Since you’ve been kindly posting excerpts from the Samuel Lane article, could I trouble you for your take (or the historical consensus, if there is one) on the situation with Fusoris and Le Gay? Was Courtenay not sending false information to Fusoris? (50k men, rations for six months, etc) Does that mean he expected Le Gay to be discovered? Or didn’t trust Le Gay and/or Fusoris? If it *was* a gambit of sorts to plant false intelligence among the French (a weird one, since surely the French could have easily disproved it via their own agents), does that mean Henry would have been involved in it? Or was Courtenay trying to “test” Fusoris in some way? Was Fusoris suspected of being a French agent? If Fusoris *was* working for the English, what good would info like that have done him? Could they have been trying to discredit him? *head explodes*
(Ngl, my intrigue re Fusoris is primarily due to *that* quote from him about Henry because historians throw it around like it was definitely a candid opinion and ignore the really ambiguous context surrounding it…)
Oh, man, the Fusoris situation is weird. I think Fusoris was passing information onto Courtenay, probably deliberately, but how much of his testimony is true, I don't know. I can write a lot of words about this and then basically sum my thoughts as to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
For anyone who doesn't know: A priest, Raoul de Gay, was captured by the English at the siege of Harfleur. de Gay was passed into the custody of Richard Courtenay, who allowed him to go free in exchange for taking a message to Jean Fusoris, a French astronomer Courtenay had met while heading Henry V's previous embassies to Paris. To make a long story short, de Gay ended up going to the authorities with the letter and Fusoris was put on trial for passing information to the English. In his defence, Fusoris claimed that he had sold some astronomical instruments to Courtenay and basically had only stayed in communication with him to receive full payment. The records for his trial survived and include some detailed accounts of his interactions with Courtenay. Although the story looks damning, there wasn't enough evidence to convict Fusoris and rather than facing the death penalty, he was exiled from Paris
Most historians who mention Fusoris (and some don't) will say that he was or could have been a spy and was lucky to escape with his life. Ian Mortimer bucks the trend by presenting Fusoris as an innocent patsy fed a steady stream of disinformation by a "sly" Courtenay for Reasons. Seb Falk's assessment of Fusoris - either guilty or "at best, spectacular naive" in his dealings with Courtenay - feels about right to me. As for the information contained in Fusoris's testimony, there's no consensus on how much of it is true.
I think some of it probably was truthful, simply because there is so much detail and it seems to be one logical narrative with no obvious contradictions within it. I also think some of his story was dishonest simply because being on trial for treason gave him plenty of motivation not to tell the complete truth, whether he was guilty or innocent. If he was guilty, he likely would have tried to hide his guilt and avoid being executed. If he was innocent, he may have omitted some details or lied in some places to present himself in the most flattering or innocent light. His answers, also, may have contained disinformation he had been told by Courtenay or other sources but he believed to be true.
There is also the possibility that his testimony was given under significant pressure and he may have given answers designed to please or placate his interrogators. He was, after all, a potential source of reliable information about Henry V's court - his unflattering description of Henry as a man better suited to be a priest than a soldier or reports of Henry's ill-health and rumoured risings against Henry may have been designed to show himself to be a source of potentially valuable information about Henry V and his court that the French could exploit.
We can assess some of the details given in Fusoris's account. Sometimes his account is the only - or only major - source of information for his claims, such as the claim that Henry was in ill health or interested in astrology. Some of his claims do seem to be borne out by surviving evidence. For instance, he reported rumours of risings against Henry which are given some credulity by the revelation of the Southampton Plot. I can go into more detail if you'd like but I didn't want this ask to be too long.
As you note in your ask, the letter Courtenay sent to Fusoris about the number of English troops and supplies looks pretty damn dodgy. The English army was about 11,000-12,000 strong, well below the 50,000 Courtenay claimed and their supplies didn't last for 6 months - though that might have been because they rotted or were lost (according to the chronicler Monstrelet, some of the supplies had been damaged at sea).
We can only guess at the purpose(s) of Courtenay's letter to Fusoris. He may have hoped that it would inspire a rumour about the size of the English army in hopes of demoralising the French - probably not the French government, who (as you say!) would have their own spies and informants, but the regular citizenry who would make up the bulk of the French army. Fusoris could have been his unwitting accomplice in this endeavour - or, alternatively, Courtenay's willing accomplice. The apparent error may have been a code, which might be borne out by the fact the letter was accompanied by a list of items (namely, it seems, melons, almonds and "other fruits") that Courtenay wanted Fusoris to purchase from the prior of the Celestines in Paris and bring to him at Harfleur. Fusoris's interrogators seem to have believed it could be a coded message and the prior claimed they didn't even grow melons in their Paris house. To be honest, it feels way too bizarre to take at face value. Why would Courtenay to ask a French astronomer to buy a lot of fruit and then personally deliver the fruit to him while he's attending the siege of a French city?
However, through le Gay, Courtenay was also openly inquiring about the French army's composition in his message so he wasn't exactly being subtle. He may have trusted le Gay with the implication that Fusoris was an informant or felt he had little choice but to trust le Gay. Alternatively, he may have intended le Gay to reveal Fusoris as a spy for whatever reason - perhaps Fusoris was attracting suspicion from the French or had run out of usefulness.
I think that last one is the weakest explanation. I think it's more likely that Courtenay "trusted" le Gay and that the message was (possibly) a coded one. What the code meant, I'm not going to guess - Fusoris probably took the melons with him to his grave.
Whatever was going on, Henry V was almost certainly aware and involved in it. Courtenay (according to Fusoris) claimed that he and Henry often talked about Fusoris and in July, Fusoris had met Henry personally. though very briefly. Two of the French envoys, Bishop Fresnel and Jean Andre, claimed Fusoris had met Henry the day before Fusoris claimed to have briefly met Henry and spent about two hours with him, though Fusoris, perhaps naturally, denied this. Finally, as Samuel Lane notes, the letter itself warned Fusoris not to mention his own or Courtenay's name in reply because their communication was a secret to everyone but the king "who is most discreet, as you know", which certainly implies Henry was involved in some way.
Now, as for that quote (or at least what I assume you meant by "that quote"): Courtenay saying that Henry had not had carnal knowledge of women since his coronation ("non credebat quod cognovisset mulierem carnaliter, postquam ipse susceperat coronam"). I absolutely understand what you mean because I got whiplash from Ian Mortimer claiming that everything Courtenay told Fusoris was lies and disinformation apart from that bit, which he then uses to build 99.9% of his argument that Henry was an awful, awful misogynist and most importantly, Not A Fun Guy Who Would Have Totally Supplied The Lads With Prostitutes Like Perfect King Edward III Definitely Did.
However, it does seem to be legitimate because The First English Life of Henry the Fifth also records a variation of that claim:
I haue hearde of credible report, this noble prince, Kinge Henrie the Fifte, obserued so constantly that from the death of the Kinge his Father vntill the marriage of himself he neuer had knowledge carnally of weomen
The First English Life is ostensibly a 16th century translation of Titus Livius Frulovis's Vita Henrici Quinti but the anonymous translator also incorporated information from a "report" by James Butler, Earl of Ormond (1392-1452). This report is the source of the translator's claim that Henry did not have sex between his coronation and wedding. Ormond certainly knew Henry and served in the retinue of his brother, Thomas, Duke of Clarence - but I can't find any reason why both Ian Mortimer and James Wylie label Ormond as a close friend of Henry's. imho, it's possible Ormond recorded the general opinion about Henry's sex life but it's unlikely he, personally, knew whether or not Henry was having sex.
Courtenay, on the other hand, was a clearly intimate friend of Henry who spent a great deal of time with him and had his confidence and so it's very possible that his claim does reflect the truth - and the fact that it's supported by Ormond means we should take it seriously.
There is still room to doubt. Courtenay says something like to his knowledge Henry had not sex with women following his coronation, which leaves the door to the possibility that Henry had sex but Courtenay didn't know about it or Henry was having sex, just not with women. (I don't think Courtenay was subtly outing Henry as having sex with men but let's acknowledge there's a difference between "no sex with women" and "no sex"). Courtenay did spend some months apart from Henry while on embassy so maybe Henry was having sex when Courtenay wasn't there to know. Alternatively, perhaps Henry was having sex but so discreetly that very few people actually knew and those who knew pretended he wasn't as a way to bolster his reputation (as Katherine J. Lewis points out, chastity was not just "a generic moral quality, but as a guarantee of good rule").
I do think that this claim is true - at least as far it reflects a widespread belief about Henry's sex life. But it's one of the few things in the Fusoris testimony that can be verified.
In brief, the context of Fusoris's testimony means we have to very careful in taking what he says at face value. Some things he says can be backed up by other evidence (such as the claim Henry V wasn't having sex or rumours of plots), for others he's our only major source. Some of the things he says might be disinformation, possibly his own or possibly disinformation he had been unknowingly fed.
References
The First English of Henry V, ed. C. L. Kingsford, (Clarendon Press 1911)
Christopher Allmand, Henry V (Yale Monarchs 1992)
Juliet Barker, Agincourt: The King, The Campaign, The Battle (Abacus 2015)
Hilary M. Carey, Courting Disaster: Astrology at the English Court and University in the Later Middle Ages (Macmillan 1992)
Anne Curry, 1415 Agincourt: A New History (The History Press 2015)
Anne Curry, Henry V: From Playboy Prince to Warrior King (Penguin Monarchs 2015)
Seb Falk, The Light Ages: A Medieval Journey of Discovery (Allen Lane 2020)
Samuel Lane, "The Adoption of the English Language by Henry V", The Fifteenth Century XX (The Boydell Press 2024)
Katherine J. Lewis, Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England (Routledge 2013)
L. Mirot, Le procès de maître Jean Fusoris, dans Mémoires de la Société de l’histoire de Paris et de l’Île-de-France, Paris, 1900, t. 27, p. 137-297.
Ian Mortimer, 1415: Henry V’s Year of Glory (Vintage 2010)
Malcolm Vale, Henry V: The Conscience of a King (Yale University Press 2016)
James Hamilton Wylie, The Reign of Henry the Fifth: Volume 1 (1413-1415) (Cambridge University Press 1914)
James Hamilton Wylie, The Reign of Henry the Fifth: Volume 2 (1415-1416) (Cambridge University Press 1919)
Ok, SO: If you're going to do the tennis ball joke from Henry V onstage, I think you play it one of two ways. The first way, you have exactly two tennis balls delivered to Henry. It becomes a way for the Dauphin to literally say, "you're so little a man and so little a king that not only am I happy to hand you your own pathetic excuses for testicles, but then I will then give them a gentle tap with my tennis racquet and you will be completely and utterly destroyed." This then gives Henry the opportunity to fire back with, "oh, that's funny. Wait till you see the big brass gunstones that drag the ground when I walk. And just because you were such a dick about this, I will use them to utterly destroy France." The visual jokes, of course, write themselves, particularly if your actor has a viciously funny comedic edge. Hell, give Henry a Mao table with little figurines and have him yeet one of the balls at the French figures (bonus points if they somehow low-key explode when hit).
The second way is less about the masculinity of the respective royals' man bits and more about the heel-face-turn from farce to horror. In this method, you have just a STUPID number of tennis balls be delivered. I'm talking baskets. Bushels. Bins. Bags. So, so many fucking tennis balls. The Dauphin is no longer the crown prince of France, he's a guy in a math problem who invested way, way too much time time money in this joke. I want so many tennis balls onstage that it is a goddamn HAZARD. I want people finding tennis balls in their pockets like, "wait how the fuck did this get here!?" I want them to run out of space on every surface and start putting them on the floor. I want Henry to stand up from his goddamn throne and have someone put a basket of tennis balls on it so he can't sit back down. Every. Tennis. Ball.
And then. And then when Henry digs into that speech and turns those balls to gunstones, it's no longer your bitter ex-boyfriend taking revenge in the weirdest way possible, it's an arsenal of every cannonball that Henry is going to rain down on France. It is wrath raining death and destruction down on an enemy nation and because you can SEE the scale, it stops being funny real quick and becomes the ominous herald of the war to come.
And wither way you do it, I think you also have Henry just ALWAYS be fidgeting with a tennis ball for the rest of the play. Lord Scroop betrayed him? Yeet a tennis ball in fury. Have to hang Bardloph? Roll that ball between your palms or squeeze it till your knuckles go white. Talking to your men in disguise the night before the battle? Build rapport with that goddamn tennis ball. Trying to woo Katherine? Juggle that tennis ball, baby!
Anything to keep in the forefront of Henry's and the audience's mind that that is where it started. A joke taken seriously that ended in the death of traitors, innocent boys, and way too many soldiers.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery, London, United Kingdom
Henry V of England
Henry V (11386 – 1422), also called Henry of Monmouth, was King of England, Lord of Ireland, and Duke of Aquitaine from 1413 until his death in 1422.
Did you know?
Henry V was the first king of England since the Norman invasion to use English as his primary language. His predecessors had all preferred French.
On October 25, 1415, an English army of 6,000 defeated a 20,000-strong French force against all odds. Playwright William Shakespeare immortalized the scene, giving Henry a stirring speech to his men.
The king won a series of victories in France, capturing Caen and Rouen, and in 1420, under the Treaty of Troyes, married Catherine, daughter of French king Charles Vi, was made French regent, and was recognized as heir to the French throne.
He had proven himself a great warrior during a raucous youth in which, as a teenage Prince of Wales, he led the battle against Welsh rebel Owain Glyndwr, and was involved in ambushes, a midnight fight in a London tavern, and practical jokes at court.
He famously put all his pranks behind him on becoming King - and even declared that none of his former friends could come within ten miles of him. Posed to unite the English and French thrones, he died at only thirty-five of dysentery contracted in the siege of Meaux, near France.
