Thank you for listening to The Rest is History. For weekly bonus episodes, add free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much loved chat community, go to therestishistory. Com and join the club. That is therestishistory. Com. Play with your fancies and then behold upon the and tackle ship boys climbing. Hear the shrill whistle, which doth order give to sounds confused. Behold the thread and sails, borne with invisible and creeping wind, draw the huge bottoms through the furrowed sea, breasting the lofty surge. Oh, do but think you stand upon the rivage, and behold, a city on the inconstant billows dancing, for so appears this fleet majestical Holding due course to Hathler. Follow, follow. So that was the chorus in William Shakespeare's Henry the Fifth, and describing the departure of the English fleet for the mouth of the River Seine. To recap from last time, Tom, Henry V, in his late 20s, this austere, deeply dedicated, serious, slightly terrifying warlord.

I think very terrifying, let's be honest.

He's not terrifying you for English.

I think he is quite terrifying, even if you're English.

I think he's inspiring.

Well, we will find out how and why he's terrifying you if you're English later on.

He has set off across the channel his destination, Harfleur, a nest of pirates who are state-sponsored pirates, I suppose it's fair to say. This is going to be his first target on the French mainland. His ambition is not just to capture Hafleur, but is to use Hafleur as the springboard for a wider campaign in France to capitalize on the chaos there and initially to annex the formerly English territory of Normandy. But Tom, like a man invading Russia, he has made a mistake, hasn't he? He started too late in the year. Yeah.

So it's already mid-August by the time they land at Hafleur, which means that Henry, he needs to capture the town very, very quickly, because otherwise, as you say, it'll be too late. Autumn will be coming on. He needs to crack on. So he's in the mouth of the Seine in this Great Bay. And as we described at the end of the last episode, there's this rocky beach, there's a shallow cliff, there's a plateau, and Harfleur is three miles away. And Henry has chosen it because it is so unexpected, it is therefore unlikely to be guarded. But of course, he needs to be sure. And so he turns to a Holland, I'm very proud to say, specifically the 19-year-old John Holland, who is the son of the Duke of Exeter, who'd been a half brother of Richard II, and had been imbroiled in the first great conspiracy against Henry IV back in Epiphany 1400. He'd been executed. So poor John Holland, hadn't been allowed to inherit his father's titles, but he's hoping to create a good impression on this campaign and maybe get them. And he does create a good impression. I'm happy to say that he actually gets his titles the following year.

So that's good to know. And so he goes back and says, Yeah, all clear. And so the landings begin, and you have these shallow barges which have been brought over the channel, and men and horses are loaded into them, and then they come crunching up onto the rocky beach. And The whole process takes three days. And as anyone knows from later Normandy landings on D-day, it's the landing that is always the most dangerous, particularly if you're being attacked. So the fact that the English are not attacked, this is a good for the campaign.

Because the French don't know that they're there? They've been taken by surprise?

No, they don't. It's too late to marshal the resources that would enable them to oppose the landing. On the 17th of August, three days after the landing, Henry is ready to advance on Harfleur, and he invests the city on the western side, which is the side nearest the landing point, and he's occupying the heights above the city. On the evening of the following day, he wants to invest the heights that stand on the side, so on the Eastern side. And so he sends his brother, the Duke of Clarence, with a large part of the English army to do that so that they will then be on both sides of Harfleur. It's actually a tricky task because Harfleur has this river, the Laisage, which flows through it. And on the south side, it flows through mud flats. And when the tide comes in, these mud flats and the Laisard itself vanished beneath the waters and the waves reach all the way up to the walls of Hafleur. But on the north side, Side, you've got this river valley, and the Lazard has flooded the river valley, so it's all very marshy and swampy. And so Clarence and his men, it takes them basically...

They have to walk nine or 10 miles to avoid the floods. And it's not until dawn on the 19th that Clarence's men appear on the crest of the far hills from Henry's side. The town is now effectively sealed off because you've got the tidal estuary on the other side. You've got this river valley. There is no way anyone can approach it. The English completely control access. This is very bad news for Hafleur because its defenses aren't really very strong. It's an important city, so it's on the site of where La Havre is now. It's been swallowed up by La Havre's industrial zone. And in the early 15th century, it covers about 20 hectares, population of around 4,500, 5,000, perhaps. And it's walls stretched for two and a half miles. But these walls are about 70 years old. They haven't been repaired. The French haven't really thought that it's going to be attacked. And so because the French haven't been anticipating an English attack, there aren't that many men. I mean, the garrisons may be, by some estimates, as low as 35, with a few crossbowmen who were there as well. And they haven't really stocked up on provisions.

And to make things worse for the people of Harfleur, the Duke of Clarence, while he was marching around to take up his position on the opposite heights to Henry, had captured a wagon train with provisions and indeed some cannon. So this is bad.

Yeah, but there's an interesting, not paradox, is it? I'm not sure what the word is, an irony or something. Henry has landed in a kingdom that he believes is his own. So Harfleur is the first target. And this is the first test I suppose, because is he going to come as a rampage in king of England, fighting his ancestral enemies, or is he arriving as Le Bon Papa? Yeah. It's a reference from our French Revolution series to Louis XVI. Is he the benevolent French king returning to his own inheritance.

Well, what's a promising sign for the people of Fafleur is that when Henry lands, he does not unfurl his banner. If he'd unfurled his banner, that would be a sign that pile in, crack on, loot and pillage and do everything you want. He doesn't do that. He issues various ordinances of war that there are to be no attacks on churches or priests or on women and no setting fire to crops, no incineration of buildings. To that extent, he is the King of France. He's looking after his subjects. Listeners may be tempted to view this with skepticism. But I think that these ordinances of war, Henry is going to uphold them because you said he's not a particularly intimidating figure to the English. I think he is because he is going to punish infractions. So even before he'd set sail from England, a group of Lancasterian archmen had been coming south to join the expedition, and they had passed through my native town of Sulsbury, where they behaved disgracefully and attacked the locals and killed four of them. And they were very, very severely punished. So that's an example of what will happen if Henry's troops do not obey these ordinances.

I think he's doing this both because he thinks it's his duty, his God-ordained duty, but also because he genuinely has hopes of winning the French round. We mentioned in the previous episode, Henry is admired by people in France, but probably not by the people of our fleur who find themselves surrounded by his cannon and his archers. They are not in a mood to accept the fact that he's actually the King of France, and they should surrender to him. So they defy him. And that, of course, means that, in Henry's opinion, they are now rebels against their anointed king.

In that case, they're fair game.

They are fair game.

So the assault on Harfleur is a bloody brutal battle, isn't it?

It really is, yes. It's the first Norman town to be pulverized by artillery. Of course, it won't be the last. There's a French account which describes Henry's canon as being of monstrous size, spewing out great boulders amid clouds of thick smoke and a noise like the fires of hell. The once more unto the breach speech that Henry gives, this famous that you delivered so beautifully in the previous episode, it's actually pretty accurate because it is all about using the canon to blast holes in the walls. Then English soldiers forcing their way through the breach. But the problem for Henry is that all the rubble and the devastation means that there is raw material for the citizens of Hafleur to use to patch up every breach. Actually, the siege is going on longer than he'd hoped, and it's having to inflict more damage on Hafleur than Henry had hoped. Because, of course, what he wants is to make it into a second calais, an English stronghold. If he's smashing the walls and pulverizing all the buildings, then that's really bad. He's going to have to repair it. It also means that if he captures it and there are great holes in the wall, then the city will be very vulnerable to recapture.

So all of this is bad news. There is also further bad news for Henry, which is, as Anne Currie, the doyen of Ashencourt historians, puts it, that Henry had too large an army for the purpose. What she means by that is that they are forced to camp in quite marshy and therefore pestilential areas. There's this flood plain. It's not a good place to be. And sickness starts to spread through the English camp. And Thomas Walsingham, the monk at St. Albans, he talks about how there are fetted corps of animals who've been drowned in the flooding, who are floating down. And this is not a good sign if you're camped out. There are also reports that the English eat underripe grapes, which is not good for the bowels, and shellfish.

Yeah, you don't want to mess with the shellfish. Yeah.

So people fall very ill. The Duke of Clarence among them, the Earl of Arundel, Henry's great friend, he falls sick.

All this raises the issue that it's all very well to be great at fighting battles and to have loads of archers, but an assault on France requires you have to supply your army and keep it supplied and healthy a long way from your native land. So there is no supply chain, I guess, once you go in land into France. So that's going to be a problem for Henry It's further down the line, isn't it?

It absolutely is. And of course, it's also difficult to replace men who you've lost a disease, which is by now starting to sweep the English camp. And so the people of Halflo managed to hold out for four weeks, which is much longer than Henry had been anticipating. And by mid-September, finally, it's clear that the end is clear. They've run out of food, they've had high casualties from Henry's artillery, and even those who are not being wounded by arrow fire or cannon Bulls are falling sick because disease is sweeping the city as well. On the 15th of September, they send a message to Clarence in his camp asking for a three-week truce, and Clarence says, No, but you can have three days. On the 18th of September, the Garrison agrees that it will surrender in four days time. On the 22nd of September, at one o'clock in the afternoon, if no French relief force has come. Henry accepts this, and no relief comes. At one o'clock on the 22nd of September, all the captains and the leading citizens of Hafleur walk out in somber procession, and they walk to Henry IV, who is in his tent, and he keeps them waiting on their knees for a long time before he will even look at them.

The mayor of the city has the keys of the town, and he hands them over to the king, and the city has now surrendered apart from a tiny group of holdouts who to hold out in the tower for a few more days. The King says he will not, as he feels entitled to, completely annihilate them. But his terms are pretty brutal. The garrison are to be treated as prisoners of war, the old infirm are expelled, and the women and children are given the option of either staying or leaving the town, probably heading for Rouen. Henry isn't being cruel here. He's essentially giving them the chance to get out of a place place that is a hellhole, basically. It's been a scene of war. There's disease and everything. So he gives them money if they want to go.

So this is the end of September. It's gone on much longer than he thought. Autumn is coming and after the winter. He's already some of his men have been lost, presumably killed in the siege or to disease. Hafleur is a definite victory for England. I mean, it's a feather in his cap. It is. So the French at this point, they've suffered this great humiliation, I guess, of Henry landing on their Coast.

I think it is seen as a humiliation across France. Right. Yes.

And what are they going to do about it?

Well, it's not just that it's been lost, but that no attempt was made to relieve it. And so, of course, in situations like this, you always have the blame game. And the guy who is chiefly blamed for it is our friend the Duke of Alonso, who, listeners may remember from the previous episode, he's the bruiser, the boar-like figure who is always a man for charging in. So it might be thought it's surprising that he didn't lead the attack. I think it's just that he didn't have enough resources available to him, and the attack came as a surprise. So he's dismissed as the Commander-in-Chief in Normandy. And he is replaced by the most famous soldier, maybe not just in France, but in the whole of Christendom. And this is Marshaal Bussier, Cusico, who we last met, holding the lists.

A tournament?

Yeah. At St. Angliver, the most famous tournament in late 14th century history, where he had fought with the future Henry IV and with Hotspur. And he's had a tremendous career. So he fought at the great Christian defeat at Nacopolis in 1396 against the Turks, where he'd performed very creditably, had ended up being ransomed. He'd then helped the Roman Emperor, the byzantine Emperor, Emmanuel II, against the Turkish siege of Constantinople. He'd come back to France. He'd founded a chivalric order dedicated to the ideals of courtly love. He's basically a complete legend. He's the absolute model of what a French night would want to be. The French, I think even more than the English, are obsessed by Arthurian romance. Loads of French nights, unlike the English, are named after Arthurian. So you get loads of people who are called Lancelot or Percival or Galahada or whatever. Whereas the English all tend to be called William or Edward or whatever.

Yeah, or worse. Thomas.

I mean, that's a tremendous name. You can't argue with that. So the fact that Bouticot is coming in, this great hero, this paladin of France, this is a sign that the French are taking the invasion seriously. So also is the fact that in the last week of August, a royal proclamation had been issued, claiming a general summons across the whole of France, calling people to throw the English back into the sea. And the Dauphin, despite being a late riser- You said he was too fat. Yeah, he's a bit podgy. He's come to Normandy to serve as the captain general. Basically, he's a figurehead because he's inexperienced, unlike Henry, as when he was a teenager, he hasn't been off fighting. He's been launching around in bed ogling girls. But he's come, so that's credit to him. He's actually in quite poor health as well. So he's not an ideal figure. But it's good for morale to have the Dauphin there, of course. The real commander, the guy who is in charge overall, so who Bussaco answers to and who is the power behind the Dauphine's throne, is another professional soldier like Bussaco. So a guy who has devoted his whole life to the art of warfare.

He is the constable of France, the leading military figure. This is a man called Charles d'Arbray, and he has been fighting the English for a very, very long time. He's old enough to have fought against them under Bertrand Duguesquelen, who was the French military leader who essentially had thrown the English out of France back in the latter days of Edward III. He's basically on the Armagnac side. He'd been dismissed as constable by John the Fearless when John the Fearless was in power. Then when John was chased out of Paris, Charles d'Arbray had been given back his office as a constable. Bussaco and d'Arbray are both very competent soldiers. They don't want to just rush in. They want to concentrate as a larger force of manpower as they can possibly get. They hope to relieve Hafleur by mid-September, but it's in mid-September that Hafleur falls. Now they have a massive force. But if Henry decides Besides to skedaddle back to England, they can then move on Hafleur and hopefully recapture it because the walls are all pockmarked. For Henry, this is a huge problem because all he has to show for all this money, all this manpower, all this effort is a devastated single French port.

Okay. So he's got this port. He's lost his mental disease. Two of the big wigs in his expedition, Clarence and Arundel, they They actually have to go home because they are invalided out.

Yeah, and Aarindel dies a few days after landing in England.

The clock is ticking towards the end of 14:15. He's obviously not going to take Normandy by the end of the year. So he could go home, and he doesn't go home, does he? Because he thinks that would be humiliating. That's not enough of a return. What does he do now? That's the question.

Well, the first thing he does is challenge the Dauphine to a duel, which, unsurprisingly, the dauphan is not very keen. So a description of the dauphan at this time from someone who was in his train, the dauphan was fat in his body, heavy and slow, and not at all agile. So I think if that's your level of training, you wouldn't want to go head to head with Henry.

The Dauphine is not dual body ready.

He is not dual body ready, no. So when the option for having a dual is thrown back in his teeth, Henry decides that what he will do instead, rather than sail back to England, is he will march from Huffler across northern France to the other port that England holds, which is Calais, and he will then sail back to England from Calais.

What's the point of this march?

It has several advantages. The first is it spares him the embarrassment of leaving for England early. By going across France, he's making a public proclamation of the fact that there is nowhere within his kingdom that he cannot visit. He has the right to go where he wishes It means that he can leave his fleet at Hafleur to keep the garrison there supplied with building materials and with more men and with food. So that's important because he cannot afford to lose Hafleur. And of course, it also means on that score that if he's marching across France, then the likelihood is that this vast French force, which is gathering, will go for him rather than for Hafleur.

Well, that's the key thing, isn't it?

So he's a decoy.

He's drawing the French army away from his one captured city, his one prize. And maybe he'll get to Calais and be able to spend the winter in Calais.

Is that what he's thinking? No, he will sail back. When he gets to Calais, he'll sail back and he'll be able to give a good talk. I've captured Hafleur, I've marched through France, they couldn't stop me. It's great. But my hunch is, and we have no way of knowing this, but my hunch is also that Henry suspects that he will get a battle. I think that he alone maybe in the entire expedition, wants this. He wants it, I think, because he thinks he will win this battle for all the reasons that we looked at in the previous episode. But also, I think because as the Christian king that he is, he wants to put it to the test. He wants to reassure himself that God is on his side, that he is entitled to the throne of France.

He knows that God is on his side. God's an instrument.

Well, I think that that is why he's prepared to take this enormous risk, because it is a huge risk. There is this vast army accumulating. He knows that if he's cornered and defeated, disaster will follow. I mean, he'll either be killed or maybe, from England's point of view, even worse, captured, because that would then bleed England dry, or maybe it'll Alternatively, precipitate a coup against the absent Henry, the collapse of the Lancasterian regime. So the stakes are now even higher than they were when he was setting sail from England earlier in the year. And that's why a large majority of his council, when he summons them and says this is his plan, they urge him not to do it. Clarence, his brother, is very, very insistent. He's sick. He's about to leave home. He's obviously not in a good mood. He doesn't feel that the expedition is going well, but he's very, very blunt. He warns Henry to consider the great and infinite multitude of their enemies, which then were assembled to prevent and hinder the king's passage by land, whereof by their spies they had knowledge. So they know what is brewing. But Henry decides, No, I'm going to risk it.

And so on the eighth of October, which I think not coincidentally is the feast day of the Patron Saint of France, Saint-Denis, he leaves Huffler for Calais. There is debate about how many men he has with him, and we'll come to this in due course, but probably about 6,000 men.

And not a massive army by any means.

Of whom about 5,000 are archers. So he's only got a thousand men at arms. To face a French army, that's not many. And off he sets. And effectively, the ball is now in the court of the French.

The ball is in the French court, Tom. That tennis ball analogy again. What is going to happen? Will the French return serve with the vengeance? Find out after the break. Also, Most high and powerful Prince, and my most honored and gracious Lord of the news of these parts, may it please your Lordship to know That by the arrival of divers good friends repairing to this town and marches, as well from France as from Flanders, it is generally reported to me that without doubt, the King our Lord will be fought by his adversaries within 15 days from this time at the latest. And it is said that the Duke of Lorraine, amongst others, has already assembled 50,000 men, and that when they all meet, there will not be less than 100,000 or more. So that was William Bardolph, the Lieutenant Governor of Calais, and he was writing to Henry V's brother, the Duke of Bedford, who, listeners may remember, was left behind to run England. And he is writing to him on the seventh of October, the day before Henry V sets out from Harfleur on this very risky march all the way to Calais. And Tom, obviously, these numbers, basically all numbers before, about 1700, are made up, massively exaggerated.

But what that letter captures is this sense that Henry is taking a hell of a gamble because the Frenchmen undoubtedly have a much bigger force. There are all these reports coming in of French troops assembling. What is he thinking? What's he playing at?

Right. So Henry's objective, as we said in the first half, his aim is to march from Hafleur to Calais. And There's a priest in Henry's train. We've already quoted him, and he provides an eyewitness account of this expedition. And he says in his account that the direct route from Hafleur to Calais is about 100 miles. But Henry knows better. He knows that it's 150 miles. He's expecting that this will take eight days to cover, and this should be doable. Henry is leaving the sick behind. He's not taking them with him. Because there's only about 6,000 men, they can use all their horses. So essentially, they'll be riding rather than walking. And because Henry is not planning to lay siege to any castles or towns, there's no need to bring the cannon. There is, however, of course, a need to bring large quantities of arrows because Henry, as a young man at the Battle of Schroesby, had fought against Hotspur, and Hotspur's archers had run out of arrows, and that had doomed him. So Henry, having brought all these archers, does not want to be in a situation where the firepower runs out.

And are they taking food with them? I mean, this is key, right? They think it'll take eight days. Do they have eight days' worth of food to take with them?

They do. So this is the assumption. It will take eight days, and so they take eight days' worth of food. And again, because traditionally, English armies going through France, they've done what were called a great plundering sweeps through the French countryside. Henry is making his march as someone who thinks he is the King of France, and so he is not prepared to allow that. And so This is why he is taking food with him. He doesn't want his men going out and plundering and raping or whatever.

But if anything goes wrong, he doesn't have more than eight days food, does he?

No, he doesn't. This then focuses the challenge for the French. The French have the problem that it's Henry who's setting out. To begin with, he has the initiative. The French can't know where Henry is going to be going, but they do know that if Henry is to reach Calais, he's going to have to cross the River Somme, which is quite a broad river, quite hard for a large expedition to cross. And an army trying to cross a river is always incredibly vulnerable. And so the French strategy is to essentially block any of the obvious crossing points and force Henry either to advance under attack across the river or to go inland to try and find a forwarding place, which then It means, of course, that it will take him much longer than he'd been planning to, and also he will be going further and further away from Calais. So this is their plan. Their immediate target is a place called Blanchetac, which is a forward. It's just a few miles down from where the Somme meets the channel. It was so named after the white stones that marked it, so Blanche Tak. This is where Edward III had crossed the Somme on his expedition, which then culminated in the Battle of Cressy.

It has resonant role in the history of the wars of the French and the English. It's very useful because people can cross 12 men abreast there. It would be a quick crossing. The French assume that this is where Henry will try and make his crossing. And Dauberay, the constable who'd been in Rouen with the Dauphin, he marches at top speed to this forward with 6,000 men, and they fortify the far bank and block the passage with stakes. And meanwhile, other contingents, they're fanning out down the length of the Somme, and they're demolishing bridges, smashing up causeways, trying to make it very, very difficult for Henry to cross the river.

So that will push him south. If he can't cross, he will have to turn to his right and march up the river Somme, south into the heart of France, try and find a crossing place. And of course, he will run out of food, and they'll be able to surround and kill him.

Exactly. And it is a massive problem for Henry because absolutely Blanchardt, this Ford near the sea is exactly where he is hoping to cross. And he approaches it and they capture a prisoner. And this prisoner says, Your Majesty, the far side is fortified. It's got stakes, it's got d'Aubrey, it's got 6,000 men. You don't want to cross it. Henry isn't 100% certain that he believes this. He continues to interview the prisoner. At the end of the interview, he's been convinced. He thinks, yes, the prisoner is telling the truth. And so he haunts the march. He summons his magnates, and they have a council of war, and they debate for a couple of hours, and then they decide, We can't risk it. We'll be slaughtered if they really are there. We You've got no choice but to start marching upriver.

There's no question at that point of turning back to our floor.

No, it's an interesting one. They don't because I think it would be too greater humiliation.

So now, instead of doing that, they take this mad gamble, really, of saying, We're going to turn It's inland into the heart of France.

Well, I think that's the measure of both Henry's determination not to be humiliated on the stage of France and indeed of Christendom, and also his inner confidence.

This is such Alexander the Great behavior, I think.

As, of course, in Shakespeare's play, the Welsh captain, Fluellen, likewise, compares Henry the Fifth to Alexander.

That's the Welsh blood speaking to you, Tom.

Yeah, absolutely. As you say, This is very, very bad for morale because Henry's men, they know that they haven't got much food. They're now having to march inland away from Calais, and they can't be sure that they're going to find a crossing point. So this is all very, very alarming. What's even more unsettling for them as they start to get a bit peckish is that Henry continues to uphold the ordinances of war. He is still not going to allow them to plunder and to loot and to strip the cottages and the villages of his French subjects of their food. To impose this, he instructs that only certain officers can have dealings with the French. In other words, there's going to be a clear chain of communication that he could control. He's not having people just fanning out. As a marker of his absolute determination to uphold these rules, when one of his soldiers steals a silver fitting from a church, this guy is publicly hanged. In Shakespeare's play, this is a character called Bardolf, who was one of Henry V's drinking companions.

One of full staff's cronies.

When he was Prince Hal. He was full staff servant. In the Kenneth Branagh film, he's played by Richard Bryers, who is the hero of the Good Life, who I think you wrote about, didn't you?

I have written about the Good Life. For me, Richard Bryers' best role was in ever decreasing circles, Tom.

You were not wrong. Anyway, so poor Richard Bryers gets hanged. This is all about upholding discipline. Henry also insists that every English soldier should wear the cross of St. George so that they can be identified. Discipline is very strict. Dominic, I'm proud to say that even the French acknowledge this.

I saw this. This brought tears to my eyes, actually.

It's wonderful. So a French chronicler says, Henry always observed proper and honorable practices. And there's another French chronicler who contrasts the behavior of the English who are notorious in France for the brutality of their chevaux chez. But they say that this time, no, they behave very well. And it's the French who behave badly as they're charging across Normandy to try and block off all these crossing points on the Somme. They did nothing, according to this chronic, to save robbing and pillaging towns, monestries and abbes, and violating women.

Plus à changer, Tom. That basically set the tone for the next 600 years, didn't it?

I think the most ringing endorsement of the behavior of the English on this march is given by Anne Currie, who is I had to say, is not team Henry IV, but even she acknowledges that the overall impression is that the English were better disciplined.

That's coming from a herald.

It's coming from herald, so she'd know. I think all English listeners can feel very proud of that. So hooray for Henry. But of course, none of this helps them cross the Somme, and none of this helps them stay well-fed. As they march along the line of the Somme, they're getting more and more depressed. What adds to their sense of depression is the realization that They're being shadowed on the other side of the river.

So at this point, they can see the French. They have a sense of them.

Well, they either see them or they... Henry has spies who are bringing in news. And these spies report that these French armies are being led by D'Après and by Bussica, who are the two greatest soldiers in France. So they clearly mean business. And so we have a brilliant account of how it felt for them that comes from this chaplain in Henry's train. And he writes, At the time, we thought of nothing else but this, that after the eight days assigned for the march had expired and our provisions had run out, the enemy, craftily hasting on ahead and laying waste the countryside in advance, would impose on us hungry as we should be, a really dire need of food. At the head of the river, if God did not provide otherwise, would with their great and countless host and the engines of war and devices available to them, overwhelm us so very few as we were and made faint by great weariness and weak from lack of food. So not a cheery state of play. And it comes to seem worse and worse the deeper and deeper into France they go. So three days go by, four days, five days since their failure to fought the Somme at Blanchetac.

And then finally, a dawn on the 19th of October. At last, the English get the news that they've been waiting for. There's not one Ford ahead, there are two. It's unclear how they're discovered, but it's likely the Henry gets told about them by a local who wants to the English off his lands. These Fords are going to be perilous across because they have to be approached through a marsh. Obviously, for an army to go through a marsh, that's very vulnerable. The causeways have been smashed up. Buzica had been there earlier, and his men had smashed them up. But it was still possible with difficulty and in a single file. But the opposite bank is not guarded. If the luck of the English holds, if no French forces while they're engaged in this operation to cross the Somme, they will be able to get across.

Why is it not guarded? Because the French think they've smashed the causeways and therefore...

Because the Somme is so long, there are so many potential crossing points. They're scattered. So it's absolutely a moment of excruciating danger. And Henry knows this, but he also knows he has no choice. So what happens is he orders some of his archers in the Vanguard to go first, and they get their bow, they get their quivers, they hold them up over their heads. They don't want their bow strings to get wet, and they cross, and then they take up a position on the far bank to protect those who are going to be following them. The men at arms follow, and then the horses of the Vanguard.

To be clear, of course, most men have not been traveling on horseback. They've been just trudging.

Yeah, Most people have been riding on horseback.

Oh, sorry.

They have been. Yeah, there have been enough horses for them to be doing that. So the horses are important because it expedites their speed. So once the Vanguard is across, you've got the archers, you've got the men at arms. They are then in a position to hold off an attacking force. And while they've been crossing, everybody else has been smashing up local settlements, taking the rubble, using it to build up the causeway so that it can then be crossed. And by one o'clock in the afternoon, so it's taking them the whole morning, the causeway Causseways can be negotiated by three men marching abreast, and the full-scale operation happens. Henry risks dividing up his army. The body of men cross one of the causeways, the luggage train with all the arrows and supplies and everything, crosses the other. They make it across, even though while they're doing it, a squad of French horsemen do ride up and observe them, but they realize that they haven't got enough men to attack Henry's force. It is an amazing feat to pull this off. Incredible. English morale surges correspondingly. The chaplain is so excited about it that he thinks the way to Calais is now open and that the news that the English have made it across in despite of all the French, this will be so demoralizing for the French.

Their morale will plummet. In the words of the chaplain, they will be disinclined to follow after us to do battle. But unfortunately for him and for the rest of the English, the opposite is actually the case. Because once the English have crossed the Somme, this vast French army, they know that it's no longer their business to fan out along the length of the river. They need to concentrate and block the path to Calais and engage the English in battle and hopefully wipe them out.

Because in a way, although the English are across, they've basically walked into. It's not really a trap, but they've walked into the killing ground. The French army is huge. It's there. And the English now are tired.

Yeah, they're hungry.

Yeah, hungry.

They're famished.

They're wet. Exactly.

I mean, it's like a... Imagine a 10-day walking holiday in the Lake district where you're completely lost. Just rains all the time. You haven't got any food.

And then you got to fight at the end.

And then you got to fight the French. Yeah.

So here's the thing. The constable is there. The guy Alonso, the bruiser is there.

Bussicot. The paladin. Yeah, he's there.

What about the dauphin? Because you said the dauphin was, dare I say, Too fat to fight?

The Dau fat, so there's this great Council of War where all these various magnates are in attendance. It's held on the 19th of October, which, of course, is the same day that the English are crossing the Somme. And it's agreed that if the English do manage to get across, then they will give battle, and as many men as possible will be summoned. They shouldn't rush in to fight the English immediately that they cross the river. They should try and get as many people as possible to make the odds absolutely overwhelming, but that they should definitely fight. Now, what will be the role of the Dofa or even more, the king, because ideally, you want someone from the royal family to lead this expedition. It's decided that the king, obviously, is in no state.

He's made a glass. I'm mad to put him in a battle.

You don't want him shattering. The Dauphin, as you say, is a bit podgy, but that's not actually the reason, I think, why he doesn't go. It's because there are very vivid memories of Poitou where the king got captured and that bled France dry. They don't want to risk any prospect of the king or the Dauphin being captured and then having to be ransomed. But there's also a more immediate and vivid reason, which is that the vast proportion of people in this Council of War are from the Armagnac faction, and so they are worried about John the Fearless, because Henry is about to advance into Burgundian territory, and they don't trust the Duke of Burgundy necessarily to be on their side. And so the Dauphin will stay behind, and he will be in command of troops that will essentially serve as a screen between Paris and the forces of the Duke of Burgundy. As he's raising men, the people in this Council of War are wondering, is it to attack the English or is it to attack Paris?

So the Burgundians have raised an army, but they haven't joined with the Aminax, and they're just waiting. Are they waiting to see who wins?

The shadow of the Civil War between the Dukes of Orléans and Burgundy continues to be a massive problem for the French, even with Henry on their doorstep. Because the King and the Dauphins are not going to be present with this army, it's important to have a member of the Royal family. And so the Duke of Orléans goes. He's been preparing for his 21st birthday party. So So he's due to be 21 on the 26th of October. So he's obviously been hanging around, getting ready, hiring the disco and all that thing. And then he gets to someone, No, you got to come. So he comes galloping up. But of course, his arrival means that there's no way the Duke of Burgundy is going to join them. Actually, neither the Duke nor the Duke of Lorraine, who was mentioned by the Lieutenant of Calais, the reading that you gave at the beginning of this half, and it's feared that he'll be coming with vast forces. He doesn't arrive either because he's an ally of the Duke of Burgundy, and nor does the Duke of Burgundy's son, the future Philip the Good, he doesn't arrive either. This will become a cause of great shame to both John the Fearless and to Philip the Good, the fact that they weren't at Ashencourt.

John the Fearless, subsequently, will explain this by saying that he had been forbidden by the King and by the Royal Council to come. I mean, it may be plausible, and it's certainly the place that his two brothers, the Duke of Brabant and the Count of Nauvers, do ride to battle. Lots of his liegemen, his banner men from Piccadilly, which is the region that Enry will be marching through, they do go as well. It's not like there are no one from the Burgundian side present at Ashencourt. But I think that John the Fearless is deliberately sitting it out because obviously, if the Armagnacs get wiped out, if maybe the Duke of William will be killed in battle. This would all be great for him, and he would then be in pole position to capitalize on it. So I think that that's why he's not present. And of course, for a council of war that is dominated by the Armagnacs, I mean, this isn't bad news. They don't want him turning up because they don't want to share the glory of the victory, and they don't want the risk of him. He might be in negotiations with Henry.

And they have enough men, right? How many men do they have by this point?

We will come to this in the next episode when we look at the actual battle, because it is a topic of more debate now than it has been for several centuries.

But they definitely have more than Henry IV.

They definitely have more. And spoiler alert, I think they have substantially more. But it is more of a live debate than it has been for a while, as I say. So we're talking that. But yeah, they have a large force, and so therefore, they are pretty confident of victory. They have more than sufficient numbers to do the job. And so the day after this Council of War, the 20th of October, they send herald to ride to Henry and to formally issue him with a challenge to battle. So this is very Arthurian. This is chivalry and all that thing. And Henry, like the chivalrous night that he is, he receives this herald very gracious cautiously, and he sends a herald of his own back to the French. And the message that this herald delivers, it is not necessary to pick a day nor a place, for every day they could find him in the open fields without any difficulty. In other words, if you want it, come and get it.

You know where I am.

And so from this point on, he orders all his men to wear the coats of arms on their circuits if they're entitled to do this. And this is a signal to the French that they are ready to fight. They are ready for combat. But in the meanwhile, they continue their march towards Calais. The road is now direct. There are no real impediments. They do it expecting the French to attack them at any moment. They are becoming increasingly nervous. The surge of morale that had followed the crossing of the Somme is starting to subside. Then their mood of anxiety is absolutely heightened by a time where they're going along the road and suddenly they see ahead of them that the road has been completely churned up. They can see that a massive force has gone ahead of them. And they realize that this must be the French forces under Dalbray and Bussacot, the two great leaders of the French force who are looking for a suitable place to offer battle. And so that at some point in the next day, maybe the day after that, they're going to find the French army drawn across the road to Calais.

It's going to be impassable. But for three days after that, they continue marching northwards. The conditions are completely grim. There's icy rain, gusting winds. Their food supplies now are really, really low. They're all feeling really, really hungry. And the terrain is They're becoming increasingly hilly. They're having to go up and down, up and down.

And a lot of them are ill, aren't they, at this point? They have colds or dysentery or whatever, don't they?

No, I don't think they're too ill. It's not like Harfleur. I mean, of course, some are. But no, I think they're despondent and wet and miserable and hungry, but they're still just about in a fit state to fight a battle. But their hope is actually, as the days pass and they still don't run into the French, maybe they'll do it. So by the 24th of October, they're only about 40 miles from Calais. I mean, they can almost feel that they're there. And on the 24th of October, early morning, the English are descending into a river valley, and ahead of them is a river called the Ternuas. It's not a massive river, but you don't want to be caught crossing it. So they're coming down towards the river when Henry come galloping up and they say, Your Majesty, alarming news. There are large numbers of French gathering in the road about three miles beyond the river, and it looks like this is what we've been waiting for. They are massing there and they are ready to offer battle. For Henry, this is alarming news because he's got to get across this river. The Ford may be held against him, even if it isn't.

If the French attack him while he's crossing this river, that would be not ideal. So he turns to his He says, Onwards, we got to make full steam ahead. So they hurry down towards the river. Huge relief. They find that the Ford is not held against them. They cross the river at top speed, and then they march up the hill again towards the crest of the next this ridge, and they reach the crest of the hill. And they reach the crest of the hill. At the top of the hill, they gaze at the vista that they see before them. And the sight is a terrifying one. I quote, About half a mile away, the grim-looking ranks of the French. And these ranks are being added to all the time. As they stand there on the ridge, the English can see ever more squadrons of French marching in, riding in, swelling the numbers of the army that is blocking the road to Calais. Henry asks his spies, These two villages ahead of us, I can see that the French are massing there around them. What are the names of these villages? And he is told, Well, one of them is called Richeville, and the other, Your Majesty, the name of this village It is Ashencourt.

Well, if you want to hear what happens next, right away, then you can join the Rest is History Club at therestishistory. Com.

But either way, we will be back with the Battle of Ashencourt.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Now, everybody, I have absolutely thrilling literary news. Our second official book, The Restice: History Returns, is, I believe the only word is landing. It's landing this September. And you can journey in this book with us through an alphabetical miscellane, taking on some of history's most bizarre moments. And along the way, you will find the answers to a whole host of curious questions, including, which is the most outlandish theory about the murder of JFK? What would it have been like to live tweet the eruption of Vesuvius? And of course, which were the very greatest monkeys in history? Now, you can pre-order a signed copy of the Restus historyice History Returns at Waterstones right now.