William Marshal’s victory prevented a foreign prince
from ruling England, but Lincoln’s citizens had little cause for celebration.
Perviously the French were unable to capture Lincoln Castle, governed by the formidable Nichola de la Haye.
The rebels invited the king of France to take the throne of England; instead Philip II’s son, Louis (the future Louis VIII), accepted the offer and was hailed as King of England in London in June of 1216. In the same year Nichola prevented another siege by paying off a rebel army, led by Gilbert de Gant, who had occupied the city of Lincoln.
As Louis consolidated his position in the south, John made an inspection of Lincoln castle in September 1216. During the visit Nichola de la Haye, who held the castle for John, even though the city supported the rebels, was appointed Sheriff of Lincolnshire in her own right.
Moving south, just 2 weeks later, the
king’s baggage train was lost as he crossed the Wash estuary and within a
few more days John was desperately ill.
King John died at Newark on 19th October 1216.
BATTLE MAP: 1. Position of the former West Gate, where
William Marshal entered the city 2. Lincoln’s North Gate, which was assaulted
by the Earl of Chester 3. The Cathedral, which was looted by Henry III’s forces
4. Castle Square, where the French were held up by Marshal’s crossbowmen and
where the main battle action took place 5. The lower town, where the French and
the rebels were chased south. The town was ransacked by Marshal’s troops,
giving the battle the name `the Battle of Lincoln Fair.
While most people have heard of Hastings, Crécy, Agincourt
and Bosworth, few have heard of the Battle of Lincoln, and even fewer know that
had it not been for that battle, England might well have been ruled by a King
Louis the First.
Towards the end of King John’s reign, the barons of England
rebelled at what they saw as his arbitrary and vindictive rule. In June 1215,
John temporarily appeased them by agreeing to what would later be called Magna
Carta, a document addressing the perceived abuses of his reign. But when Magna
Carta was withdrawn less than three months later, many English barons concluded
that there was no doing business with John and invited Louis, the son of Philip
Augustus of France, to replace him as the king of England.
Louis duly invaded, and with the support of the rebel
barons, he overran much of southeast England and East Anglia, although the
castles at Windsor and Dover stubbornly held out against him. Then, in October
1216, John did what has been described as the best thing he ever did for his
country. He died. Much of the baronial support for Louis had been motivated by
a hatred of John, and now that he was no longer on the scene, many barons
switched sides in favour of his successor, the nine-year-old Henry III,
especially when his advisors re-issued Magna Carta. Even so, Louis didn’t
abandon his attempts to conquer England, and while half his army continued to
besiege Dover Castle, he sent the rest north to capture Lincoln.
At the time, Lincoln was one of the largest and most
important cities in the country. Perched on the top of a steep hill, it was
surrounded by stone walls and defended by a powerful castle. The castle had two
fortified mounds and two main gates, one leading into the city and the square
opposite Lincoln’s cathedral, and the other westward into the countryside. In 1217,
the castle’s constable was a woman in her 60s, Nichola de la Haye.
Although the castle would prove a tough nut to crack, the
city itself wasn’t prepared to resist a full-scale attack and quickly
surrendered to the forces of Louis, who arrived in March under the command of
the young Comte du Perche and Saer de Quincy, the Earl of Winchester and a
leader of the baronial rebellion. But, with the redoubtable Nichola in command,
the castle held out even though the French brought up siege engines – probably
trebuchets – to bombard its walls.
William Marshal, the regent of England and commander of the forces
loyal to Henry III, was determined not to let such an important stronghold fall
into the hands of Louis. He gathered together a relief force, which assembled
at Newark before heading for Lincoln. They realised that although the main road
entered the city from the south, an approach from that direction was highly
undesirable. Before they could get to the castle, they would have to fight
their way through the town and up a precipitous road that even today is known
as `Steep Hill’. So they marched on Lincoln via Torksey, approaching the city
from the north-west on Saturday 20 May.
Perche and his men saw them coming and, according to one
chronicler, a small reconnaissance force of English rebels went out to check
out the approaching threat. They reported back that William Marshal’s army was
not a particularly large one, and argued that the best course of action was to
leave the city and take them on in the open fields, where their own superior
numbers could prove decisive. The chronicler says that Perche was unconvinced
and sent out a second reconnaissance force, this time made up of French
knights. At the time, a quick way of estimating the strength of an enemy army
was to count the banners of its knights, but this account claims that the
French were unaware of the fact that each English knight carried two banners
and therefore concluded that Marshal’s army was twice as strong as it actually
was. Whether this actually happened isn’t known Perche’s English troops would
have put them right – but in any event, the French decided to remain behind the
safety of the city walls, thus handing the initiative over to Marshal.
Meanwhile, Marshal’s men were arguing about who should have
the honour of leading the assault, with the powerful Earl of Chester
threatening to go home if it wasn’t him. In fact, it didn’t really matter – for
Marshal’s plan was to mount a series of simultaneous attacks from a variety of
directions. While the Earl of Chester led the assault on the city’s North Gate,
drawing the French in that direction, Marshal himself attacked the West Gate.
It was said that he was so keen to join the battle that as he was beginning to
move his column, a page had to remind him that he had forgotten to put his
helmet on. Meanwhile, 300 crossbowmen under Falkes de Breauté, one of Henry
III’s most loyal and ruthless commanders, slipped into the castle through a
postern gate that opened outside the city walls. They took up position on the
castle walls and poured down a deadly shower of crossbow bolts onto the French
below them. Marshal and the Earl of Chester both broke into the city and soon
Lincoln’s cramped streets were filled with a mass of struggling men. One
contemporary described the scene:
“Had you been there you would have seen great blows
dealt, heard helmets clanging. seen lances fly in splinters in the air, saddles
vacated by riders. great blows delivered by swords and maces on helmets and on
arms, and seen knives and daggers drawn for stabbing horses.”
The turning point came when Breauté led the castle’s
garrison out of its East Gate and joined in the fray. Initially, they were
driven back and Breauté was temporarily taken prisoner before being rescued,
but their intervention probably tipped the scales in favour of Marshal, and
when the Comte du Perche was killed by a lance thrust through the eye-slit of his
helmet, the French lost heart. They were steadily driven back down Lincoln’s
steep main street until they reached the gate at the south end of the city,
which was so narrow that few could escape. While we have no idea of what
happened to their ordinary soldiers – the chroniclers at the time simply
weren’t interested in them – many of the knights in the French and rebel army
were taken prisoner.
The battle was won but the destruction and bloodshed wasn’t
yet over. The victorious English considered that the city had surrendered
rather too quickly to the French and, suspecting it of collaboration, meted out
a savage punishment. The entire city was thoroughly sacked. Even the cathedral (whose
clergy had been excommunicated by the Papal Legate accompanying the English
army) was pillaged. As the panic-stricken residents tried to save themselves
and their property from Marshal’s marauding soldiers, tragedy struck. According
to the chronicler Roger of Wendover:
“Many of the women of the city were drowned in the
river for, to avoid shameful offence (ie rape), they took to small boats with
their children, their female servants, and household property. the boats were
overloaded, and the women not knowing how to manage the boats, all
perished.”
As Marshal’s victorious troops left Lincoln, they were so
laden with booty and plunder that it looked to onlookers as though they had
been on some enormous shopping expedition, with the result that the battle
gained its unlikely nickname – Lincoln Fair.
THE MAN WHO WAS NEARLY KING
Prince Louis was the son of Philip Augustus, King of France
and Richard the Lionheart’s partner (and rival) during the Third Crusade. He
was born in 1187 and in 1200 he married Blanche of Castile, a granddaughter of
Henry II. At a time when you didn’t necessarily have to be next in line in
order to take the throne, Louis, who did have royal blood after all, seemed an
ideal replacement for the tyrannical John. To the English barons who asked him
to be their king Louis was all the things John wasn’t – brave, pious,
trustworthy and a man who kept his word. After landing in England he was
proclaimed king in London, and within months about two thirds of the barons and
more than half of the country were under his control. After the failure of his
bid to rule England, Louis returned to France where he succeeded to the throne
as Louis VIII in 1223 and promptly conquered large amounts of the remaining
English territory in the country.
