Battle of Agincourt

Conflict	Battle of Agincourt
Partof	the Hundred Years' War
Caption	The Battle of Agincourt, 15th century miniature
Date	25 October (Saint Crispin's Day) 1415, November 3rd. (NS), 1415.
Place	Agincourt, France
Result	Decisive English victory
Combatant1	England
Combatant2	France
Commander1	Henry V of England
Commander2	Charles d'Albret
Strength1	Modern estimates range from 6,000 to 9,000 (See Numbers at Agincourt.) Approximately longbow archers, dismounted knights and men-at-arms in heavy armour.
Casualties1	At least 112 dead, unknown wounded}}

The Battle of Agincourt was a major English victory against a numerically superior French army in the Hundred Years' War. The battle occurred on Friday 25 October 1415 (Saint Crispin's Day, November 3. NS), near modern day Azincourt, in northern France. Henry V's victory had a crippling effect on France and started a new period in the war, during which Henry married the French king's daughter and his son was made heir to the throne of France. However, his battlefield successes were not capitalised on by his heir, Henry VI.

Henry V led his troops into battle and participated in hand-to-hand fighting. The French king of the time, Charles VI, did not command the French army himself as he suffered from severe, repeating illnesses and moderate mental incapacitation. Instead, the French were commanded by Constable Charles d'Albret and various prominent French noblemen of the Armagnac party.

The battle is notable for the use of the English longbow, which Henry used in very large numbers, with English and Welsh archers forming most of his army. The battle is also the centrepiece of the play Henry V, by William Shakespeare.

Campaign

Henry V invaded France following the failure of negotiations with the French. He claimed the title of King of France through his great-grandfather Edward III, although in practice the English kings were generally prepared to renounce this claim if the French would acknowledge the English claim on Aquitaine and other French lands (the terms of the Treaty of Bretigny). He initially called a great council in the spring of 1414 to discuss going to war with France, but the lords insisted that he should negotiate further and moderate his claims. In the following negotiations Henry said that he would give up his claim to the French throne if the French would pay the 1.6 million crowns outstanding from the ransom of John II (who had been captured at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356), and concede English ownership of the lands of Normandy, Touraine, Anjou, Brittany and Flanders, as well as Aquitaine. Henry would marry Princess Catherine, the young daughter of Charles VI, and receive a dowry of 2 million crowns. The French responded with what they considered the generous terms of marriage with Princess Catherine, a dowry of 600,000 crowns, and an enlarged Aquitaine. By 1415 negotiations had ground to a halt, with the English claiming that the French had mocked their claims and ridiculed Henry himself. In December 1414, the English parliament was persuaded to grant Henry a "double subsidy", a tax at twice the traditional rate, to recover his inheritance from the French. On 19 April 1415, Henry again asked the great council to sanction war with France, and this time they agreed.

Henry's army landed in northern France on 13 August 1415 and besieged the port of Harfleur with an army of about 12,000. The siege took longer than expected. The town surrendered on 22 September, and the English army did not leave until 8 October. The campaign season was coming to an end, and the English army had suffered many casualties through disease. Rather than retire directly to England for the winter, with his costly expedition resulting in the capture of only one town, Henry decided to march most of his army (roughly 9,000) through Normandy to the port of Calais, the English stronghold in northern France, to demonstrate by his presence in the territory at the head of an army that his right to rule in the duchy was more than a mere abstract legal and historical claim. He also intended the manoeuvre as a deliberate provocation to battle aimed at the dauphin, who had failed to respond to Henry's personal challenge to combat at Harfleur.

The French had raised an army during the siege which assembled around Rouen. This was not strictly a feudal army, but an army paid through a system similar to the English. The French hoped to raise 9,000 troops, but the army was not ready in time to relieve Harfleur. After Henry V marched to the north the French moved to blockade them along the River Somme. They were successful for a time, forcing Henry to move south, away from Calais, to find a ford. The English finally crossed the Somme south of Péronne, at Béthencourt and Voyennes and resumed marching north. Without the river protection, the French were hesitant to force a battle. They shadowed Henry's army while calling a semonce des nobles, calling on local nobles to join the army. By 24 October both armies faced each other for battle, but the French declined, hoping for the arrival of more troops. The two armies spent the night of 24 October on open ground. The next day the French initiated negotiations as a delaying tactic, but Henry ordered his army to advance and to start a battle that, given the state of his army, he would have preferred to avoid, or to fight defensively: that was how Crécy and the other famous longbow victories had been won. The English had very little food, had marched 260 miles in two and a half weeks, were suffering from sickness such as dysentery, and faced much larger numbers of well equipped French men at arms. The French army blocked Henry's way to the safety of Calais however, and delaying battle would only further weaken his tired army and allow more French troops to arrive.

Battle

Preparation for battle

The battle was fought in the narrow strip of open land formed between the woods of Tramecourt and Agincourt (close to the modern village of Azincourt). The French army was positioned at the northern exit so as to bar the way to Calais.

English deployment

Early on the 25th, Henry deployed his army (approximately 1,500 men-at-arms and 7,000 longbowmen) across a 750-yard part of the defile. The army was organised into three "battles" or divisions, the vanguard led by the Duke of York, the main battle led by Henry himself and the rearguard, led by Lord Camoys. In addition, Sir Thomas Erpingham, one of Henry's most experienced household knights, had a role in marshalling the archers. It is likely that the English adopted their usual battle line of longbowmen on either flank, men-at-arms and knights in the centre. They may also have deployed some archers in the centre of the line. The English men-at-arms in plate and mail were placed shoulder to shoulder four deep. The English and Welsh archers on the flanks drove pointed wooden stakes into the ground at an angle to force cavalry to veer off. This use of stakes may have been inspired by the Battle of Nicopolis of 1396, where forces of the Ottoman Empire used the tactic against French cavalry.

The English made their confessions before the battle, as was customary. Henry, worried about the enemy launching surprise raids, and wanting his troops to remain focused, ordered all his men to spend the night before the battle in silence, with having an ear cut off the punishment for disobeying. He told his men that he would rather die in the coming battle than be captured and ransomed.

On the morning of the battle, Henry made a speech, emphasising the justness of his cause, and reminding his army of previous great defeats the kings of England had inflicted on the French. The Burgundian sources have him concluding the speech by telling his men that the French had boasted that they would cut off two fingers from the right hand of every archer, so that he could never draw a longbow again. (Whether this was true is open to question; death was the normal fate of any soldier who couldn't be ransomed.)

French deployment

By contrast, the French were confident that they would prevail and were eager to fight. The French believed they would triumph over the English not only because their force was larger, fresher, and better equipped, but also because the large number of noble men-at-arms would have considered themselves superior to the large number of archers in the English army, who the French (based on their experience in living memory of using and facing archers) considered relatively insignificant. The chronicler Edmond de Dyntner stated that there were "ten French nobles against one English", ignoring the archers completely.

The French were arrayed in three lines or "battles". The first line was led by Constable D'Albret, Marshal Boucicault, and the Dukes of Orléans and Bourbon, with attached cavalry wings under the Count of Vendôme and Sir Clignet de Brebant. The second line was commanded by the Dukes of Bar and Alençon and the Count of Nevers. The third line was under the Counts of Dammartin and Fauconberg. The Burgundian chronicler, Jehan de Waurin, writes that there were 8,000 men-at-arms, 4,000 archers and 1,500 crossbowmen in the vanguard, with two wings of 600 and 800 mounted men-at-arms, and the main battle having "as many knights, esquires and archers as in the vanguard", with the rearguard containing "all of the rest of the men-at-arms". The Herald of Berry uses somewhat different figures of 4,800 men-at-arms in the first line, 3,000 men in the second line, with two "wings" containing 600 mounted men-at-arms each, and a total of "10,000 men-at-arms", but does not mention a third line.

Approximately 8,000 of the heavily armoured French men-at-arms fought on foot, and needed to close the distance to the English army to engage them in hand-to-hand fighting. If they could close the distance, however, they outnumbered the English men-at-arms by more than 5-to-1, and the English longbowmen would not be able to shoot into a mêlée without risking hitting their own troops. Many of the French men-at-arms had fathers and grandfathers who had been humiliated in previous battles such as Crécy and Poitiers, and the French nobility were determined to get revenge. Several French accounts emphasise that the French leaders were so eager to defeat the English (and win the ransoms of the English men-at-arms) that they insisted on being in the first line. For example: "All the lords wanted to be in the vanguard, against the opinion of the constable and the experienced knights".

There appear to have been thousands of troops in the rearguard, containing servants and commoners whom the French were either unable or unwilling to deploy. De Waurin gives the total French army size as 50,000. He says: "They had plenty of archers and crossbowmen but nobody wanted to let them fire [sic]. The reason for this was that the site was so narrow that there was only enough room for the men-at-arms." Most of the rearguard played little part in the battle, with English and French accounts agreeing that many of the French army fled after seeing so many French nobles killed and captured in the fighting.

Terrain

The field of battle was arguably the most significant factor in deciding the outcome. The recently ploughed land hemmed in by dense woodland favoured the English, both because of its narrowness, and because of the thick mud through which the French knights had to walk. An analysis by Battlefield Detectives has looked at the crowd dynamics of the battlefield. The 1,000–1,500 English men-at-arms are described as shoulder to shoulder and four deep, which implies a tight line about 250–300 men long (perhaps split in two by a central group of archers). The remainder of the field would have been filled with the longbowmen behind their palings. The French first line contained men-at-arms who had no way to outflank the English line. The French, divided into the three battles, one behind the other at their initial starting position, could not bring all their forces to bear: the initial engagement was between the English army and the first battle line of the French. When the second French battle line started their advance, the soldiers were pushed closer together and their effectiveness was reduced. Casualties in the front line from longbow arrows would also have increased the congestion, as the following men would have to walk around the fallen. The Battlefield Detectives episode states that when the density reached four men per square metre, soldiers would not even be able to take full steps forward, lowering the speed of the advance by 70%. Although the French initially pushed the English back, they became so closely packed that they are described as having trouble using their weapons properly. The French monk of St. Denis says: "Their vanguard, composed of about 5,000 men, found itself at first so tightly packed that those who were in the third rank could scarcely use their swords", and the Burgundian sources have a similar passage. In practice there was not enough room for all these men to fight, and they were unable to respond effectively when the English longbowmen joined the hand-to-hand fighting. By the time the second French line arrived, for a total of about eight thousand men (depending on the source), the crush would have been even worse. The press of men arriving from behind actually hindered those fighting at the front.

As the battle was fought on a recently ploughed field, and there had recently been heavy rain leaving it very muddy, it proved very tiring to walk through in full plate armour. The French monk of St. Denis describes the French troops as "marching through the middle of the mud where they sank up to their knees. So they were already overcome with fatigue even before they advanced against the enemy". The deep, soft mud particularly favoured the English force because, once knocked to the ground, the heavily armoured French knights had a hard time getting back up to fight in the mêlée. Barker states that some knights, encumbered by their armour, actually drowned in their helmets. Their limited mobility made them easy targets for the volleys from the English archers. The mud also increased the ability of the much more lightly armoured English archers to join in hand-to-hand fighting against the French men-at-arms.

Fighting

Opening moves

On the morning of 25 October the French were still waiting for additional troops to arrive. The Duke of Brabant (about 2,000 men), the Duke of Anjou (about 600 men), were all marching to join the army. This left the French with a question of whether or not to advance towards the English.

For three hours after sunrise there was no fighting. Military textbooks of the time stated "Everywhere and on all occasions that foot soldiers march against their enemy face to face, those who march lose and those who remain standing still and holding firm win". On top of this, the French were expecting thousands of men to join them if they waited. They were blocking Henry's retreat, and were perfectly happy to wait for as long as it took. There had even been a suggestion that the English would run away rather than give battle when they saw that they would be fighting so many French princes.

Henry's men, on the other hand, were already very weary from hunger, illness and marching. Even though he knew as well as the French did that his army would perform better on the defensive, Henry was eventually forced to take a calculated risk, and move his army further forward to start the battle. This entailed pulling out the long stakes pointed outwards toward the enemy which protected the longbowmen, and abandoning his chosen position. (The use of stakes was an innovation for the English: during the Battle of Crécy, for example, the archers were instead protected by pits and other obstacles.) but in the event, the archers and crossbowmen were deployed behind and to the sides of the men-at-arms (where they seem to have played almost no part, except possibly for an initial volley of arrows at the start of the battle). The cavalry force, which could have devastated the English line if it had attacked while they moved their position, seems to have charged only after the initial volley of arrows from the English. It is unclear whether this is because the French were hoping the English would launch a frontal assault (and were surprised when the English instead started shooting from their new defensive position), or whether the French mounted knights simply did not react fast enough to the English advance. French chroniclers agree that when the mounted charge did come, it did not contain as many men as it should have; Gilles le Bouvier states that some had wandered off to warm themselves and others were walking or feeding their horses.

In any case, within extreme bowshot from the French line (approximately 300 yards), the longbowmen dug in their stakes and then opened the engagement with a barrage of arrows.

The French cavalry attack

The French cavalry, despite being somewhat disorganised and not at full numbers, charged the longbowmen, but it was a disaster, with the French knights unable to outflank the longbowmen (because of the encroaching woodland) and unable to charge through the palings that protected the archers. John Keegan argues that the longbows' main influence on the battle was at this point: armoured only on the head, many horses would have become dangerously out of control when struck in the back or flank from the high-elevation shots used as the charge started. The effect of the mounted charge and then retreat was further to churn up the mud the French had to cross to reach the English. Juliet Barker quotes a contemporary account by a monk of St. Denis who reports how the panicking horses also galloped back through the advancing infantry, scattering them and trampling them down in their headlong flight. The Burgundian sources similarly say that the mounted men-at-arms retreated back into the advancing French vanguard.

The main French assault

The constable himself led the attack of the dismounted French men-at-arms. French accounts describe their vanguard alone as containing about 5,000 men-at-arms, which would have outnumbered the English men-at-arms by more than 3 to 1, but before they could engage in hand-to-hand fighting they had to cross the muddy field under a bombardment of arrows.

The plate armour of the French men-at-arms allowed them to close the 300 yards or so to the English lines while being under what the French monk of Saint Denis described as "a terrifying hail of arrow shot". However they had to lower their visors and bend their heads to avoid being shot in the face (the eye and airholes in their helmets were among the weakest points in the armour), which restricted both their breathing and their vision, and then they had to walk a few hundred yards through thick mud, wearing armour weighing 50–60 pounds.

The French men-at-arms reached the English line and actually pushed it back, with the longbowmen continuing to shoot until they ran out of arrows and then dropping their bows and joining the mêlée, implying that the French were able to walk through a hail of tens of thousands of arrows while taking comparatively few casualties. (Mortimer suggests "about a thousand arrows every second". Henry brought in the region of 130,000 sheaves (i.e. about three million arrows) with him from England at the start of the campaign.) However the physical pounding from thousands of non-penetrating arrows, combined with the slog in heavy armour through the mud, the heat and lack of oxygen in plate armour with the visor down, and the crush of their numbers meant they could "scarcely lift their weapons" when they finally engaged the English line. When the English archers, using hatchets, swords and other weapons, attacked the now disordered and fatigued French, the French could not cope with their unarmoured assailants (who were much less hindered by the mud). The exhausted French men-at-arms are described as having been knocked to the ground and then unable to get back up. As the mêlée developed, the French second line also joined the attack, but they too were swallowed up, with the narrow terrain meaning the extra numbers could not be used effectively, and French men-at-arms were taken prisoner or killed in their thousands. The fighting lasted about three hours, but eventually the leaders of the second line were killed or captured, as those of the first line had been. The English Gesta Henrici describes three great heaps of the slain around the three main English standards. According to contemporary English accounts, Henry was directly involved in the hand-to-hand fighting. Upon hearing that his youngest brother Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester had been wounded in the groin, Henry took his household guard and stood over his brother, in the front rank of the fighting, until Humphrey could be dragged to safety; the king received an axe blow to the head which knocked off a piece of the crown that formed part of his helmet.

The attack on the English baggage train

The only French success was an attack on the lightly protected English baggage train, with Ysembart d'Azincourt (leading a small number of men-at-arms and varlets plus about 600 peasants) seizing some of Henry's personal treasures, including a crown. Whether this was part of a deliberate French plan or an act of local brigandage is unclear from the sources. Certainly, d'Azincourt was a local knight but he may have been chosen to lead the attack because of his local knowledge and the lack of availability of a more senior soldier. In some accounts the attack happened towards the end of the battle, and led the English to think they were being attacked from the rear. Barker, following the Gesta Henrici, believed to have been written by an English chaplain who was actually in the baggage train, concludes that the attack happened at the start of the battle.). Le Fevre and Waurin similarly say that it was signs of the French rearguard regrouping and "marching forward in battle order" which made the English think they were still in danger.

In any event, Henry ordered the slaughter of what was perhaps several thousand French prisoners, with only the most illustrious being spared. His fear was that they would rearm themselves with the weapons strewn upon the field, and the exhausted English would be overwhelmed. Though ruthless, it was arguably justifiable given the situation of the battle; perhaps surprisingly, even the French chroniclers do not criticise him for this. This marked the end of the battle, as the French rearguard, having seen so many of the French nobility captured and killed, fled the battlefield.

Aftermath

Due to a lack of reliable sources it is impossible to give a precise figure for the French and English casualties. However, it is clear that though the English were outnumbered, their losses were far lower than those of the French. The French sources all give 4,000–10,000 French dead, with up to 1,600 English dead. The lowest ratio in these French sources has the French losing six times more men than the English. The English sources vary between about 1,500 and 11,000 for the French dead, with English dead put at no more than 100.

Barker identifies from the available records "at least" 112 Englishmen who died in the fighting (including Edward of Norwich, 2nd Duke of York, a grandson of Edward III), but this excludes the wounded. One widely used estimate puts the English casualties at 450, not an insignificant number in an army of about 8,500, but far less than the thousands the French lost, nearly all of whom were killed or captured. Using the lowest French estimate of their own dead of 4,000 would imply a ratio of nearly 9 to 1 in favour of the English, or over 10 to 1 if the prisoners are included.

The French suffered heavily. Three dukes, at least eight counts, a viscount and an archbishop died, along with numerous other nobles. Of the great royal office holders, France lost her Constable, Admiral, Master of the Crossbowmen and prévôt of the marshals. The baillis of nine major northern towns were killed, often along with their sons, relatives and supporters. In the words of Juliet Barker, the battle "cut a great swath through the natural leaders of French society in Artois, Ponthieu, Normandy, Picardy." Estimates of the number of prisoners vary between 700 and 2,200, amongst them the Duke of Orléans (the famous poet Charles d'Orléans) and Jean Le Maingre (known as Boucicault) Marshal of France. Almost all these prisoners would have been nobles, as the less valuable prisoners were slaughtered.

Although the victory had been militarily decisive, its impact was complex. It did not lead to further English conquests immediately as Henry's priority was to return to England, which he did on 16 November, to be received in triumph in London on the 23rd. Henry returned a conquering hero, in the eyes of his subjects and European powers outside of France, blessed by God. It established the legitimacy of the Lancastrian monarchy and the future campaigns of Henry to pursue his "rights and privileges" in France. Other benefits to the English were longer term. Very quickly after the battle, the fragile truce between the Armagnac and Burgundian factions broke down. The brunt of the battle had fallen on the Armagnacs and it was they who suffered the majority of senior casualties and carried the blame for the defeat. The Burgundians seized on the opportunity and within 10 days of the battle had mustered their armies and marched on Paris. This lack of unity in France would allow Henry eighteen months to prepare militarily and politically for a renewed campaign. When that campaign took place, it was made easier by the damage done to the political and military structures of Normandy by the battle.

It took several years' more campaigning, but Henry was eventually able to fulfil all his objectives. He was recognised by the French in the Treaty of Troyes (1420) as the regent and heir to the French throne. This was cemented by his marriage to Catherine of Valois, the daughter of King Charles VI.

Notable casualties

French

Notable casualties included: Antoine of Burgundy, Duke of Brabant and Limburg (b. 1384)

Philip of Burgundy, Count of Nevers and Rethel (b. 1389)

Charles I d'Albret, Count of Dreux, the Constable of France Michael de la Pole, 3rd Earl of Suffolk Dafydd Gam (Davy Gam) Welsh hero who reputedly saved Henry V's life at Agincourt

Numbers at Agincourt

Anne Curry in her 2005 book Agincourt: A New History, argues (based on research into the surviving administrative records) that the French army was about 12,000 strong, and the English army about 9,000, giving odds of 4–3. By contrast, Juliet Barker in her Agincourt: The King, the Campaign, the Battle (also published in 2005) argues the English and Welsh were outnumbered "at least four to one and possibly as much as six to one". She suggests figures of about 6,000 for the English and 36,000 for the French, based on the Gesta Henricis figures of 5,000 archers and 900 men-at-arms for the English, and Jehan de Waurin's statement "that the French were six times more numerous than the English". The 2009 Encyclopædia Britannica uses the figures of about 6,000 for the English and 20,000 to 30,000 for the French. The 1911 Britannica used somewhat different figures of 6,000 archers, 1,000 men-at-arms and "a few thousands of other foot" for the English, with the French outnumbering them by "at least four times".

With one of the lowest estimates for the size of the French army and also one of the highest estimates for the size of the English army, Curry is currently in a minority in suggesting that the odds were as near equal as 4–3. While not necessarily agreeing with the exact numbers Curry uses, some historians have however given support to her assertion that the French army was much smaller than traditionally thought, and the English somewhat bigger. Bertrand Schnerb, a professor of medieval history at the University of Lille, has said that he thinks the French probably had 12,000–15,000 troops. Ian Mortimer, in his 2009 book 1415: Henry V's Year of Glory, notes how Curry "minimises French numbers (by limiting her figures to those in the basic army and a few specific additional companies) and maximises English numbers (by assuming the numbers sent home from Harfleur were no greater than sick lists)", but agrees that previous estimates have exaggerated the odds, and suggests that "the most extreme imbalance which is credible is fifteen thousand French troops against 8,100 English: a ratio of about two-to-one".

However, Clifford J. Rogers, professor of history at the United States Military Academy at West Point, has recently argued that archival records are too incomplete to substantially change his view that the English were outnumbered about 4–1. Juliet Barker also disagrees with Curry's arguments in the acknowledgments section of her 2005 book on Agincourt, saying: "Surviving administrative records on both sides, but especially the French, are simply too incomplete to support [Curry's] assertion that nine thousand English were pitted against an army only twelve thousand strong. And if the differential really was as low as three to four then this makes a nonsense of the course of the battle as described by eyewitnesses and contemporaries."

Those supporting a greater imbalance have generally put more store by contemporary (and especially eyewitness) accounts. The Gesta Henrici gives plausible figures for the English of 5,000 archers and 900 men-at-arms, but Mortimer notes it is "wildly inaccurate" in stating the English were outnumbered 30–1, and there have also been doubts as to how much it was written as propaganda for Henry V. The proportions also seem incorrect, as from surviving records we know that Henry set out with about four times as many archers as men-at-arms, not five and a half times as many. Those who have supported the Gesta figures for the English army have generally thought that although the English army may have left Harfleur with eight or nine thousand men, it is plausible that after weeks of campaigning and disease in hostile territory they would have lost two or three thousand fighting men; however Mortimer states: "Despite the trials of the march, Henry had lost very few men to illness or death; and we have independent testimony that no more than 160 had been captured on the way."

As Mortimer notes, the Burgundian numbers for the size of the French vanguard of 8,000 men-at-arms in the vanguard with 1,400 (or 2,400) men-at-arms in the wings correspond roughly with the figures of ten thousand men-at-arms recorded by the duke of Berry's herald. The Burgundians also recorded 4,000 archers and 1,500 crossbowmen in the "vanguard", which would suggest "fourteen or fifteen thousand fighting men". (It should be noted that the Burgundians actually give the total size of the French army as an implausible 50,000, and the numbers they use do not correspond closely to the odds they describe. Using very similar numbers, Jean Le Fevre states that the English were outnumbered 3–1, whereas Waurin states that the English were outnumbered 6–1.)

One particular cause of confusion may have been the number of servants on both sides. Mortimer suggests that because there was a much higher proportion of men-at-arms on the French side, the number of non-combatants was much higher. Each man-at-arms could be expected to have a page, who would have ridden one of his spare horses. If the French army had an extra 10,000 men mounted men (as opposed to only 1,500 extra for the English), then "the English probably did see an army about three times the size of their own fighting force".

It is open to debate whether these should all be counted as non-combatants; Rogers (for example) accepts that the French probably had about 10,000 men-at-arms, but explicitly includes one "gros valet" (an armed, armoured and mounted military servant) per French man-at-arms in his calculation of the odds. There may therefore be less difference between some of these different historians' positions on the numerical odds than there initially appears, given that the various accounts generally agree that the battle was almost entirely fought between the French men-at-arms and the English army, with French crossbowmen, archers, and other infantry playing little or no part.

Popular representations

Soon after the English victory at Agincourt, a number of popular folk songs were created about the battle, the most famous being the Agincourt Carol, produced in the first half of the 15th century. Other ballads followed, including King Henry Fifth's Conquest of France, raising the popular prominence of particular events mentioned only in passing by the original chroniclers, such as the gift of tennis balls before the campaign.

The most famous cultural depiction of the battle today, however, is through William Shakespeare's Henry V, written in 1599. The play focuses on the pressures of kingship, the tensions between how a king should appear - chivalric, honest and just - and how a king must sometimes act - Machiavellian and ruthless. These tensions are illustrated by in the play by Shakespeare's depiction of Henry's decision to kill some of the French prisoners, whilst attempting to justify it and distance himself from the event - this moment of the battle is portrayed both as a break with the traditions of chivalry, and as key example of the paradox of kingship. Shakespeare's depiction of the battle also plays on the theme of modernity - Shakespeare contrasts the modern, English king and his army with the medieval, chivalric, older model of the French. Shakespeare's play presented Henry as leading a truly British force into battle, playing on the importance of the link between the monarch and the common soldiers in the fight. The original play does not, however, feature any scenes of the actual battle itself, leading critic Rose Zimbardo to characterise it as "full of warfare, yet empty of conflict."

The play introduced the famous "Saint Crispin's day" speech; Shakespeare has Henry give a moving narration to his soldiers just before the battle, urging his "band of brothers" to stand together in the forthcoming fight. One of Shakespeare's most heroic speeches, critic David Margolies, describes how it "oozes honour, military glory, love of country and self-sacrifice", and it forms one of the first instances of English literature linking solidarity and comradeship to success in battle. Partially as a result, the battle was used as a metaphor at the beginning of the First World War, when the British Expeditionary Force's attempts to stop the German advances were widely likened to it.

Shakespeare's version of the battle of Agincourt has been turned into three films - by Laurence Olivier in 1944, by Kenneth Branagh in 1989, and by Peter Babakitis in 2004. Branagh's version gives a longer, more Realist portrayal of the battle itself, drawing on both historical sources and images from the Vietnam and Falkland Wars. Babakitis uses digital effects to exaggerate realist features during his battle scenes, producing a more avant-garde interpretation of the fighting at Agincourt.

The battle remains an important symbol in popular culture. For example, a mock trial of Henry V for the crimes associated with the slaughter of the prisoners was held in Washington, D.C. in March 2010, drawing from both the historical record and Shakespeare's play. Participating as judges were Justices Samuel Alito and Ruth Bader Ginsberg. The trial ranged widely over the whether there was just cause for war and not simply the prisoner issue. Although an audience vote was "too close to call", Henry was unanimously found guilty by the court on the basis of “evolving standards of civil society”.

See also

V sign, for more on the "two-fingers salute" which some claim derives from the gestures of longbowmen fighting in the English army at the battle of Agincourt.

Notes

Footnotes

a. Pronunciation: The story of the battle has been retold many times in English, from the fifteenth-century Agincourt song onwards, and an English pronunciation of has become established. Merriam-Webster has a small audio file here. The modern tendency, however, is to use pronunciations closer to the original French , such as or , as exampled in this interview with Juliet Barker on Meet the Author, here. b. Dates in the fifteenth century are difficult to reconcile with modern calendars: see Barker (2005) pp. 225–7 for the way the date of the battle was established.

Citations

References

Books

Adams, Michael C. (2002) Echoes of War: a thousand years of military history in popular culture. Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press. ISBN 9780813122403.

Barker, Juliet (2005). Agincourt: The King, the Campaign, the Battle (U.S. Title: Agincourt : Henry V and the Battle That Made England.) London: Little, Brown. ISBN 9780316726481.

Cantor, Paul A. (2006) "Shakespeare's Henry V: From the Medieval to the Modern World," in Murley and Sutton (ed) (2006).

Curry, Anne (2000). The Battle of Agincourt: Sources and Interpretations. The Boydell Press. ISBN 0851158021.

Curry, Anne (2005) (paperback edition 2006) . Agincourt: A New History. Pub: Tempus UK. ISBN 978-0-7524-2828-4

Dupuy, Trevor N. (1993). Harper Encyclopedia of Military History. Pub: New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-270056-8

Hatchuel, Sarah. (2008) "The Battle of Agincourt in Shakespeare's, Laurence Olivier's, Kenneth Branagh's and Peter Babakitis's Henry V," in Hatchuel and Vienne-Guerrin (eds) (2008).

Hatchuel, Sarah and Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin. (eds) (2008) Shakespeare on Screen: the Henriad. Rouen, France: Laboratoire ERIAC. ISBN 9782877754545.

Keegan, John (1976). The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme. Pub: Viking Adult. ISBN 978-0-14-004897-1 (Penguin Classics Reprint)

Margolies, David. (2006) "Henry V and ideology," in Hatchuel and Vienne-Guerrin (eds) (2008).

Murley, John Albert and Sean D. Sutton. (eds) (2006) Perspectives on politics in Shakespeare. Oxford: Lexington Press. ISBN 9780739116845.

Woolf, Daniel. (2003) The Social Circulation of the Past: English historical culture, 1500-1730. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199257782.

Articles

Azincourt Museum, The Azincourt Museum, Azincourt, France Accessed 15 April 2008.(The site is in French and English).

Beck, Steve (2005). The Battle of Agincourt, www.militaryhistoryonline.com.

Bragg, Melvyn (presenter). Agincourt with Anne Curry, Michael Jones and John Watts from In Our Time (BBC Radio 4), 16 September 2004

Family Chronicle.com, The Agincourt Honor Roll, Family Chronicle, March/April 1997.

Glanz, James (October 25, 2009). Henry V's Greatest Victory is Besieged by Academia. The New York Times. Accessed October 24, 2009.

Grummitt, David. (Oxford University), A review of Agincourt 1415: Henry V, Sir Thomas Erpingham and the triumph of the English archers ed. Anne Curry, Pub: Tempus UK, 2000 ISBN 0752417800. Accessed 15 April 2008.

Hansen, Mogens Herman (Copenhagen Polis Centre) The Little Grey Horse --Henry V's Speech at Agincourt and the Battle Exhortation in Ancient Historiography Histos volume 2 (March 1998), website of the Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Durham

"Battle of Agincourt" in Military Heritage, October 2005, Volume 7, No. 2, pp. 36 to 43). ISSN 1524-8666.

Rogers, Clifford J. “The Battle of Agincourt,” The Hundred Years War (Part II): Different Vistas, ed. L. J. Andrew Villalon and Donald J. Kagay (Leiden: Brill, 2008): 37-132.

Rogers, Clifford J. “Henry V’s Military Strategy in 1415,” The Hundred Years War: A Wider Focus, ed. L. J. Andrew Villalon and Donald J. Kagay (Leiden: Brill, 2005): 399-427.

Other

The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge Macclesfield Psalter CD

External links

Contemporary account of battle written by Enguerrand de Monstrelet (d.1453), governor of Cambrai and supporter of the French crown.

"Historians Reassess Battle of Agincourt" by James Glanz, The New York Times, October 24, 2009

Category:1415 in France Agincourt 1415 Category:History of archery Category:Military history of the Pas-de-Calais Category:Conflicts in 1415