Chapter 1: The Beginnings - Foreign Troops in France to 1418
"Depuis XXXIII anz enca et des devant a eu plusieurs divisions civiles en ce royaume, soubz umbre et par le moyen desquelles les seigneurs ont leve et mis sus plusieurs gens de guerre avecques lesquels se sont mis gees de peuple et y sont venus a cause de ce plusieurs estrangiers, tant Escossoys, Espagnos, Lombars Arragonois et gens de toutes nacions estrenges" (1). Jean Juvenal des Ursins, lamenting the state of the nation at the Estates of Orle.ins in 1439 was in no doubt as to the date and cause of the beginnings of the employment on a large scale of foreign troops in France. Civil strife was to blame in his eyes and that had begun on a serious scale around 1406.
As so often in the thunderous pronouncements of Jean Juvenal and other sermonisers and moralists of his ilk, this admirably straightforward explanation, while it has much to commend it, is nevertheless rather misleading as far as foreign soldiers are concerned. Such figures were no strangers in France well before the suggested date. The kings of France had for many years filled the gaps in their traditional armies with specialists hired beyond the boundaries of the kingdom. The unfortunate Genoese crossbow–men slaughtered on the slopes of Crecy in 1346 are merely the most conspicuous representatives of their type, and this failure did nothing to discourage the early Valois from using their services (2). Cazelles (3) records the careers of several foreigners in the service of Philip VI, and the reorganised armies of Charles V under du Guesclin and Clisson showed an overwhelming majority of foreign–ers (Genoese, Spaniards and others) amongst their infantry forces (4). Even the mounted (and thus more noble) men at arms could boast their foreigners, most notably the Welsh exiles Owen de Galles (Owain Lawgoch, last descendant of the Princes of Gwynedd) and Jean Wyn and their Welsh followings as well as isolated foreigners in other companies (5). This essentially traditional mixture of specialist companies and smallish groups of political exiles and more or less chivalrically-inspired foreigners entering the French service for longer or shorter periods continued into the early years of the fifteenth century (6).
The disorders which began in this period, however, certainly stimulated recruitment as well as producing conditions in parts of France reminiscent on a smaller scale of the days of the great companies of the 1370's. Most of the princes involved in the fighting were to recruit troops from abroad. John the Fearless bolstered his armies with strangers to his Burgundian dominions particularly freely; Highland Scots in 1411 (7), Savoyards, Lombards (a band headed by a Lombard and three Savoyards was very active on his behalf in 1416-7), (8) and Spaniards (the later-notorious "Ecorcheur" Rodrigo de Villandrando was to begin his French career in the company of the Burgundian Villiers de 1'Isle Adam) (9). He was not alone. A Lombard Knight was prominent amongst the Armagnac forces deployed against John in 1411 (10), while the town authorit–ies of St. Jean d'Angely held a German called "Anequin de Constances", the servant of a Lombard man at arms in the company of the Bastard of Bourbon in prison accused of the theft of four cattle from one Guillamme Raoul de Poursay. He, however, failed to appear in court, so Anequin was duly freed on 30th November 1413, chivalrously pardoning the injuries he had suffered out of concern for the honour of his captain (11).
At this point, however, much the most numerous of these foreigners were the English; as yet neutral in the wars and able to intervene easily from Calais. Again, the Burgundians were the biggest hirers. Duke John began his hirings in 1411 (12) and English forces helped to take him to victory in 1412; many quittances issued to English soldiers at the end of this year when they were freed to go home survive (13). There were, however, Englishmen in the Armagnac armies as well; a circumstance not without its dangers for their paymasters; according to Lefevre de St. Remy, Soissons was betrayed to the Armagnacs by an English soldier in 1414 (14). On a much grander scale was the attempt to involve a large English army under the Duke of Clarence in the summer of 1412; an expedition which in some ways foreshadowed the Agincourt campaign and ended with the Duke being bought off by his nominal hirers (15). Large-scale foreign intervention in French affairs was in the air at this time; John the Fearless was to make a formal treaty with the Earl of Douglas when the latter was in considerable embarrassment in Flanders and in danger of a spell in prison for unpaid debts. Douglas agreed to come to help John when required with no less than 4,000 men (16).
In the case of the English, one can indeed speculate as to what might have happened had Henry V not chosen to fish in the troubled waters of French politics on his own account. It is possible to imagine a situation in which England could have acted as a major supplier of mercenary forces to one side or the other (whether on an official basis or not) without attempting any formal conquest of France - a role similar to that fulfilled by Scotland vis-a-vis the French after 1420. No doubt, though, she would have driven much harder bargains about advantages to be conceded by the French faction thus aided in return. Instead of this potentially advantageous semi-neutrality, however, Henry V was to decide in favour of asserting his highly dubious claims to the throne of France, a decision which was to lead to a marked quickening in the pace of foreign involvement on the French side as well. The shattering defeat of Agincourt on 25th October 1415, with its consequent effects on the military capacity of the French aristocracy combined with the continuing civil war against the Duke of Burgundy stimulated the need for allies and military aid. Indeed, even during the campaign leading up to the battle, foreign troops can be found; one Jehan de Seville with a company of mounted crossbow–men under the Comte de Vendome appears in the Caux area in September 1415 (17). The aftermath of defeat encouraged efforts to increase this involvement; according to a rather later royal ordinance, it was at about this time that Scotland was first looked to as a possible source of aid (18). More immediately, an embassy consisting of Hugues Comberel, councillor of the Chambre des Aides and Antoine Grielle, clerk of the Chambre des Comptes went to Genoa in the winter of 1415-6 to recruit crossbowmen (19). This was a rather delicate operation, since Genoa was technically in revolt against France, but a generous distribution of money succeeded in raising 660 crossbowmen under six captains, including such famous Genoese names as Jacques Doria and Franco Spinola. They were to reach Aigues Mortes for official mustering on 7th May 1416 and march northwards from Genoa and Castile to retake Harfleur and entered Paris two by two in good array according to Jean Juvenal des Ursins, who noted with surprise that there were only three or four horses in the whole troop (20). He put their numbers at a thousand and had them commanded by nine captains the chief of whom was one Baptiste Grimaldi. It is at least possible that other men could have been recruited by the ambassadors, and Baptiste Grimaldi indeed appears ht the head of 157 crossbowmen with eight subordinate and unnamed captains in the garrison of Lisieux in August of the following year (21); equally well, Jean Juvenal could have confused the year. The monk of St. Denis manages to boost their numbers to 5,000 with the addition of Spanish auxiliaries (22). These certainly existed and were not restricted to the traditional Crossbowmen. Recruitment was eased by the 1406 treaty with Castile which allowed Castilian subjects to serve in the French forces without penalty (23) but the exact scope of such recruitment is very hard to judge in the absence of any detailed recruitment accounts. Some can be identified from musters which have survived; the forces of the Constable reviewed in Paris in January 1416 included such figures as Diego de Madrigal with twelve esquires, and the probably Catalan company of Jaimet de Peyrussa (24) while other Spanish groups are to be found in the ranks of Arnault de Barbazan's men (Jehan de Salcedo and Sanzo de Laredo (25)) or operating apparently independently (Alphonso de Caumont (26)).
The majority of these men probably served either on board the combined Franco-Castilian fleet attempting the blockade at Harfleur or in the land army co-operating with it during the unsuccessful siege (27). Others were put into Norman garrisons during this campaign, such as Pierre de Bilbao and his twelve esquires at Montivilliers in the Caux in June 1416 (28).
Again, the winter saw recruitment abroad (it is perhaps to this general period that the assertion of Hughues d'Arpajon, appearing before the Parlement and giving a review of his career in June 1423, that he had been sent to Lombardy by the Constable to assemble men to the number of 3,500 and bring them to France, should be dated (29)) and the spring and summer of 1417 was full of the move–ments of men from the south towards the seat of the war. In July of that year, the consuls of Montferrand had to cope with the on–set of some 1500 crossbowmen under Louis de Giustella (perhaps Guastella, near Parma) marching from Genoa to serve the king. His men were so spread out along the road that the column took from the 22nd to the 24th to assemble fully in the town. When they were all present, the captain went before the consuls to demand aid from them as a royal town against the garrison of "Nonette" which had captured some of his men. He wished the help of the town in effecting an armed rescue. The consuls, highly embarrassed by the whole affair, begged him to move on because of the dangers his men were bringing to the town, and in the end were forced to bribe him to go, captives apparently unredeemed (30). It may have been the same troop which passed through Orleans in August (though the captain there is called the Seigneur de Castelle) whose commander had to be given presents of food and tuns of wine to keep his men from pillaging (31), Such troops were widely distributed round France; Genoese soldiers entered the garrison of Peronne in the north about this time (32) and Jean Juvenal records another group on guard at St. Jacques gate in Paris against the Burgundians (33). whilst a Spanish group can be found serving under the Seneschal of Poitou in November 1417 (34). Slightly later, the guard of Lyon against Burgundian attack was entrusted to such people as Mathieu de Palme (Palma ?) and Bartelemy de Savoye with other constables of troops of crossbowmen of equally foreign origins (35). Significantly, in the light of what was to follow, the Scots begin to make an appearance on French battlefields at this time; the Parlement of Paris found itself sitting on the case of a Scot contesting the Prevot's jurisdiction over a prisoner he had taken in Paris itself; he claimed that whatever the regulations concerning prisoners taken in walled towns might be for the French, he, as an ally, was only bound by the normal rules of war (36). This fore–shadows the kind of relationship which later Scottish soldiers were to have with their allies and nominal superiors; it also displays very early the kind of attitude with which many Scots were to participate in the war in France.
The absence of complete royal
accounts for this period makes any guesses about the fate of such soldiers very
hazardous; even identification is an uncertain business and most of the
information comes in a very fragmented form split up amongst collections made
for genealogical purposes or otherwise preserved by chance from the destructive
impulses of the Revolution. Their generally humble origins confuse the situation
still further; such men rarely figure in chronicle accounts and when they do,
only appear as a kind of anonymous mass. One can hypothesize a little about the
destiny of the Genoese, but they remain largely elusive. Many, no doubt, were
taken by the English in Normandy during the course of the English advance during
1417-18 and were sent back to Genoa (37) by Henry V; when Rouen eventually
fell in 1419 one Luca the Italian was expressly excluded from a general measure
allowing foreign troops to depart (38). The Genoese in Paris were much less fortun–ate; when the
city fell to the Burgundians on 29th May 1418 they were slaughtered in the
streets as the upholders of a government well-hated by many Parisians. Jean
Juvenal records his sorrow for these essentially innocent victims "Mais ce
fut grand pitie des pauvres Genovois qui n'estoient que soudoyers"(39).
This was by no means the end of such companies, as we shall see in the next
chapter, but their relative importance was never to be the same again and they
slowly disappear from the records (if not perhaps from real life; who can tell
how many groups of Genoese crossbow–men or their Spanish equivalents served
peacefully is garrisons well away from the main theatres of war?). Isolated ones
can be found surprisingly late; as late as 1445 a Genoese called Jehan du Chaste
au who had come to France some thirty years earlier to serve in the wars
appealed to the king for letters of remission concerning a murder committed
after his release from an English prison in which he had spent some time. He,
however, had settled in France, judging by the fact that he stated in his appeal
that he had a wife and three children (40). It would perhaps be too much of a coincidence to identify
him with another Genoese called Jehan du Chastel who was favoured with the aid
of St. Katherine de Fierboys in a trial by battle in 1428 (41).
On the whole though times were changing as far as the employment of foreign
troops went. The defeat of Agincourt, which put such a large quantity of the
French aristocracy out of the military reckoning, the continuation and
intensification of the parallel wars against the English in Normandy and the
Burgundians in the north and round Paris, which progressively reduced the areas
loyal to the king (and, when mad King Charles fell into Burgundian hands, loyal
to the Dauphin Charles, as Regent of the kingdom) and the considerable confusion
as to who had the right to represent the crown in France, with the consequent
confusion and uncertainty as to loyalties - all of these were to lead to a much
increased military role for foreign troops. The three parallel musters on 24th
June 1418 in Bourges of the Spanish companies of Guille Hersart, Jaime de
Perussa and Antoine de Pronnente (42)
suggest that some kind of Spanish company of men at arms may have been being
organised, while the Italian Luquin Ris went into garrison in Melun in July 1418
with no less than 46 men at arms as against 29 crossbowmen (43).
The real shift probably came in this summer, when the Dauphin was trying to
establish his administration in Bourges and organising his armed forces on the
basis of the much-truncated kingdom still left to him. From this moment on,
foreign troops were considerably more than the essentially auxiliary forces they
had been in the past; they were to become, for the next decade and more, a
major, and at times, preponderant element in the French royal armies. It is this
development to which I shall now turn in the next chapter.
Notes
(1) BN Fonds Francais (hereafter FF) 2701 f8ro
(2) Contamine has suggested that the majority of them were not in fact professional soldiers at all, but rather oarsmen and other sailors for the royal galleys pressed into service (P. Contamine La Vie Quotidienne Pendant la Guerre de Cent Ans Paris, 1976 p. 248-9.
(3) R. Cazelles, La Societe Politique et la Crise de la Royautesous Philippe de Valois Paris 1958 p. 275-7.
(4) P. Contamine Guerre, Etat et Societe a la Fin du Moyen Age; Etudes sur les Armees des Rois de France 1337-1494 Paris and The Hague 1972 (hereafter GES) p.155.
(5) id p. 154. For individual careers, see id p.576-7, 592-3 and A.D. Carr 'Welshmen and the Hundred Years War' The Welsh History Review Vol. IV No. 1 p.31-5.
(6) 4-5000 Genoese crossbowmen served at the siege of Calais in 1406 (Enguerrand de Monstrelet Chronique ed. L Douet d'Arcq Paris 1858 Vol. 1 p. 135), and other foreign nobles like the Earl of Crawford served with the French at around this time (J. Balfour Paul The Scots Peerage Edinburgh 1904-14 Vol. III p.16.)
(7) R. Vaughan John the Fearless London 1966 pp. 87, 260.
(8) Monstrelet Vol. III pp. 150, 153, 180.
(9) J. Quicherat Rodrigo de Villandrando Paris 1879 p. 8-11.
(10) Monstrelet Vol. II p. 228.
(11) Archives Communales de St. Jean d'Angely, printed in Archives Historiques de la Saintonae et de l'Aunis Vol. XXXII Paris Saintes 1902 p. 94.
(12) Monstrelet Vol. II p. 172.
(13) eg. BN Clairambault 49 no. 147 (Thomas Fox), 85 no. 136-7 (Nicolle Peythole) and 100 no. 30 (Alixandre Sadrahan - though in this case there seems to be some doubt as to whether he was English or Scottish)
(14) Jean le Fevre de St. Remy Chronique ed. F. Morand Paris 1876-81 Vol. I p. 164; also Monstrelet Vol. III p.7.
(15) Vaughan p. 97.
(16) id p. 260.
(17) Clairambault 103 no. 99, 100.
(18) Ordonnances des Rois de France de la Troisieme Race Vol. X p.362.
(19) The accounts of the embassy are to be found in Fonds Latin (hereafter FL) 5414A f59ro-61vo.
(20) Jean Juvenal des Ursins Histoire de Charles VI ed. Michaud et Poujoulet Paris 1836 p. 531-2.
(21) Clairambault 165 no. 67.
(22) Le Religeux de St. Denis Chronique ed. L. Bellaouet Paris 1852 Vol VI p. 11-13.
(23) G. Daumet Etude sur l'Alliance de la France et de la Castille au 14e et 15e Siecles Paris 1898 p.70.
(24) Clairambault 68 no. 33, 85, no.78.
(25) Clairambault 65 no.22, 100 no.131.
(26) Clairambault no. 146 no. 76-81.
(27) For an account of these operations, Rel. de St. Denis Vol. VI p. 36-41, 66-7, 98-9.
(28) Clairambault 14 no. 182.
(29) Archives Mationales (hereafter AN) X2a f2vo-3ro.
(30) A Thomas 'Soldats Italiens au Service de la France ca 1417' Annales du Midi Vol. IV 1892 p. 69-70.
(31) Archives Departmentales (hereafter AD) Loiret, Town Accounts of Orleans, CC 546 f13vo.
(32) Monstrelet Vol.III p. 183.
(33) Juvenal des Ursins p. 536.
(34) FF 25766 no. 740-1 bis.
(35) FF 7858 f332ro-3vo.
(36) AN X1a 4791 f21Oro, quoted in M Keen The Laws of War in the Late Middle Ages London 1965 p. 18.
(37) Rymer Foedera First Edition London 1709 etc, Vol. IX p. 659.
(38) id p. 667.
(39) Juvenal des Ursins p. 541.
(40) AN JJ 177 no. 175.
(41) Le Livre des Miracles de Sainte Katherine de Fierbovs, 1375-1470 ed. Y Chauvin, Archives Historigues du Poitou Vol. LX 1976 p. 55-7 no. 104.
(42) Clairambault 59 no. 163, 85 no. 76.
(43) Clairambault 95 no. 105.