PART FIVE

THE TRUCE OF TOURS

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

A Truce and a Marriage

The Truce of Tours was greeted with euphoria throughout England and France. In Paris, where there had already been intercessory processions for peace, there were now thanksgiving processions, and the Saint-Martin gate, which had been blocked up since Jehanne d’Arc’s attack on the city in August 1429, was reopened for the first time. In Rouen Suffolk was greeted on his way home with cries of ‘Noël! Noël!’ and on his return to England a grateful king, who had already granted him the valuable wardship of Margaret Beaufort, Somerset’s infant daughter and sole heiress, four days after her father’s death on 27 May 1444, promoted him to the rank of marquess.1

The universal rejoicing was a natural reaction to the first general truce in the war since 1420: war-weariness was endemic. Yet, in itself, the truce offered nothing more than a temporary suspension of hostilities on land and at sea: all territories would remain in the hands of their current possessors, no new fortresses were to be built and no old ones repaired and all soldiers were to live in garrison on wages instead of living off appâtis levied on the enemy.

Henry VI believed, and Suffolk hoped, that the Truce of Tours was just the first step on a path that would lead to permanent peace: the marriage was their warranty that negotiations would continue, that the truce would be prolonged and that the powerful Angevin faction at Charles’s court, which had previously been for war, would put its weight behind any potential settlement. Charles VII undoubtedly encouraged these presumptions but for him the truce was just a breathing space in which to reorganise his armies and focus his energies elsewhere. Henry’s marriage to Margaret had his blessing because it ended the possibility that the English king might ally himself with one of his recalcitrant nobles (the count of Armagnac had already made approaches on behalf of his own daughter) and planted his niece as his observer and advocate in the biddable Henry’s court, chamber and bed.2

The truce and the marriage had been arranged with almost indecent haste compared with the tortuous and protracted negotiations which had always accompanied previous attempts to end the war. This was partly because Henry was now a twenty-two-year-old adult in control of his own destiny: as king he could take decisions that were impossible for his council to do during his minority and Suffolk, acting as his personal emissary, was responsible only to him for carrying out his wishes. In retrospect, however, the ease and speed with which Suffolk carried out his mission were regarded by his detractors as evidence that he was a traitor who had sold out to France – had even, it was alleged, been suborned by Charles d’Orléans, his former prisoner, and the Bastard of Orléans, his former captor, to become Charles’s liegeman. His foolish errors in omitting the king of Aragon and the duke of Brittany from the list of Henry VI’s allies in the truce and, worse still, in allowing Charles VII to include Brittany among his allies, were interpreted as a deliberate and sinister conspiracy to empower Charles at the expense of his own king. The most serious charge against him was that, ‘exceeding the instruction and power committed to him’, he had promised to surrender Le Mans and Maine to Henry’s ‘great enemies’, René d’Anjou and his brother Charles, ‘without the assent, advice or knowledge of your other ambassadors’.3

Was it possible that Suffolk could have given such a momentous promise just to secure the hand in marriage of a woman who was in reality the fourth child and younger daughter of a French duke, even one who claimed to be king of Sicily? Given the geographical proximity of Anjou and Maine, and the disputed claims to their ownership, it is likely that the future of these provinces was a subject of discussion. Charles VII would not countenance the more obvious idea that Margaret might bring Maine to Henry VI as her dowry. As far as he was concerned, the English were the suppliants and they should be making the concessions; he had no intention of creating another Gascony.

The French would later claim that Suffolk had indeed given a verbal undertaking that Maine would be ceded back to Charles d’Anjou but, as nothing was put in writing, there is nothing to prove that such a promise was definitely made, or that it was unconditional. The very fact that it was not documented implies that it was not an issue upon which either the truce or the marriage depended. This suggests that, if such a promise was made at Tours, it was probably offered as an inducement for future Angevin assistance in converting the truce into a concord that would genuinely end the war. In any event Suffolk could not have acted without Henry’s knowledge and approval and there is little doubt that Henry himself would willingly have parted with Maine to secure a permanent peace. The problem was that the Truce of Tours was not a final settlement and it did not warrant relinquishing such an important part of Henry’s heritage. Henry himself naively assumed that Charles was as anxious for peace as himself and urged ‘our very dear uncle of France’ to send ambassadors to England as soon as possible to conclude a final peace.4

After the apparent triumph of his first commission it was inevitable that Suffolk would be entrusted with the second, more pleasant task of fetching Henry’s bride back to England. This time he went in style. The tiny embassy that he had taken to Tours was replaced with a magnificent entourage, which significantly included the warrior Talbot and several members of his family, as well as a contingent of well-born ladies-in-waiting: the duchess of Bedford, the marchioness of Suffolk (Alice Chaucer, granddaughter of the poet), the countesses of Shrewsbury (Talbot’s wife) and Salisbury, lady Scales (wife of the lieutenant-general of western Normandy) and lady Grey. In total five barons and baronesses, seventeen knights, sixty-five esquires and 174 valets were selected to escort Margaret of Anjou to England.5

Henry was forced to beg and borrow to put on this appropriately prestigious display: loans were raised throughout the kingdom and the abbot of Bury Saint Edmunds was even browbeaten into lending horses, the need for palfreys, which were suitable for women to ride, especially being stressed. Though it was expected to cost just under £3000 (£1.58m), the eventual outlay was £5573 17s. 5d. (£2.93m). When one learns that this ranged from the cost of replacing the arms of Louis de Luxembourg with Margaret’s own on silverware she had bought to that of bringing a lion and its two keepers from Titchfield, where it had been presented to her, to the royal menagerie at the Tower, one understands how the expenses built up; even the budget for the fleet to convey the company was overspent by £17 (£8925), though the culprit had to wait ten years for his payment.6

Suffolk and the bridal party set out from London on 5 November 1444. They had possibly expected to return to Tours, or to go to Angers, where Margaret was in residence, as arrangements were put in hand at Rouen three weeks later for all the royal officials and notable individuals of the duchy to prepare to accompany York for her formal reception. Instead, however, the party had to travel to Nancy, the capital of René d’Anjou’s duchy of Lorraine, where the royal court had been in residence since the autumn. Charles had lent his moral and military support to the duke for a campaign against Burgundian-backed Metz, thirty-five miles north of Nancy, which claimed allegiance to the Empire, rather than to Lorraine. A lengthy siege was in progress, usefully providing employment well away from the centre of France for soldiers made idle by the truce.

Suffolk must have expected to find Margaret at Nancy but he was to be disappointed, for she was still over 350 miles away at Angers and would not arrive until early February. For two full months after its own arrival, therefore, the English embassy was obliged to kick its heels at Charles VII’s court. This might have been a genuine misunderstanding or, as the rumour-mill in England soon suggested, a deliberate ploy by Charles to extract more concessions from Suffolk before permitting the bride to leave France. The revocation of Maine was again said to have been on the agenda.7

What was definitely discussed, at the request of Richard, duke of York, was the possibility of marrying Edward, his son and heir, to one of Charles’s three daughters. Suffolk advocated this scheme as his insurance policy in case Henry’s marriage failed to produce an heir: after the elderly Gloucester, York had the best claim to the throne, and it was therefore in Suffolk’s interests to cultivate York’s favour. Charles too must have known that York was a potential king of England, yet he willingly went along with the proposal, only substituting his youngest daughter, the infant Madeleine, for the older Jeanne, whom York would have preferred.

York’s ambition must have blinded him to Charles’s motives, for if the latter had refused to allow any of his daughters to marry Henry VI, why would he approve a marriage with his possible successor? By leading York to believe that such a thing was achievable, Charles brought the lieutenant-general and governor of Normandy into his Francophile fold, ensuring that he too would be willing to endorse the cession of Maine. If such was his aim he was successful: York never explicitly condemned the handover. In the meantime the marriage negotiations dragged on for almost two years, during which time the lieutenant-general did his best to ingratiate himself with the former ‘adversary of France’: ‘I pray the blessed Son of God that he will have you in his safe-keeping and give you a good life and a long one.’8

At the beginning of March 1445 Margaret of Anjou finally set out with her English escort for her new home. It was clearly not a prospect she relished. She burst into tears when she parted from her uncle and by the time she arrived in Rouen, a couple of days before her fifteenth birthday, she was apparently too ill to participate in the formal entry that had been prepared to welcome her. One of her English ladies-in-waiting had to take her place in the processions, wearing the robes Margaret had worn for her betrothal at Tours. Her physician, Master Francesco, was kept busy plying her with ‘ointments, confections, powders and drugs’ but she was seasick on the voyage from Harfleur and by the time she arrived at Portsmouth on 9 April she had broken out in ‘the pox’.9

In the circumstances it is not surprising that Henry may have paid a surreptitious visit to view his bride before he married her. The Milanese ambassador reported that he disguised himself as an esquire so that he could personally deliver her a letter from himself, enabling him to scrutinise her while she read it. Not realising who he was, Margaret was dismayed to discover afterwards that she had kept the king of England on his knees before her. Whether or not the twenty-three-year-old Henry liked what he saw – Margaret was variously described as ‘a good-looking and well-developed girl, who was then “mature and ripe for marriage”’ and ‘a most handsome woman, though somewhat dark’–the wedding ceremony was performed on 22 April at Titchfield Abbey in Hampshire. Cardinal Beaufort, who might have been expected to carry out such an important duty, did not officiate, though Margaret was placed in his care afterwards; the couple were married by Henry’s confessor and councillor, William Aiscough, bishop of Salisbury.10

The low-key wedding may have been arranged to accommodate the bride’s ill-health and obvious nerves but she could not avoid the extravagant pageantry that was to come. On 28 May she was greeted at Blackheath by the customary assembly of nobles and civic dignitaries, led by the duke of Gloucester with a retinue of five hundred, all ‘in one livery’, and escorted into London. Her formal entry was an opportunity for propagandist displays and speeches celebrating ‘peace and plenty’, while the Londoners went wild with joy, aided, no doubt, by the copious supplies of wine which ran through the water conduits and fountains on such occasions. Two days later, on 30 May, Margaret was crowned in Westminster Abbey.11 For better, for worse, Henry had a new wife and England a new queen. The general expectation was that a lasting peace with France would follow.

It was Suffolk, of all people, who first sounded a note of caution. Two days after the coronation, on 2 June, he addressed the lords in parliament, informing them of his great labours to procure the marriage and reminding them that the truce would lapse on 1 April 1446 and that Charles had promised to send an embassy to England ‘well instructed and disposed to good conclusion of peace’. Nevertheless, he added,

it still seemed to him to be entirely necessary, expedient and beneficial for the security of this realm and the king’s obedience overseas, in order to have a more agreeable manner of peace in the said treaty and to avoid all manner of ambiguities and inconveniences which might arise and occur by breach of their promises should they depart without effective conclusion, which God forbid, that ordinance and provision might be made with all good speed in order to be ready at all times to defend that land, and for the war and the mighty defence of the same . . . and also to stock up the castles, towns and all manner of fortresses of the king’s obedience in Normandy and France.

When he was on his embassy to Tours, he told the lords, he had advised York ‘to stock up the places in Normandy to prevent all manner of harm and problems which might occur or arise in those parts in default of such an ordinance and provision’. Were the French to know that such preparations had been made, he ‘truly believed’ that it ‘would be of great benefit to the better conclusion of peace’.12

Perhaps rumours were already beginning to circulate that he had promised to cede Maine, for he ended his recommendation on rearmament with an elliptically phrased assertion that, during all his time overseas, he had never discussed details of what a peacetreaty might contain, nor of what kind it might be, but had always referred all such queries back to Henry VI. The day after he made his speech in the lords he repeated it in the commons, stating that, ‘whatever might happen’ in the future, he had answered to the king. He requested that this should be recorded on the parliamentary roll, which was duly done, and he was effusively thanked by the speaker on behalf of parliament for his ‘good, true, faithful and notable service to his highness and to his land’.13

Suffolk had done all that he could to protect himself against the inevitable backlash that would come from the likes of Gloucester and the Beauforts when they learned that Maine might be returned to the French. He had made it clear that any decision to do so had been, and was still, the king’s to make: he had only acted as Henry’s agent and bore no personal responsibility in the matter. The timing of his statement in parliament was significant, for it was delivered as preparations were being made to receive Charles VII’s ambassadors for the conferences that were to end the war permanently. The ceding of Maine would inevitably be on the agenda.

Suffolk’s advice on using the truce as an opportunity to secure Normandy’s defences against a possible resumption of war was not acted upon for the simple reason that there was no money available to do so. The savings to the English exchequer on military expenditure occasioned by the truce had been outweighed by the extraordinary costs of the embassy to fetch Margaret of Anjou, her reception in London and the coronation.

The truce had not brought a massive reduction in spending in Normandy either. The estates-general still had to levy taxes to pay the wages of soldiers in garrisons, even if there were no longer field armies to be supported. According to the terms of the Truce of Tours, all forms of protection money levied by frontier garrison captains had been prohibited, including collecting appâtis and charging for safe-conducts. This raised the intractable problem posed by Perrinet Gressart in a letter to François de Surienne written in 1425, when local truces were about to be imposed round La-Charité-sur-Loire: ‘Tell my lord the Marshal that if he includes this town within these truces, he must find for me and my companions some means of living: otherwise it must not be included in the truce, for without wages we cannot sustain ourselves unless we make war.’ The innovative means introduced by the Truce of Tours was to replace appâtis with a direct local tax levied by the civil authorities of each obedience. The totals due from both sides were then to be added together and divided equally: if one party received more than the other it was to hand over the difference.14

This complex arrangement was administered jointly by the conservators of the truce appointed by each side and inevitably it led to disputes. The assessments revealed an imbalance of 18,000l.t. (£1.05m) a year in favour of the English, so Suffolk, while he was at Nancy, agreed that this sum should be paid into Charles VII’s exchequer: a further 2156l.t. (£125,767) would be paid directly to the Armagnac garrison at Bellême. As York complained in April 1445, this was still unfair: he disputed the Armagnac claims to jurisdiction at Beaumont-le-Roger, Pontorson, Saint-James-de-Beuvron, Sainte-Suzanne and Granville. He also found that the enemy garrison at Louviers was encouraging the inhabitants of neighbouring Pont-de-l’Arche to resist paying taxes legally levied by the estates-general, driving the collector to resign his commission in frustration.15

The biggest problem for both sides was what to do with the soldiers rendered unemployed by the truce. Within days of the start of the Truce of Tours the citizen of Paris was already complaining that Robert Floques and La Hire’s bastard brother had established themselves in the villages round Paris with ‘a great gang of robbers and cut-throats . . . limbs of Antichrist every one, for they were all thieves and murderers, incendiaries, ravishers of all women’, and they were killing, robbing and ransoming with impunity. ‘When people complained to the rulers of Paris, they were told: “They’ve got to live. The King will be seeing to it very soon.”’16

Charles’s solution was to send these soldiers of fortune off under the dauphin’s command into Alsace and Lorraine to support the Habsburgs against the Swiss and put pressure on Burgundy. (It was as part of this campaign that Charles himself moved to Nancy and besieged Metz in the autumn and winter of 1444.) Exactly the same problems with unemployed soldiers were being experienced in Normandy. The novel answer devised there in the summer of 1444 was to allow Matthew Gough to recruit from their numbers one hundred men-at-arms and three hundred archers and lead them to Alsace to enter Charles VII’s service and join his campaign.17 Bizarrely, therefore, they found themselves fighting side by side with men who, just weeks earlier, had been their mortal enemies.

This proved to be only a temporary solution for the Norman companies: while Charles’s armies spent the winter living off the land in Alsace, Gough and his men trooped back to Normandy. By December 1444 the bailli of Caen was sending messages to the duke of York at Rouen informing him that ‘certain Englishmen and other soldiers have just come into the Auge region and this bailliage from the company of Matthew Gough and Raynforth’ and that they were committing numerous oppressions on the king’s subjects. The inhabitants of Lisieux bribed Gough with food and money to keep his men away from their town and by the following February they had moved into the Cotentin, where they were ‘plundering and robbing the poor people and committing crimes, pillages, batteries, murders and other numerous excesses and offences’.18

So many complaints were pouring into Rouen that York decided drastic measures would have to be taken. He therefore went to Argentan in person to deal with the problem, taking with him a large number of councillors, justiciars and soldiers, many of whom would remain there throughout the spring. He carried out musters of those retinues which seemed genuinely to consist of placeless soldiers and assigned them to various garrisons; the remaining English, Welsh and Irish ‘who do not seem to suit soldiering’ were given their fare home and repatriated immediately in ships that Thomas Gower, captain of Cherbourg, was ordered to hire at York’s expense especially for that purpose. York also gave numerous ‘secret gifts to divers persons whom he employed to make the payments to the men who were not in any garrison’ and, since the funds were not available from the Norman exchequer and the necessity was urgent, York personally pledged his jewels and plate to raise the money.19

On 12 May 1445 York ordered the bailli of Caen ‘very expressly on our behalf’ to have proclamations made in the customary places and at the sound of the trumpet that any remaining soldiers living off the land should leave immediately. If they belonged to a garrison in Normandy or Maine they should return there; those ‘of this nation and tongue’ who had a trade or employment should go back to it, on pain of being considered rebels and disobedient; all other soldiers should immediately take themselves off

to the furthermost marches between Normandy and Maine, living there under their chiefs and leaders in an orderly fashion, taking nothing except reasonably adequate victuals for men and horses, and, to avoid a crowd of people, they should only stay in one place for a single night and in moderately sized companies . . . and they must be on their guard and abstain at all times from doing anything contrary or prejudicial to the present truces and abstinences of war; and if it happens that, after the said proclamation, anyone should be found acting contrary to our present order, you must arrest and imprison them, or have them arrested and imprisoned in reality and in fact, wherever they may be found, except in sanctuary, and you should inflict such punishment, and so harsh, that it will be an example to others, without fear or favour and using armed force if necessary.20

In July York presided over a meeting of the estates-general at Argentan, setting out the huge costs involved in this entire exercise and seeking reimbursement for his personal expenditure; a tax of 30,000l.t. (£1.75m) was imposed on the duchy as a result. This was one of York’s last formal acts as lieutenant-general and governor, for his five-year term of office was now coming to an end. In September he returned to England in the expectation that his appointment would be renewed and in order to attend the third session of parliament, which was reconvening in the wake of the latest peace negotiations.21

The great French embassy empowered to seek peace had arrived in England in July 1445, almost exactly thirty years since its predecessor had sought and failed to prevent Henry V launching the Agincourt campaign, which was then in the final stages of preparation. Surprisingly, at least one man served on both embassies. Louis de Bourbon, count of Vendôme, had returned to France in 1415 and taken up arms to resist the English invasion. Captured at the battle of Agincourt, he had spent eight years as a prisoner in England, where he had fathered the Bastard of Vendôme by an Englishwoman before being released in 1423. Now he returned to London as an honoured guest, escorted by Garter king-of-arms from Dover, and accompanied by Jacques Juvénal des Ursins, the new archbishop of Reims, together with several other members of the royal council and representatives of the dukes of Brittany and Alençon, René d’Anjou and the king of Castile.22

Suffolk naturally played a leading role in the negotiations and did his utmost to flatter both Charles VII and his ambassadors, repeatedly and openly proclaiming that he was ‘the servant of the king of France and that, excepting the person of the king of England, his master, he would serve him with his life and his fortune against all men’. Henry VI, he assured them, felt just the same, as his uncle was the person he loved most in the world after his wife. Suffolk also commented ‘loudly’, so that others could hear, that when he was in France he had heard it rumoured that the duke of Gloucester would impede the peace process. This Suffolk now denied, adding in the duke’s presence that Gloucester would not do so and could not, since he did not have the power.23

Suffolk’s cosy relationship with the French ambassadors had Henry VI’s approval. The king also had several personal interviews with them in which he too was at pains to declare the warmth of his love for the uncle he had never met. He went into transports of joy when they conveyed messages of affection from Charles VII, and publicly rebuked his chancellor for not using words of greater friendship in his reply. There was also an implicit rebuke for Gloucester, who was at the king’s side, in Henry’s comment to the chancellor: ‘I am very much rejoiced that some, who are present, should hear these words: they are not a comfort to them.’24

Despite all these mutual protestations of affection and goodwill, the peace negotiations foundered, as they had always done, on the question of sovereignty. The offer that Suffolk had made at Tours was repeated: the English would abandon their claim to the crown if their right to hold Normandy and Gascony without doing homage to Charles was accepted. Now, as then, this was rejected. Rather than allow the peace talks to fail completely, a face-saving solution was agreed. The archbishop of Reims suggested that a peace settlement was more likely if a summit meeting was held between the two kings in person rather than trying to negotiate through intermediaries. This request had to be referred back to Henry, who professed himself willing to go to France for further discussions in a face-to-face meeting with his uncle, though he warned that this would take time and much preparation to organise. As an earnest of goodwill on both sides, the Truce of Tours, which was due to expire on 1 April, was extended to 11 November 1446.25

After the grand French embassy had returned to report to Charles VII, one of its members, Guillaume Cousinot, Charles’s councillor and chamberlain, was sent back to England at the head of a smaller working delegation charged with making the preliminary arrangements for the meeting of kings. Suffolk and Adam Moleyns, the keeper of the privy seal, were appointed to treat with them and by 19 December they had decided that the meeting should take place in November 1446, necessitating a further extension of the truce until 1 April 1447.26 Cousinot and his colleague, Jean Havart, had also been entrusted with a far weightier matter: they had been instructed to demand that Henry should hand over Maine to his father-in-law, René d’Anjou, in return for a lifelong alliance and a twenty-year truce. In this they were nominally acting on René’s behalf and at his request – or so it was said – but the fact remained that they were Charles VII’s envoys and there is no doubt that it was Charles himself who was pushing this agenda. And he was doing so entirely for his own ends because the Angevins had just lost their ascendancy at court in one of the periodic palace coups. Charles had told them ‘by word of mouth, that they should not return until they were sent for’: René d’Anjou disappeared from the list of royal councillors in September; his brother, Charles, in December.27

The cession of Maine had never been part of the formal marriage contract but Charles now insisted that Henry should fulfil what he claimed was his nephew’s personal promise which had been given on his word as a prince. If that promise had indeed been given, it had been to achieve peace. Charles now demanded its fulfilment merely to extend the truce, though he cleverly played to Henry’s susceptibilities, urging him to make the concession ‘because we hope that on this account the matter of the principal peace will proceed better, and will come to a more speedy and satisfactory conclusion’. Charles had already enlisted the aid of his niece, Henry’s queen. On 17 December Margaret of Anjou replied to letters from her uncle, saying that there could be no greater pleasure in the world for her than to see a treaty of peace between him and her husband, to which end ‘we are employing ourselves effectively to the best of our ability so that really you and all others ought to be content’. As to the delivery of Maine, she understood that her husband had written to him at length about this but she would nevertheless do what he wished ‘to the best that we can do, just as we have always done’.28

Five days after this letter, and three days after the truce was prolonged, Henry VI signed with his own hand a formal engagement addressed to Charles VII promising to hand over Le Mans and all other places, towns, castles and fortresses in Maine to René and Charles d’Anjou by 30 April 1446. He did this, he said, to show the sincerity of his own wish for peace, to please his queen, who had requested him to do it many times, and principally to please and benefit Charles VII. It did not augur well for the future that this crucially important undertaking was not a public document, witnessed, sealed and approved by the royal council, but a private letter conceived, written and sent in secret.29

It was an act of supreme folly which played straight into Charles VII’s hands. How could Henry possibly expect to keep his written undertaking secret, especially as he had also promised to put it into effect in four months’ time? When or how did he imagine he would inform his subjects in either England or France, particularly those whose lands and lordships he had just signed away without any whisper of compensation? By agreeing to surrender Maine he had implicitly renounced his sovereignty over it and effectively declared that future diplomatic or military pressure might persuade him to make similar concessions elsewhere in France. He had made himself – and his French possessions – a hostage to the possibility that this grand gesture would persuade Charles VII to make a final peace. It was a serious and fatal error of judgement.

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