Review: Agincourt by Bernard Cornwell

Peering from his hiding place in a corpse-strewn alley of 15th century Soissons, young Nicholas Hook watched in horror as his fellow English archers, surrendered by a treacherous nobleman for a pouch of coins then disarmed, are set upon by their French captors. First, their bow fingers are sliced off, something Hook had heard stories about in the short time he had spent with his company. But then they were grabbed by the hair, their heads wrenched back, and their eyes gouged from their sockets. Still the Frenchmen’s bloodlust was not sated. Drawing their daggers, the French men-at-arms castrated the screaming, blinded men and left them to bleed to death, writhing on the cobblestones of the square in front of the little church where they had sought refuge.

This scene (I have condensed it) reflects the sheer brutality of warfare during the Hundred Years War. I have read many books in which conquering armies sack cities but I have never experienced the savagery as explicitly as I did reading Cornwell’s description of the fall of Soissons in 1415.

There, men not only hacked each other to pieces with poleax, mace, and sword, but the victors used their own bodies to violate and rend dazed women and hollow-eyed children. Even priests and nuns were raped or disemboweled. The shockwaves of this massacre of mostly French citizens by French soldiers rocked all of Christendom. In fact, this transgression was pointed to as the reason the French were so resoundingly defeated at Agincourt a year later, October 25, 1415, on the feast day of St. Crispin and St. Crispian, the patron saints of the town of Soissons.

Nicholas Hook escapes the carnage, along with a young novice, Melisande, the bastard daughter of a wealthy French nobleman. The couple flee to Calais where Nicholas relates all he has seen to the English commander there. As one of the few survivors of the butchery at Soissons, Nicholas is then summoned to London to repeat his story to King Henry V. Afterwards, the king assigns him to the company of Sir John Cornewaille (sometimes spelled Cornwall).

Sir John Cornewaille was born in 1364 to a noble family. His father, also Sir John Cornewaille, had been in service to the Duke of Brittany. His mother was, purportedly, the niece of the Duke. Sir John (the younger) served Richard II in Scotland. Then, he fought for the Duke of Lancaster in Brittany and, later, King Henry IV. Sir John was made a Knight of The Garter in 1410 for his numerous acts of courage on the battlefield. King Henry IV even gave him Elizabeth Plantagenet, the Duchess of Exeter, daughter of the third surviving son of King Edward III , in marriage.

But, although he was a celebrated tournament champion as well as decorated soldier, Sir John was not the romanticized warrior that people often think of when the subject of knights and chivalry arise. His training speech, as related by Cornwell, would make a U.S. Marine drill sergeant proud:

“ …you rip their bellies open, shove blades in their eyes, slice their throats, cut off their bollocks, drive swords up their arses, tear out their gullets, gouge their livers, skewer their kidneys, I don’t care how you do it, so long as you kill them!”

Now English archers were lethal and Nicholas Hook was an exceptional archer. Hook could punch a fletched shaft through the throat of a crossbowman at a distance considered out-of-range by the average archer. But Sir John taught him to kill with poleax and dagger as well. As it turned out he would need all of these skills to survive the killing fields of Agincourt.

But first, Hook had to endure the withering siege of Harfleur, a small port on the coast of Normandy. There, Henry V’s army not only faced a defiant French garrison supported by determined townsfolk, but, as the siege dragged on and on, devastating disease and dysentery.

Again Cornwell’s gritty narrative engulfs you in the grinding depravations of the victims of the besieged town as well as the squalid existence of the archers and men-at-arms clamoring outside the crumbling walls.

Cornwell also introduces us to a quintessential villain, not a menacing Frenchman, but a stringy-haired English priest who uses his office to force himself on women and now casts a lecherous eye on Melisande. Each time this priest appeared, I would picture the balding priest with bulging, lascivious eyes who is groping a cackling, bulbous-breasted prostitute in the History Channel series, “The History of Sex”. This character was so well drawn, like all of Cornwell’s characters, that he actually made my skin crawl.

Of course the climax of the novel is the battle of Agincourt. The battle itself lasted for about three hours and Cornwell’s account of the slaughter that occurred in those three hours left me as emotionally drained as those unarmored archers who, after exhausting their supply of bodkins, struggled in the knee deep mud of that sodden wheat field to fight off French knights wielding shortened lances and spiked maces.

I had always heard that the English won the battle of Agincourt because of their archers with their famous long bows. But, actually, the archers depleted their arrow supply on the first French battle charge. The second wave was repulsed in hand to hand fighting along the entire English line, with archers discarding their bows and resorting to secondary weapons like poleaxes and mallets.

I must confess, now, although I have seen probably all of the Sharpe’s Rifles television series and have over a dozen of Bernard Cornwell’s books in my “to be read” stack, Agincourt: A Novel
is the first book by Cornwell that I have actually read. I have read hundreds of other novels featuring accounts of many of the ancient world’s most famous battles - some, like Cannae, with much higher death tolls than Agincourt. But I have never read a fictionalized account of battle more immersive than the struggle described by Cornwell in this novel.

For interesting videos about the story behind the book, check out my earlier post.

The Autobiography of Henry VIII by Margaret George

I just finished reading Margaret George's "Autobiography of Henry VIII" and I found it gave me a lot of insight into the King's character. I have much more sympathy for him now than I did when all I had ever heard about him was that he had six wives and executed two of them.

As the second son of Henry VII, Henry was never groomed to be king. His older brother Arthur was the heir apparent so Henry grew up relatively ignored by his parents and other members of his father's court. Since he was not to be king, he was actually educated to be a churchman. Therefore his knowledge of scripture was quite extensive and he was a formidable scholar with a passion for astronomy, music, and poetry. I didn't realize until I read George's book that Henry VIII wrote the song I memorized as a young piano student - Greensleeves.

When the sickly Arthur died just months after his marriage to Katherine of Aragon, Henry was suddenly thrust into the role of heir although he realized he would never supplant his brother in his parents' affections. He tried diligently to learn the art of Kingship from his now ailing father and ascended the throne at the relatively tender age of seventeen. Soon after, he married his brother's widow, Katherine of Aragon.

According to George, the couple loved each other and it was not until they had endured the birth of seven dead offspring, the last being a malformed "monster" along with the unwillingness of the French monarch to betroth one of his offspring to Henry's only surviving child, Mary, did Henry begin proceedings to end the marriage. The French were the first to claim that Mary was cursed as a daughter born of an incestuous marriage, citing Leviticus' warning about a man marrying a brother's widow. As a learned churchman, Henry, faced with the mounting evidence of what he perceived as God's disfavor, sought the means to rectify what he probably truly perceived as a mistake on his part.

Of course, this action was complicated by the fact that Katherine, already quite a bit older than Henry, bore the physical deterioration of someone who has endured eight pregnancies in relatively short order. She suffered from arthritic hips and could not share in her young vibrant husband's passion for riding and dancing. As was common during the period, Henry had taken mistresses to expend his physical appetites. However, when Anne Boleyn caught his eye, he soon found himself in a relationship where she ( or actually, her father, the ambitious Earl Thomas Boleyn) dictated the terms rather than the King.

The Boleyns capitalized on the King's "Great Matter" and, through the relationship with Anne, pressured the King to do whatever it would take to make it possible to make her Queen. That would eventually include separating the church in England from the control of the Pope in Rome. This was ironic since, at one point, Henry had been named defender of the faith when he wrote a rebuttal to the charges against the Catholic church posed by Martin Luther. Even after Henry became head of the church in England, he viewed himself as Catholic and a member of the true faith, not an adherent to Protestantism. Despite this, however, his appointed ministers, Thomas Cromwell chief among them, moved to dissolve the remaining monasteries in England and eliminate any allegiance to the Pope.

"Cromwell was the most prominent of those who suggested to Henry VIII that the king make himself head of the English Church, and saw the Act of Supremacy of 1534 through Parliament. In 1535 Henry appointed Cromwell as his last Vicegerent in Spirituals. This gave him the power as supreme judge in ecclesiastical cases and the office provided a single unifying institution over the two provinces of the English Church (Canterbury and York). As Henry's vicar-general, he presided over the Dissolution of the Monasteries, which began with his visitation of the monasteries and abbeys, announced in 1535 and begun in the winter of 1536. As a reward, he was created Earl of Essex on 18 April, 1540. He is also the architect of the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542, which united England and Wales .Although the Dissolution of the Monasteries often has been portrayed as a cynical money-grabbing initiative, Cromwell and his supporters had genuine theological reservations about the idea of monastic life, specifically on the nature of intercessory prayers for the dead." - Wikipedia

George points out numerous indescretions by Anne Boleyn who loved to be doted upon by swarms of courtiers. Although the question of her incestuous relationship with her own brother George may have been a case of overzealous prosecutors, you are left with little doubt that she deserved her fate. There is even a suggestion that she was engaged in a poison plot against Katherine of Aragon. Apparently when Katherine died, an autopsy revealed nothing pointing to a cause of death except a black growth or section on her heart. The physicians told Henry it was evidence of poison although it could have been simply heart muscle damaged by a clot. Anyway, the end result, his ordering Anne's execution, was hardly capricious or due simply to the fact that the only son she bore him was stillborn.

His marriage to Jane Seymour was apparently a love match. Although she too had ambitious family members, her affection for Henry and his for her appeared to be genuine. He mourned her loss for the rest of his life.

Another interesting point George makes in her book is that Henry, although physically repulsed by Anne of Cleves, calling her the "Flemish Mare", actually learned to love her wit and intelligence. The scene of their wedding night is portrayed as both comical and tragic. Henry attempts to caress her but finds her body sagging and less than maiden-like. When he leaps up partially exposing himself, Anne points and roars with laughter at his apparent impotence.

Although Anne feared for her life, knowing the fate of Henry's other Ann, Henry, because of his affection for her, adopted her as his sister when their marriage was annulled because Henry was incapable of consumating it. This allowed her to retain court status and a comfortable stipend. It even gave her a certain degree of independence she would have never had if she had returned to the duchy of Cleves. She subsequently enjoyed visits to court as an honored guest and even participated in family gatherings during the holiday season.

Henry's next marriage to Catherine Howard was again, one engineered by ambitious relatives, with Henry blinded by his lifelong need to feel loved by someone. Catherine herself was far from innocent and apparently had a long history of licentious behavior. Her involvment in a plot to eliminate the aging king was certainly justification for her execution. I got the impression that although Henry realized that she had to be eliminated, he hesitated to order it, not unlike the Roman Emperor Claudius when faced with the treachery of his beloved Messalina. It was this execution that seemed to haunt him for the rest of his life. George portrays Henry tormented by visions of a headless Catherine running through the hallways of his palace and sitting at his dinner table.

His last Queen Catherine was portrayed as a kind and sensitive woman. I was saddened to read that as Henry's health deteriorated with symptoms that sound very much like kidney failure (severe bloating, headaches, etc.) he would have episodes of insanity where he would order the imprisonment of those closest to him. Catherine suffered one such imprisonment. However, when Henry's symptoms eased he would regain control of himself and release the unfortunate targets of his previous paranoid episodes.

Henry actually had a son by Katherine of Aragon that appeared healthy but died after just a few weeks of life. I sometimes wonder how much different history would have been if the boy had lived and the "Great Matter" had never arisen to split the faithful in England away from the Catholic Church and thereby reinforce the Protestant Reformation.

Children of the Morning by Jennifer MacAire

I treated myself to a copy of Children in the Morning for a Christmas present and was not disappointed. Like Jennifer's two previous novels in the series, I found the characters believable and their relationships well developed. Alexander is a passionate hero with human failings just as I had always envisioned him and I enjoy the depiction of this unusual "family" group that has grown up around him during his efforts to explore the edges of the known world. Although battles are described, the emphasis is on the developing human relationships that I find as important to history (even alternate history) as events.

In this installment, Alexander and Ashley are in India and they experience the culture's exotic combination of beauty, courage, and treachery as they struggle through the monsoons, confront the formidable war elephants of Porus, and outwit brutal Brahmin rebels. Ashley must also face the reality of Alexander's looming death and consider the possibilities and consequences of cheating fate.