel I have dubbed as either Norman or French.
In describing those bloody times when my French cousins
killed their British relatives, I have tried to remain impartial
not always with success.
The enmity between France and England is an ancient one
that can nowadays be treated with humour. On arrival at the
London 2012 Olympic Games, President Franois Hollande
thanked Britain for rolling out the red carpet for French
athletes to win medals. This light touch of sarcasm was
doubtless in retaliation for Prime Minister Camerons earlier
comment that he would roll out the red carpet for French
businessmen fleeing the high rates of tax that Hollande had
081JJ_TXT.indd 2 20/08/2014 16:21
3
Foreword
proposed for France. The truth is that the two countries have
been jealous and suspicious of one another since the Norman
Conquest of 1066, which was led by my direct ancestor Count
Eustace of Boulogne, the army commander of William the
Conqueror.
The series of wars involving Edward I and his successors,
called the Hundred Years War by historians, was the direct
outcome of the Conquerors victory at Hastings in 1066,
where Eustace proudly carried the flag of the invasion. To be
more specific, the Hundred Years War started as an argument
between Edward III and Philip VI of France over feudal lord-
ship principles, and this was caused by the fact that, after
Hastings, the English (Anglo-Normans) owned huge areas of
France through inheritance and/or marriage.
The war took place in two phases. Between 1337 and
1380 there was a series of invasions with the express Viking-
type purpose of ravage, plunder and destruction in order
to keep the French on the defensive, thereby safeguarding
the Anglo-Normans possessions in France. For many years
in Aquitaine and Gascony, the inhabitants preferred English
rule and provided large numbers of soldiers for the English
armies.
There were no standing armies in Britain until the seven-
teenth century, so an army had to be raised for a specific
campaign, after which the soldiers would head back home
with their pay and, hopefully, some worthwhile plunder, or
even some ransom money.
During the 350 years between the battles of Hastings and
Agincourt, the fighting skills and methods of both the two
great armies underwent considerable change, as did the attitudes
081JJ_TXT.indd 3 20/08/2014 16:21
4
Agincourt
of their successive monarchs. So to understand Agincourt, you
need to understand what leads up to it. The first chapters that
follow detail the countdown to the incredible Battle of Agincourt
and its aftermath.
Ranulph Fiennes
Exmoor 2014
081JJ_TXT.indd 4 20/08/2014 16:21
5
1
The French Connection
25 October 1415
B
efore the cold gleam of daylight spread over the sodden
trees and tents of Maisoncelles, France, King Henry V
sent out orders to prepare for battle. The order for silence
still held. The smell of woodsmoke as fires died down vied
with the foul body odour of the soldiers scurrying through
the gloom to the whispered orders of their sergeants.
Four men, all knights, were sheltered in a barn, unable to
sleep. They were keen for action, any action, to break the
dread anticipation of waiting for death or worse. They had
all seen the horrendous wounds sustained in medieval battles.
After donning their full battle armour with considerable help
from their pages, they bade each other Gods blessing and
went to the camps of their men.
These knights were Roger Fiennes, his brother James
Fiennes, Rogers brother-in-law John Holland and Rogers
stepfather John Cornwaille. All four were my direct ancestors.
081JJ_TXT.indd 5 20/08/2014 16:21
6
Agincourt
If ever a single line of kinsmen had, over four centuries,
a continuous influence on British history, then I claim that
role for my direct ancestors and their immediate clansfolk.
In every age there have been aggressive monarchs and dicta-
tors who thrived on and lived for war, or who tried to focus
their subjects minds on foreign conquests when things were
bad at home.
Just as the spark that led to the great wars of the twentieth
century involved a chance assassination in Sarajevo, so certain
acts of favouritism to foreigners in the English court of King
Edward the Confessor during the eleventh century caused
intense jealousy to rage in the heart of the most influential
baron in the land, the Viking descendant Harold Godwin of
Wessex.
We, my direct ancestors that is, were the main foreign
favourites who caused this rift and were thus directly the
cause of the Anglo-Norman war that followed, including,
in 1415, the bloody Battle of Agincourt where Fiennes blood
flowed on both sides.
To understand the Battle of Agincourt we have to go back
400 years. To explain why Edward the Confessor was linked
with the Fiennes clan involves a brief history of northern
Gaul, the land of my ancestor King Pepin, his son the Emperor
Charlemagne and the latters direct descendant Count Adelof
of Boulogne (born AD 918).
Adelof s fiefdom included the village of Fiennes a few
miles south of Boulogne which, during the past millennium
had been a local barony subject to successive sovereigns:
counts of Boulogne, dukes of Burgundy and kings of England
and France. A welter of counties, duchies, principalities,
kingdoms and empires, positioned on what would become
081JJ_TXT.indd 6 20/08/2014 16:21
7
The French Connection
the international boundary between France and Germany,
were involved.
The land of Fiennes is mostly low and level, but rises to
a higher plateau and eventually to tableland. A series of
plateaux are cut by river valleys. The terrain is traversed
from south-east to north-west by low hills and forms the
watershed between the basins of the North Sea and the
English Channel. Cte dOpal, which thrusts north-westwards
towards England, and extends on its western side from Cap
Blanc Nez to Cap Gris Nez, is known as the Boulonnais,
the Bononia of ancient Gaul. Caesar fortified its principal
city, which eventually became the see of the diocese of
Boulogne. Its coastline is broken by many a port from which
the Romans set forth in conquest.
This Boulonnais was an ancient county ruled over by sover-
eigns who held only nominal allegiance to the kings of France.
For the most part, this region gives the impression of a charming
Flemish landscape. In the midst of the general fertility, however,
lies a vast moorland extending northwards, and on the border
of this land of mystery there ran the Roman road over which
royal entourages to the Field of the Cloth of Gold once trav-
elled. Here nestles the village of Fiennes, and to the east of
it the extensive forest of Gunes.
Charles de Gaulle called this part of the world the fatal
avenue. Since the Treaty of Verdun in 843, when the Carolingian
Empire was divided among the three grandsons of Charle-
magne, the Boulonnais has suffered the ravages of warfare,
from Agincourt to the Somme. Even before the division of
the empire, Celtic Belgae had invaded the area. They were
followed by Romans and by Germanic Franks, and eventually
by the Valois kings of France who fought the English during
081JJ_TXT.indd 7 20/08/2014 16:21
8
Agincourt
the Hundred Years War. The wars of the seventeenth century
to establish Frances international border continued into the
Franco-Prussian War and two World Wars. The soil must be
rich in blood and bone.
The county of Boulonnais now forms part of the French
department of Pas-de-Calais. Its rulers from 879 through to
1160 stemmed from a junior line of the royal house of
Flanders, and at that time it was an independent county. My
ancestors, the Counts of Boulogne, rulers of the Boulonnais,
were nominally feudal lords who rendered homage only to
the kings of France. About 1059 Eustace II, Count of
Boulogne and Seigneur of Fiennes built his castle in his parish
of Tingry to consolidate his local power. The immediate
region was heavily forested, the hiding place of wolves and
bands of brigands. Boulonnais policy during this period was
a calculated balancing of the spheres of interest exercised
by the dukes of Normandy and the counts of Flanders on
either side of the Boulonnais.
The earlier Counts of Boulogne had by then already
acquired large feudal holdings in England. Eustace II left
three legitimate sons as well as a bastard who acquired the
title Count of Tingry. When that line ended in the person
of heiress Sybil de Tingry, her husband Enguerrand de Fiennes
then became the joint ruler of Fiennes and Tingry, as well
as succeeding to an immense patrimony in England because
of the influence of Matilda, the last heiress of Boulogne who
was also his cousin and political supporter.
When Matilda married into the House of Blois, it was to
Stephen, who was to become both sovereign of the Boulonnais
and King of England.
Matildas uncle, Eustace of Boulogne, was married to
081JJ_TXT.indd 8 20/08/2014 16:21
9
The French Connection
Princess Goda, the sister of King Edward the Confessor, and
the two men, King Edward and Count Eustace, were the best
of friends. Quite why they had become acquainted in the
first place, despite the then considerable geographical barrier
of the English Channel, deserves explanation.
The Anglo-Saxon settlers of the ninth and tenth centuries
fought waves of Viking raiders, their most successful leader
being Alfred the Great. One of Alfreds line, Ethelred the
Unready, ordered the massacre of all Danes in England, but
Viking reinforcements forced his exile to Normandy. While
there, his daughter, Goda, married my ancestor Count Eustace
of Boulogne.
After a brief spell of Danish rule under King Canute,
Ethelreds son, Godas brother, was recalled from exile and
became King Edward the Confessor. He brought many
Norman friends with him to the English court and placed
them in positions of power, much to the annoyance of the
English nobles, especially Lord Godwin of Wessex, the most
influential baron in the land. Thus began a power struggle
between Edward and his friends from his days in exile under
Duke William of Normandy, ranged against the Viking English
forces of Harold Godwin.
A third party then entered the ring in the person of my
cousin Count Eustace of Boulogne. He had been threatened
by the French emperor and decided that it would be wise to
retire for a while to the English court of his brother-in-law,
King Edward, where he soon learned to loathe Harold
Godwin.
Following a scuffle in Dover, Godwins soldiers killed twenty
of Eustaces retainers, and this gave King Edward good reason
to exile Godwin to Flanders (now Belgium).
081JJ_TXT.indd 9 20/08/2014 16:21
10
Agincourt
A year later Godwin returned at the head of a Flemish
army and Edward, a weak man, became a mere puppet king.
It was later claimed by Duke William of Normandy that,
while Godwin was in Flanders, Edward had promised William
the throne of England on his death.
When King Edward, the last of twenty-five kings of the
Wessex dynasty all based in England, died in 1066 with no
sons, Godwin seized the throne. This enraged two would-be
claimants, one of whom, King Harald Hardrada of Norway,
attacked from the north while Duke William prepared an
invasion fleet on the French coast. Count Eustace of Boulogne
lent William many ships and agreed to be second-in-command
of Williams army.
Godwin marched his army of Anglo-Danes north and
defeated the Norwegians at Stamford Bridge. Only three days
after that battle, Duke William and cousin Eustace landed at
Pevensey. After a forced march south, Godwins army clashed
with the Norman and Boulogne forces on a hilltop near
Hastings.
Duke Williams chaplain wrote of the battle: The Normans
furiously carried out their attack on the main body of the
English host. There were present in this battle, Eustace Count
of Boulogne, William Count of Evreux, Rodulf of Tossey . . .
Duke William, armed only with a broken lance, was more
formidable than others who brandished long javelins. With
a harsh voice, he called to his main army commander, Count
Eustace of Boulogne, who, with fifty knights, was about to
give the signal to retreat. Eustace came up to the duke and
said in his ear that he ought to retire since he would court
death if he went forward and is depicted offering this advice
on the Bayeux Tapestry.
081JJ_TXT.indd 10 20/08/2014 16:21
11
The French Connection
If only Duke William had listened to cousin Eustaces
advice to retreat, then the Norman occupation would never
have happened and nor would the long years of bloodshed
of the subsequent Hundred Years War.
But William won the battle, Godwin collected an arrow in
his eye and, sad day for the Anglo-Saxons, we Normans had
arrived in Britain. William had himself crowned in London
on Christmas Day as Saxon villages all around were torched
by his soldiers. He ruled with immense cruelty, trampling the
native English underfoot. By the end of his twenty-one-year
reign, 5 per cent of the 2 million inhabitants of his British
territories were Gallic imports appointed by the king to control
a rigid caste system with a Stasi-type spy network and a
meticulous census of all citizens and their possessions, known
as the Domesday Book. This recorded the wealth of some
13,000 settlements down to the last goat and hen, so that an
unavoidable tax burden could be levied, chiefly to pay for his
mercenaries.
William stole some 5,000 estates from their Saxon owners
along the borders of Scotland and Wales, and in the so-called
Pale region of Southern Ireland and gave them to Normans
in return for their pledge to fight for him whenever needed.
Only the mountain regions of Wales remained as the last
redoubt of the native British.
Despite the efficiency of the Norman occupiers, occasional
revolts flared, especially when the King was in Normandy
fighting the King of France or other neighbours. Late in 1067
the men of Kent decided to get rid of the Normans by the
simple expedient of inviting my feisty ancestor Count Eustace
to spearhead their revolt. By then he was fed up with his
erstwhile Norman ally and saw no reason why parts of
081JJ_TXT.indd 11 20/08/2014 16:21
12
Agincourt
England should not become Boulogne, rather than Norman,
controlled.
So in 1067 a second invasion force arrived from France
and took the countryside around Dover from the Normans.
Sadly, the key Norman bastion of Dover Castle held out
against the Boulogner siege long enough for a superior
Norman relief force to arrive, and Eustace sensibly hightailed
it back to Boulogne. William was apoplectic and he confis-
cated land, including a huge chunk of south-east England,
which he had nicknamed the Honour of Boulogne and
awarded to Eustace after Hastings. Several years later with
no further bad behaviour and professed loyalty to King
William, cousin Eustace was given back most of the Honour.
The behaviour of the Normans in Britain mirrored that
of whites in South Africa in the apartheid era. No intermar-
riage was allowed with Saxons, who had become second-class
citizens in their own land.
Eustace and many other Boulogne or Norman lords lived
mostly on their French, not British, estates, and they continued
both to fight and to intermarry with each other. Important
towns and major villages gave their names to their lords
families, as was true of my ancestors who came from towns
such as Boulogne, Fiennes, Saye, Gunes and Ardres, and all
sooner or later married into each others ruling families.
Did Britain and its people actually benefit in any way from
the Norman invasion? Were the new Norman aristocrats,
who supplanted their Saxon counterparts, better for the well-
being of the general populace? Was their governance from
an economic and social viewpoint an improvement on that
of the overthrown system of King Edward the Confessor and
his English Saxon predecessors?
081JJ_TXT.indd 12 20/08/2014 16:21
13
The French Connection
Economically, William did nothing to promote trade, other
than to establish the first Jewish colony in London. In terms
of the law, the Normans introduced their trial by battle system,
whereby the defendant and his accuser fought one another to
establish who was guilty of the original crime. This seems to
me to be no improvement on the existing Saxon method of
establishing guilt by trial by ordeal, where the accused was
thrown into a river to see whether they floated or sank. Normans
had the considerable privilege of being able to select a third
option of purging themselves via an unbroken oath.
Unfortunately these days, despite my Norman DNA, when
caught speeding I do not automatically qualify to avoid the
heavy fine or, worse still, points on my licence, as awarded
to drivers of Saxon heritage.
Williams policy of ensuring internal security by building
castles involved punitive taxes on local communities, while
large numbers of Englishmen were recruited into Norman
armies as mercenaries to fight Williams French enemies. French
became the encouraged and socially acceptable language, even
though the Saxons were probably a more civilised race in
many ways and at most levels of society than were the
Normans. Both groups shared a good mix of Viking blood.
Large numbers of Englishmen were recruited into Norman
armies as mercenaries to fight Williams French enemies, and
the status of English women suffered a considerable decline.
Whereas the two sexes had, in Anglo-Saxon times, experi-
enced a general state of equality, the Normans imported
their firm belief as to womens inferiority. After all, St Paul
had clearly indicated that this was a Christian rule of life.
Women should show blind obedience, first to their father
and then to their designated husband.
081JJ_TXT.indd 13 20/08/2014 16:21
14
Agincourt
Although Hastings is generally described as a battle between
the French and the English, the reality was a struggle between
a Norman duke, whose main enemy was the King of France,
and Harold, a West Saxon Viking earl with zero English blood
in his veins.
Hastings resulted in the union of two lands England and
the Duchy of Normandy. But a century and a half later the
last of the Norman kings of England lost the duchy to the
French. The result would be the Hundred Years War.
081JJ_TXT.indd 14 20/08/2014 16:21