Time: July 19, 1429
Location: The Royal Encampment, outside the walls of Reims (Near the Abbey of Saint-Remi)
The coronation festivities were still echoing inside the city walls, but out here in the fields near the Abbey of Saint-Remi, the air was cold and sober.
Jean II, Duke of Alençon, stood at the perimeter of the camp occupied by the 1st Compagnie d'ordonnance. Beside him stood his lieutenant, the veteran captain Ambroise de Loré.
"It is... quiet," Alençon murmured. "Too quiet."
"It is the silence of a machine, My Lord," Loré replied, his voice tinged with a mixture of envy and unease.
They walked into the camp. It was a grid of terrifying precision.
In a traditional camp—like Alençon's own, located a mile down the river—the knights pitched their large, colorful pavilions in the center, surrounded by the squalor of their servants and the chaotic hovels of the archers. Here, the layout was mathematical.
The tents were arranged in clusters of six.
Inside one open tent, Alençon saw a shocking sight: a un homme d'armes was sitting on a log, sharpening his sword, while a common archer—a man with dirt under his fingernails—was mending the knight's leather strap. They shared a loaf of black bread.
The Lance. Six men. One unit. Living, eating, and sleeping together.
Raoul de Gamaches, the commander of this new world, walked toward them. He wore no silk, only practical steel and the leather jerkin that had seen the mud of Patay.
"Duke Alençon. Captain Loré," Gamaches greeted them. He did not bow with courtly flourish; he saluted with a sharp strike of his fist against his chest.
"Raoul," Alençon nodded, returning the salute awkwardly. "If my vanguard had possessed this discipline at Verneuil... I would not have spent five years in an English prison."
He looked at the rows of identical tents, the absence of personal heraldry, the suppression of ego.
"The King sent me," Alençon said quietly. "He wants me to start the reform here. He wants me to purge..."
Alençon paused. He was about to say 'my troops'. The words were on his tongue, a habit of twenty years of feudal lordship.
But he looked at the Royal Standard flying above Gamaches's tent. He remembered the Council. He remembered the diagram on the table.
He swallowed the word 'my'. It tasted bitter, like ash.
"He wants me to purge... the King's troops," Alençon corrected himself, his voice firm. "The troops currently in my custody."
Gamaches looked at the Duke with a new respect. He nodded slowly. "Then let us begin, My Lord."
They crossed the invisible line that separated the New Model Army from the old feudal host.
Entering Alençon's sector felt like stepping back in time. The noise hit them first—laughter, arguments, the clanging of cooking pots, the shouting of grooms. It was vibrant, alive, and utterly chaotic.
Ambroise de Loré led them through the maze of guy-ropes. To his credit, the camp was organized better than most; the latrines were dug downwind, and the horses were picketed securely. But the segregation was absolute. The knights drank wine in silver goblets near the center; the archers gnawed on hardtack in the mud at the periphery.
"We have matched the numbers, Gamaches," Loré reported as they walked. "Six hundred men. We have grouped them into one hundred Lances on paper. But..."
Loré gestured to a group of knights who were glaring at a group of archers passing by.
"They refuse to mix. The knights say the archers smell of manure. The archers say the knights are preening peacocks. We have the bodies, but we do not have the cohesion. We have no experience in training them as one."
A squire carrying bridles stopped short when an archer reached for the nearest bit.
"Not for hands like yours," he muttered, and held the tack higher, like a relic kept from touching dirt.
"Training is not about experience," Gamaches said, stopping in the middle of the parade ground. "it is about habit. And habit is forged with pain."
He turned and whistled—a sharp, piercing sound.
From the gate of the 1st Company, five men came running. They did not run like a mob; they ran in a V-formation, their steps synchronized. They halted in front of the Duke and the Captain, snapping to attention as one.
Gamaches gestured to them.
" These are the King's Drill-Masters, sent under seal."
"Men called them, half in awe and half in hatred, the Five Fingers. "
He walked down the line, introducing them not by their lineage, but by their utility.
"Marcel the Hammer," Gamaches pointed to a man whose shoulders were as wide as a doorframe. He carried a heavy wooden staff. "Son of a blacksmith. He teaches endurance and formation. He can march a horse to death."
"Hugues de Montfaucon," he pointed to a lean man with a hawk-like nose. "A fallen squire. He teaches the heavy cavalry charge and the lance strike."
"Thibaut One-Eye," he indicated a scarred man with a patch over his left eye and a longbow in his hand. "He teaches the archers. And he ensures the knights know how to protect them."
"Étienne Inkhand," a younger man with ink stains on his fingers, but eyes like flint. "Logistics and camp hygiene. He teaches them that a clean camp kills fewer men than a dirty sword."
"Bertrand," the last man, stocky and grim-faced. "A former butcher. He teaches close-quarters combat. How to kill with a dagger in the mud."
Gamaches turned to Alençon.
"For the next month, these five men will live here. They will eat here."
He lowered his voice.
"On the field—and only on the field—their word stood above lineage. Including yours, My Lord."
Gamaches reached into his satchel and produced a folded strip of parchment. It was bound with a cord and sealed with a thick disk of dark wax—fleur-de-lis pressed so deep it looked bruised into the wax itself.
He did not hand it to Alençon. He held it up where the Duke could see the seal.
"Not by my mouth," Gamaches said quietly. "By the King's warrant."Alençon's eyes lingered on the unbroken seal. He nodded once, as if signing his name in the air.
Alençon looked at the five men. They were commoners (except for the fallen squire), rough-hewn and scarred. A month ago, his knights would have beaten them for making eye contact.
"Do it," Alençon said.
Ambroise de Loré stepped forward. He blew a horn, signaling a general assembly.
Alençon's troops shuffled into a loose formation. Knights stood casually, leaning on their swords, chatting. Archers huddled in groups, looking wary.
"Men of the Vanguard!" Loré's voice boomed. "From this hour, the old training schedule is abolished."
He swept his hand toward the five strangers.
"These are the King's Instructors. Their word is my word. Their command is the Duke's command."
Loré lifted a parchment high above his head. The wax seal caught the sun like a dark coin.
"This is the King's warrant," he thundered. "Unbroken. Unargued. Any man who disputes it disputes the Crown itself."
A ripple of murmurs went through the ranks.
"FALL IN!" Marcel the Hammer roared. His voice was like a thunderclap, trained to cut through the din of battle. "MIXED FORMATION! LANCES TOGETHER!"
Most of the soldiers, stunned by the volume, began to shuffle into their new six-man groups. But near the front, a young knight, Gaspard de Valois—a distant cousin of the Duke—did not move. He adjusted his glove with deliberate slowness. Two squires mirrored him, like reflections.
"I am a Chevalier of France," Gaspard said, not loud—just clear enough for the nearest ranks to hear. His smile was thin. "If the Duke wishes me placed, he will tell me himself."
A few knights snickered. A few archers stiffened.
Marcel the Hammer stared at him for one long beat.
"Fall in," Marcel repeated, voice flat now. "Mixed formation. Lances together."
Gaspard turned his head as if listening to something distant and unpleasant. Then he looked back at Marcel.
"I heard a noise from a low-born mouth," he said. "Go back to your forge."
Only then did his hand drift toward his sword hilt—slow, theatrical, a test offered to the entire camp.
Before the steel could clear the scabbard, a shadow moved.
Ambroise de Loré was there.
He did not draw his sword. Instead, he grabbed Gaspard's scabbard with his left hand, locking the weapon in place, and with his right hand, he delivered a backhanded slap across the knight's face. The sound of the gauntlet striking flesh echoed across the field.
Gaspard staggered back, stunned, blood trickling from his lip. "Captain? He is a commoner!"
"He is an Officer of the King!" Loré roared.
Loré drew his own sword then, the steel hissing in the silence. He pointed the tip at Gaspard's throat.
"Look at me, Gaspard."
"We are not in a tourney. We are in a war for survival."
"You just refused a direct order from a superior officer designated by the Crown."
Loré leaned in, his eyes cold and hard.
"By warrant sealed at Reims—dispute the instructor, and you dispute the King's writ. "
"That is not insolence," Loré said. "That is lèse-majesté."
"It earns a rope."
"Do you want to explain to the Duke why I had to hang his cousin? Or will you get in line?"
Gaspard looked at Alençon, begging for noble solidarity.
Alençon stared back, his face a mask of stone. Then, almost imperceptibly, he lifted one hand—palm down—stilling the Duke's household knights before they could move.
He did not intervene.
Gaspard swallowed his pride. It tasted like ash and blood.
"I... I will get in line, Sir."
"Don't tell me," Loré hissed. "Tell the Instructor."
Gaspard turned to Marcel. He trembled with humiliation. "I await orders... Instructor."
Marcel nodded once. He did not gloat. He turned back to the chaotic mass of men.
"YOU HEARD THE CAPTAIN! MOVE!"
For the first time, a knight's mistake would be written on another man's back.
"I WANT TO SEE SWEAT! I WANT TO SEE LINES! IF YOU CANNOT RIDE WITH YOUR ARCHER, YOU WILL WALK WITH HIM!"
From the edge of the field, a drummer from Gamaches's unit began to play.
Rat-tat-tat. Rat-tat-tat.
It was a fast, aggressive cadence. The heartbeat of the reform.
Alençon stood on a small hillock, watching the chaos slowly, painfully, begin to resolve into order. He saw his knights gritting their teeth, standing shoulder to shoulder with the men they once ignored. He saw the pride of centuries being ground into the mud under the boots of a blacksmith's son.
He felt a deep, terrifying vertigo.
I have surrendered my army, Alençon thought, his hand resting on the pommel of his useless sword. I have surrendered my lands to the taxman. And now, I have surrendered my honor to the drillmaster.
He looked at the setting sun over the towers of Reims.
I have stripped the nobility naked, so that the King might dress us in iron.
I have bet everything on this boy-king. My past, my name, my blood. If he fails, I am not just defeated; I am erased. I am the traitor who sold his caste.
But if he wins...
Alençon watched the lines form, straight and deadly as a spearpoint.
A sergeant dragged out a rough wooden board and drove it into the earth with a mallet. Across it were rows of pegs—one row for each Lance—each peg marked with a simple number cut by knife.
A clerk with ink-stained fingers noted it without looking up: "Lance 47—helmet missing—pay docked.
As the drumbeat continued, men stepped forward in groups of six. One by one, they hung their helmets and belts on a single peg, sharing the same hook like a shared fate.
When the drummer stopped for a breath, the lines did not dissolve.
They held.
If he wins, we will burn the world.
"Ambroise," Alençon whispered to the wind, his decision final. "Break them. And then... make them iron."