Hundred Years War.
Fields of Glory.
Michael Jecks.
For my parents, Beryl and Peter, with much love.
A new direction . . .
And For Andy and Mandy.
in the hope this may distract you both from the events of the last horrible couple of years.
Lots of love.
Sir John de Sully.
Knight Banneret from Devon Richard Bakere Esquire to Sir John Granda.r.s.e under Sir John, the Centener: leader of a hundred men.
Berenger Fripper the leader of one vintaine of twenty men under Granda.r.s.e.
Members of Berenger"s vintaine:.
Clip Eliot Jack Fletcher Jon Furrier Gilbert "Gil"
Luke.
Matt Geoff atte Mill Oliver Walt Will "The Wisp"
Ed "The Donkey"
orphan found by the vintaine in Portsmouth Roger vintener of the second vintaine Mark Tyler/Mark of London Roger"s most recent recruit Archibald Tanner a "gynour" trained in gunpowder and cannon Erbin leader of a party of Welsh fighters.
Dewi and Owain Welshmen under Erbin King Edward III King of England.
King Edward II the King"s predecessor, rumoured to have died in Berkeley Castle King Philippe VI.
King of France Edward of Woodstock son of Edward III, later known as "the Black Prince"
Earl Thomas of Warwick a noted peer of the realm and Marshal of England Beatrice Pouillet.
daughter of a gunpowder merchant in France.
In those far-off days when I was still at school, I was a member of a book club that was devoted to non-fiction books on warfare, and bought vast numbers from them. They remain on my bookshelves, the greater part of them very well-thumbed and yellowed, but all offering a haven of peace whenever I need it. Lyn MacDonald"s They Called It Pa.s.schendaele (which I read when only eleven), books on the Somme, Max Hastings" The Korean War, and books about the Das Reich Panzer Division and Bomber Command they are still there in front of me as I type this.
But one in particular, sadly, is missing. It was a t.i.tle I enjoyed so much that I kept offering it to other people to read. One of them took it and lost it. I have mourned the loss of that book for many years. It was The Hundred Years War by Desmond Seward, first published by Constable in 1978. I must have bought my copy in about 1983 or so, and I read it twice, back to back, in my cottage in Oxted, Surrey.
The book is a gem of concise, undramatic but enthralling writing. So much so that I was forced to buy a new copy as soon as I was able to do so. Of course, it"s not the only book on the Hundred Years War, and, if I"m brutally honest, it"s probably not the best. There are many other t.i.tles, from Jonathan Sumption"s superb studies of the same subject to books by experts like Terry Jones (I have sung his praises many times before, but I"ll do it again: if you haven"t read Chaucer"s Knight: Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary it is high time you did) but it was Seward"s book that fired my imagination in the first place. It was his book that persuaded me to find out more about this terrible time, and his book that inspired me to write about the Battle of Crecy.
It is difficult to write a book that includes the lives of real people.
In Medieval Murderers, the performance group I founded more than a decade ago, we have had many debates about whether or not to use real characters from history. When I set out to create my medieval world, I was determined not to look at matters from the point of view of real characters, because I had a secret dread of someone doing that to me. I could all too easily envisage a time when someone read an article on their . . . what will it be in a few hundred years? On their wall? In their retina? Well, no matter where they would see it, they would read about this fellow Jecks who was alive in the early twenty-first century, and might want to write about him. They would have him as a witty, clever fellow, no doubt. Fair enough. And a criminal investigator. And they would state that I was vegan, teetotal, a cat-loving, anti-hunting, football-supporting campaigner for the European Union. In short, I would have to give up my proud disdain for all things psychic and take up haunting the foul blighter for his or her calumnies.
You can see why I did not want to take a real person and infuse them with my own feelings, beliefs and prejudices. It just wouldn"t be fair. A kind of "post-mortem slander". That is why, in my earlier books, although I make some use of characters like Walter Stapledon, I don"t look at the world through his eyes. He is simply included because he was there, in Exeter, at the time. I couldn"t ignore him.
However, over time my att.i.tude has changed. There are some situations which do need the perspective of key players. And for this book, I chose a man who has fascinated me for many years: Sir John de Sully.
If you look him up on the internet, you will find his life doc.u.mented at the website for the Collegiate Church of the Holy Cross and the Mother of Him Who Hung Thereon in Crediton ( extraordinary man, Sir John was questioned in his one hundred and sixth year, because of a dispute between two other knights about the arms they were allowed to display. He died, apparently, the following year. But in his long life, he had survived battles all through the Edwardian period, from (probably) Bannockburn through to Najera. That means that the last time he went to war in armour, he was some eighty-six years old.
His character can only be guessed at. In reality, of course, he was probably a hugely aggressive man, arrogant, proud and independent: a terrible enemy. But he came from Devon, too, and I have deliberately made him a more complex fellow and not a mere brute.
Above all, this is the story of a vintaine. A small group of Englishmen in a foreign land, fighting and killing and dying for a cause which they only dimly understood. But they knew that there was money to be looted, that there were women, and there was wine. They were not saints. Soldiers rarely are. But what they achieved was astonishing, and for that, if nothing else, they deserve admiration.
The Battle of Crecy has always been a source of argument. Firstly because most historians find it inconceivable that the commander of such a relatively small force could have deliberately sought to meet the full might of the ma.s.sive French army in battle; secondly because there has been hot debate over the precise battle-formation used by the English during that battle.
I do not presume to argue the cases either way. You can find the arguments marvellously summarised in War Cruel and Sharp by Clifford J. Rogers, Boydell Press, 2000. In Chapter 10 "Invasion of 1346: Strategic Options and Historiography", he goes through them on both sides in some detail. However, it seems clear to me that the English King Edward III would have known that he ran the significant risk of battle by taking war to the north of France. He had tweaked the French King"s tail too often already to think he would escape unhindered once more. The prestige of Philippe VI was at stake.
For my story, I have a.s.sumed that the argument from Rogers"s book is correct: that the English King knew he would force the French to battle and was confident nonetheless, convinced that his ma.s.sed archers would be so overwhelming that the French must be crushed. He suffered setbacks, true, especially on the long march to the Somme, but I believe he had a strategic ambition to draw the French to him on well-prepared ground in a planned manner.
The second issue has given me a great deal more heartache than the simple question of whether the English intended to fight. How did King Edward dispose his troops?
I have resorted to many books in researching the battle, from Jonathan Sumption"s superb Trial By Battle, Rogers"s War Cruel and Sharp mentioned above, J.F. Verbruggen"s The Art of Warfare in Western Europe, Maurice Keen"s Medieval Warfare, Kelly DeVries"s Infantry Warfare in the Early Fourteenth Century . . . all the way to Ian Mortimer"s The Perfect King: The Life of King Edward III, with stop-offs at Froissart and other chroniclers.
Some think that there were three battles (groups of fighting men, in modern terms "Battalions" is the nearest word), with English soldiers spread side-by-side over the top of the hill, with groups of archers between these groups of men, and more archers at either side. I disagree, and side with those who consider the next scenario more likely: that the English had the three battles one placed before the other, and with two large groups of archers at either flank with cannon, so as to keep up a withering fire both on the killing ground before them on the plains, and, as the enemy grew nearer, launching their weapons and missiles directly into the flanks of the French advance. Not only is this the most likely formation to have achieved the victory won at such low cost to the English but also it was the formation practised and rehea.r.s.ed in so many prior battles.
But after all my research, there is still a margin for error. I have occasionally guessed at mysteries such as, where precisely was Sir John in the battle-line? and where my guesses have missed their mark, I can only apologise. Any errors are my own.
This story, then, is the story of soldiers through the centuries, and I have unashamedly used scenes as described by George MacDonald Fraser in his magnificent autobiography Quartered Safe Out Here, as well as many contemporary accounts. The story of fighting men, and their experiences in battle, has not changed all that much. Their lives are full of fear, boredom, misery and sudden horror. But they also enjoy making jokes at each others" expense, and gradually they learn to trust and rely on one another.
Finally, I should say that when I was writing this, I had in my mind the young men and women who are fighting with the British Army in Afghanistan.
May they all return safe and well.
Michael Jecks.
North Dartmoor.
January 2013.
St-Vaast-la-Hogue, 12 July 1346.
Berenger Fripper, vintener of this pox-ridden mob of sixteen men under Sir John de Sully, ducked as another wave splashed over the gunwale and drenched him.
"s.h.i.t, s.h.i.t, s.h.i.t," he muttered, wiping a hand over his face to clear it of water. White foam was everywhere, and he was already frozen to the marrow in the bitter wind. He cursed the day he"d agreed to lead the men on this raid.
Granda.r.s.e, his centener, and leader of four more vintaines, bellowed, "Get ready!" near his ear, and Berenger felt like snapping back that they were all ready they had been ready this past hour or more but he swallowed his resentment. Discipline was all-important in the army. Any diminution of respect weakened a fighting force, which was why punishment for insubordination was so savage, and rightly so.
Granda.r.s.e shouldered his way past. The older man was built like a barrel, with a belly that declared his love of ale and food. His eyes were blue like the sky, his skin leathery from living rough, marching for his King. He was a hard man, used to the ways of war, but the Yorkshireman was honest enough, and kindly to men he trusted. He respected Berenger"s men: such fellows were the backbone of the King"s army, and Granda.r.s.e knew it.
Another big wave, another wipe of his face. Berenger hated ships. This was no way to go to war. The rolling decks and constant spray, the sound of horses whinnying, almost screaming in fear belowdecks, the constant taste of sickness in his throat and the smell of vomit all about him . . . it all reminded him of Sluys, two years before. Christ"s ballocks, that had been a fight! He was an old man now. Already six and thirty, and a fighter for his King for the last eleven years. He knew he shouldn"t feel such trepidation at the prospect of battle.
Yet he did.
He shifted the strap of his pack where it had rubbed a sore patch at his collarbone. The salt in the air was making it sting. Another wave crashed at the side of the ship, spume exploding into his face and beard, and he swore viciously.
Beside him, young Ed was kneeling and retching, his belly emptied many long hours before.
"Get up, boy!" Berenger snarled. "You want to kneel when the French come and beat you all about your bleeding head?"
He hauled on the boy"s arm until Ed was up and could lean on the wale himself, his fist clenched in white determination about a rope.
An odd boy. Too young for this kind of fight, Berenger told himself again. The lads had thought he"d make them a good mascot if nothing else.
They had found him lying in the gutter outside a Portsmouth tavern, dazed from the blow that had broken his tooth and bloodied his face. If he was the victim of a robbery, the thief had poor judgement in selecting his victims. A lad that old could have little indeed worth taking. Clip had wanted to see if he had any money, but Geoff shouldered him aside and picked up the pathetic bundle, carrying Ed back to their lodgings with a gentleness that surprised the other men. With luck, Geoff said defensively, the boy"d earn his keep by fetching and carrying. They could do with a lad to bring arrows or water in battle, and bear food on the march.
Well, that was as may be. As far as Berenger was concerned, Ed was a waste of s.p.a.ce. He was a boy, and they needed men. Granda.r.s.e didn"t care: he would get money for the extra head, and that was all he cared about; but Berenger felt responsible for the fellow. Just now the boy"s head hung low, drool trailing from his chin. How, in G.o.d"s name, the son of a fisherman could be so useless and pukey on board a ship, he didn"t know. The lad was the most cack-handed p.r.i.c.k he had ever met. He wouldn"t meet Berenger"s eyes but stood shivering, staring miserably at the land ahead, as did all the others.
"Not long now," Berenger said, more kindly.
The others, he thought. They had all survived the sailing, thank the Lord. His glance ran over the vintaine. Although he wouldn"t let it show, Berenger felt a flare of pride to be leading them. At least they were all fighting men.
Beside him, Granda.r.s.e stood rolling with the deck, hoa.r.s.ely singing a crude marching song, his enormous belly constrained by his thick leather belt. Behind him stood Geoff, the square-faced, impa.s.sive son of a miller from Tewkesbury, flanked by the lanky form of the grey-eyed Jack Fletcher and the shorter, wiry Will the Wisp. Wisp was scrawny and looked always on the verge of toppling over, but he had muscles like steel cords and could have been pegged to the deck.
Behind him, lumbering helplessly from one man to another with every plunge of the ship, and swearing all the while, was Clip, the shortest of them all. Clip had the pinched wizened features of a beggar. This last winter, the scurvy had laid hold of him, and now he had few teeth remaining. His brown eyes were red-tinged, and he tried to cower behind Wisp, keeping his scrawny a.r.s.e sheltered from the water, but was flung around by the power of the waves like a rag doll.
And then there were the others: Jon Furrier with the dropped shoulder, the always-limping Eliot, Oliver with the squint and fretful chewing of his inner lip, Matt, Walt, Luke and Gilbert and the rest. All waiting, all watching, veterans of battles in France and Scotland. Geoff met Berenger"s eyes and nodded, his mouth twisted at one side as usual. They would soon be fighting: the King had promised them. This was to be the chevauchee that proved once and for all that the English King was rightful King of France as well.
Well, so long as there was wine and plunder in it, the men would be content: him too. Berenger narrowed his eyes against the spray. Since his parents" death four and twenty years ago, he had spent his life searching for adventure. Now, perhaps, it was time to stop. He could buy a little house, find a woman. Brew ale, make friends, raise children. Aye mayhap! he told himself sardonically.
There was a moment or two of peace. Shipmen were up at the sail, hauling for dear life, and on a series of commands from the shipmaster, the vessel began to wallow, her speed cut as the sails were reefed. Soon they would be at the sh.o.r.e, and the tension amongst the ship"s company increased dramatically as they prepared to disembark. Bags and blankets were hefted, personal weapons tested in their sheaths, and men muttered prayers. Two near Berenger were murmuring as the beads of their rosaries slipped through their fingers.
Berenger could see the waves ahead battering at the shallow sands. At least the rocks were over to the west of them now. This sh.o.r.eline looked safer, with smoothly shelving sands that rose up gently to meet the small houses of the town itself. Berenger caught a glimpse of a steeple, a little row of fishermen"s houses, a low breakwater that enclosed a wide port, but then another wave was hurled into his face and blinded him. When he could look again, the beach was much closer.
"Ready!" he shouted, and as he looked across at his men one last time, the ship struck.
There was a graunching rasp from deep within the bowels of the vessel, a sound felt through the feet, as though a monster was tearing through the hull. He was thrown onto Ed, the weight of the men behind them crushing them both. The planks of the deck were slick with water and p.i.s.s and vomit and his boots slipped, but then the vessel lurched once more, and he found his foot struck the hull, and he could stand again.
"With me!" Berenger heaved himself onto the wale and stared down at the sea below. Beside him, Ed gaped at the drop before them. Berenger grunted to himself, hauled the lad to the gunwale and pushed him over, before closing his eyes and leaping down himself, grasping his sword"s hilt as he went. "Come on, you sons of wh.o.r.es!"
It was further than he had realised, a good eight or nine feet, and the sea was five feet deep. His ankle twisted on a rock, but he refused to acknowledge the dull pain. Ed was already halfway to dry land, floundering through the surf, and Berenger made his way after him, splashing water high on each side as he swaggered towards the welcoming sands, sword held up at shoulder height. He"d have to clean and dry the blade, he told himself, and his pack would be soaked through. Ah, G.o.d, but it would be good to be on solid ground again! That ship had been an instrument of torture. He would never go aboard a ship again, not if he could avoid it.
The waves sucked at his hosen as though trying to drag him under but then he was into the shallows and up onto the sand. There was no time to pause here. He had his orders: his vintaine was to run on ahead and keep any enemy away while a bridgehead was established.
His world was yet rolling about him. It was as if the land was still moving like the boat, and he had to fix his stare on the men jumping from the ships and making their way towards him to force his mind to accept that he was at last free from that tub.
"Hoy, Fripper! Get your men up to the dunes there!" Granda.r.s.e roared.
Berenger nodded, and urged the men on with him, scrambling up the sand. Soon he and the others were huddled on a hillock from where they could see the land before them, while also watching the ships unloading their cargoes of men and materiel.
"Have they all run away?" Ed asked. He was shivering as he gazed about him. All around, the countryside looked empty. A flat land with thin reedy gra.s.ses stretched away into the distance; only a few thick stands of trees distracted his eye. One wood stood a short distance away to their right, while on the left was a village. He could see a church looming high over the huddle of buildings, but to his relief, there was no one about.
"Aye, boy," Geoff chuckled drily, his face pulling oddly as he smiled. His jaw had been broken years before in a battle and had never properly mended. Ever since, his voice had been sibilant and slurred. "They heard you were coming, and hared off before you could get to them."
Berenger grinned to himself. Geoff was built like a bull. His arms thick as sacks of grain, his thighs the size of young oaks, and as strong. If the French were to run from anyone, it would be him. Geoff"s shrewd grey eyes were wrinkled in humour now as he glanced at the boy.
"When will they come, then?" Ed wanted to know. He was thirteen or so, a thin-faced boy with pale brown hair cut ragged and eyes that slid away rather than meet another"s.
Berenger shrugged. "When they"re ready, boy."
Their personal gear was piled on the sand, while Clip knelt, muttering under his breath, trying unsuccessfully to strike a spark from flint and dagger to light a fire from the driftwood piled all about.
"Get a move on, Clip. You think those French b.u.g.g.e.rs will wait until you"re good and ready for "em?" Matt joked.
"If ye think ye can light it faster, then you do it!" Clip said with exasperation. "Come here and demonstrate your wondrous skills. Happen, if you breathe and fart on it, your hot air and wind will light the tinder faster than my flint."
Clip"s constant whine grated, but the others had grown accustomed to it over the years and now they laughed. He had kept up his customary wheedling and complaining through both misery and joy, and was unlikely to change now.
"Just hurry up," Berenger said, wrapping his arms about his damp torso. "I need some warmth."
"We"ll be hot enough when the French army arrives," Jack said, and with that, the vintaine fell silent, stilled as they gazed at the lands all about them. Somewhere, out there, was an army preparing to throw them back in the sea.
Sir John de Sully took the pewter goblet from his esquire and drank deeply.
At five-and-sixty years old, Sir John was the oldest knight here. His first battle had been that b.l.o.o.d.y fiasco in Scotland, when the late King Edward II of inglorious memory had seen his men baffled by the traitor Bruce in the boggy wastes beside the Bannockburn. It was not a battle Sir John liked to recall. A knight should remember victories, not shameful disaster.
He grunted and rubbed at his knee. A pain there had come on during the voyage a tight stabbing whenever he bent his leg. He had ma.s.saged the area with goose fat, but it seemed to do little good. He would speak to a leech when he found time.
It was the way of things. He was an old man, and should have been pensioned off like an ancient warhorse by now: he would have been, were it not for the reputation he had gained. Sir John had been present at all the crucial battles since 1314. Sometimes he thought he was brought along because his kings viewed him as a mascot of good fortune. But while he had earned his retirement, there was a restlessness in his soul. His sword and mace had stabbed and crushed many skulls, but as soon as he had learned of this latest adventure, he had jostled for a place in the army.
It was where he belonged.
"Sir, your horse is ready," Richard Bakere, his esquire, said.
Sir John tossed back his wine. "And so begins our campaign," he grunted as he made his way to the ladder at the forecastle.