alternatehistory.com

Chapter 7: The Capetian Resurgence and the End of the Capetian-Plantagenet War (1227-1230)
Louis VIII of France and I of England or Henry III of England
Chapter 7: The Capetian Resurgence and the end of the Capetian-Plantagenet War (1227-1230 )

News of Louis' imminent return was a massive boost to the resolve of the pro-Capetian nobility in England but, more importantly, was accompanied by some significant moves made by Louis in the build-up to his return. From as early as November 1227, the pace at which soldiers and resources were smuggled into Dover Castle began to increase and correspondence between Louis and his supporters in England picked up significantly as well. The Treaty of Nantes in January 1228 and the declaration of Louis' rightful kingship April only served to further weaken Henry's position in England. Needless to say, the response and result was panicked within the Plantagenet nobility as all the main players in Henry's court were spread out across England. Henry had been fighting since 1223 to reestablish his control and, even as he fought the pro-Capetian nobles in the South, he was constantly putting up with raids across the border from Alexander of Scotland, raids which only picked up with the Treaty of Edinburgh in December 1224 and increased massively in 1227 and 1228. Along the Southern coast, Henry was being faced with raids by Eustace and the French fleet, not to mention smuggling which only slowed down any gains being made in the Siege of Dover Castle. Those vassals who had been pressured to turn on Louis such as the Earls of Hereford and Gloucester began to become problematic once again for Henry and correspondence picked up between them and the resisting barons. Henry was well aware that he needed to capture Dover Castle if he wished to prevent Louis from landing but resistance and discontent amongst his army only slowed things down further, especially as Ranulf de Blondeville, Earl of Chester began voicing concerns that Hereford and Gloucester might turn on Henry and invade Chester and began asking for permission to take his retinue and return to Chester. Some worried that Henry risked being cut off from London should he fail to take Dover Castle before Louis could return to England, a worry exacerbated by Eustace capturing the Cinque Ports in April which forced Henry to send a contingent under Hugh de Vere, Earl of Oxford, to dislodge the French forces from the ports.

In Wales, the campaigns of the Marshal family came to a halt from January onward amidst disagreements between the Marshal family and the Earl of Gloucester, culminating in the desertion of Gloucester in March 1224 and a treaty between Llywellyn in which Louis recognised him as the Prince of Wales in return for Llywellyn's acknowledgement and support for Louis' claim to the throne of England. Ultimately, the return of Louis in late April was the point at which the boiling pot of 1220s England finally exploded. It began with a relatively simple engagement as Louis' forces landed in Kent and quickly overran the defenders of the Cinque Ports, driving Vere back to Dover Castle to report the landing of the French army. Fearing that he would end up being trapped between a rock and a hard place should he try to keep up the siege, Henry instead opted to break the siege of the castle and retreat as quickly as possible to London where he could assemble his forces in preparation to meet Louis in battle. But it's at this point that the negotiations between the rebelling vassals and Henry's supporters began to show themselves as discontent amongst the Irish forces led by the House de Braose led to Henry dismissing them from his army in May 1228 while Gilbert de Clare (Earl of Gloucester) defected to Louis in June and Henry de Bohun (Earl of Hereford) defected in July. William d'Aubigny (Earl of Arundel) and William FitzGeoffrey de Mandeville returned to Louis' side in September following further victories against the Plantagenet forces. But Louis had no intention of letting Henry unite with the greater part of his supporters across the country and made a beeline for Rochester Castle, hoping to take the castle and prevent Henry from crossing over towards London. The problem for Henry came when Louis ran into the dismissed forces of the House de Braose in early June 1228 and, there, received oaths of loyalty from Margaret of Trim (by correspondence later in the month) and Walter de Lacy, bolstering his forces further. The subsequent Battle of Rochester and the events that would follow are the culmination of 4 years' efforts to undermine and outdo Henry on every front. Louis had no chance of capturing Rochester before Henry could arrive but he had no intention of just letting Henry cross to take refuge in the castle and so, in a repeat of what had happened at the Battle of Lincoln 11 years earlier, Louis left a small force to maintain a siege of the castle while he marched two miles to face up against Henry. This was the first time that Louis and Henry met on the field of battle and the events of the campaign so far and in months to come show two kings who have both spent years fighting. Henry had been leading the war against his vassals since 1223 while Louis had fought three separate conflicts since 1216 (The Baronial War, Theobald's Revolt and the Albigensian Crusade). The Battle of Rochester was by far the largest engagement in the Capetian-Plantagenet War with Louis leading a force composed of soldiers from his own demesne as well as Maine, Angouleme, Champagne, Toulouse, Lusignan and Brittany as well as mercenaries and whatever forces could be sent from Dover Castle to support him plus the now defected Irish forces under Walter de Lacy. Before we can go on to talk about the battle we need to remind ourselves that there were two 'de Lacy's' brought from Ireland in 1223. The first was of course Walter de Lacy but the second was Hugh de Lacy who hadn't been dismissed unlike Walter and was about to play a decisive role in events to come. It's probable that Louis had been in communication with Hugh for hours beforehand and Hugh was likely in correspondence either with the king or with Walter or even both. Not entirely trusting Hugh after Walter's defection, Henry had put his forces on the front lines so that they would be pushed into fighting the Capetians first with the irony, of course, being that Henry's very attempt to prevent defection possibly pushed Hugh over into defection and made its impact worse.

Most of our primary sources are pretty clear on what happened next and, as Henry's forces advanced, Hugh raised a banner and shouted some variation of 'For England, I urge you, strike down that tyrant' and turned to face Henry. Henry's vanguard had been broken by the defection and a massive gap of hostile soldiers now existed right in the centre of his army that was not about to be pushed on by Louis' advancing force. Determined to push Hugh and his retinue out from the centre of the vanguard and restore his lines before Louis could push to deepen the fissure, Henry and Ranulf led a spirited charge against the Irish soldiers, supported on the flanks by the remaining members of the vanguard. Despite initial success, however, Hugh's forces weren't completely dislodged, allowing Louis to close the remaining distance and drive forward the split in the English lines. Henry's vanguard now found itself increasingly pressured, facing the Irish defectors under Hugh in the centre (fittingly supported by Walter who had been in the vanguard of Louis' army) and Louis' own forces as they pushed on their sides. Soon enough, the break in Henry's lines became a fissure in his army, pushing the two flanks wider and wider apart as Louis continued to exert pressure on the centre. Gradually, the flanks were forced to retreat step by step until they had been driven completely apart. In truth, Henry's army split into about 5 different contingents as the far flanks were driven apart from the forces at the back on either side and the centre back forces ended up separated as well. Those towards the back of Henry's army ultimately got lucky in the battle, with Henry and Ranulf both escaping with their lives and even some small forces of soldiers who began to band back together in the weeks following Rochester. Others weren't so lucky. Hugh de Vere, Earl of Oxford was captured and William Longespee, Earl of Salisbury and a talented commander in his own right was killed.

Rochester was a disaster for Henry, both militarily and politically. Large swathes of his army had been wiped out and the subsequent siege of Rochester threatened to allow Louis to cross over and move on London while defections picked up their pace in the wake of the defeat. Unable to retreat North, Henry fell back West towards Devon where he met up with Redvers. Determined to prevent himself from being completely surrounded following the recapture of the South-East and the capture of Vere, which effectively meant that Oxford was far from safe, as well as the defections of Gloucester, Henry and his contingents pushed on to join Redvers' forces in capturing Cornwall. Progress in Cornwall sped up significantly after Henry's arrival, ultimately forcing Fitzwalter to abandon the Earldom in September and flee around the coast to Kent. But in the South-East, Henry's success faded rapidly as Louis set about repairing and strengthening Dover Castle and sent Quincy and Thomas of Kent to push West and reclaim Winchester which they did by March 1229. Rochester fell in November 1228, too late for Louis to launch a serious march to London (which wouldn't take place until March the following year) but allowing Louis time to reinforce and garrison the castle against any attempts Henry might make to retake it. In the West, Bohun swept back North into Chester while Clare, with support from Llywellyn and Braose, gradually pushed the Marshal family on two fronts. Having secured the South-West as a power-base and with support from some portions of Ireland weakened but still available as well as surviving contingents from other noble supporters, Henry began turning his attention back to the other fronts of the war starting in Spring 1229. He had two options available to him with the first being to try and retake the South-East and cut Louis off from France and the second being to try and push North through Gloucester and Hereford to secure access to the Marshals and whatever other resources could be brought from Chester (although Ranulf was with him in Cornwall). The death of Verraccio in 1226 now proved especially damaging for Henry's links to the Papacy who now began to fall back to a more neutral position following the arrangement between Louis and Gregory in 1227 and the loss of the main pro-Plantagenet advocate in the Papacy the year prior to that. Without the Papal legitimacy he had had before, Henry found his list of allies growing thin in England, especially after Louis' capture of London in late March 1229. Resolving to try once more to cut off reinforcements from France and thus to isolate Louis in London, Henry decided to make another move East beginning in March and, for three months, successfully pushed Quincy back from his recently recaptured positions in Winchester.

Louis', meanwhile, had been celebrating his victory by taking the chance to actually make the political moves he had been unable to make back in 1219 and presided over the appointment (chosen by Gregory IX himself) of Richard le Grant as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1229. By the time Louis reached the capital, however, the crown itself had been spirited away by Henry's supporters and wouldn't actually be recovered until 1231 and so Louis' coronation was an affair that actually ended up taking place with a replica rather than wait. Louis was well aware that he couldn't afford to wait forever before being crowned king, he needed to be crowned as soon as possible to help legitimise his position. With his coronation having finally taken place, Louis now turned to securing what remained of the country. By about June 1229, the war in Wales had been won effectively but Henry continued to push in Winchester while large swathes of land North of London remained contested. Louis now split his forces up, sending a force under Amaury de Montfort North towards Lincoln to reestablish Montfort and Maudit as Earls of Leicester and Warwick respectively before moving against Chester to support Bohun. Meanwhile, Louis himself would lead the rest of his forces South to Winchester to finally put down Henry once and for all. Louis and Henry met for the second time at the Battle of Petersfield in July 1229 where Louis gained a second victory over the Plantagenet forces, allowing him to make a counter-attack beginning shortly afterwards and continuing on well into 1230. Ultimately, the war is considered to have ended with Henry's second flight from the country in October 1230 following the Battle of Sidmouth in September 1230 and the capture of Redvers with the subsequent rapid push into Cornwall. In a repeat of the events of 1219, Henry now found himself trapped in Cornwall with nowhere to go but abroad if he hoped to actually survive Louis' advance and so, like in 1219, Henry fled. We'll go into more detail on the situation in 1230 and why Henry fled to Europe rather than to Ireland but, in short, Henry had little choice but to turn to a foreign country and no better option than the very country Louis had started vying against politically only 3 years earlier due to an arrangement between Louis and Gregory IX, the Holy Roman Empire. Once again, the flight of Henry marked the end of the war that was tearing England apart but not quite the end of all the fighting. The Marshals were, once again, driven into exile following their defeat at the hands of the Earl of Gloucester and the Lord of Braose as well as Lllywellyn but fled, instead, to Ireland where they would come to play a role in the events there in the next few years. Ranulf left with Henry once again, one of the few major supporters Henry had left in England while Bohun was restored to Chester. This is where we are going to leave things, on the eve of Louis' victory in the Capetian-Plantagenet War (1223-1230) so that we can really cover the situation of 1230 and how Louis would move, once again, to secure the country in the wake of his victory over Henry.

Top