Battle of Agincourt

Background

In August 1415 Henry V of England, pressing his claim to the French throne in the Hundred Years War, landed in Normandy and besieged the port of Harfleur. The town held out for five weeks, and dysentery killed or disabled a large part of his army. Rather than sail home, Henry decided to march overland to English-held Calais with what was left, perhaps 6,000 to 9,000 men, about five in six of them archers. The French, led by the Constable Charles d'Albret and Marshal Boucicaut, blocked the crossings of the Somme and gathered a large army to intercept him. On 24 October the two armies met near the village of Azincourt, and the exhausted English spent a wet night in the open.

The Battle

The field was a strip of newly ploughed land, soaked by rain, running between the woods of Tramecourt and Azincourt, less than a kilometer wide. The French army was larger — traditional estimates of 20,000 to 30,000 have been revised downward by some historians, notably Anne Curry, but most still put it at two to three times the English — and it formed in three lines, mostly of dismounted men-at-arms, with cavalry on the wings. Neither side wanted to attack first. In the late morning Henry advanced his line to within long bowshot of the French, and the archers hammered in the sharpened stakes they carried and began to shoot. The French cavalry on the wings charged, were shot down or turned back by the stakes, and rode back into their own advancing men-at-arms. The French first line then advanced on foot, in heavy armor, through deep mud, under arrow fire from the front and flanks. When it reached the English men-at-arms it was already exhausted and so tightly packed that men could barely lift their weapons; the archers dropped their bows and joined in, and heaps of French dead and wounded built up along the line. The second line was drawn in and met the same fate. Late in the battle, fearing a renewed attack and a raid on his baggage, Henry ordered many of the French prisoners killed.

Weapons

The English Longbow decided the opening phase, but the killing was done at close quarters, with the Poleaxe, the Longsword, daggers, axes and the archers' mallets, a kind of War Hammer. Men-at-arms wore full plate armor of the early fifteenth century, the predecessor of Gothic Plate Armor, with the visored bascinet. The French crossbowmen, armed with the Arbalest, were placed behind their men-at-arms and barely shot.

Aftermath

French losses were enormous: several thousand killed, including the Constable d'Albret, the dukes of Alençon, Brabant and Bar, and a large part of the nobility of northern France, and many more captured, among them Charles, Duke of Orléans. The English lost a few hundred at most, including the Duke of York. Henry reached Calais and sailed home a hero. He returned to conquer Normandy, and the Treaty of Troyes of 1420 made him heir to the French throne, though his early death in 1422 undid his work. Shakespeare's Henry V made the battle, and the "band of brothers" speech, part of English national memory.