English Yeoman archers and mud spelled disaster for the Cream of French Chivalry. |
The
Battle of Agincourt, which was fought on October 25, 1415 is usually found on one of those
lists of the most important battles in world history, that intrigue the
kind of military history geeks who haunted the History Channel before it
turned into a freak show of toothless hillbillies. This is due almost entirely to the Anglo-centrism
of the historians and publicity by one William Shakespeare who made a
hero out of English King Henry V and put in his mouth a glorious speech
which took on a special significance as a rallying cry for the British in
the darkest days of another war more than 500 years later.
The battle was a decisive English victory over a
much larger French army and is interesting on a number of points, but in
the long run did little to change the course of history. It was a part of the series of wars known at
the Hundred Years War fought from 1337 and 1453 between the Valois
and Anjou (the English House of Plantagenet) claimants to the
French throne. Here is the Cliff Notes version of what happened.
Henry V was the second of the Lancastrian kings
of the Plantagenet dynasty, a branch of the French House of Anjou which had ruled England since 1154. His father, Henry IV had successfully
usurped the throne from Richard II and established a new line of
succession. Young Henry V acceded to the
throne in 1413 at the age of 27. As Prince
of Wales he was already a seasoned military commander when he led armies
against a Welch rebellion in his principality.
He was an ambitious and aggressive monarch. He began his reign with many reforms,
including restoring the lands and titles of most the heirs and loyalists of
Richard II to gain their support. He
also decreed for the first time the English, rather than French, was the
official language of the kingdom. His
court was the first to use English and he wrote predominately in it. But that did not mean he was not interested
in France.
The young monarch, seeing France was in dynastic
turmoil, decided to reinstate his claim to the title of King of France,
which was based on connections through Richard II. He also wanted to reclaim and expand large
claims of land on the continent, most of which had been lost over the preceding
two hundred years. He demanded of the French
to be accepted as the legitimate Heir to the throne and in addition to ancestral
Anjou and Normandy demanded Aquitaine,
Touraine, Brittany and Flanders and marriage to the daughter of the Valois claimant to the French crown to
cement his claim. After two years of
negotiations Henry received the permission of Parliament to declare war and a doubling of the tax rate to finance
a campaign.
With
the revenues, Henry raised an army composed not only of the noble knights and
men at arms, but primarily of hired yeomen
most of whom were armed with the longbows. His army of about 12, 000 arrived in
France in August of 1415 and immediately lay siege to the port of Harfleur.
Due to a lack of proper siege equipment, the capture of the city
took until well into September, which gave the divided French to unite and
gather a large army at Roen under Charles
d’Albret, the Constable of
France.
Because the campaign season was drawing to a close,
Henry decided to try and avoid a battle with the main French army, and to march
north to the English port of Calais to resupply over
the winter. His force was already
reduced to about 9,000 by disease and was soon in hunger as they could not
forage enough provisions as they marched.
The French army began to shadow them, but waited to gain strength as
more troops joined.
At
the River Somme the French got ahead
of Henry and blocked the most direct route to Calais, forcing him to move
south, away from the city to find a ford. He finally crossed south of Péronne. Resuming his march north again, Henry found
the whole French army blocking his path near Agincourt on October 24. The 250
mile march over two and a half weeks had left his army in wretched condition,
but Henry knew that the French were still receiving reinforcements and had to
come to battle before they arrived.
As was the custom the two sided met and agreed on
the battle field. It could not have been
a more disastrous choice for the French who out-numbered the English by as many
as 6 to 1. The battle was to be fought
on a recently harvested open field only 750 yard wide closed in between to
heavy stands of woods. The night before
the battle heavy rains had turned the field into a sea of mud, which would only
become more encumbering as it was roiled by men and horses.
Henry deployed his forces across the narrowest point
on the southern end of the field, divided into three sections with himself
personally on the field in command of the center. These forces totaled about 1,500 heavily
armed knights and men-at-arms mostly dismounted. Along both flanks, backed against the woods,
he deployed his 7,000 longbow men protected from cavalry attack by hastily
erected pointed stakes dug into the ground at a sharp angle.
The French had to advance several hundred yards
across the muddy ground to reach the English line. The French deployed 10,000 heavily armored
knights and men at arms in two or three divisions, with about 1,200 knights
mounted as cavalry. To the rear were
thousands more men including archers, crossbowmen and levies of ill trained,
lightly armed infantry which the French evidently did not even plan to deploy,
so sure were they about the power of the “cream of French nobility” to carry
the day against the vastly outnumbered English.
The action began with a successful raid against
Henry’s baggage train to the rear, which made him nervous all day of being
surrounded. Then, as the heavy infantry
began their slog across the field, the cavalry charged the two flanks of
archers. The archers let fly with volley
after volley of high arching shots that fell on the knights wounding and
maddening their horses, many of which broke away and began wildly running
across the field. The surviving horsemen
came up against the sharpened stakes and could not break through suffering
heavy casualties and being repelled.
They and the maddened horses churned the muddy ground badly then crashed
into their own lines of advancing men on foot.
The archers turned their attention to the men at
arms who were advancing slowly and with great difficulty over the muddy ground. Their many flights of arrows did not injure
many due to heavy armor, but the incessant rain of missiles made them march
with their helmet visors down to prevent injury to the face, which restricted
their vision and their breathing. Soon
the French were bogged down in knee deep muck and the rear ranks were pushing
forward. By the time that they finally
reached the English line they were exhausted and only the very front ranks
could even swing their broadswords because they were pressed so tightly together. The French did push the English line back,
but were soon engaged in furious hand to hand combat. Many of the French fell unwounded but were
unable to get up in the deep mud with the heavy weight of their armor. Many drowned in the mud, others were trampled
by their own men. With only the front
ranks effectively able to engage, they suffered heavy losses and soon the
ground was covered by the French.
Then, the English long bowmen, having exhausted
their arrows, surged from behind their stakes swinging axes, short swords, and
weapon picked up on the field and attacked the dense mass of French on the
flanks. Unarmored except for helmets and
light mail, they were speedy and agile and slaughtered the exhausted French.
The English knights began taking prisoners among the
survivors in hopes of exchanging them for ransom, as was the custom. But Henry, fighting at the front of his
troops thought he saw movement in the French rear and feared a second
attack. He also began to worry that the
many prisoners might take advantage of the chaos of the battlefield to seize
weapons and turn on their captors. Henry
ordered his knights to execute their hostages.
Most refused because they wanted the ransom money and because they feared
that if they did so, they would receive the same treatment if later captured
themselves. Frustrated, the King sent
his most trusted aide at the head of a force of 150 non-noble yeoman infantry
to hack the prisoners to death with axes and broadswords.
Whatever the intention of the French secondary had
been, the sight of the Nobles of France being hacked to death sent the
remaining forces into a panicked retreat.
They ran into, and became ensnared with, the great number of unused
archers, crossbow men, and light infantry, who might have saved the day, had
not the knights been too proud to deploy them.
The battle was a disaster for France. French losses were estimated to be between
7,000 and 10,000, almost all of them killed.
About 1,500 nobles survived the slaughter as prisoners. The English lost a documented 112 men on the
day of the battle and probably hundreds more of wounds, disease, or exhaustion
within days. The best guess for total
English casualties is about 450 dead and wounded.
Henry did not follow up, as he could have, with an
attack on Paris to take the crown. Instead
he returned to England to receive a hero’s welcome and re-arm for another
season of campaigning. He returned to
France in 1417. After years of fighting
the 1420 Treaty of Troyes gave him nearly
everything he wanted. He was recognized
as heir and Regent of France until
the death of King Charles VI. He married Charles’s daughter Catherine of Valois to secure his
dynastic claim.
In
1422 Henry was campaigning in France against hold-outs not recognizing his
claim when he died of dysentery. Charles
VI died within a month, making Henry’s infant son Henry VI King of France.
The
younger Henry grew into his crowns, but battled depression and some say bouts
of madness. He was deposed as English
King once, returned to the throne, and lost it again to the House of York in the War of the Roses. But he retained the disputed throne of
France until his death 1453. The same
year the Hundred Year War finally ended with England expelled from France
except for Calais and accession of Charles
VII to the throne, resuming the Valois dynasty.
The
lasting impact of the battle of Agincourt
was to begin a revolution in military theory and practice. It was the swansong of chivalry and
semi-feudal armies built around the war lord castes of nobility. Heavy knights were shown to be vulnerable to
both the long bow and to lighter forces fighting behind and from field
fortifications. As the Hundred Year War
dragged on the addition of fire arms and artillery only accelerated the
development. The fall of reliance on
knighthood, also reduced the influence of the nobility and raised the power of
monarch who could hire armies. By 16th
Century large professional armies helped lead to the creation of the nation
state as we know it.
The French and English went on being the best of enemies
through future conflicts that would including 18 wars before the virtual
world wars—The Seven Years War (in America the French and Indian Wars),
the Anglo-French War of 1779-1783 (including France’s participation in
the American Revolution), and the Napoleonic Wars.
Only later in the 19th Century did changing
European political realities—certain common colonial interests and the
unification and militarization of Germany—finally brought the two old
rivals together as sometimes wary and suspicious allies.
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