Agincourt in Context

War on Land and Sea

Rémy Ambühl, Craig Lambert

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351022842
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Weltgeschichte

This book investigates the Battle of Agincourt—which continues to be of immense national and international interest—as well as the wider conduct and organisation of war in the late Middle Ages. In England, Shakespeare's Henry V ensured that the battle holds a place in the English national consciousness, and through the centuries that followed the story of Henry's famous victory was used to galvanise English national spirit in times of war. In France, the immediate impact of the battle was that it helped to galvanise French national awareness in response to an external enemy. This book showcases new research into Agincourt and the wider issues of military recruitment, naval logistics, gunpowder and siege warfare, and the conduct of war. It also takes a wider European perspective on the events of 1415 by including research on Portuguese military organisation at the time of Agincourt. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Medieval History.

The military careerist in fourteenth-century England

Andrew Ayton

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to explain how it was that the careerist soldier became so prominent and ubiquitous a feature of the English military scene during the second half of the fourteenth century. Beginning with a characterisation of the military careerist in his various guises, the discussion proceeds with an investigation of how the pool of militarily employed manpower and the wider recruitment context changed during the fourteenth century owing to the impact of exogenous agencies of change on the dynamics of recruitment. The importance of expanded employment opportunities across Europe and the socio-economic consequences of the Black Death are noted, but particular attention is given to how the English crown’s management of war strategy and operations, as well as its influence on army structures and recruitment mechanisms, created a fertile soil within which military careerism could flourish. The roles played by ‘supersized’ mixed retinues and by opportunities for service in garrisons (especially at Calais) and at sea are considered in turn. The article concludes with an assessment of how the rise of the careerist affected the character of England’s military community and the social cohesion of its armies.

For over three decades from the late 1410s until 1450 the English crown maintained a large garrison establishment on a permanent footing in Normandy and the pays de conquête. This, it has recently been argued, was the defining period for the late medieval English professional soldier,¹ and it is an argument that has much to commend it, for long-term service within a single institutional context does indeed represent a major step towards ‘professionalism’ in the modern sense. Moreover, the large number of men-at-arms, archers and others employed on these terms – 3000 to 4000 from the beginning, reaching a peak of about 6000 in 1436, with inevitable shrinkage towards the end² – is indicative of how far the professional practitioner had become emblematic of England’s military community during the second quarter of the fifteenth century.³ The crown’s heavy reliance on standing forces at this particular time, to maintain a ‘scale of garrisoning never hitherto experienced by the English’ in pursuit of a policy of conquest and occupation,⁴ can be compared with contemporary developments elsewhere in Europe. For Venice and Milan, it was rivalry and regular conflict that prompted the shift towards greater permanence: stability and loyalty were achieved by extending the duration of military contracts from a few months to several years.⁵ For the Hungarian crown, it was defence against the Ottoman threat that necessitated the maintenance of a chain of garrisoned fortresses along the southern frontier of the kingdom from the Adriatic to Transylvania.⁶ For the Portuguese, capturing Ceuta on the Moroccan coast in August 1415, a symbol of reconquista resumed, committed the crown to sustaining a garrison of 2700 men in what was essentially a base for raids on land and at sea.⁷ Setting England’s shift towards institutionalised military professionalism alongside the experience of other polities serves primarily to highlight the variety of forms that standing forces took at this early stage in their development – the variety being the result of differences in the circumstances of demand and supply: of particularities in the nature of military and political objectives and in the potential of, and limits imposed by, resources and institutions. Necessarily quite as varied as a consequence were the ‘local’ identity and experience of military professionals: their terms of service, their operational roles and the social and institutional structures within which they served. If military professionalism, as both a key feature of standing forces and an individual career choice, was an evolving and non-uniform phenomenon in the early to mid fifteenth century, what of its antecedents in the fourteenth?

Immediately evident when we survey the second half of the fourteenth century are the prominence and ubiquity of English fighting men whose careers may appear to justify the epithet ‘professional’. Sir John Hawkwood, the much sought-after mercenary leader in Italy, or Sir Robert Knolles, the freebooter and royal captain in the French wars, spring to mind, as does Chaucer’s fictional Knight, whose dedication to the martial life took him just about everywhere except Italy and France. Like all his pilgrims, Chaucer’s veteran man-at-arms was both larger than life and a familiar figure of his time.⁸ Indeed, it is the ubiquity of proto-professionals in the mid to late fourteenth century that demands attention and explanation: men like John Dancaster, leader of the band of adventurers from the Calais garrison who captured the castle of Guînes from the French in 1352;⁹ or Richard Musard, the soldier of fortune who became the companion and trusted lieutenant of Count Amadeus of Savoy for over 20 years until, with the count, he died of the plague while on campaign in 1383;¹⁰ or the extraordinary Nicholas Sabraham, whose campaigning life, which took him from Brittany to the Black Sea, was if anything even more varied and packed with incident than that which Chaucer bestowed upon his Knight.¹¹

As these examples illustrate, what is strikingly different about the world of the dedicated English soldier during the later fourteenth century, as compared with the reigns of Henry V and Henry VI, is the diversity, in terms of location and character, of accessible wars, and also their intermittent nature. Consequently, there was no single, predominant institutional context within which long-term service could flourish. Since what might be regarded as the pre-requisite conditions for military professionalism existed only in certain localities, notably Calais, the dedicated soldiers of the fourteenth century are perhaps more appropriately described as ‘careerists’, a term that conveys something of the individualism that was a key feature of their martial lives.¹² Viewed from one perspective, what follows is an exploration of the implications of that individualism. Accordingly, we shall examine how the interaction of personal background and opportunity, of supply and demand at individual level, contributed to the distinctive patterns of experience of fourteenth-century careerists. Nevertheless, our underlying purpose is to investigate how it was that the military careerist became so prominent and ubiquitous a part of the English military scene during the mid to late fourteenth century, and what consequences this had for the military community as a whole. To this end, it is necessary to begin with a working characterisation of our subject.

The military careerist

How is the careerist to be identified amidst the amorphous crowd of men who took up arms at some point in their lives? He is, perhaps, most obviously identifiable from what he actually did: by the intensity and single-mindedness of his focus on war, by the frequency and regularity – even continuity – of his service. One problem with this approach to identifying careerism – with counting campaigns and assessing length of service ‒ is that we are often let down by our sources. As relatively well-documented as fourteenth-century English royal armies and garrisons undoubtedly are, there are many lacunae in the sequence of nominal records, and freelance service is still more patchily documented. How, in these circumstances, are we to interpret the gaps, perhaps lengthy, that are likely to appear in a man’s career in arms? Moreover, establishing a reliable career profile through nominal record linkage is not made any easier by the diffuse, apparently unfocused character of many of our dedicated soldiers’ lives with the sword or bow. For every John Dancaster, who scarcely strayed from the Calais March, there is a globetrotter like Nicholas Sabraham – or, to ascend the command hierarchy, a captain like Sir Ralph Ferrers, who served for over 40 years from the mid 1330s, taking in Scotland, Ireland and France, including several tours of duty at Calais, as well as some serious naval service in the 1370s.¹³

Career reconstruction is generally less difficult with those, like Ferrers, from the upper levels of the pyramid of gentility. But it is that very socio-economic group that presents another interpretative problem for an approach to identifying the careerist that is based simply on his actions. For a warrior like Ferrers should be considered a ‘socio-professional’:¹⁴ a man whose regular soldiering and leadership roles were closely related to his social standing, to his membership (albeit as a younger son) of a noble family and the martial mentality that went with those origins. The problem with socio-professionals is that, for all the frequency of their campaigning, only a proportion of them can properly be considered military careerists. Take, for example, Humphrey Bohun, earl of Hereford (d. 1373), whose short adult life was by any standards energetically martial – in Prussia, the Mediterranean, France and at sea; but he was, of course, so much more than a soldier. He did not depend on soldiering to maintain his lifestyle. His landed wealth and socio-political weight facilitated his military leadership role; indeed, that role was expected of him. Hereford was an employer of military careerists, an enabler, but not one himself.

Establishing who served where, when and with whom is an essential starting point in our search for the careerist, but understanding military careerism requires appreciation of two further issues, the first being why men served, their motivation and personal circumstances. The second concerns the relationship between the consequences of that inclination to take up arms and the opportunities that existed for doing so, between the supply of manpower and the demand for it. Let us begin with why men served. Remuneration should be considered a key issue, but always interwoven with what would have been for everyone a mix of considerations. A career soldier enlisted because, given his skills and often his background, soldiering was the most attractive means of making a living, and perhaps the only practical or socially acceptable one. Indeed, whether fortune smiled or scowled, careerists could easily become locked into the life of the sword, the winners and losers nicely illustrated by Sir Roger Beauchamp’s will in 1379, which included a bequest of £20 to his son Philip, who had last been heard of in Lombardy, ‘bound in a sum of money’ to the mercenary captain Sir John Thornbury.¹⁵

The remunerative aspect of soldiering that was necessarily a characteristic of the careerist mentality preoccupied men of diverse social origins. On the one hand, there was a subset of the socio-professionals who had been born and bred to the life of arms but depended on payment to maintain their status. It is something of a commonplace that the freelance companies that flourished across Europe at this time were swelled by the impoverished petty nobility, and this certainly applied to England as much as it did to France, Germany and Hungary. Among these genteel military careerists were heirs awaiting inheritances, and for some this proved to be a long wait. That Sir Nicholas Goushill served regularly with the sword for over 35 years was surely related to the extraordinary longevity of his parents.¹⁶ More numerous were those lacking significant inheritance prospects: younger sons, like Sir Ralph Ferrers, striving to maintain their status, and those at the very broad base of the pyramid of gentility, the parish gentry, who shared the values of the nobility but not their resources. Some of these men, perhaps younger sons of families on the margins of gentility, might start out as mounted archers.¹⁷ Many, even the most experienced and successful among them, eschewed knighthood: the genteel military careerist was typically an esquire.¹⁸

Turning to the remainder of the pool of military careerists, the sub-genteel men-at-arms and archers, it is tempting to regard them as the authentic military professionals, for with such men we can set aside the issue of cultural conditioning that affected the gentry – ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Foreword
• Introduction: Agincourt in context: war on land and sea. Introduction
• 1 The military careerist in fourteenth-century England
• 2 Henry V and the crossing to France: reconstructing naval operations for the Agincourt campaign, 1415
• 3 To Agincourt and beyond! The martial affinity of Edward of Langley, second duke of York (c.1373–1415)
• 4 ‘The scourge of the stones’: English gunpowder artillery at the siege of Harfleur
• 5 Henry V and the administration of justice: the surrender of Meaux (May 1422)
• 6 The posthumous knighting of Dafydd Gam
• 7 ‘Then a great misfortune befell them’: the laws of war on surrender and the killing of prisoners on the battlefield in the Hundred Years War
• 8 Another 1415: Portugal’s military landscape at the time of Agincourt
• Index