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| A not-very-realistic rendering of the Battle of Agncourt. The English are shown on the right. It looks like they are neatly battling on pavement rather than in deep mud and the high Renaissance outfits do not reflect the heavy plate armor that bogged down the French. Also the English yomen archers did not fire directly into the massed enemy but in high arching lobs that fell on the French like rain. |
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 Welsh
rebellion in his principality.
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| English King Henry V was fighting for his claim to be heir to the French Crown. |
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 laid 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 time 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 to 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 sides 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, and backed
against the woods, he deployed his 7,000 longbow men protected from
the cavalry attack by hastily erected abattoirs, hastily erected abatises,
sharpened logs dug into the ground at an angle.
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| English yeomen armed with longbows were the key to the Battle of Agincort. |
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 longbow
men 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. 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 as the rear ranks continued to push 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 longbow men, having exhausted
their arrows, surged from behind their stakes swinging axes, short
swords, weapons 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.
 |
| The slaughter of the Nobility of France. |
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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| With World War II raging, Laurence Olivier mounted his screen production of the Bard's Henry V mostly as a set piece for the rousing St. Crispin's Day Speech, meant to inspire the current generation. The patriotic ode to England is surely the oddest speech to attribute to a man waging a war to claim the French crown. |
Despite all of that history, what most people
remember are the words never spoken by Henry but put in his mouth by William
Shakespeare in his history play, Henry
V:
If we are mark’d to die, we are
enow
To do our country loss; and if
to live,
The fewer men, the greater
share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish
not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for
gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon
my cost;
It yearns me not if men my
garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not
in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet
honour,
I am the most offending soul
alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a
man from England.
God's peace! I would not lose
so great an honour
As one man more methinks would
share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do
not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it,
Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach
to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport
shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into
his purse;
We would not die in that man’s
company
That fears his fellowship to
die with us.
This day is call’d the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and
comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this
day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of
Crispian.
He that shall live this day,
and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast
his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint
Crispian.’
Then will he strip his sleeve
and show his scars,
And say ‘These wounds I had on
Crispian’s day.’
Old men forget; yet all shall
be forgot,
But he'll remember, with
advantages,
What feats he did that day.
Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as
household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and
Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury
and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups
freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man
teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of
the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band
of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his
blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his
condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not
here,
And hold their manhoods cheap
whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint
Crispin’s day.
—William
Shakespeare
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