Louis was boasting about what he would do to the English if they dared set foot on French soil. With a few of his friends he contrived what he thought was a joke. He had a cask of tennis balls sent from Paris to London, with a message to Henry that the balls were more fitting playthings for him than the weapons of war he was proposing to use against France.
Knowing Henry, as I did later, I could well imagine the mood in which he received the tennis balls.
His reply was typical of him. “These balls,” he said, “shall be struck back with such a racket as shall force open the gates of Paris.”
It was tantamount to a declaration of war.
On August 7 in that year 1415, Henry set sail for France.
At that time I was nearly fourteen years of age.
It was just a month after he had landed when Henry took Harfleur. It had cost him a great deal and there were rumors that his army was plagued by sickness.
He marched on, however.
The terrible events of the previous months had aroused my father from his madness. He listened to the accounts of the capture of Harfleur and declared he would place himself at the head of his army and go with it to meet the English King.
It was his Uncle Berry, I think, who begged him to consider what he was proposing to do.
“Remember Poitiers?” he said. “Remember Crécy? It is better that you should not be there. If we lose the battle, we cannot lose the King or the Dauphin as well.”
My father hesitated. He must have known that his presence would be a cause for alarm rather than an inspiration. What if madness should seize him on the battlefield—which was not unlikely? What harm would that do? It was agreed that he should not go…nor the Dauphin and his brothers Jean and Charles. It was also decided that it would be unwise for Berry, Brittany and Burgundy to risk themselves either.
When I heard this, I felt that they were preparing for defeat before the battle had begun. But although it was more than fifty years since the Battle of Poitiers had been lost, Frenchmen had never forgotten it.
The Battle of Agincourt would be another of those which would be remembered for a long time. It was October 25 and I had now reached my fourteenth birthday. There was tension throughout the Queen’s apartments.
All the flower of the nobility—with the exception of the very highest in the land, whom it had been decided could not risk their lives—was there.
In trepidation we waited for the result.
I heard more of that battle later on. Henry himself described it to me. He glowed with pride and enthusiasm when he did so, and I could not help catching it, even though it had meant such a bitter defeat for my own countrymen.
“The French were doomed from the start,” Henry told me, “in spite of the fact that there were so many of them. We had come from Harfleur…there was sickness in our ranks, and a soldier will often fight better when he is defending his homeland. France was mine by right but these men of mine…well, they wanted victory…they wanted the spoils of victory…but home for them was England. The French were confident…too confident. Fifty thousand of them at least…all drawn up in their heavy armor. Compared with them, we were very few. Some Englishmen quailed when they compared the numbers of French with ours, and I had to remind them one Englishmen was worth ten Frenchmen.” He laughed that rather raucous laugh of his to which I had become accustomed by that time. But I never forgot his description of the battle.
“They were so confident, your poor deluded Frenchmen. They had the numbers. There they were in their shining armor…elegant to look at but oh so heavy to wear. They spent the night before drinking, dicing, betting on how long we should last against them. A soldier should have confidence…but the right sort of confidence…which is not the foolhardy sort. There must be no vanity in that confidence. The French did not have the right kind. We spent the night in preparation. I had my scouts all over the ground. I knew where it was marshy due to the excessive rains. I knew where I wanted my men and I knew where I wanted theirs. I made sure the French were huddled together without enough space to move freely. I had them on the sodden ground. I knew that, however pretty their ornate armor was, it was too heavy for easy maneuver. And there we were, with the whole width of the field to move in, with the archers on our wings and the woods to protect our flanks. I wore a crown in my helmet so that all should know I was there among them. And at the end of the day the French had lost 10,000 men and the English…some say fourteen, but I’ll confess it might have been a little more…perhaps a hundred or two. Small, though, against 10,000. I did not know the name of the place and asked it of a peasant who said: ‘It is Agincourt, my lord.’ And I replied, ‘Henceforth this shall be known as the Battle of Agincourt.’”
That was Henry’s version, and I think it must have been an accurate one for he was not a man to hide the truth.
In any case, no one could fail to admit that that was a sad day in France’s history.
There was despondency throughout the Court. There was scarcely a family in the land which was not plunged into mourning. The Duke of Burgundy had lost his two brothers—the Duke of Brabant and the Count of Nevers. I heard he cursed himself because he had not been present. He had given orders that his son—who was the husband of my sister Michelle—should not be allowed to go, and although the young man had attempted to disobey his father’s orders, he had been restrained by the Duke’s men.
It was a day of shame for France, and that meant England’s glory.
The Duke of Burgundy, in a moment of despair, sent a message to Henry with his gauntlet challenging him to single combat. He wanted to avenge his brothers, he said.
By this time I was beginning to realize that Henry was not the man I had first thought him to be. Isabelle’s account had been of that rash youth, that frequenter of taverns. This was a different man, a man of great wisdom…a king and a conqueror.
He at once saw the folly of fighting a duel with the Duke of Burgundy. Weighty matters such as he was engaged in were not solved by such methods. He was the victor of Agincourt, but he was fully aware that this was by no means the end of the struggle. Victory could easily turn sour, and he had no intention of allowing his to do so. Moreover, he knew of the strife in France; and he believed that, with a little diplomacy, because of Burgundy’s intense hatred of the Armagnacs, he might consider them a greater enemy than the English. Henry was more than a great soldier; he was a diplomatic king, always looking far ahead beyond the triumphs of the moment.
His reply to the Duke was almost sycophantic, which amazed all, for it seemed incredible that the victor of Agincourt could write in such a humble manner. I was as surprised as any, for, of course, I did not know Henry at that time.
He wrote back: “I will not accept the gauntlet of so powerful a prince as the Duke of Burgundy. I am of no account compared with him. If I have had a great victory at the expense of France, it is through the grace of God. The death of the Duke’s brothers has afflicted me sorely, but neither I nor my soldiers caused their deaths. Take back this gauntlet. I will prove to the Duke by the testimony of my prisoners that it was the French who accomplished his brothers’ destruction.”
I wondered what Burgundy’s feelings were when he received that reply. He must have realized the cleverness which lay behind it. It could have been the beginning of that rapport between Burgundy and the English. The latter were not so much the Duke’s personal enemies as the hated Armagnacs.
I remember my brother Louis’s rage when he realized the extent of the defeat at Agincourt. All his arrogance had disappeared; he was a different man from that one who had laughingly sent the tennis balls across the Channel. He looked more like the bewildered boy I had known in the Hôtel de St.-Paul.