Henry V of England
gigatos | January 23, 2022
Summary
Henry of Monmouth (Monmouth, August 9 or September 16, 1387) was king of England from 1413 to his death. Although he reigned for only nine years, the political and military action exercised by Henry V was very remarkable on the European scene, making him one of the most popular sovereigns of the Middle Ages.Henry, in fact, was able to bring again the Kingdom of England among the first European powers thanks to the brilliant victory at Azincourt over the French, after which he was appointed heir to the throne of France.
An able politician and expert administrator, Henry also had the merit of recomposing, through his uncle Henry Beaufort, the Western Schism, stipulating the Treaty of Canterbury with Emperor Sigismund. The figure of the sovereign, however, was immortalized by William Shakespeare in the drama of the same name, in which is emphasized the affable, noble and deeply religious spirit.
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Origin and early years
Henry V was born at Monmouth Castle on August 9, 1387, the eldest male child of Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby and Duke of Lancaster, and Mary of Bohun. Young Henry, raised by his governess Johanna Waring, was then educated by his uncle, the clergyman and chancellor of Oxford University Henry Beaufort, in a range of disciplines unusual by the standards of the time: music, literature, and the English language. It is uncertain whether Henry actually studied at Queen”s College, while it is known that he was knighted by King Richard II.
As for the rest of Henry”s childhood, there are insufficient sources to attest to his character, higher studies, and private life. The dissolute life and subsequent repentance narrated by Shakespeare in the historical drama of the same name are, in all probability, without foundation. Certainly were not easy years because of the political disagreements between his father and Richard II and for the pain suffered as a result of the sudden loss of his mother.
1399 was a fundamental year in the life of young Henry: his father Henry, who had returned to England after being exiled by Richard II, joined forces with a group of dissatisfied nobles, deposed the Plantagenet king and proclaimed himself king with the name of Henry IV. As a result, his son Henry of Monmouth, who during his father”s rebellion was sent with his brother Thomas to Trim Castle and immediately started a military career. Little more than sixteen years old Henry, as prince of Wales, commanded the military forces occupied to defeat the revolts of 1403, led by Owain Glyndŵr, keeping him occupied until 1408. The military efforts, however, did not turn only to the Welsh: some nobles (including members of the family of Percy) Robert III of Scotland himself allied with the rioters to attack England, taking advantage of the fall of the main branch of the Plantagenets and the rise of the cadet branch of Lancaster.In 1403 Henry was pierced in battle by an arrow to the face that entered his skull, but was miraculously saved after two surgeries.
Henry, in this five-year period of turbulent events, demonstrated his innate military capabilities by contributing to the victory over Henry Percy (who in the dynastic line was the true heir to the throne) in the battle of Shrewsbury on 21 July 1403. Defeated the first and dead the second, Owen Glydnwr was left only with the weak support of Charles VI of France, who soon abandoned the Welsh rebel to his destiny (1409).
By virtue also of these merits in the field, the young prince was appointed president of the privy council of the crown in 1410, assuming more and more a position of predominance due to the poor health of his father. In this position he distinguished himself, thanks to the support of his uncles Henry and Thomas Beaufort, in a lively opposition to the policy of the king his father and his chancellor, Archbishop Thomas Arundel: Monmouth did not share the policy of his father towards France and his surrender to Arundel. This disagreement aroused the disapproval of the king, a hostile feeling that grew when some nobles of Parliament proposed to abdicate in favor of the heir to the throne. This led him to a rapid dismissal from office already in 1411. But on September 23, 1412 Henry of Monmouth arrived in London with a large retinue, and presented himself alone in front of the king, who embraced and forgave him: the future Henry V was judged and fully acquitted. Henry IV died in Westminster, on March 20th 1413, and Henry of Monmouth ascended to the English throne the following day, being crowned at Westminster Abbey on April 9th.
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The King of England
The first problems he had to face were of internal politics: at the beginning of 1414, Henry showed great determination in repressing the Lollard heresy, inspired by Hussism and spreading in England during the reign of Richard II. Because of their opposition to Arundel, the Lollards thought that the Prince of Wales was a sympathizer of their movement, but they understood Henry”s orthodoxy only when he ascended the throne. Sir John Oldcastle, an old friend of Henry”s and a leader of the Lollards, tried to gather his brethren at St Giles in the Fields on January 7, 1414, but the king himself dispersed them, destroying their home front. Then, in April of the same year, the parliament gathered in Leicester and approved new and very severe measures against heretics.
The Lollard Revolt, despite being struck down early in Henry”s reign and eradicated by 1417 (when Oldcastle was captured in the Midlands and then hanged), would continue to exist in clandestine form until the Anglican Reformation, when it resurfaced with the collapse of the Catholic Church on English soil.
In July 1415, the king suppressed a conspiracy known as the “Southampton Plot” hatched by followers of Edmund Mortimer, heir to Richard II. In July 1415, Edmund was made aware of a conspiracy led by his cousin and brother-in-law, the Earl of Cambridge, Richard of Conisburgh, of the House of York, who was aiming to place Edmund on the throne in place of Henry V. Edmund, seized with a severe sense of guilt, ran to report it to the king, who pardoned Edmund but sent Richard to the gallows.
In economic policy, the conflictual relationship with Hansa continued. Between 1418 and 1420, in fact, there was a commercial incident between the city of London and the merchants of the League who lived there: the municipal council of the English capital, in fact, imposed a tax (the scot and lots) on all foreign merchants, an act that aroused the protests of the Hansa. Henry V, for his part, silently exploited the situation to damage the powerful commercial league, doing nothing concrete to oppose the degeneration of relations and writing only vague letters of renewed friendship with the leader of the Hansa.
The resolution of internal problems was the necessary prodrome for the young sovereign to concentrate on his real objective: the subjugation of France, a political-military action favored through the recovery of old dynastic rights claimed, almost a century before, by Edward III. In fact, already in September 1413, Henry V undertook an audacious foreign policy: taking advantage of the serious rift between the party of the Armagnacs and the Burgundians, the English sovereign pretended to want to renew the peace treaty, with the real intention of keeping under control the evolution of internal French politics. The leader of the Burgundians, Duke John Without Fear, was the main interlocutor of the English sovereign, so much so that between 1413 and 1414 marriage negotiations were held between the young king and a daughter of the Duke of Burgundy.
The alliance between the two foresaw that, in case Henry would have attacked France, John would have remained neutral and would have recognized him as king, if Henry would have had the upper hand. On the other side, Henry V, probably already by the end of May 1414, officially claimed the throne of France, asking in marriage Catherine, the daughter of Charles VI, a proposal that was refused because of the titles advanced by the king of England. On May 31, 1415, taking advantage of the deterioration of events in the Kingdom of France, Henry V returned to the offensive, making unacceptable territorial demands: Normandy, Ponthieu, Maine, Anjou, Touraine, Poitou and, finally, Aquitaine in its extension after the Treaty of Bretigny in 1360, with the addition of Provence. The French envoys, knowing full well that France was not ready for open conflict with England, sought to counter by granting Aquitaine “legal” lordship rather than its “direct sovereignty.” Henry, finding this counteroffer too meager, responded by declaring war on France.
After he left his brother John, Duke of Bedford, as lieutenant of the Kingdom, Henry V set out for Normandy in August 1415. On the 13th of that month, the English fleet (1500 vessels strong) docked near Le Havre, and a few days later the English army besieged Harfleur, which fell on September 22. Henry, aware of how his army had been decimated by disease and hunger and how the summer was rapidly ending, thought it wise to reach the port of Calais from where then return to England, but arrived in Picardy he found himself in front of the French army, at least three times bigger than his. The French army could have been even more numerous if John Without Fear”s offer of help had been accepted, but it was rejected because of the diatribes between the Duke of Burgundy and Constable Charles d”Albret, leader of the Armagnacs.
In spite of the bad weather conditions and the muddy ground, at about 10 o”clock in the morning of October 25, 1415, Saint Crispin”s day, the French led by D”Albret engaged in a battle near the village of Azincourt. At four o”clock in the afternoon, the battle ended with a French disaster: compared to the 500 dead of the English side, on the French side between 7 000 and 15 000 men died, among which the two brothers of John Fearless, Antonio, Duke of Brabant and Philip, Count of Nevers, while the Duke of Orleans, Charles, fell prisoner. The extraordinary victory achieved by the English over a much larger army was due not only to the meteorological impediments mentioned above, but also to the different organization of the two armies. In fact, if the French army was composed mainly of the fearsome heavy cavalry, expression of the feudal aristocracy, the English could count on a greater mobility thanks to the infantry and the archers, prepared after long and hard training. The latter were fundamental for the victory: the darts shot from their bows at great distance could not be avoided by the French cavalry, which was therefore decimated.
After returning to London in November, Henry, strengthened by the popular support for the victory obtained, prepared to resume hostilities and with a fortunate diplomatic activity, he first broke the alliance between the French and the Emperor Sigismund through the stipulation of the Treaty of Canterbury on August 15, 1416. With this diplomatic act, Henry supported the diplomatic action carried out by Sigismund at the Council of Constance to put an end to the Western Schism; for his part, Sigismund declared himself in favor of recognizing the legitimacy of the war undertaken by Henry himself. On October 8, the Lancastrian sovereign strengthened his alliance with John Without Fear by meeting him in Calais, where it seems that John was willing to recognize Henry V as King of France. France, meanwhile, was sinking deeper and deeper into complete anarchy: the naval defeat suffered at the mouth of the Seine on August 15, 1416, the failure of diplomatic negotiations to avoid coalition with Sigismund, and the death of John, Dauphin of France, in April 1417, contributed to demoralize the French court. With a mad king, the perennial threat of the Duke of Burgundy, and the French army annihilated, Henry could lay claim to the crown of France, given the young age of the new dauphin, 14-year-old Charles.
In the summer of 1417 hostilities resumed. Henry V, having obtained financing from the Parliament, landed at Trouville with 12,000 men on August 1st and, after having conquered Normandy in less than a year, on July 29th 1418 he presented himself in front of Rouen, besieging it.
At the same time John had advanced on Paris, where he was welcomed as a liberator on July 14, two months after the citizens of the capital had killed Bernard VII d”Armagnac. The Duke posed as the king”s protector and unofficially took command of operations against the English, but did nothing to prevent the surrender of Rouen on January 20, 1419. Now Normandy was all English, with the exception of Mont-Saint-Michel, and Henry, for the whole two-year period 1419-1420, could move freely in the north of France, conquering Pontoise (city at the doors of Paris) on July 30.
During 1419, the duke John Fearless had approached the dauphin Charles to counter the English presence in France. During the negotiations John was assassinated at Montereau (September 10) and the new duke, his son Philip III, accused Charles (who was also his brother-in-law), to have planned the murder of his father, coming to the conclusion that for the Burgundians was preferable alliance with the English to that with the Armagnacs. Meanwhile, the wife of Charles VI, the intriguing Isabella of Bavaria, begged Henry to avenge the murder of Duke John, to punish the alleged murderer and to reach Paris. By now the war was over: with the Treaty of Troyes (May 21, 1420), Henry, who had been adopted by the French royal family, was recognized as regent of France and heir to Charles VI in place of the legitimate heir, the Dauphin Charles. The agreements also provided for the marriage between Henry and Catherine of Valois, daughter of the French sovereign, a marriage that was celebrated on June 2, 1420.
France thus found itself split in two, that controlled by the Burgundians and the English, and that under the control of the Dauphin and the Armagnacs. Although the Armagnacs did not want to recognize the Troyes clauses and the new line of succession, by the dawn of 1421 Henry had become not only the virtual master of the French kingdom, but also the arbiter of European politics, thanks to the agreements with Sigismund. In 1421, the defeat (and death) of his brother Thomas of Clarence in the battle of Baugé induced Henry V to descend again to the continent, where he learned of the birth of his son and heir Henry, which took place on December 21. The king, however, never had the chance to see his son again, as he died of typhoid fever on August 31, 1422 near Vincennes.
His body, after having been embalmed, was transported to Rouen, from where it was finally moved to England and buried, after a solemn funeral on November 7, in Westminster Abbey in London. In 1422, besides Henry V also Charles VI died, therefore the new king of France, as well as king of England, was his son Henry, entrusted to the guardianship of a regency council made of Henry Beaufort, John Duke of Bedford and Humphrey Duke of Gloucester.
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Historiographical considerations
The figure of Henry V has been the object of a policy of mythologizing by the English historiographic and literary tradition, making the Lancastrian sovereign one of the brightest symbols of patriotism and the prototype of the medieval hero, because of his chivalrous mentality. Undoubtedly, Henry”s successes were extraordinary: the lightning stabilization of the kingdom, the tactical genius and the political ability he showed towards France, the Empire and during the recomposition of the Church were the fruit of his innate qualities. The political and military power that England achieved under his scepter, therefore, favored the birth of a historiography largely favorable to Henry V, which can already be seen in the chronicles of his reign.
The historian Tyler James Endell (1789-1851), in his important work reconstructing the figure of Henry V (the essay Henry of Monmouth, published in 1838), examined the written accounts of the Lancastrian king”s contemporaries, outlining an extremely positive and virtuous profile of him:
Endell, in order to outline such a virtuous picture of Henry V, read the accounts of the Ypodigma Neustriae of the monk Thomas Walsingham (dated around 1419 and dedicated to the sovereign), and those of the writings of the poets John Lydgate and Thomas Occleve, extolling his military exploits in France. The consultation of such unashamedly biased sources prevents a clear historiographic evaluation among contemporaries, which can be denied, however, by the confidence with which Henry V implemented his ambitious foreign policy. In fact, the full harmony of the sovereign with the expectations of the English people are a tacit sign of the popularity that the sovereign enjoyed in large strata of the Kingdom. Other important contemporary historical evidence, which will later be used by Shakespeare for his Henry V, are the Henrici Quinti Angliae Regis Gesta. The same French chroniclers contemporary to Henry V”s French campaign, such as Waurin, Jean Chartier and Chastellain, acknowledged that “although he had been their enemy, he was indeed a great character”.
Under the Tudor dynasty (especially on the part of Henry VIII, who dreamed of emulating his predecessor”s feats of war) the memory of Henry V was the object of a veritable patriotic propaganda. Raphael Holinshed”s Chronicles, first published in 1577 in the reign of Elizabeth I, profoundly influenced the historical theater of William Shakespeare, who crystallized the figure of Henry V into the virtuous, affable, and pious ruler that the historiographical tradition of the modern age has not challenged.
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Henry V in literature and cinema
As mentioned before, it was on the character of Henry V that William Shakespeare focused his homonymous historical drama, where the sovereign appears as the purest hero of the national epic. Already in Henry IV, Shakespeare had introduced the figure of the then Prince of Wales (called in the play by the nickname of Hal), delineating him as a young man in full psychological evolution, at the beginning extremely impulsive and devoted to pleasure, and then mature towards the end of the play. When he became king, Henry embodied all the virtuous traits that distinguished the ethics of chivalry: a strong sense of justice, great religiousness, determination and confidence in his actions. A manifest example of this strong personality is testified by the speech that Henry gave to the troops the evening before the beginning of the battle of Agincourt, a masterpiece of patriotic and national rhetoric. The theatrical re-enactment that Shakespeare created, however, was modeled on precise political and ideological needs of Elizabethan England: the figure of Henry V, in fact, became the symbol par excellence of the national unity of the English people united under the command of the monarch.
Three films and a television series have been made from the Shakespearean play:
Also, in a scene from the film Anonymous (2011), he is seen acting out part of the play.
On June 2, 1420, in Troyes, France, Henry married Catherine of Valois, daughter of King Charles VI of France and Isabella of Bavaria. Catherine bore Henry an only son, Henry VI of Windsor, king of England.
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