Henry V’s destruction of the military strength French nobility at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 was the high point of English success in the Hundred Years War. Edward III, Henry’s great-grandfather, had begun the campaign 80 years earlier to wrest back from France territories that the English king laid claim to through his French ancestry.
When Henry V succeeded to the throne in 1413 he was already planning to consolidate the work begun by his ancestor. He wanted to win back lands lost and to gain possession of other lands that the French had never handed over. He planned to first take possession of Normandy, which he claimed to have been a domain of the English crown since the time of William the Conquer. From this power base, he would be in a strong position to make the French acknowledge and honour his claim to the French crown.
Henry V’s invasion of Normandy was no quick raid across the Channel. On 11 August, 1415, a pleasant Sunday afternoon on Southampton Water, the king gave the signal that sent on its way to France an armada of 1,500 ships – 12 times the number of ships that Spain sent against England in 1588 – carrying an army of 12,000 men and the huge tonnage of arms and equipment needed to support them in the months ahead. Three days later the little ships, most of which were merchant ships and coastal traders, were unloading their cargoes near Harfleur, on the south bank of the mouth of the river Seine in Normandy.
Henry had originally intended to cross the Seine from Harfleur and push north to the English possession of Calais, gathering in the lands of Normandy as he went and relying on speed to get him to Calais before the French could muster a response. Unfortunately, the town of Harfleur was well garrisoned and Henry had to besiege it. It was a month before Harfleur capitulated, and Henry eventually set off north early in October. By this time, his army had been depleted in both men and resources, with much having to be left behind to garrison and defend Harfleur.
At the same time, the French were organizing their forces into an increasingly formidable, well-organized army. The English found themselves constantly harried, short on rations, and again and again having to turn away from their chosen line of march because bridges and fords were now held by the French. Much of the way was through wooded country or marshy land on either side of rivers, and when the weather broke, heavy rain turned the country into a muddy quagmire. Much of this land, the valley of the Somme, was to be fought over again by French and British forces during World War I, now on the same side, in equally dreadful conditions in 1916.
On 20 October, the French sent heralds to the English camp, with a formal challenge for Henry V from the dukes of Orléans and Bourbon. Henry rejected it, sending back a message to the French that he intended to continue his march to Calais and would fight them if they opposed him. For the next four days the English and French armies marched virtually in parallel north towards Calais. Late in the day on 24 October, the two armies came together in a gorge between Agincourt and Tramecourt, with the French army blocking Henry’s way to Calais. Both armies made camp within sight and sound of each other. Clearly, there would be a battle between the two the next day, the Feast of Saints Crispin and Crispinian.
Of the two armies, the English was undoubtedly in the worse condition and the less prepared for a major encounter. It was much smaller than the French force. Henry is generally thought to have had about 900 lightly armed men-at-arms and 5,000 archers, all armed with the English longbow, at his disposal. Many of these men were suffering from dysentery, they had all been underfed for weeks and they were all tired: one military historian has calculated that they had marched about 420 km (260 miles) in 17 days. Nearly 200 years later the playwright William Shakespeare turned this ragged army into an heroically romantic ‘happy few, a band of brothers’ whose actions on ‘Crispin Crispian day’ would be remembered from that day onwards.
French numbers have been less easy to calculate. A generally accepted number is somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000, with the probable total being nearer the former number than the latter. Half the French army was made up of dismounted men-at-arms and the other half consisted of roughly two-thirds mounted knights (cavalry) and one-third crossbowmen and archers.
During the night heavy rain fell on both armies and the ground on which they would be fighting the next day. The English army made its preparations quietly; the French, full of confidence, could be heard eating and drinking, dicing and gambling, the knights resting on bales of straw to keep them above the mud, and their servants bustling to and fro and shouting cheerfully at each other. A rumour went about among the English that there was a brightly painted wagon at the back of the French camp and that in a few days’ time the English king was going to be paraded through Paris in it.
Next day, 25 October, 1415, both the English and French were up at dawn, moving their armies into position about 914 m (1,000 yds) apart. The French had decided on a battle plan that involved sending their troops into the fight in three waves. To this end, they formed their army into three lines, or ‘battles’, each battle consisting of two ranks of dismounted men, five or six men deep, and a line of horsemen – about 6,000 men in all in each battle. Bodies of 600 cavalry were stationed on each flank. There were well-disposed crossbowmen and gunners among the lines.
Henry, with far fewer fighting men at his disposal, had a single line of men-at-arms, four men deep. The line was divided into three divisions, with wedges of bowmen between them and more archers on the wings, standing behind well-sharpened stakes set in the ground in front of them at an angle carefully calculated to make the enemy turn aside or risk being impaled.
To ensure that no one would forget that his invasion was being carried out in the name of God, Henry had his priests well to the fore before battle was joined, praying continually. He himself received the sacrament before donning his gold-plated helmet, surmounted by a gold, jewel-studded crown, and mounting his horse. Late in the morning, after addressing his troops and reminding them of the justice of his cause and of those back home in England awaiting their return, Henry ordered his army to advance. Once in the centre of the field, the line stopped. The archers hammered their stakes into the ground, and let fly a storm of arrows at the enemy.
The longbow, used by the English much more successfully than other European states, helped Henry V win the Battle of Agincourt so comprehensively. It has been said that, not until the American Civil War, would a weapon with the range and accuracy of the longbow appear on a battlefield. The first French battle into the attack was led by the flanking cavalry, advancing so tightly packed that the knights could not wield their weapons. Their charge broke apart under the hail of arrows, which a well-trained archer could loose off every ten seconds. Many of the horses and riders that did get as far as the English line were impaled on the stakes in front of the archers. The remnants of the cavalry, retreating, plunged back into the heavily-armed and armoured foot soldiers, slowly lumbering into action behind them. The same thing happened to the second French battle.
Within four hours, the whole thing seemed to be over. The field was covered with dead and dying French; the French are calculated to have lost more than 6,000 men at Agincourt, while the English dead numbered less than 250. Many slightly wounded or unhorsed knights became so bogged down by their armour in the deep mud that they had become completely ineffective as fighting men. As one commentator noted, ‘Great people of [the French] were slain without any stroke’. There was a perceptible lull in the fighting, and it looked as if the third French battle would not continue. The English began gathering up prisoners who could be ransomed and searching for booty among the dead.