"As the new campaigning season opened in the late spring of 1424, both sides made preparations for a major offensive. The dauphin had a war chest of a million livres (£58.33m) granted him by the estates-general of the kingdom of Bourges, and the backing of a new Scottish army, ‘two thousand knights and esquires, six thousand good archers and two thousand Scots with axes', commanded by the elderly earl of Douglas and his eldest son. The dauphin's declared intention was to fight his way to Reims so that he could be crowned in the cathedral, the place where for centuries kings of France had received their coronation.
Bedford's plans were equally ambitious: to wipe out the remaining Armagnac garrisons on the frontiers of Normandy and then secure the border by extending the conquest south into the counties of Anjou, Maine and Dreux. On 3 March 1424 Le Crotoy was handed over in accordance with the terms of capitulation agreed the previous year. Twelve days later Compiègne agreed to surrender. The town had been captured some months earlier in a daring raid by the Armagnac captain Étienne de Vignolles, better known as La Hire, who had taken advantage of thick fog and an inadequate night-watch to take it by surprise from the Burgundians. The siege to recapture it had dragged on until Bedford, uncharacteristically losing patience, took Guillaume Remon, captain of neighbouring Passy-en-Valois, under whom many of the garrison of Compiègne had fought, and paraded him before the town with a halter round his neck, threatening to hang him if they did not surrender, but release him if they did.
Though this produced the desired effect, it cost Sir John Fastolf a considerable amount of money because Remon was his prisoner and he thereby lost not only Remon's ransom but also those of a group of merchants from Hainault and Brabant whom Remon had captured bringing food to sell in Paris. Fastolf was not a man to allow his loss to go unchallenged. He sued the merchants, unsuccessfully, in the parlement of Paris and complained to Bedford for nine long years until the regent finally succumbed and gave him lands in compensation…"
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Amicalement
Armand
shows how using inks makes it easier to paint a 15mm scale army.
