Battle of Agincourt

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Battle of Agincourt
Part of the Hundred Years' War
Image:Agincour.JPG
The Battle of Agincourt, 15th century miniature
Date 25 October (St. Crispin's Day) 1415
Location Agincourt, France
Result Decisive English victory
Combatants
Kingdom of England Kingdom of France
Commanders
Henry V of England Charles d'Albret
Strength
About 6,000 (but see 'Modern re-assessment'). 4/5 longbowmen, 1/5 dismounted men-at-arms. Between 20,000 and 30,000 (but see 'Modern re-assessment'). Estimated to be 1/6 crossbowmen and archers, 1/2 dismounted men-at-arms, 1/3 mounted knights.
Casualties
100-250 Casualties[1] Around 6,000 Casualties
Hundred Years' War
Edwardian – Breton Succession – Caroline – Lancastrian

The Battle of Agincourt was fought on 25 October 1415 (Saint Crispin's Day), in northern France as part of the Hundred Years' War. The combatants were the English army of King Henry V and that of Charles VI of France. The latter was commanded not by the incapacitated king himself, but by the 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 helped the English compensate for their inferior numbers. The battle was also immortalised (and somewhat fictionalised) by William Shakespeare as the centrepiece of his play Henry V.

Contents

[edit] The campaign

Henry V invaded France for several reasons. He hoped that by fighting a popular foreign war, he would strengthen his position at home. He wanted to improve his finances by gaining revenue-producing lands. He also wanted to take nobles prisoner either for ransom or to extort money from the French king in exchange for their return. Evidence also suggests that several lords in the region of Normandy promised Henry their lands when they died, but the King of France confiscated their lands instead.

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. Henry decided to move most of his army (roughly 9,000) to the port of Calais, the only English stronghold in northern France, where they could re-equip over the winter.

During the siege, the French had been able to call up a large feudal army which d'Albret deployed skilfully between Harfleur and Calais, mirroring the English manoeuvres along the river Somme, thus preventing them from reaching Calais without a major confrontation. The result was that d'Albret managed to force Henry into fighting a battle that, given the state of his army, he would have preferred to avoid. The English had very little food, had marched 260 miles in two and a half weeks, were suffering from sickness, and faced large numbers of experienced, well-armed and armoured Frenchmen.

However, the catastrophic defeat that the French suffered at the Battle of Agincourt allowed Henry 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.

Henry V did not live to inherit the throne of France. In 1422, while securing his position against further French opposition, he died of dysentery at the age of 34, two months before the death of Charles VI. He was succeeded by his young son, Henry VI. During his reign, the English were expelled from all of France except Calais by French forces, inspired by Joan of Arc, under the new French king, Charles VII.

[edit] The battle

Henry and his troops were marching to Calais to embark for England when he was intercepted by forces which outnumbered his.

The battle was fought in the defile (gorge) formed by the wood of Agincourt (close to the modern village of Azincourt) and that of Tramecourt. The army was positioned by d'Albret at the northern exit so as to bar the way to Calais. The night of 24 October was spent by the two armies on open ground, and the English had little shelter from the heavy rain.

Early on the 25th, Henry deployed his army (900 men-at-arms and 5,000 longbowmen) across a 750 yard part of the defile. It is likely that the English adopted their usual battle line of longbowmen on either flank, men-at-arms and knights in the centre, and at the very centre roughly 200 archers. The English men-at-arms in plate and mail were placed shoulder to shoulder four deep. The English archers on the flanks drove pointed wooden stakes called palings into the ground at an angle to force cavalry to veer off. It has been argued that fresh men were brought in after the siege of Harfleur; however, other historians argue that this is wrong, and that although 9,200 English left Harfleur, after more sickness set in, they were down to roughly 5,900 by the time of the battle.

The French were arrayed in three lines called "battles", each with roughly 6,000; however, the first is thought to have swelled to nearly 9,000. Situated on each flank were smaller "wings" of mounted men-at-arms and French Nobles (probably 2,400 in total, 1,200 on each wing), while the centre contained dismounted men-at-arms, many of whom were French scions, including twelve princes of royal blood. The rear was made up of 6,000-9,000 (some sources estimate lower, some estimate higher) of late arriving men-at-arms and armed servants known as "gros varlets" . The 4,000-6,000 French crossbowmen and archers were posted in front of the men-at-arms in centre.

Contrary to popular belief, the French were a force of professional soldiers led by experienced commanders, not an ill-disciplined force of levied noblemen.

The lack of reliable and consistent sources makes it very difficult to accurately estimate the numbers on both sides. Estimates vary from 6,000 to 9,000 for the English, and from about 15,000 to about 36,000 for the French. Some modern research has questioned whether the English were as outnumbered as traditionally thought (see below). The English were probably not outnumbered as badly as the legend would have it; however, most modern historians would accept that they were outnumbered by three to one or more.

Arguably, the deciding factor for the battle's outcome was the terrain. Plagued by recent heavy rains, the battle field was knee deep in very thick mud. This deep, soft mud favoured the English force because, once knocked to the ground, the heavily armoured French knights struggled to get back up to fight in the melee. Various accounts [citation needed] state that several knights, encumbered by their armor, actually drowned in it. Their limited mobility made them easy targets for the volleys from the English archers. The mud also increased the ability of the English archers to fight in the melee. Lightly armoured or even unarmoured compared to the men-at-arms on both sides, the archers suffered only minor problems from the mud.

French accounts state that, prior to the battle, Henry V gave a speech reassuring his nobles that if the French prevailed, the English nobles would be spared, to be captured and ransomed instead. However, the common soldier would have no such luck and therefore he told them they had better fight for their lives.

Map of the battle
Enlarge
Map of the battle

On the morning of the 25th the French were still waiting for additional troops to arrive. The Duke of Brabant, the Duke of Anjou and the Duke of Brittany, each commanding 1,000-2,000 fighting 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; then Henry, finding that the French would not advance, moved his army further into the defile. Within extreme bowshot from the French line (400 yards), the archers dug in palings, and opened the engagement with a barrage of arrows. The use of palings was an innovation; during the Crécy and Poitiers, two similar engagements between the French and the English, the archers did not use them.

The French at this point lost some of their discipline and the wings charged the archers, but were decimated and then driven back in confusion. The constable himself headed the leading line of dismounted men-at-arms, but weighed down by their armour and sinking deep into the mud with every step, they struggled to reach and engage the English men-at-arms. Wallowing in the mud, they were easy targets for the English bowmen. Once the French reached the English line it became worse: because of the number of men they had brought into the defile, the French were far too closely packed to even lift their weapons to attack the enemy. However, as casualties mounted and prisoners were taken, the French started to engage the line to good effect. The thin line of defenders was pushed back and Henry himself was almost beaten to the ground. But at this moment, the archers, using hatchets, swords and other weapons, penetrated the gaps among the now disordered French, who could not cope with their unarmoured assailants, and were slaughtered or taken prisoner. By this time the second line of the French had already attacked, only to be engulfed in the mêlée. Its leaders, like those of the first line, were killed or captured, and the commanders of the third line sought and found their death in the battle, while their men rode off to safety.

One of the best anecdotes of the battle is about what happened when Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, Henry V's youngest brother, was wounded in the abdomen. According to the story, Henry, upon hearing of his brother's wound, took his household guard and cut a path through the French, standing over his brother's body and beating back waves of soldiers until Gloucester could be dragged to safety.

The only success for the French was a sally from Agincourt Castle behind the lines. Ysambart D'Agincourt seized the King's baggage with 1,000 peasants. Thinking his rear was under attack and worried that the prisoners would rearm themselves with the weapons that were strewn across the field, Henry ordered the slaughter of the captives. The nobles and senior officers, wishing to ransom the prisoners, refused, so the task fell to the common soldiers.

In the morning, Henry returned to the battlefield and ordered the killing of any wounded Frenchmen who had survived the night out in the open. All the nobility had already been taken away and any commoners left on the field were too badly injured to survive without medical care.

Claims that the English losses were only thirteen men-at-arms (including Edward of Norwich, 2nd Duke of York, a grandson of Edward III) and about 100 of the foot soldiers are not supported by reliable documentation and are quite unlikely given the ferocity of the fighting. Henry quite deliberately concealed the actual English losses by paying the English retinues at their pre-battle strengths while quickly spreading the story of only minor English losses which survive to this day. One fairly widely used estimate is that there were 450 English casualties. This is not an insignificant number in an army of 6,000, but far less than the thousands of French who were lost.

The French suffered heavily, mainly because of the massacre of the prisoners. The constable, three dukes, five counts and 90 barons (see below) were among the dead, and a number of notable prisoners were taken, amongst them the Duke of Orléans (the famous poet Charles d'Orléans) and Jean Le Maingre, Marshal of France.

Due to a lack of reliable sources it is impossible to give a precise figure for the French and English losses at Agincourt. However, it is clear that in a battle where the English were considerably outnumbered, their final losses were much lower than those of the French.

The Battle of Agincourt did not result in Henry conquering France, but it did allow him to escape and renew the war two years later.

[edit] Notable casualties

[edit] Sir Peers Legh

When Sir Peers Legh was wounded, his mastiff stood over him and protected him for many hours through the battle. Although Legh later died, the mastiff returned to Legh's home and became the forefather of the Lyme Hall mastiffs. Five centuries later, this pedigree figured prominently in founding the modern English Mastiff breed.

[edit] Modern re-assessment of Agincourt

[edit] Were the English as outnumbered as traditionally thought?

Until recently, Agincourt has been feted as one of the greatest victories in English military history. But, in Agincourt, A New History (2005), Anne Curry makes the claim that the scale of the English triumph at Agincourt was overstated for almost six centuries.

According to her research, the French still outnumbered the English and Welsh, but at worst only by a factor of three to two (12,000 Frenchmen against 8,000 Englishmen). According to Curry, the Battle of Agincourt was a "myth constructed around Henry to build up his reputation as a king". The legend of the English as underdogs at Agincourt was definitely given credence in popular English culture with William Shakespeare's Henry V in 1599. In the speech before the battle, Shakespeare puts in the mouth of Henry V the famous words, "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers." Furthermore, Shakespeare seriously overstated the French casualties and understated the English, even by the traditional count; at the end (Act IV, Scene 8), when Henry's herald delivers the death toll, the numbers are 10,000 French dead and just 29 English.

The primary sources themselves generally do not agree on the numbers of the combatants involved. For example, Enguerrand the Monstrelet, a chronicler writing thirty-eight years after the battle, gave a number of 13,000 archers and 2,000 men-at-arms for the English while the French first and second battles plus the two mounted wings added up to 25,000 men. He does not provide any numbers for the mounted reserve that made up the third battle, stating only that it ran away upon seeing the English victory over the first and second battles.

Juliet Barker in Agincourt: The King, the Campaign, the Battle, claims 6,000 English and Welsh fought against 36,000 French, with the odds being six to one, from a French heraldic source.

Many documentaries about the Battle of Agincourt use the figures of about 6,000 English and 36,000 French, with a French superiority in numbers of 6-1. This is almost certainly an exaggeration; even Shakespeare only puts the odds at 5-1. Other historians put the English numbers at 6,000 and the French numbers at 20-30,000, which would mean the English were still outnumbered by more than 3-1. Curry's research is currently alone in putting the odds at significantly less than this.

[edit] Popular myths

It has long been told that the famous "two-fingers salute" and/or "V sign" derives from the gestures of English archers, fighting at Agincourt. The myth claims that the French cut off two fingers on the right hand of captured archers and that the gesture was a sign of defiance by those who were not mutilated.

The "two-fingers salute" is certainly older than Agincourt. It appears in the Macclesfield Psalter MS 1-2005 Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, believed to be produced in about 1330, Folio 130 Recto, CDROM p261, being made by a glove on the extended nose of a marginalia depicting a human headed hybrid beast, ridden by a person playing the pipe and tabor. The Psalter marginalia have many absurdities and obscenities so the traditional meaning of this gesture would not be out of place here. As the gesture is made by a disembodied glove accidental positioning of the hand may be ruled out.

This may have some basis in fact. Jean Froissart (circa 1337-circa 1404) was a historian as the author of The Chronicle, a primary document that is essential to an understanding of Europe in the fourteenth century and to the twists and turns taken by the Hundred Years' War. The story of the English waving their fingers at the French is told in the first-person account by Froissart, however the description is not of an incident at the Battle of Agincourt, but rather at the siege of a castle in another incident during the Hundred Years' War. Also, Froissart is known to have died before the Battle of Agincourt. So, while it may have been used at Agincourt, it did not originate there.

[edit] See also

[edit] Bibliography

  • Barker, Juliet (2005). Agincourt: The King, the Campaign, the Battle Pub: Little, Brown. ISBN 0-316-72648-6 (UK). ISBN 0-316-01503-2 (US: Agincourt : Henry V and the Battle That Made England (2006)).
  • Curry, Anne (2005). Agincourt: A New History. Pub: Tempus UK. ISBN 0-7524-2828-4
  • "Battle of Agincourt" in Military Heritage, October 2005, Volume 7, No. 2, pp. 36 to 43). ISSN 1524-8666.
  • Dupuy, Trevor N. (1993). Harper Encyclopedia of Military History. Pub: New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-270056-1
  • Keegan, John (1976). The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme. Pub: Viking Adult. ISBN 0-14-004897-9 (Penguin Classics Reprint)
  • The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge Macclesfield Psalter CD, e-mail fitzmuseum-enquiries@lists.cam.ac.uk

[edit] External links

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Trevor Dupuy, Harper Encyclopedia of Military History. p. 450. However, "..it is likely that casualties were substantially greater than this."

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