We few. We happy few. We band of brothers.
[Slightly edited reprint]
Today is 25 October, which until the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican was known as the feast day of the twin saints Crispin and Crispinian.
On the night of 24 October 1415, two armies settled in for a cold, wet, unpleasant night on either end of a narrow strip of land between the woods of Agincourt and Tramecourt. Each army believed it knew the outcome of the following day's battle, and what's more, agreed on what that outcome would be. The small, sick, foreign army must lose to the larger, fresher native one. It was the sort of thing you could count on.
King Henry V of England also claimed to be King of France. His title descended through Edward III, who in turn claimed his inheritance through his mother, Isabella of France, daughter of King Philip IV of France. English feudal law recognized claims through the female line. French Salic Law insisted on a purely male succession. Edward had fought several battles in the attempt to press his claim; Henry's father, also named Henry, had planned an expedition to do so but never managed it. Now Henry was determined to make the French crown his in fact and not merely an empty boast.
To this end, he had led a raid on French territory, capturing Harfleur in a long siege that whittled down his forces. He started out with nearly 10,000 men, and ended the siege with more like 7,000, some of which had to be left to hold the city. By the time the siege was done, the traditional campaigning season was almost over, and he resolved to march his much reduced force to Calais.
Charles d'Albret, Count of Dreux and Constable of France, acting on behalf of King Charles VI, was determined to stop Henry's depredations and bar his claim. King Charles might be insane and incompetent, the Dauphin unpromising, but at least they were French. Furthermore, while they were in power, d'Albret's Armagnac party at court held the real reins of power. He led an army that was at least double, possibly as much as six times as large as the depleted English host, depending on whose records and analysis you believe, and replete with the flower of French nobility.
Count Charles' army pursued the English all along their march. Their pursuit successfully prevented the English from raiding for provisions, which meant that by 20 October, the English were not just tired and sick, but also starving. French heralds issued their challenge to Henry that day; Henry shrugged, and committed himself and his army's fate to G-d's hands.
On the 24th, the French army successfully blocked Henry's path. Henry took stock of the situation, and stopped his army about a half-mile from the French lines, and attempted to parley. He offered to relinquish all the gains of his campaign and pay damages, if the French would give his army safe conduct to Calais. The French demanded he relinquish the claim that spurred the campaign in the first place. Henry refused, but both sides decided, apparently independently, to wait until the next day to settle the matter.
While Shakespeare exaggerates much in his play Henry V, his depiction of the night before the battle is fairly accurate. The English were fatalistic, resigned to sell themselves dearly but expecting to lose. By the King's order, they were nearly silent, and lit few fires, so that the French believed that the English had actually abandoned the position they'd held near sunset. The French camp, by contrast, was a carnival. Better equipped, better armoured, better fed, and boasting a much larger force defending home turf, it never occurred to them that they could lose.
The next morning, the two sides drew up on either side of a narrow, rain-sodden, freshly plowed field. The field was hemmed in by the two woods, and was no more than 900 feet across at the point where the two sides were likely to meet.
The lightly armoured English men-at-arms formed a single line of battle in three groups, with the center commanded by the King himself. On the two flanks were arrayed the longbow archers who made up the bulk of Henry's army. The archers carried stakes, called "palings", which they were to pound the ground at an angle once they reached their position. The idea was to hamper cavalry charges and other attempts to get at the longbowmen, while still permitting those archers free fire and an easy way to get out and into the melee.
The more heavily armoured French divided their numbers into three battle lines in theory, but in practice, none of the nobles who had assembled to prove their honour upon English corpses wanted to be anywhere but in front. Jealousies and politics made forming up in any sort of order a severe trial. Charles and his fellow general, Boucicaut, successfully argued that they should let the English attack first, believing they could grind the meagre force to dog-meat quickly. Indeed, it was hoped that the English would not attack at all, and that the French could simply starve them out.
Henry knew better. If he and his men were truly fated to die, it was not going to be by starvation. He ordered an advance that brought his men within the longest range of his archers. If the French had attacked at any time during that advance, they would indeed have had their meat grinder, and the English would have been destroyed. Instead, the French waited, and watched, and the English host reached its position, its archers driving their palings into the muddy earth.
The French continued to wait, expecting a charge. Instead, the English archers, all 5,000 of them by some estimates, began to unleash volley after volley of arrows, while the English men-at-arms stood back.
Not many of those arrows were likely to hit targets right away, but the sight and sound of 5,000 arrows being unleashed, followed seconds later by 5,000 more, and then 5,000 more, provoked the French into action. Elements of the French cavalry (many had wandered out of position in boredom!) charged, only to be thinned out by the continuous rain of arrows, piercing armour and equally important, horse-flesh. Unhorsed knights found their heavy armour a significant liability in the mud of the field, and the arrows kept coming. The woods kept them from outflanking the archers, and the narrow field made them easy targets. The few who made it anywhere near the archery lines ran smack up against the palings, and unable to breach the man-made thicket, retreated, only to have yet more arrows continue to fall down upon them.
The French cavalry's disorderly flight sent them crashing straight into the attempt at an orderly advance by the first line of French men-at-arms. That advance was further hindered by the muddy ground, made harder to traverse by the churning of panicked horses hooves and the bodies of fallen horses and men. The English men-at-arms awaited their charge, letting them exhaust themselves in the slog through the mud while the English archers used up their arrows, tipped with Bodkin points to pierce armour.
The French found themselves compressed on all sides, without adequate room to maneuver or use their weapons. The English gave hardly any ground as the French charge lost all its force in the drag through the mud. The English had taken their stand right before the narrowest point in the field, and refused to advance into the narrow neck the French had been lured across, made narrower by the constant rain of arrows shot by well-protected archers. Meanwhile, behind the first French line, the nobles in the second, eager to get to the victory they knew would be theirs, charged blindly forward.
With their arrows largely expended and the compression of the French line forcing the foot troops toward their palings, the archers dropped their bows in favour of whatever implement of destruction was handy, some of them merely using the mallets with which they'd driven in the stakes, and charged into the flanks of the increasingly ineffective French. The field was littered with dead Frenchman, many of them nobility. More French prisoners were taken for ransom than the entire English host. These prisoners were moved to the rear for protection.
While the English waited for the third line to attack, the Lord of Castle Agincourt led a small army of peasants to the English baggage train. There, they stole or destroyed much of what they found there, and slaughtered the token guard and the page boys left behind with the baggage. At about the same, the third line charged, meeting the same grinding fate as its predecessors.
Perhaps in anger over the slaughter of the page boys and wreck of the baggage; perhaps in fear of the large body of prisoners finding new weapons strewn on the field and leading a new attack from the rear; or perhaps simply because there were simply too many prisoners, Henry ordered many of those captured to be killed outright. His men-at-arms refused, still hoping for ransoms, so Henry ordered 200 archers--commoners and professional soldiers--to do the job. By some accounts, more prisoners were killed by that order than soldiers had been killed on the field in front of them. Despite this, some 1,500-2,000 prisoners returned with the English to England, and many were never ransomed, and so lived out their lives there.
While different accounts come up with different numbers, no account suggests that the English lost more than 500 men that day, and some as few as 100 (only Shakespeare would put the number as low as 29), and only a few of noble blood.
By contrast, the French lost thousands. Some say as few as 4,000, some as many as 11,000, but the result was the same, regardless of the actual number. The back of the French army was completely broken, and its nobility virtually depopulated.
Henry did nothing more to press this advantage. He and his army stumbled to Calais, reaching it on the 29th. From there, he sailed for home, leaving France alone until 1417. Two more campaigns broke the French will to fight and led to the Treaty of Troyes. The Treaty declared Henry Regent of France and rightful heir to Charles VI, dispossessing the dauphin. It also gave Henry the hand of Charles' daughter Catherine in marriage.
Henry would never be crowned King of France. He would die only a short while later, two months before Charles, of dysentery while attempting to subdue those who continued to dislike the idea of an English dynasty ruling France. His infant son's regents would proceed to squander all his gains, while a French heroine, Jean d'Arc, would fire up the notion of French nationality and put the spine back into the French people.
Meanwhile the Dauphin, once unpromising, would eventually be crowned Charles VII and reform his army along more professional lines, depriving the English of one of their advantages: a disciplined but smaller force was consistently able to beat an undisciplined larger one, but had no chance against a disciplined larger one. He would eventually drive the English out of almost all of France except the Pale of Calais.
Catherine would become the mother and grandmother of two kings, the latter of which was not descended from the former. After Henry V's death, she would dally with and perhaps marry an Owen Tudor; their son Edmund would marry Margaret Beaufort. Their son Henry would defeat Richard III at Bosworth Field to become Henry VII.
England's kings would continue to claim the French crown on and off until the Act of Union that created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
Today is 25 October, which until the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican was known as the feast day of the twin saints Crispin and Crispinian.
On the night of 24 October 1415, two armies settled in for a cold, wet, unpleasant night on either end of a narrow strip of land between the woods of Agincourt and Tramecourt. Each army believed it knew the outcome of the following day's battle, and what's more, agreed on what that outcome would be. The small, sick, foreign army must lose to the larger, fresher native one. It was the sort of thing you could count on.
King Henry V of England also claimed to be King of France. His title descended through Edward III, who in turn claimed his inheritance through his mother, Isabella of France, daughter of King Philip IV of France. English feudal law recognized claims through the female line. French Salic Law insisted on a purely male succession. Edward had fought several battles in the attempt to press his claim; Henry's father, also named Henry, had planned an expedition to do so but never managed it. Now Henry was determined to make the French crown his in fact and not merely an empty boast.
To this end, he had led a raid on French territory, capturing Harfleur in a long siege that whittled down his forces. He started out with nearly 10,000 men, and ended the siege with more like 7,000, some of which had to be left to hold the city. By the time the siege was done, the traditional campaigning season was almost over, and he resolved to march his much reduced force to Calais.
Charles d'Albret, Count of Dreux and Constable of France, acting on behalf of King Charles VI, was determined to stop Henry's depredations and bar his claim. King Charles might be insane and incompetent, the Dauphin unpromising, but at least they were French. Furthermore, while they were in power, d'Albret's Armagnac party at court held the real reins of power. He led an army that was at least double, possibly as much as six times as large as the depleted English host, depending on whose records and analysis you believe, and replete with the flower of French nobility.
Count Charles' army pursued the English all along their march. Their pursuit successfully prevented the English from raiding for provisions, which meant that by 20 October, the English were not just tired and sick, but also starving. French heralds issued their challenge to Henry that day; Henry shrugged, and committed himself and his army's fate to G-d's hands.
On the 24th, the French army successfully blocked Henry's path. Henry took stock of the situation, and stopped his army about a half-mile from the French lines, and attempted to parley. He offered to relinquish all the gains of his campaign and pay damages, if the French would give his army safe conduct to Calais. The French demanded he relinquish the claim that spurred the campaign in the first place. Henry refused, but both sides decided, apparently independently, to wait until the next day to settle the matter.
While Shakespeare exaggerates much in his play Henry V, his depiction of the night before the battle is fairly accurate. The English were fatalistic, resigned to sell themselves dearly but expecting to lose. By the King's order, they were nearly silent, and lit few fires, so that the French believed that the English had actually abandoned the position they'd held near sunset. The French camp, by contrast, was a carnival. Better equipped, better armoured, better fed, and boasting a much larger force defending home turf, it never occurred to them that they could lose.
The next morning, the two sides drew up on either side of a narrow, rain-sodden, freshly plowed field. The field was hemmed in by the two woods, and was no more than 900 feet across at the point where the two sides were likely to meet.
The lightly armoured English men-at-arms formed a single line of battle in three groups, with the center commanded by the King himself. On the two flanks were arrayed the longbow archers who made up the bulk of Henry's army. The archers carried stakes, called "palings", which they were to pound the ground at an angle once they reached their position. The idea was to hamper cavalry charges and other attempts to get at the longbowmen, while still permitting those archers free fire and an easy way to get out and into the melee.
The more heavily armoured French divided their numbers into three battle lines in theory, but in practice, none of the nobles who had assembled to prove their honour upon English corpses wanted to be anywhere but in front. Jealousies and politics made forming up in any sort of order a severe trial. Charles and his fellow general, Boucicaut, successfully argued that they should let the English attack first, believing they could grind the meagre force to dog-meat quickly. Indeed, it was hoped that the English would not attack at all, and that the French could simply starve them out.
Henry knew better. If he and his men were truly fated to die, it was not going to be by starvation. He ordered an advance that brought his men within the longest range of his archers. If the French had attacked at any time during that advance, they would indeed have had their meat grinder, and the English would have been destroyed. Instead, the French waited, and watched, and the English host reached its position, its archers driving their palings into the muddy earth.
The French continued to wait, expecting a charge. Instead, the English archers, all 5,000 of them by some estimates, began to unleash volley after volley of arrows, while the English men-at-arms stood back.
Not many of those arrows were likely to hit targets right away, but the sight and sound of 5,000 arrows being unleashed, followed seconds later by 5,000 more, and then 5,000 more, provoked the French into action. Elements of the French cavalry (many had wandered out of position in boredom!) charged, only to be thinned out by the continuous rain of arrows, piercing armour and equally important, horse-flesh. Unhorsed knights found their heavy armour a significant liability in the mud of the field, and the arrows kept coming. The woods kept them from outflanking the archers, and the narrow field made them easy targets. The few who made it anywhere near the archery lines ran smack up against the palings, and unable to breach the man-made thicket, retreated, only to have yet more arrows continue to fall down upon them.
The French cavalry's disorderly flight sent them crashing straight into the attempt at an orderly advance by the first line of French men-at-arms. That advance was further hindered by the muddy ground, made harder to traverse by the churning of panicked horses hooves and the bodies of fallen horses and men. The English men-at-arms awaited their charge, letting them exhaust themselves in the slog through the mud while the English archers used up their arrows, tipped with Bodkin points to pierce armour.
The French found themselves compressed on all sides, without adequate room to maneuver or use their weapons. The English gave hardly any ground as the French charge lost all its force in the drag through the mud. The English had taken their stand right before the narrowest point in the field, and refused to advance into the narrow neck the French had been lured across, made narrower by the constant rain of arrows shot by well-protected archers. Meanwhile, behind the first French line, the nobles in the second, eager to get to the victory they knew would be theirs, charged blindly forward.
With their arrows largely expended and the compression of the French line forcing the foot troops toward their palings, the archers dropped their bows in favour of whatever implement of destruction was handy, some of them merely using the mallets with which they'd driven in the stakes, and charged into the flanks of the increasingly ineffective French. The field was littered with dead Frenchman, many of them nobility. More French prisoners were taken for ransom than the entire English host. These prisoners were moved to the rear for protection.
While the English waited for the third line to attack, the Lord of Castle Agincourt led a small army of peasants to the English baggage train. There, they stole or destroyed much of what they found there, and slaughtered the token guard and the page boys left behind with the baggage. At about the same, the third line charged, meeting the same grinding fate as its predecessors.
Perhaps in anger over the slaughter of the page boys and wreck of the baggage; perhaps in fear of the large body of prisoners finding new weapons strewn on the field and leading a new attack from the rear; or perhaps simply because there were simply too many prisoners, Henry ordered many of those captured to be killed outright. His men-at-arms refused, still hoping for ransoms, so Henry ordered 200 archers--commoners and professional soldiers--to do the job. By some accounts, more prisoners were killed by that order than soldiers had been killed on the field in front of them. Despite this, some 1,500-2,000 prisoners returned with the English to England, and many were never ransomed, and so lived out their lives there.
While different accounts come up with different numbers, no account suggests that the English lost more than 500 men that day, and some as few as 100 (only Shakespeare would put the number as low as 29), and only a few of noble blood.
By contrast, the French lost thousands. Some say as few as 4,000, some as many as 11,000, but the result was the same, regardless of the actual number. The back of the French army was completely broken, and its nobility virtually depopulated.
Henry did nothing more to press this advantage. He and his army stumbled to Calais, reaching it on the 29th. From there, he sailed for home, leaving France alone until 1417. Two more campaigns broke the French will to fight and led to the Treaty of Troyes. The Treaty declared Henry Regent of France and rightful heir to Charles VI, dispossessing the dauphin. It also gave Henry the hand of Charles' daughter Catherine in marriage.
Henry would never be crowned King of France. He would die only a short while later, two months before Charles, of dysentery while attempting to subdue those who continued to dislike the idea of an English dynasty ruling France. His infant son's regents would proceed to squander all his gains, while a French heroine, Jean d'Arc, would fire up the notion of French nationality and put the spine back into the French people.
Meanwhile the Dauphin, once unpromising, would eventually be crowned Charles VII and reform his army along more professional lines, depriving the English of one of their advantages: a disciplined but smaller force was consistently able to beat an undisciplined larger one, but had no chance against a disciplined larger one. He would eventually drive the English out of almost all of France except the Pale of Calais.
Catherine would become the mother and grandmother of two kings, the latter of which was not descended from the former. After Henry V's death, she would dally with and perhaps marry an Owen Tudor; their son Edmund would marry Margaret Beaufort. Their son Henry would defeat Richard III at Bosworth Field to become Henry VII.
England's kings would continue to claim the French crown on and off until the Act of Union that created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.