History of the British Army (Vol.1&2). J. W. Fortescue
on the wings rallied to their aid, while those of the baggage-guard, freed from all further alarm of cavalry, hurried up with loud shouts in support. The Scots wavered, and the English pressing forward with one supreme effort broke through their ranks, split up the battalion, and threw the whole into helpless confusion. And then began a terrible carnage, for the Scots had told Bedford that they would neither give nor receive quarter, and they certainly received none. Five thousand men, mostly Scots, were killed on the French side, John Stewart, Earl of Buchan, the Earl of Douglas and James his son being among the slain, and two hundred more were taken prisoners. Of the English some sixteen hundred only went down.
1428.
To France Verneuil was a disaster little less crushing than Agincourt, and indeed it seemed as though she had passed irrevocably under English dominion. All was however spoiled by Bedford's brother Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, who, having made a match with a rich heiress, Jacqueline of Holland, carried away English troops to take possession of her dower-lands, and, worst of all, gave the deepest offence to Burgundy. At home Humphrey was equally troublesome, so much so that in 1425 Bedford was compelled to return to England to set matters right. It was not until three years later that he took the field again, well reinforced with men and with a powerful train of artillery. So far we have rarely found artillery employed except for sieges, but henceforth we see gunners regularly employed at the high wage of a man-at-arms, one shilling a day, and "hand-cannons" and "little cannons with stone shot of two pounds weight," playing ever a more prominent part in the field.
1429.
Against his better judgment Bedford now resolved to carry the war across the Loire, and detached the Earl of Salisbury with ten thousand men to the siege of Orleans. The operations opened unfortunately with the death of Salisbury, who was mortally wounded by a cannon-shot while examining the enemy's works; but the investment was carried on with spirit by the Earl of Suffolk, and a little action at the opening of 1429 showed that the English superiority still held good. This, the battle of Roveray, better known as the action of the Herrings, has a peculiar interest, though the occasion was simple enough. Lent was approaching; and as, among the many complications of mediæval warfare, the observance of the fast was by no means forgiven to fighting men,[33] it was necessary to send provisions of "Lenten stuff," principally herrings, to the besieging force round Orleans. The convoy being large was provided with an escort of sixteen hundred men under command of Sir John Falstolfe. The French and Scots decided to attack it on the march, but unfortunately could not agree as to their plan; the Scots insisting that it was best to dismount, the French preferring to remain in the saddle. Meanwhile Falstolfe with great dexterity drew his waggons into a leaguer, leaving but two narrow entrances defended by archers. It was the trap of Poitiers once more. The French and Scots after long discussion agreed to differ, and attacked each in their own fashion. The English archers shot with admirable precision; the Scots lost very heavily, the French after a short experience of the arrows rode out of range, and Falstolfe led his herrings triumphantly into Orleans, having killed close on six hundred of the enemy with trifling loss to himself. This was the last signal employment of the tactics of Poitiers, the last brilliant success of the English in the Hundred Years' War, the first glimpse of a lesson learnt by England from the military genius of a foreign power. For the tactics of the waggon were those of John Zizka, the greatest soldier of Europe in the fifteenth century.
From this point the story is one of almost unbroken failure for the English in France. They were now about to pass through the experience which later befell the Spaniards in the Low Countries, and the French themselves in the Peninsula. The turning-point is of course the appearance in the field of Joan of Arc, a phenomenon so extraordinary that it has become the exclusive property of the votaries of poetry and sentiment, and is, perhaps rightly, not to be rescued from their hands. It is certain that her military talents were of the slightest; but, on the other hand, she possessed the magic of leadership and the amazing power of restoring the moral strength of her countrymen, which had been impaired as never before by an endless succession of defeats. The English not unnaturally attributed this power to witchcraft: for by what other agency could a peasant girl have checked the ever-victorious army? and the punishment of witchcraft being the fire they burnt her to death. Any other nation would have done the same in their place then, and there are still a few folks both in France and the United Kingdom who would do so now. But the fire in the market-place of Rouen availed the English little. "The French," as Monstrelet says, believed that "God was against the English"; and the English began to believe it themselves.
1430.
For the woman's quick instinct and the pure insight of a saintly soul had guided the maid aright. The moral quality of the English force was corrupted, and needed only to meet some loftier spirit to fall into decay. The chivalrous character of the war was gone. Hostile commanders no longer laid each other friendly wagers on the success of their next operations. The army too was ceasing to be national; the English element was growing smaller and smaller in number, and fast sinking to the level of the lawless adventurers who furnished the majority in the ranks. Long contempt of the enemy had bred insolence and carelessness, and the old discipline was almost gone. The sight of a deer or a hare sufficed to set a whole division hallooing, sometimes, as at Patay, with disastrous results. On that day the French scouts, who were feeling for the enemy, roused a stag, which ran towards the English array, and was greeted with such a storm of yells as told the French all that they wanted to know. The English force blundered on, without advanced parties of any kind, till it suddenly found itself on the verge of an engagement. Then the leaders wrangled as to the question of fighting in enclosed or open country, and, having finally in overweening confidence selected the open, were surprised and routed before the archers could plant their stakes in the ground. Worst of all, an officer in high command, Sir John Falstolfe, seeing that defeat was certain, disobeyed the order to dismount and galloped away. He was disgraced by Bedford, but was afterwards for some reason reinstated, though had Harry been king he would assuredly have lost his head.[34]
Sandacourt,
1431.
Among the French the revival of the military spirit soon showed itself in a remarkable development of new ideas. They had long copied, though with a bad grace, the English practice of dismounting men-at-arms and furnishing archers with a palisade of stakes, but in 1434 at Gerberoy they used the three arms, cavalry, infantry, and artillery, in combination, with signal success. Artillery was still so far a novelty in the field that only three years before a whole army collected by the Duke of Bar had flung itself howling to the ground at the first discharge; but the English archers, though they knew better than to behave thus, were sadly dismayed when the round stone shot came bounding within their trusted palisade. It was just after this, too, that two fatal blows were struck at the English by the shifting of Burgundy to the French side, and by the death of their ablest leader, John, Duke of Bedford.
Still the war, wantonly and foolishly continued by an inefficient Government, dragged on and on, and, though not unbroken by occasional brilliant exploits, turned steadily against the English. The behaviour of the soldiers was sullied more and more by shameful barbarity; and gradually but surely their hold on Normandy and Guienne slipped from them. Truce was made at last in 1444, and Charles the Seventh seized the opportunity to execute a series of long-meditated reforms in the French army. He established a national militia of fifteen companies of men-at-arms and archers, each six hundred strong, organised garrisons of trained men for the towns, took the greatest pains for the equipment, discipline, and regular payment of the troops, and formed the finest park of artillery thitherto seen. In a word, he laid the foundation of the French standing army, with the Scottish archers and Scottish men-at-arms at its head, two famous corps that remained in their old place on the army-list until the French Revolution. Thus French military organisation, spurred by a century of misfortune, made one gigantic bound ahead of English, and may be said to have kept the lead ever since.
1440.
1449.
1450,
April 18.
In England there had been no such improvement. A feeble effort had been made to check by statute fraudulent enlistment and the still graver abuse of embezzlement of the soldiers' pay by the captains, but this was of little help when the enforcement of the Act[35] was entrusted to so corrupt and avaricious