Battlefield vineyards: Part 1

As armies have tramped their way across Europe over the centuries, so have they plundered its cellars and fought and died in and destroyed its vineyards.

There are few vineyards on the continent that have not, at some point or other, seen the fatal tide of battle roll over them.

One can take many accounts of the First or Second World War, particularly the latter, and read of local actions taking place in this Italian vineyard or that French one. The damage wrought by those wars on Champagne and Alsace, Italian, Hungarian, Austrian and German vineyards was immense.

Of course, in the era of total war, where front lines run for hundreds of miles, the all-encompassing nature of warfare cannot but consume all landscapes laid before it.

As such, the battles here are all from the age of more limited war when generals strove to pick the ground on which to fight extremely carefully – and sometimes the positions they chose were vine covered.

Many of those vineyards have either disappeared since or indeed new plantings have gone in where before there were none. Some of these battles and campaigns are famous: Cannae, Poitiers, Porto and Champagne. Sometimes their wine history and fame far outweighs their military past: Roche-au-Moine, Dürenstein-Krems, Macon and Nuits-St-Georges.

Yet all of these battles are important or significant for various reasons. Some, not always the most well-known, had a decisive influence on the course of European history. Others are indicative of the importance of wine and viticulture to a region’s economy as well as the sheer scope and extent of wine’s commercial reach; the trade it engenders and how hard those bonds can be to cultivate and how easily they can be broken.

This first part looks at four battles/campaigns from the classical and medieval period and the next on the titanic struggles between Napoleonic France and her enemies.

218-201 BC: The second Punic war and the campaigns of Hannibal

The plains of Cannae where Hannibal won his greatest victory are now covered in vines.

Hannibal’s long and bloody campaigns against Rome that marked the late second century BC includes a veritable checklist of what are, today, famous wine regions.

Rioja, Priorat, Catalonia, Languedoc-Roussillon, the Rhône, Emilia-Romagna, Montepulciano, Puglia and Campania, all were among the modern wine regions once traversed by Hannibal’s extraordinary army.

Of course, in 218 BC, most of those regions had not yet been put under vine. The ancient Iberians and Gauls did not practice viticulture although the Greek colonies along the Spanish and Gaulish coastlines, such as at Massilia, today Marseille, certainly did include winemaking as part of their economy.

Before setting out to destroy Rome, Hannibal first had to pacify the Iberian tribes along the Ebro as far along as the areas now known, collectively, as Rioja. He left his brother Hanno to keep peace in the area before moving across the Pyrenees.

When Hannibal crossed the Rhône – a spot still debated today but probably not far north of Avignon – it was not the thriving home of Syrah and Grenache but the rather less welcoming home of the Volcae tribe who fiercely resisted his passage.

It would not be until Italy that the Carthaginians would have come across vines in any great quantity though, even so, not to the extent they exist now.

Hannibal’s most famous victory took place on the plains of Cannae. It is said some 50,000 Romans were slaughtered in what is widely held as one of the most ‘perfect’ battles ever fought and where now exist row after regimented row of vines producing wine in bulk or for the local DOC Barletta.

In the years that followed Cannae the Romans refused to give battle to what they now recognised as their Nemesis. The new dictator, Fabius, forbade confronting Hannibal directly in the field but opted to wait until Rome’s manpower was sufficiently replenished.

So, for the next 15 years, Hannibal roamed southern Italy, reducing Roman towns, setting up client kings and burning the olive groves and vineyards to try and tempt the Romans out from behind their walls.

While ravaging Campania when trying to bring Fabius to battle, he even burned the vineyards that produced the famous Falernian wine around Mount Massicus.

In the end, however, Hannibal’s victories and pillaging were all for naught. Recalled to Africa by his political enemies, he was finally defeated at Zama by Scipio in 202 BC. The infamous Carthaginian war elephants – reputedly given wine before battle to encourage them into a frenzy and to ignore pain – were countered by a simple drill manoeuvre; soldiers stepping aside to create lanes through which the wine-addled elephants charged to the rear, where they were dealt with by javelin-armed men.

In 146BC Carthage would be destroyed, but one of the few things salvaged from the great city before it was torched were the famous treatises by Mago on agriculture, including viticulture.

Translated into Latin and now only existing in works by the likes of Columella, this accumulated Phoenician knowledge would help form the basis of Roman winemaking techniques that would then be taken into Gaul and Iberia as the Roman Empire began its inexorable expansion; bringing viticulture and wine to those very areas which Hannibal had passed through in his bid to destroy Rome over a century before.

1214: La Roche-au-Moine

There is a special place in the hearts of most wine lovers for Savennières and its steely, honeyed Chenin Blancs.

Many who’ve been to the region are no doubt well acquainted with the Château de la Roche aux Moines, home of the ‘clos’ ‘La Coulée de Serrant’, which is farmed by one of the Loire’s foremost producers Nicolas Joly.

However, while the vine-clad hills that lead down to the Loire present a peaceful sight today, in early July 1214 the hill where the ‘château’ stands was dominated by an important castle and the fields around it would have been filled with the army of the King of England, John I.

By the early 13^th century the once mighty Angevin empire that stretched up the western French coast from Gascony to Normandy was in tatters, broken apart by the French king Philip II and the inability of John of England to inspire sufficient loyalty in his French and English barons.

In 1214 however, John struck an alliance with the Count of Flanders and the Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV with the aim of attacking Philip’s kingdom on two fronts. John would launch an attack through the Loire with the aim of rallying his Angevin and Poitevin nobles back to his cause before reclaiming Normandy; while the Flemish and Germans would strike from the north through Flanders and Picardy.

The campaign began well enough for John. By June his forces had retaken Anjou and many of the barons had come back into his camp – or so he thought.

After capturing several important castles on 19 June he began to besiege the small castle of Roche-au-Moine, no doubt expecting the business to be over swiftly. The garrison, led by the aptly named Guillaume des Roches, had other ideas and resisted stoutly.

Philip II became increasingly aware of this threat in the west just as he was about to set out to confront Otto in Flanders. Recognising the seriousness of the situation, he despatched his son, Prince Louis, with 800 knights and several thousand other troops to the Loire where they arrived in late June. On 2 July the English army would have watched the arrival of the French and John prepared to give battle, confident in victory because of his superior numbers.

At this crucial juncture however, his Angevin and Poitevin nobles, never wholly loyal to begin with, declined to support him and slipped away.

His army substantially weakened, John’s tactical and strategic position in France was fatally compromised. He raised the siege of the little castle and fell back on La Rochelle, closely followed by Louis.

At the end of July at Bouvines near Lille, the Flemish and Germans were decisively defeated by Philip and the safety of the Kingdom of France was not only secured but its status as the most powerful and dominant realm in Europe was established for the next century.

Little remains of the old castle today, it was torn down during the Wars of Religion in the 16th century although part of the wall and a small tower do still exist. La Roche-au-Moine may not have been much of a battle, it barely merits a mention in most histories of the period, but, as Sean McGlynn has argued, John’s critical failure on the banks of the Loire absolutely confirmed the English loss of northern France and relegated their possessions on the Continent to Aquitaine.

However, it was far from the last time the Loire would be a battleground between England and France.

1356: Poitiers

English soldiers broach wine casks at a manor house they’re ransacking during a chevauchée

Despite being an ancient and important historical city, Poitiers is not widely celebrated for its wine. Too far south from the more fêted vineyards along the Loire around Angers and Tours, Poitiers has instead the AOC of Haut-Poitu, which was created in 2010.

In the Middle Ages though, when viticulture was far more widespread, the wines of Poitou were among the most famous in France but even that could not and would not spare them from the ravages of the Hundred Years War.

In August 1356 an English army led by Edward Prince of Wales set out from the city of Bordeaux on a great ‘chevauchée’ – a long range raid – into France with the aim of sacking and plundering the countryside.

By September Edward was in the Loire and attempted, unsuccessfully, to take Tours. After the disastrous battle of Crécy in 1346 the French, much like the Romans after Cannae, had become increasingly wary of facing the English and their longbowmen in open battle. Furthermore, maintaining standing armies was expensive and assembling one took time, to the extent that an English raid might wreak havoc in an area and then march to friendly territory before the French were able to gather together a force to do anything about it.

However, in this particular instance, the French king, John II, already had an army assembled not far away and quickly marched to the Loire to chase off the English and even destroy them in an engagement if they were able.

Their pursuit was relentless and not for the first or last time an English army found itself pursued by a superior French force, far from safety and running out of supplies.

On 16 September the Prince of Wales turned to face his pursuer a short distance south of Poitiers. He chose a strong position, his flanks secured by woods and boggy ground while to his front was a vineyard.

The next few days were taken up with the attempts of the Cardinal of Périgord to negotiate a peace between the two camps. As he hurries back and forth from the prince to the king each side takes the opportunity to scout each others’ positions and adjust their plans accordingly. The French in particular take note of the thick vineyard and hedgerows in front of the English line, which they know will render a mounted attack useless.

The English know it too. Froissart writes that as Cardinal Périgord rides from the French to the English he found the Prince of Wales, “standing among his men in the thickest part of a vineyard, awaiting the French attack with every sign of confidence.”

The cardinal’s peace overtures come to nothing and on Monday, 19 September battle is joined. Although the English arrow fire is less effective against the dismounted French knights, the thick hedges and tangled vineyard disrupt their assault. After a fierce battle the French are defeated and John and his young son Philip, future Duke of Burgundy, are among the many great nobles captured.

The Loire would continue to be a flash point over the course of the 14^th century. Although various peace treaties in the 1360s stopped outright warfare, the area was among the regions of France that suffered the depredations of the so-called ‘Free Companies’, gangs of unemployed soldiers who, with no war to fight, turned to brigandage.

They occupied a number of castles along the upper Loire and despite proving a persistent thorn in the side of the French king, winning many battles, they didn’t have it all their own way.

While staying at the court of the Count of Foix, Froissart met a Gascon squire called the Bascot* de Mauléon who had been part of a Free Company.

The Bascot remembered one of their number, Sir John Aimery, had been ambushed and captured by some French knights. Ransomed for 30,000 francs Sir John was spitting with rage and decided to sack the town of Sancerre in retribution.

Yet, as the Bascot went on, the garrison commander of Sancerre, Guichard Aubergeon, caught wind of the plan and laid a trap for the freebooters.

“We left La Charité (sur-Loire) at sunset and rode in order at a brisk pace as far as Pouilly,” remembered the squire. Here the raiders crossed the river and rode up towards Sancerre but just as they approach the town the trap is sprung.

With a cry of “Our Lady, Sancerre!” the locals attack the freebooters and rout them.

“What hampered us most was that we could not spread out, because we were going along a road with tall hedges and vines on both sides of it,” the squire told Froissart. “Some of their men who knew the country and this road well had climbed up on the vine slopes with their servants and were throwing stones at us from above, which bruised us and threw us into disorder.”

The Bascot was captured, so too was Sir John although towards sunrise he died of wounds sustained in the ambush.

The battle, which the Bascot remembered as “hard and nasty”, nonetheless broke the power of the Free Companies in the Loire and saw all of those lands surrendered once more to the French Crown – and a measure of precious peace was restored.

* ‘lo basco‘ – ‘the Basque’; although a Gascon, Mauléon is in the Basque country, the Bascot nonetheless describes himself to Froissart as a “loyal Englishman”. Many freebooters and routiers went by nicknames such as this, another common one being the ‘bourc‘ which was a southern French term for ‘bastard’ and indicates that many of these men were illegitimate sons forced to scrape a living in some manner as they could expect little to no inheritance.

1453: Castillon

As the tide of the Hundred Years War turned against England in the latter half of the 15^th century, it was only a matter of time before the attentions of the French turned towards the city of Bordeaux.

With the collapse of the Anglo-Burgundian alliance in 1435, the pace of the French reconquest stepped up.

Normandy was retaken in the 1440s and the French marcher lords in Gascony crept ever closer to the great wine port on the Gironde.

In fact Bordeaux was actually taken by the French in 1451 and the war seemed to be at an end. But, after 300 years of English rule, the jurats and citizens of Bordeaux were not at all inclined to be ruled directly by the French monarch.

Not only did they consider themselves English subjects but they preferred the attitude the English king-dukes had largely taken to their Gascon lands; which was one of little interference in the actual running of the city and the duchy but very much encouraging commerce – especially that of wine.

No sooner had Charles VII marched off again than the city elders were writing an urgent letter to Henry VI of England demanding he take the city back under English rule.

In England though there was little appetite for fresh war in France. The attitude of the nobility towards foreign adventure had slowly changed over the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

In the days of the Angevins the nobles were Anglo-Norman, spoke French and had French lands. Yet after John’s defeat outside La Roche-au-Moine in 1214 so the connections with the Continent had been weakened. The ‘Anglo-Norman’ aristocracy no longer split their time between estates in Sussex and Poitou but remained in England. They stopped speaking French and adopted English as their first language and identified themselves as English.

Knowing their history none doubted Edward III’s claim to those formerly ‘English’ territories in France but the capture of great swathes of land did not lead to a wholesale renewal of those ties with the Continent that had existed in the centuries after the Conquest. English nobles did not have time to enjoy the hunting on new estates. They were garrison commanders, permanently on a war footing, risking death and capture by a hostile and active enemy who might have been in the next castle along from theirs.

The Hundred Years War had brought with it the potential for glory, honour, plunder and profit but as the political landscape in England became increasingly unstable, with over-mighty lords wrestling for control over a weak and feeble-minded king, so most baulked at leading a risky expedition overseas for a cause they no longer considered was any of their concern.

In the end only the old Earl of Shrewsbury, John Talbot, could be found to lead the expedition. Aged at least 66, a veteran of the battle of Verneuil, the Siege of Orléans and numerous other scrapes and chevauchée, he was the last great lord in England to whom the battles of Henry V and the Duke of Bedford really meant anything anymore.

Landing in October 1452 they took the French by surprise. Charles had been expecting an attack but had mustered his forces in Normandy as he thought it the most likely landing place (unlike Adolf Hitler 500 years later). Bordeaux was swiftly recaptured from the weakened garrison and most of Gascony was in English hands again by the end of the year.

Charles though quickly turned his armies southwards and by summer 1453 was raiding the country and investing English castles. When the castle of Castillon was besieged in early July, Talbot gathered his small force and set out to relieve the fort.

The subsequent battle on 17 July pitted the famed English archer against the new power on the battlefield – blackpowder.

The French had a strong and well-entrenched artillery park protecting their siege works and the English advanced straight into it, Talbot having attacked impetuously and on faulty intelligence.

Cannonballs scythed through the English ranks killing six men at a time and in the mêlée Talbot was unhorsed and despatched with an axe.

Some 4,000 English fell at Castillon and only 100 or so Frenchmen; a complete role-reversal from the first great battle of the wars – Crécy.

The surviving English fell back and took refuge in Château Theobon in Margaux, the site of which is now occupied by third growth Château d’Issan. News of the disaster reached England and sent Henry VI into his first bout of catatonic madness. Two years later the kingdom would be gripped by the Wars of the Roses, which would last for the next 30 years.

The French retook Bordeaux on 19 October, allowing the remaining English to sail away. Those Bordelais who wished to go were also given leave to do so, provided they never returned to their homeland. Many did although this injunction prohibiting their return was lifted only a few years later, whereupon many returned to Bordeaux.

The furious and vindictive Charles imposed a number of sanctions on the city, which were greatly resented by the populace. Charles was not the only ruler to punish Bordeaux for its (supposed) lack of loyalty.

Napoleon Bonaparte was less than trusting of the city, which he considered a hotbed of Bourbon and British sympathisers. He wasn’t entirely wrong, the English may have been gone from Bordeaux for three centuries by then but the taste for the region’s wines had never entirely gone away.

In 1814 the city gladly threw open its gates to Wellington’s troops and welcomed them in. But that’s a story for another time.