‘To Lose One Excalibur May Be Regarded As A Misfortune…’
How two English kings parted company with Arthur’s famous sword.
At Agincourt, in the midst of his victory over the French, Henry V suffered what, on the face of it, should have been a great loss. A force of local nobility and peasants appeared behind the English lines and ransacked the baggage wagons. According to the Chroniques de Ruisseauville the men of the nearby town of Hesdin, led by the knights Ysembert d’Azincourt and Robinet de Bournouville, carried away gemstones, two crowns, a fragment of the True Cross and ‘the sword of King Arthur which was worth so much money that no one knew what to do with it…’
Henry V took the field against apparently insurmountable odds, but Excalibur, Arthur’s magical sword, was left in his saddlebags. Then, when a sneaky French attack plundered it from the baggage, there was hardly a murmur of discontent. Henry doesn’t even seem to have demanded its return as part of the peace settlement after his victory.
Why hadn’t he chosen to make use of this great weapon, brandishing it on the field and smiting his enemies, and why was he so apparently sanguine about its loss?
Excalibur - Arthur’s not-so-magical sword.
Excalibur holds a fascination for us, imbued with magic, mysticism and power. It becomes the eponymous heart of John Boorman’s 1981 re-imagining of the Arthur legend. but in the medieval tales it does not always have the same significance.
(Universal Images Group North America LLC / DeAgostini / Alamy Stock Photo)
Part of the problem is that we have a rather inflated opinion of Excalibur. If there is one ‘medieval’ sword that everyone knows it is Excalibur. It is perhaps the most iconic weapon, at least in the English-speaking world. Ask the majority of people and they will tell you that it was the sword of King Arthur, and that he was either given it by the mysterious Lady of the Lake, or that he drew it from a stone, in the latter case demonstrating his right to become the King of the Britons. Some might know that it was forged on the mystical isle of Avalon. They may remember that, on Arthur’s death, the sword was flung into the lake and reclaimed by the Lady, and perhaps that Sir Bedevere, whom Arthur had entrusted with this task, failed to follow his command the first time. Most will agree that Excalibur is magical, and a very few might know that the scabbard was equally magical, ensuring that its wearer would never suffer loss of blood. If pressed, however, even fewer if any will be able to suggest the specific power with which the sword itself was imbued.
In actuality, none of the medieval tales of Arthur assign any magical powers to Excalibur. In the earliest of versions, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, the sword - Caliburnus (derived from the Welsh Caledfwlch, the name which Arthur’s sword has in the Welsh tales Geoffrey drew on for inspiration) - is merely one of the named pieces of wargear belonging to Arthur, appearing alongside his shield Pridwen and his spear Ron (again Latin renderings of Welsh names from the Mabinogion’s telling of the Arthur myth). The twelfth-century romance writer Chrétien de Troyes, so important for creating many elements of the tales which would become central elements of the myth, puts the sword in the possession of Arthur’s nephew, the knight Gawain. The ‘Vulgate Cycle’ of the first half of the thirteenth century gives Excalibur something more of a role; originating the idea of it being the mystical Sword in the Stone, drawn by the true King of the Britons. This branch of the tradition also sees Arthur give Gawain Excalibur when the young knight represents him in tournament and adventure.
The arrival of Excalibur is somewhat magical. In most versions of the story Excalibur is not the Sword in the Stone, and it is Nimuë - the Lady of the Lake - who gives it to the king. Again, Nimuë may be mysterious, but there is nothing to suggest that she is in any way other-worldly, nor is the Isle of Avalon, from where the sword is said to come. Geoffrey of Monmouth does not consider it so, he just describes it as a remote place.
References to the making of Excalibur in the medieval traditions are rare. Layamon’s Brut (written between 1190 and 1215), is the first work to give the sword’s forging an other-worldly touch, claiming it to have been forged by the Elven smith Wyar (who must be a variant on the Germanic smith-god Weyland). It is not until Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Mists of Avalon, published in 1983, that Excalibur’s forging becomes truly mythic. She is the first to describe it as being hammered and quenched by dwarves and fairies.
Excalibur’s only power was to shine and dazzle those who gazed on it. Unlike early medieval swords, and those of the sagas such as Skofnung or Tyrfing, it had no power to inflict wounds that would not heal, nor did it have a destiny to inflict evil on and eventually kill its wielder. Nor was it studded with relics as the Carolingian hero Roland’s sword Durendal was; serving as a spiritual conduit for God’s divine power. It was simply a very fine sword. There would be little point in Henry V carrying it onto the field of battle in favour of any other sword. It did not have the power to grant him victory.
That doesn’t mean that the sword was not important, however. Possession of Arthur’s sword was a symbol of royal legitimacy.p We can see this in the way in which Excalibur first left English royal hands.
Excalibur and the Plantagenets
In 1191, on his way to join the Third Crusade, Richard Coeur de lion landed in Sicily. He met the island’s new king, Tancred, and on securing transport for his onward journey made Tancred a gift of ‘the finest sword of Arthur, who was once noble king of the Britons. The Britons called the sword “Caliburn”.’
The Plantagenet monarchs, Henry II and his descendants, were the first to really embrace the Arthurian traditions and seek out links with the mythic king. At the time of Richard’s meeting with Tancred the supposed tomb of Arthur and Guinevere had only just been discovered in Glastonbury Abbey (a miraculous happening for a cash-strapped Abbey in desperate need of funds for repairs following a fire!) Richard had visited in the same year he went on crusade. It has been argued that royal interest in the discovery was connected with Henry II’s recent victories over the Welsh - the ostentatious reburial of their great king in an English abbey making it clear that he was not sleeping and would not come back to lead them to victory over their Saes foes. Ownership of Excalibur made a direct statement as to the Plantagenets’ claim to Arthur’s inheritance. Kings of the English, yes, but also kings of Britain, including Wales.
This is why Richard was prepared to give Excalibur away. As Christopher Berard has argued, his gift of the sword to Tancred was far from being a simple transactional one - the famous sword in return for enough transport to allow him to continue his journey to the Holy Land. It was a nuanced political move, heavily imbued with Arthurian symbolism.
Tancred was holding Richard’s sister Joan captive. She had been the wife of Tancred’s predecessor to the Sicilian crown, William II, and on his death held substantial and strategic lands. In the negotiations for her release (and the return of her dowry: Richard was not doing this just out of brotherly kindness), Richard promised the marriage of his nephew, Arthur of Brittany, to Tancred’s daughter. Berard argues that the gift of Excalibur was made with the intent that Tancred would use it to knight Arthur at his wedding, returning the sword to the heir to the throne of Britain, and thereby make Arthur of Brittany heir to his legendary namesake. As the heirloom of Arthur, the sword was not being traded for ships but being used in an elaborate piece of Arthurian and dynastic theatre to reinforce Arthur’s position as Richard’s heir.
The plan came to nought. Tancred died in 1194, his throne taken by Henry IV of Germany. Arthur was not destined to be Richard’s heir. He was too young at the time of Richard’s death in 1199, and it was his uncle John who took the throne; Arthur was imprisoned, and then disappeared (almost certainly killed by John). There is no record of the sword being returned to the Plantagenet dynasty and we should presume it to be lost. Indeed, there is no further mention of Excalibur in the hands of English monarchs until it is taken from Henry V at Agincourt.
There should be no surprise that Excalibur disappears from view. By the fifteenth century the legend had developed that Arthur, dying from Mordred’s mortal blow at Camlann, instructs that Excalibur be thrown into a nearby pool, returning it to the Lady of the Lake. Excalibur could not therefore be available to be used by English kings, not even that great lover of Arthurian lore, Edward III.
So, the question begs, how did Henry come to have Excalibur in his saddlebags?
The answer is that he didn’t.
A Case of Mistaken Identity?
It is only the later sources that presume that the sword is Excalibur. The earliest source merely states that it was Arthur’s sword. That does not mean it was Excalibur. In spite being the most famous of Arthur’s swords it was not his only one. Several swords were named in the different traditions of Arthur’s story. One in particular is of interest here.
According to the Alliterative Morte Arthure, a version of the legend written around 1400, Clarent was Arthur’s Sword of State, used only for ceremonial occasion and never in battle. Ironically, it is Clarent that Mordred steals and uses to slay Arthur.
Clarent’s ceremonial function connects it to another Arthurian sword, Courte – the sword of the Cornish hero Tristan. In his legend the sword was chipped whilst slaying the Irish giant Morhault. It later came into the hands of the companion of the French hero Roland, Ogier the Dane. He found it too long and used the break in the blade as a reason to have it shortened. This resulted in the sword being too short, and so he named it Courte.
Courte is another sword that ends up in the hands of an English king. In 1207 ‘the sword of Tristan’ is amongst the royal regalia that King John has brought to him at his Palace of Clarendon from the Tower of London. John had received Tristan’s sword in another piece of anti-Celtic Arthurian theatre staged by Henry II in 1185. Here Henry knighted his youngest son and granted him lordship of both Cornwall and Ireland. Henry was drawing a direct link between his son and the Cornish hero who overcame the Irish, making another statement as to the Plantagenet claim of authority over all of Britain.
Just as with Excalibur, Tristan’s sword seems to disappear from view after the single mention in 1207. Given the way in which John’s regalia and treasures were to disappear – famously lost in the Wash – we might assume that Tristan’s sword was amongst those items that went beneath the waves.
However, a sword called Courte, with a clipped tip, serves as the ‘Sword of Mercy’, one of the three swords in the English coronation ritual, and has done since the late middle ages. The link between this Courte, and Tristan’s chipped and shortened blade, and Arthur’s unblemished Sword of State is an obvious one. It would seem likely that Clarent and Courte have become confused and compounded over time.
Charles of Orléans, being led away captive at Agincourt, from a later fifteenth-centruy chronicle. The raid on the baggage that saw the theft of Excalibur (or, as it might be, Clarent or Courte) also led Henry to order the execution of a number of French prisoners.
(Martial d’Auvergne, The Vigils of Charles VII, circa 1484, Département des Manuscrits. Français 5054,fol. 11 / Alamy)
Given what else was stolen from the baggage it would seem likely that it was Courte that was the sword in Henry V's saddlebags at Agincourt. Perhaps he was carrying the coronation regalia in anticipation of being crowned king of France after a successful campaign, or so that it could be carried in procession (perhaps at an Easter or Christmas crown-wearing, when monarchs traditionally wore their regalia). The French chroniclers would have heard that it was one of Arthur’s swords that was taken and, quite naturally, assumed that it was his most famous one.
This whole tall tale might serve as an explanation of why there was so little fuss over the loss of one of Arthur’s swords. Why there was no concerted effort to have it returned (it made its way into the hands of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, being too hot a property for the local knights who had taken it as it linked them to the raid, and the resultant deaths of the noble prisoners Henry ordered executed).
English kings since Richard had been seemingly careless of Arthur’s heirlooms, no longer seeing them as swords of magical power and mystical provenance, but rather as symbols of royal power and authority, tools to be used for political points scoring and leverage. Yes they were important, but they were not irreplaceable.
Selected Readings:
Martin Aurell, The Plantangenet Empire, 1154-1224, trans. David Crouch (Harlow, 2007)
C. M. Berard, Arthurianism in Early Plantagenet England, from Henry II to Edward I (Woodbridge, 2019)
Anne Curry, Agincourt: A New History (London, 2006)
Emma Mason, ‘The Hero’s Invincible Weapon: An Aspect of Angevin Propaganda’, The Ideals and Practices of Knighthood: Proceedings of the Fourth Strawberry Hill Conference, ed. C. Harper-Bill and R. Harvey (Woodbridge, 1990), pp. 121-38
Kathy Toohey, ‘King Arthur’s Swords’, The Grail Quest Papers, ed. Barbara Poston-Anderson and Anne-Marie Morrison (Sydney, 2000), 26-38
