Elite Fighting Forces of the Middle Ages

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• published: 21 Jan 2014
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This show travels to France to study the Battle at Agincourt. Looking into the tactics of the heavily armored French Knights versus the lightly armored, fast moving expeditionary army of Henry V and his secret weapon, the English Longbow. 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, on pain of having an ear cut off. He told his men that he would rather die in the coming battle than be captured and ransomed. The men-at-arms on both sides were high-ranking men who knew that if captured they could expect to be ransomed. As "commoners", on the other hand, the English archers knew they could expect to be killed out of hand by the French if they were defeated, as they were not worth ransoming. 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; as previously noted, death was the normal fate of any soldier who could not be ransomed.) French deployment The French force was not only larger than the English, their noble men-at-arms would have considered themselves superior to the large number of archers in the English army, whom the French (based on their experience in recent memory of using and facing archers) considered relatively insignificant. For example, the chronicler Edmond de Dyntner stated that there were "ten French nobles against one English", ignoring the archers completely. 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; as one of the contemporary accounts put it: "All the lords wanted to be in the vanguard, against the opinion of the constable and the experienced knights". 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, Jean de Wavrin, 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. The rearguard played little part in the battle; English and French accounts agree that many in the French army fled after seeing so many French nobles killed and captured in the fighting.