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| The Battle of Bouvines, in BL Royal MS. 16 G VI f.379 |
The Battle
of Bouvines, fought on 27 July 1214, was one of the most influential battles in
European history, directing the fate of the kingdom of France, the Holy Roman
Empire and the Angevin dominions. In England, it was to lead to Magna Carta. Since
1204, when Philip Augustus had won Normandy from King John, the English king had
worked relentlessly to raise the funds needed to reverse his losses. His
demands pushed his subjects to the brink of rebellion. Defeat at Bouvines
sealed King Philip’s hold on Normandy and fuelled opposition to John’s rule in
England. In Sir James Holt’s words, ‘the road from Bouvines to Runnymede was
direct, short, and unavoidable.’
Defeat at French hands in 1214 was far from inevitable. John
sailed for Poitou in February, dispatching a force commanded by his
half-brother, William Longespée earl of Salisbury, to Flanders. Within weeks of
his arrival, John could write to William Marshal that ‘Hardly had I appeared
when twenty-six castles and fortified places opened their gates to me.’ He took
Nantes and then Angers, which submitted without a fight on 17 June.
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Battle of Roche-aux-Moins, and Louis on the march,
BL Royal MS. 16 G VI f.385 |
Understandably confident, John prepared to face French
forces. King Philip had headed north to Flanders to deal with John’s allies but
had left his son, Louis, in the south. Louis advanced toward Roche-aux-Moins,
where John was besieging the castle. It
was then that the rug was pulled from beneath John’s feet. On seeing Louis’
forces, the Poitevin barons refused to follow John into battle. Abandoning his
baggage and siege engines, John retreated hastily to La Rochelle. From there, on
9 July, he composed a letter to his barons in England pleading for reinforcements.
His appeal was in vain.
Yet the alliance formed by John remained formidable. Outside
the village of Bouvines, the combined forces of William Longespée, Otto of
Brunswick (Holy Roman Emperor and John’s nephew), and the counts of Flanders
and Boulogne prepared to meet King Philip. The allied commanders, after some
debate, chose a Sunday to attack. As this was a day when knights would not normally
bear arms, they hoped to take Philip by surprise. The French king was
sheltering from the heat of the sun in the shade of an ash tree when he was
brought the news that his enemies were arrayed for battle. Quickly raising
himself, he entered the nearby church of St Peter to offer a prayer (‘Lord, I
am but a man, but I am king’) before arming himself.
The two sides drew up an arrow’s shot apart. Both were
formed of three divisions. The French right was commanded by the duke of
Burgundy, its left by the bishop of Beauvais, and its centre by King Philip
himself. The count of Flanders led the allied left, the Emperor Otto its
centre, the earl of Salisbury its right. The fighting began, with each
contingent shouting its own battle-cry (‘Montjoie!’, ‘Boulogne!’, ‘Rome!’, ‘Regales!’).
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A cavalry encounter at Bouvines,
BL Royal MS. 16 G VI f.380v |
Combatants did not set out to kill but rather capture noble enemies,
in accordance with chivalric principles (indeed, the account of the Anonymous
of Béthune describes the battle as if it were a tournament, enacted through
a series of mêlées). Thus knights targeted the horses of opponents. King Philip
was unhorsed by Renaud, count of Boulogne, his erstwhile friend and now vehement
enemy. Set upon by Renaud’s men, Philip was saved by his household knight,
Peter Tristan, who shielded the king and offered him his horse. Meanwhile, three
of Otto’s mounts were killed beneath him, the last after it was stabbed in the eye
by Gerard La Truie, in a fearsome attack sanctioned by King Philip. Many horses were
to fall at Bouvines, as the eye-witness account of William the Breton reveals:
‘You could see horses here and there lying in the meadow and
letting out their last breath; others, wounded in the stomach, were vomiting
their entrails while others were lying down with their hocks severed; still
others wandered here and there without their masters and freely offered
themselves to whomever wanted to be transported by them: there was scarce a
spot where one did not find corpses or dying horses stretched out.’
(It is, perhaps, telling that accounts of the battle make
much of the killing and wounding of horses under knights, but little of the
death of foot soldiers, who must have died in great numbers).
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Flight of the imperial army at Bouvines,
BL Royal MS. 16 G VI f.381v |
The decisive moment in the battle came when the allies’
right division, under the earl of Salisbury, advanced at an angle toward King
Philip’s central force. The French left, headed by Philip of Dreux, the bishop
of Beauvais, confronted the attack. The bishop was an old enemy of the
Angevins. He had been captured by John in 1197, leading a sortie from his city
to meet John’s forces, and brought bound before Richard the Lionheart. According
to the History of William Marshal, the sight had gladdened the English
king, who hated Philip of Dreux almost more than any other. Richard declared
him: ‘a robber, a tyrant and an arsonist, who so loved waging war that he
devastated the whole of my land and pillaged it night and day.’ It was
forbidden for clerics to shed blood, a ban the bishop of Beauvais defied; as
Richard complained, ‘it was not as a bishop that he was taken captive but as a
knight of great reputation, fully armed and with his helmet laced.’ Now, at
Bouvines, he faced the English contingent wielding his mace. Launching himself
at William Longespée, he dealt such a blow that he shattered the earl’s helmet.
Thrown to the ground, the earl was captured. So too were the counts of Flanders
and Boulogne and a host of allied knights. Otto fled the field, having been
provided with a horse by Guy d’Avesne to replace his dying mount.
After three hours of brutal fighting in the blazing July sun,
Philip’s forces had triumphed. For the allies it was, in the words of the History
of William Marshal, an ‘ignominious rout’. 400 miles away in Bouteville,
south-east of La Rochelle, John was yet to know that his dreams of recovering
Normandy had been crushed.
Note on sources: the Battle of Bouvines is described in
several sources, including the eye-witness (though partisan) account of William
the Breton. Many of these were translated into French by George Duby for the
appendices of his Le Dimanche de Bouvines (Paris, 1973), and translated
into English from the French in the English edition of Duby’s work, The
Legend of Bouvines (Cambridge, 1990). The battle is also outlined in History
of William Marshal, ed. A. J. Holden and trans. S. Gregory (London, 2004),
II, lines 14787-14839. The various accounts are synthesised in the narrative of
the battle provided by Jim Bradbury in his Philip Augustus: King of France 1180-1223
(London, 1998). John’s capture of the bishop of Beauvais in 1197 is described
by Roger of Howden (The Annals of Roger de Hoveden, trans. H. T. Riley
(London, 1852), II,396 – a reference I owe to Marc Morris), and Richard I’s
enmity for the bishop is stressed in the History of William Marshal, lines
11267-11286, and 11579-11626 (drawn to my attention by Elizabeth
Chadwick).
