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REVIEW BY DUNCAN CAMERON
The reign of King John is a period of immense significance in English history, comparable to the events of 1066 and the Norman Conquest a century and a half previously. John’s signing of the Magna Carta supposedly laid the foundations of the rights of property and personal freedom in England, although the reality behind his reign, generally considered to have been a disaster, is more nuanced than the mythology would suggest.
Catherine Hanley’s complex and exciting book 1217: The battles that saved England reveals to us the significance of the later years of John’s reign, after he repudiated his famous agreement with his barons. Reneging on Magna Carta made him several enemies, although many of the barons he broke with were not in favour of radical action. They simply wanted a better monarch.
But England’s division was France’s opportunity. Were French king Philip Augustus to play his cards right, he could use the schism within the country to get rid of John and instal his son Louis on the throne. This would involve usurping John’s own son and heir, Henry.
Thus 1217 – the year after John’s death – would mark, like 1066, a turning point in English history. Would the country revert to being politically a subsidiary of the Kingdom of France? Or would it become an independent island kingdom, guarding its freedom from the political powers on the other side of the Channel?
The key to England
The story opens with England in a state of chaos, with King John criss-crossing his realm in order to hunt out and defeat his nay-sayers. Supported by English rebel barons, Louis took advantage of the chaos and landed on the south coast unopposed in May 1216. From there, he moved to London, where he was received with great acclaim by the people and proclaimed king, although he was yet to be crowned.
John was much too busy trying to deal with the rebellions that had sprung up all over the country – but at the same time as there were rebels, there were just as many important strongholds that stood beside him. Much of the narrative in Hanley’s book concerns the fighting that ensued, the battles that ‘saved’ a nation.
The first large engagement we read about it is, fittingly, Dover – said to be the ‘Key to England’, commanding as it does the narrowest point of the Straits of Dover. The siege forces were led by Louis himself. The French monarch was well-prepared for an attack, with the most effective siege machines of the time, such as mangonels and trebuchets, both of them stone-throwing devices, and equipped with plenty of wattle in order to construct siege towers. But the defenders of Dover were active and energetic, and often broke out of their defences in order to kill as many of the French forces as possible.
In the end, both sides recognised that they had reached a stalemate. For Louis, it must have been extremely frustrating. He had crossed the channel with many troops in order to take the throne, but now he was spending months camped outside a coastal castle achieving very little, and his invasion was losing momentum.
During this long intermission, the French invaders had one thing in their favour – the person of King John himself. His remarkable incompetence, both as a war leader and as a politician, meant that for many their dislike of John as a ruler trumped the natural patriotic instinct to oppose an invasion by a foreign enemy.
But, before 1216 was out, John was dead, having taken ill in the middle of a campaign. His successor was his little son Henry, who at the time of his father’s death was only nine years old. Hanley gives us much fascinating detail about the child- king’s accession and coronation, including his dress in infant-sized ‘robes of state’ and how he had to be carried out of Canterbury Cathedral because he moved too slowly for the presumably athletic and fast-moving barons who accompanied him. Few could have anticipated that the early years of young Henry III’s reign would be quite so successful.
The siege of Lincoln
The next significant battle took place in the city of Lincoln in May 1217. During this period, the city was the heart of the economically important, fertile wool-raising region, as well as being situated on the key north–south route of Fosse Way. It was built on a hill, and well defended by walls and fortifications. This made it strategically vital for any invading force to capture.
Interestingly, in the case of Lincoln, the leader of the defence was a woman. Shortly before his death, King John had conferred the title of Castellan of Lincoln and Sheriff of Lincolnshire on the person of Nicola de la Haye, who had inherited the titles from her father Richard de la Haye. Hanley’s book portrays her as a competent leader.
When the French forces moved into Lincolnshire and started to besiege the city, the importance of the stronghold elicited a response from the English royalists. So a curious pattern emerged. The ordinary inhabitants inside the city walls were sympathetic to the French and tried to maintain their lives, while English and French forces were engaged in complex manoeuvres all around them.
The siege ended in victory for the English loyalists – and the downfall of the French was accompanied by an outbreak of terrible violence that has gone down in history as the ‘Fair of Lincoln’. English forces moved through its streets, destroying property, and killing any civilians who put up resistance. Many women took to small boats laden with their possessions in an attempt to escape, although some boats overturned and sank, drowning their passengers.
The pillaging by the English went beyond the usual limits – churches were broken into, storerooms and cellars were raided. But the victory was to act as a morale booster. An army notionally led by child-king Henry in a kingdom that had been through years of political chaos had defeated the forces of the King of France himself.
Eustace the Monk
The last key battle in this account is a naval one. The loss of Normandy by King John earlier in the century had meant that the English Channel had become an international border between two hostile countries, England and France. This created a need for fighting ships, and over the previous years a fleet of fighting galleys and cogs, ready to defend the shores of England from its enemies, had been built up.
In 1217, the King of France appointed a certain Eustace the Monk to lead a maritime invasion force against the English. This was, in a way, a good choice of leader. Eustace was a notorious pirate and freebooter, willing to sell his skills to anyone, and he had a long history of violence. In August 1217, the fleet took off, aiming to follow the English coast northwards, turn into the Thames Estuary past Sandwich, and attack London.
Things did not turn out that way. The French stopped near the mouth of the Thames, outside Sandwich, when the English ships arrived. It appears that the French expected the English side to engage with them, and start a naval battle fought out with fighting men on deck. But the English had a different plan. They chose to pull out to the east of the French ships, which meant that they had the easterly wind behind them. This was a great advantage.
At this point, a new form of weapon appeared: quicklime. The English had great pots of the powder on board, which they hurled at their enemy. Scattered by the prevailing wind, this covered the French sailors, effectively blinding them. The English boarded the French ships much more easily after this, and captured and executed their leader Eustace.
Then they worked their way through the fleet, capturing, robbing, and throwing the crew into the sea as food for the fishes. The great stores of treasure on board the French ships were taken by members of the fleet. And then the entire fleet landed in Sandwich, to be greeted by English bishops dressed in full regalia and many cheering townspeople. It was said that the sailors were even handing out coins to the townsfolk ‘by the bowlful’.
Payoff
The story of this fateful year really concludes with Louis giving up his claim to the English throne, after receiving a huge payoff from the English of 10,000 marks – a vast sum of money – as part of the Treaty of Lambeth. He sailed back to France from Dover on 28 September 1217. He would become King of France in 1223.
After the victory, King Henry’s agents moved through the country identifying and destroying anyone who had supported the vanquished enemy. Bolstered by a military triumph while still in his teens, Henry was able to embark on a long and successful reign.
1217: The battles that saved England
Catherine Hanley
Osprey Publishing, hbk, 304pp (£25)
ISBN 978-1472860873
