Written by: Laurier Hampton
The Battle of Agincourt, fought by France and England, is one of the most epic battles of all time. It’s right up there with some of the greatest wars in history such as Waterloo, D-Day and the Battle of Marathon. Some of you may have heard of the Battle of Agincourt and some never. Where you come from may be a contributing factor. This may not be the case for you but I was taught in the U.S. and I never heard of this battle until I came across it on my own. While deciding whether or not if I should research Agincourt for my next topic, I asked various family, friends and acquaintances if they had ever heard of it. I either received a “Never.” or “That name rings a bell but, not really.” That was when I decided I needed to research this battle and write about it. The more I read about the Battle of Agincourt, the more I wanted to know. It is important to know the details that lead up to the battle so, before I get into the meat and potatoes of the battle itself, here is a little preface on the political situation in England and France before this epic battle took place.
Depiction of the Battle of Agincourt
During the 15th century, France and England were butting heads constantly and this was mainly due to territory disputes. This time in French and English history is known as the Hundred Years War. These wars dramatically affected England’s government, economy, reputation and it caused turmoil within the country itself. There was this English dynasty known as the Plantagenets, who originally came from France. This family was at their most powerful from 1154 – 1204 and ruled all of England and parts of France such as Normandy, Aquitaine, Brittany, Anjou, Maine and Touraine. This was a sizeable chunk of territory. Over time, France was able to recapture these territories the Plantagenets had taken from them and all that was left was an area called Gascony. The English king wasn’t even the sovereign of Gascony, but only a hereditary duke. This was a major problem for the English king because his status as the Duke of Gascony made him part of the French feudal aristocracy. This meant that the French king could, at any moment, dispose of him. It was King of England, Edward the III, who decided it was time to do something about England’s dwindling territory in France. Edward III started a war with France to gain the lost territory back, but he was also furious with France for interfering with the wars between England and Scotland at the time. Edward used his claim to the French crown as the rationale behind going to war with France. Europe has a history of wars breaking out due to hereditary claims and Edward was no different. Kingdoms would unite through arranged marriages with other nations to form treaties and alliances. An example would be Mary I, whose mother was Catherine of Aragon from Spain and her father Henry VIII who was the King of England. Edward III’s claim was through his French mother, Isabella of France. Numerous invasions ensued and resulted in England gaining territory in France that included the port of Calais through the Treaty of Bretigny. All of this was done during the Black Death which, without assistance from the war, killed forty percent of Europe’s population. It was bad enough that many lives were needlessly lost during these invasions into France.
Now that you have an idea of the history before the battle, let’s move on to the actual battle itself. Flash forward to the year 1413 and England’s king is now the twenty-nine year old battle experienced Henry V. When Henry comes to the throne the Treaty of Bretigny that granted England all of its French territory back is now falling apart. Everything that his great-grandfather Edward III fought for is disappearing, so immediately upon his ascension to the throne he decides to take action. The king of France at the time was King Charles VI. This guy is a story in himself and I would love to cover the history of his life one day, but for now I will just stick to the basics for the sake of this topic. Historians have some ideas as to who Charles VI was and believe him to have been a sufferer of paranoid schizophrenia. It is said that he would run around the palace screaming while smearing his own excrement all over his body. It is also believed that he thought himself made of glass. He had steel framing installed into his clothes to keep himself from shattering. This of course was not good for France and what also was not good for France was a major power struggle that was taking place between two French royal families known as the dukes of Burgundy and the dukes of Orleans. Henry had a lot to prove when he came to the English throne and he knew this was the perfect time to strike France while they were at their weakest. The only problem was wars cost a lot of money and Henry lacked the financial requirement to take action.
Charles VI
To finance his conquest, Henry levied new taxes and borrowed a lot of money from the wealthy English citizens. In order to guarantee repayment, Henry pawned royal treasure and even a ruby and diamond-encrusted crown that once belonged to King Richard II. He was able to muster the equivalent in today’s money five million dollars to pay for his army. Unlike in France, England was inventing new ways in military organization. The army England gathered consisted of mercenaries, knights, volunteers and criminals who would be pardoned for joining the army. They created a contract system where the soldiers were paid daily for their service during the contractually obligated amount of time. The French were still operating on the code of chivalry, where only the elite class of nobility was allowed to bear arms for their king. The French would never arm their peasants and believed that the glory and honor was only meant for the nobility. The French army was comprised of an estimated 24,000 elite knights wearing plate armor, while the English was comprised of an estimated 9,000 men from many walks of life and roughly 7,000 of them were bowman in light armor.
Henry V
It was on August 11, 1415 that Henry V and his army set sail for their French invasion. He arrived at the French port of Harfleur on October 9, 1415 and began a siege that lasted five weeks. Henry’s army was successful but the siege resulted in Henry loosing many men and much supplies. He took the captain of the garrison and many French soldiers as prisoners. The siege also displaced thousands of families and women and children became refugees because their homes were now destroyed and occupied by a foreign army. Although many were displaced Henry, unlike his predecessors, forbade the burning of homes, crops or churches, and killing or raping of civilians. These war tactics were commonly used during Edward III’s day to utilize terror to break the population. Henry wanted to be the sovereign of these lands and therefore had to show the people that he would be an even greater king than their current one. Anyone caught doing anything of the sort would be killed on site. One of his soldiers was caught stealing a pyx from a church and Henry condemned him to death.
Henry was advised to retreat back to England to regroup after the success of the siege because of his army’s weakened state, but he decided to push forward all the way to Calais. After resting at Harfleur for three weeks, he left twelve hundred of his men to defend Harfleur and set forth with the remaining men to reach Calais. Henry and his army had to reach Calais without getting caught by the French along the way. The remaining army is estimated to be nine-thousand total with seven-thousand of them being archers. I’ve found that this number varies source to source. After a two-hundred mile march over sixteen days to reach Calais, the French caught up with them and forced them to travel along the river Somme, which added more days to their journey. At this point, Henry’s men were exhausted, starving and some suffering from dysentery. Then, on a rainy October 25 St. Crispin’s Day, the English army was ambushed by a French army full of heavily armored men-at-arms with eight times the cavalry. The total French force is estimated to have been twenty-four thousand men. It is said that the night before Henry forced his troops to move in silence throughout the night because he feared an ambush. He kept strict order amongst his men by threatening them for their silence. The men-at-arms and knights were told if they were not silent, they would be ordered to give up their horse and harness. The lower ranking soldiers were told they would lose their right ear. However, this did not help Henry in the least and the French still caught up with them. Right before the battle broke out, Henry ordered each of his archers to make a stake and to place it in the ground in order to protect the archers from the French cavalry. Supposedly, when the archers unleashed their arrows at the French, the arrows were so thick that they blacked out the sun. This attack slaughtered the French and afterwards the archers joined in with mallets and poleaxes. The French were also at such a great disadvantage due to the weather. For several days before the battle it rained and for the heavily armored French army, this was bad news. Sinking into the mud, the French knights tried to make their way to the English soldiers. By the time they arrived, the knight would be so exhausted giving the English an advantage. For the record, plate armor is ridiculously heavy! The end result was Henry’s small sickly army unbelievably annihilating the French. An estimated six-thousand French men died during the battle which included nobles and men-at-arms. There were only around two-hundred English casualties and two noteworthy ones, the Duke of York and the Earl of Suffolk. Henry took French soldiers as prisoners and his roster included the Duke of Orleans and the Duke of Bourbon. Do you remember these guys? These were the two dukes I mentioned who were fighting each other for power in France. Part of the code of chivalry was to ransom off a nobleman who was a prisoner of war. If a knight was captured after a battle he expected to return to his home. This was not the case for some of the nobles who were captured at Agincourt. There was a rumor that spread throughout the English ranks that the remaining French were organizing for a second attack. Henry V did not want to take any chances, so he ignored the old code of honor and executed all French troops in his custody except for a hand full of dukes and men of prestige. Per an account of a French knight, a group of twelve prisoners were forced inside of a house that was then set on fire.
The Battlefield
In the end, Henry and his army sailed back home and did not come back to France until 1417. He eventually married Charles VI’s daughter Catherine de Valois and was recognized as the heir to the French throne when Charles VI would die. He went on to have a son, Henry VI, who would show signs of mental instability like his grandfather. Shortly after the birth of Henry V’s son, on August 31, 1422, he died from dysentery while besieging Meaux in France when his son was but nine months old. He died before Charles VI, so he was never able to actually gain the French crown.
Even though the English won the Battle at Agincourt, they did not win the Hundred Years War. Never the less, the battle is still noteworthy to this day. William Shakespeare is partially responsible for the battle’s lasting legacy because of his play “Henry V”. The play includes a well known speech called the St. Crispin’s Day speech, in which Henry V rallies his army for the battle. If we flash forward to World War I, the play was used to keep up British moral during the war.
I hope you enjoyed the history of the Battle of Agincourt as much as I did. If you would like to learn more information about the Battle of Agincourt, please check out the references I have listed below. Thank you for reading! 🙂
References
- Dodd, Gwilym. “Henry’s Hollow Victory.”History Today 2015: 19-26. Print.
- YouTube. History, 18 Sept. 2014. Web. 10 Mar. 2017. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhuO3oQBE7A&t=507s>.
- Cooper, Stephen. “Attitudes to Agincourt.” History Today 2012: 31-33. Print.
- Jones, Dan. “Agincourt—600 Years On.” The American Interest. N.p., 16 Oct. 2015. Web. 05 Mar. 2017. http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/10/10/agincourt600-years-on/
- Andrews, Evan. “9 Things You May Not Know About the Battle of Agincourt.” History, 23 Oct. 2015. Web. 05 Mar. 2017. <http://www.history.com/news/9-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-battle-of-agincourt>.
Old Dirty History 