The Last Knight Errant: Sir Edward Woodville & the Age of Chivalry (30 page)

They waited, drawn up in their lines along the ridge. The French marched out of their fortress and along the road. Trémoille reckoned the Bretons were well north of Mézières, maybe six miles further away, and his army of 15,000 professional soldiers, ‘well appointed in which the artillery and the heavy cavalry were conspicuous’, came ambling along the narrow road beside the Wood of Usel. They were in file and without order.25 The artillery train rumbled along; most of the cannon were bronze, drawn by horses and so able to keep up with a marching army.

The Frenchmen tramped round the corner of the wood and suddenly saw their enemy lined up in full battle order. The surprise must have been palpable and the Bretons should then have taken the advantage and attacked then. A charge was demanded but, at that moment, d’Albret decided to change his dispositions and vetoed the idea. Marshal de Rieux pleaded with him to allow the vanguard to attack, presumably echoing an urgent demand from Edward.

It is surprising that Edward, who knew an opportunity when he saw one, did not lead his men in his own charge. But it would have been unsupported and he had recently seen Lincoln defeated as the result of an indisciplined charge at Stoke. However, he must have seethed with rage as he watched Trémoille deploy his army into a fighting formation and the advantage disappear. He exercised remarkable restraint and perhaps remembered that campaign in Spain when he had lead an unexpected and successful charge into the enemy flank.

Once the French were properly arrayed, the infantry and cavalry lined up and, with cannon arranged, the battle started. The French and English accounts – Molinet and Hall – produce a mixed picture of the battle, which opened with an artillery duel: ‘there was a heavy exchange of artillery fire, very damaging to both sides’. The Bretons shouted ‘Sant-Sanson’ and the Swiss ‘Sant-Lautrois’.26 ‘The sun shone brilliantly on the arms of the French.’ ‘Both the vantgardes joined together with such a force it was a marvel to behold.’ 27

The infantry of the Breton vanguard, English or Bretons dressed as English, led by Edward, advanced ‘en pointe’ against the enemy, i.e. they charged in arrowhead formation, presumably behind the banner of the scallop of Scales with Edward as the leading man. ‘The French right flank went to meet it en masse.’ The Marshal de Rieux, beside d’Albret, watched from his horse and must have known the charge should have been made earlier. ‘The battle was hard and furious...bodies fell, blood flowed.’ Edward, the man at the point of the arrowhead, presumably hacked his way through the French but perhaps he hacked too hard and became isolated.28

The action was reported by Molinet: ‘The English archers showed great courage, for each of the opposing parties fought for victory...The mêlée developed into a hard and rough free-for-all; bodies fell, blood flowed.’ In the face of this assault the French pulled back 100 paces but Edward had been killed there. ‘Lord Descales together with a large number of English were killed there, near a wood called Selp.’

On the edge of the wood there is now a bed of pine needles and around a carpet of heather. Somewhere there Edward lay with his blood soaking the ground; a dead paladin, a knight driven by honour and obligation.

He was dead but there were still other Englishmen. There was a break in the hand-to-hand fighting and the French drew back for breathing space, the English holding their ground. At this point the archers saw their opportunity and shot flight after flight of arrows into the French whose front ranks, already heavily knocked about, tried to pull back out of range. They scurried back to the reserves where their horsemen were. The rearward of the French, seeing the retreat, started to flee, but, luckily for Trémoille, his captains grasped the situation, subdued the panic and were able to regroup their men.29

Meanwhile the Breton mainguard was moving into the attack under a barrage from the French artillery. It seems that one of the German captains in the Breton line, keen to avoid cannonballs and grape shot, moved his men forward too quickly and while this may have saved his men, it made a gap in the line. ‘But a kink formed in the Breton centre by the fault of the Chief German Bühler. A Neapolitan adventurer in the French Service, Jacques Galliota, with four hundred mounted men-at-arms and two hundred others, attacked to the back. Galliota was killed but the breakthrough was made.’

King Charles had particularly recommended Galliota to Trémoille who was using him as his military advisor.30 He had been one of Duke Charles of Burgundy’s leading (mercenary) captains and fought in the last disastrous campaign against the Swiss, so he had useful experience. There seems to have been a question over his eyesight, but there was nothing wrong with it that day.

Part of the French line had been in deep trouble as a result of Edward’s attack and Galliota had been watching for an opportunity to change the balance. He saw the break in the Breton line and asked Trémoille if he could mount an attack. With permission, he gathered together 400 men-at-arms and charged the gap created by the German mistake. His troop smashed through the Breton lines sending shock waves along the ranks. The Breton cavalry waiting on the wings should have been dispatched to deal with the incursion but they only watched, doing nothing to help their foot soldiers who were terribly exposed.

Despite his death, Galliota’s horsemen, ‘threw themselves on the artillery, killing the soldiers [manning the guns]. They raced over to the rearguard and fell on the vivandiers and valets, spreading death and disorder everywhere.’ A French infantry company, in their turn, penetrated the open gap in the Breton lines, then turned and attacked the mainguard in the rear.

It was disastrous, and to make matters worse this coincided with a huge explosion in the wood behind the Breton lines. Their magazine blew up, probably hit by a stray shot. It was all too much for the untrained levees and the Breton lines just dissolved into groups of frightened individuals.

A question mark hangs over d’Albret. The gap arose in the centre of his division and that, together with his earlier refusal to allow the charge, would take some explaining at a court of inquiry, as would de Rieux’s failure to order his cavalry to charge Galliota’s incursion. The main body of French infantry regrouped and, in conjunction with their cavalry, mounted a full-scale attack against what was left of the Bretons. They ‘set fiercely on the Bretons and slew the most part of their footmen’.

‘The Ducal rearguard ran away. The mainguard broke up. The Breton cavalry scattered or ran away as did the Chief Marshal [de Rieux] with d’Albret whilst the archers were annihilated. The wearers of the Red Cross, Bretons like the English, were sacrificed.’

The Breton army entered its death throes. ‘When the [survivors of the] vanguard of the Bretons saw that neither their horsemen nor the Germans were coming forward [to fight] they provided for themselves and fled.’ ‘In conclusion, the Frenchmen obtained the victory and slew all such as wore red crosses supposing them to be English.’ The French mopping-up operation turned into ‘a hunt which went as far as the village of Masières in the area of Barbase...In this conflict were slain almost all the Englishmen and 6,000 Bretons, Lord Woodville was found amongst the dead. The French losses were 1,200.’ 31

On a count by the heralds the French dead were estimated at 1,400, most of whom were killed by the vanguard. Included among the figures of the Breton dead were the Spanish contingent, all 1,000 of them killed. Marshal de Rieux and d’Albret were safe as they had galloped away with the cavalry.

The Duke d’Orléans and the Prince d’Orange had been on horseback but the Breton infantry distrusted them, believing they would gallop away if the battle went badly or they might betray the cause, ‘wherefore they dismounted and put themselves in the German
battle
[battalion]’.32 Things did not go well for them. Orléans was captured in the Wood of Usel trying to rally the stream of fugitives, and Orange, having thrown off the Black Cross of Brittany, was pretending to be dead. Unfortunately for him, he was recognized by a French soldier who had once served under him and took considerable pleasure in making the arrest.

King Charles wrote, ‘Never within living memory was there so wonderfully complete a rout.’ Two weeks later General de la Trémoille received the surrender of St Malo, one of the articles of capitulation being, ‘All the goods, arms, ships, horses and other things belonging to the late Lord Scales which are in the said town and its harbours and roadsteads are to remain at the disposition of the Sieur de La Trémoille’.33

These were the spoils of war and of no more use to Edward. He had died in the service of a ruler to whom he owed no allegiance, only friendship. His death was regarded as sufficiently important for the Spanish chroniclers to record. Bernáldez wrote, ‘in her [the Duchess of Brittany] support there came the Count of Scalas, the Englishman, who was at the capture of Loja, who died in a battle between the French and the Bretons’, while Pulgar reported, ‘and there died many Bretons, Englishmen and Castillians who had gone to help them. And there died fighting the Count of Escalas, since he would not surrender and be imprisoned.’

There is now a grey stone monument that records the end of Breton independence and catalogues those who fought for Brittany and died on 22 July 1488: ‘The Earl of Scales and 500 English archers.’ 34

They are listed together with 6,000 Bretons, Gascons, Spaniards and Germans from the Holy Roman Empire. A hundred yards beyond through the pinewood, a rocky outcrop rises up out of the scrub with a battered old stone cross firmly embedded in its top. There on the ridge, a mile south of Mézières, with the woods to left and right and moorland sloping down ‘an arrows flight’, was where Edward Woodville had stood, watching the battle unfold and from where he had led his last charge. Beyond is a dark pinewood encroaching the field where the bloody battle was fought and Sir Edward and his archers died.

What drove a man like Edward? Was it the sheer excitement of fighting death and hoping to win? Earlier in the fifteenth century Jean de Beuil wrote:

How seductive is war! When you know your quarrel to be just and your blood ready for combat, tears come to your eyes...Alongside him [your friends], one prepares to live or die. From that comes the delectable sense which no one who has experienced it will ever know how to explain. Do you think that a man who has experienced that can fear death? Never, for he is so comforted, so enraptured that he knows not where he is and truly fears nothing.35

On 20 August King Henry was in Southampton inspecting
The Sovereign
, one of his two brand-new Tower ships of 600 tons; it was also the day Duke Francis signed the Treaty of Sable. With this bitter pill the Duke formally accepted defeat, acknowledging himself to be a vassal of France. He agreed to a French veto on the marriage of his daughters and he surrendered territory. Three weeks later the heartbroken Duke died, leaving Marshal de Rieux as guardian of his children.

Rennes, with the huge new ducal château and state-of-the-art defences, had never surrendered and the fighting was renewed. The Duchess Anne and her guardian appealed to King Henry for help, while King Charles also wrote to his ‘beloved cousin’:

La Roche Talbot, the 29th August, 1488

Most High and Most Powerful Prince, our most dear and most beloved cousin.

We have received the letters which you wrote...we thank you also for what you inform us by your letters concerning the late Sir Edward de Woodville, who called himself Sieur de Scales...we well knew, the expedition of the late Lord de Scales and of your subjects whom he had brought with him to Brittany was made without your knowledge and permission and regarded by you on your account of your love for us with a very great displeasure; and we never had a single doubt of that; besides, since our last letter we have, with the help of God and the works of our good and loyal subjects, won the battle against the Bretons and our other rebellious subjects.

The towns and the fortress of Dinan and St. Malo have fallen also into our obedience and notwithstanding all these things we have made peace with our cousin the Duke of Brittany, although if we had wished it was in our power to take into our hands the rest of the said country of Brittany and its fortresses, but we were content in assuring to ourself for the future the right which we claim over them in driving away our rebellious subjects who had retreated there....

Most High and Most Powerful Prince, our most dear and beloved cousin, our Lord have you in His holy guard,

CHARLES

But it was not that simple. English blood had been shed and it looked increasingly likely that France would absorb Brittany. King Henry began to think about war. Four months later he sent an embassy to Spain36 and was telling the papal legate that, ‘He was not meditating anything against the King of the French but he is compelled to defend the Breton interests, both on account of the immense benefits conferred on him by the late Duke in the time of his misfortune, and likewise for the defence of his own kingdom.’ 37

The legate also reported on Henry’s preparations for war: three embassies dispatched, parliament summoned to provide £100,000 over three years for 10,000 men.38 In practice he was hearing about the Treaty of Redon, concluded in February, where Henry would lend the Duchess 6,000 soldiers for defensive purposes. The Bretons would pay the cost and hand over some strongholds as an earnest. It was to fund this expeditionary force that Bishop Morton developed his celebrated ‘fork’ to raise the money. He extracted benevolences from all, from the ostentatiously wealthy because they could obviously afford to pay, and from the parsimonious because they were careful with their money. It seems King Henry was remembering his obligations to Brittany, always provided the duchy could pay.