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 ancient aliens
and conspiracy theories. 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 conflicts
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.
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 own. After two
years of negotiations Henry received
the permission of Parliament to declare war and impose a
doubled 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 two 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.
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 that 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.
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 a 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.
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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