← Dan Snow's History Hit
Dan Snow's History Hit
The Battle of Agincourt
00:35:39
Join Dan to discover how Agincourt became a legendary military triumph in English history.
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- [00:00]
Dan Snow
Hello folks. Dan Snow here. I am throwing a party to celebrate 10 years of Dan Snow's history. I'd love for you to be there. Join me for a very special live recording of the podcast in London in England on 12th September to celebrate the 10 years. You can find out more about it. Get tickets with the link in the show notes. Look forward to seeing you there. Dude, did you order the new iPhone 17 Pro? Got it from Verizon, the best 5G network in America. I never looked so good. You look the same. But with this camera everything looks better. Especially me.
- [00:38]
Knox
You haven't changed your hair in 15 years. Selfies check please.
- [00:43]
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- [01:49]
Dan Snow
That he which hath no stomach to this fight, let him depart. His passport shall be made, and crowns for put into his purse. We would not die in that man's company that fears his fellowship to die with us. Old men forget, yet all shall be forgot. But he'll remember with advantages what feats he did that day. Then shall come our names, familiar in his mouth as household words. Harry the King, Bedford next to Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester be in their flowing cups freshly remembered. This story shall the good man teach his son, and Crispin Crispian shall ne' er go by from this day to the ending of the world, but we in it shall be remembered, we few, we happy few, we band of brothers. For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother. Be he ne' er so vile, this day shall gentle his condition. Hi everybody, and welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. That was one of the greatest speeches in the English language. Henry V before the Battle of Agincourt. But like William Wallace shouting freedom. It is entirely made up. Absolutely no basis in history at all. Utter glorious nonsense. But Shakespeare hit those dizzying heights because he was writing about a battle that indeed seared into English consciousness. Saint Crispin's Day was talked about and thanks to him, it was seared deeper still. As Shakespeare said, the good man shall teach his son about this battle. And my son happens to be here as well. Wolf, come over here. Wulf, do I tell you about this battle? Uh, no. Go and do your homework. You can list this pod when it comes out. Jeeper screamer, show me up. The Battle of Agincourt is one of the most famous and celebrated victories in English history. It was a great clash between a weary, outnumbered English army and the mighty host of France. Few battles in English history, certainly as steeped in legend. It has inspired plays and poems and movies and it's bit the root of centuries of national myth making. There was spin right from the start, from within minutes of the battle ending. Henry V was keen to show this as a sign of divine approval, approbation on him and the House of Lancaster. He made sure he marketed that victory on both sides of the Channel for everything it was worth. And so because of Henry and because of Shakespeare, 600 years later, we are still talking about the Battle of Agincourt. Exploring why England and France came to blows again. Hearing about the powerful personalities who shaped events on both sides. We're gonna follow the drama of the battle itself. We're gonna trace the far reaching consequences of Agincourt. From Henry V's fleeting dominance in France. Wish that had lasted a bit longer. To the enduring ways that this muddy October morning reshaped nations, histories and stories they told themselves. Without any further ado, here's everything you need to know about Henry V's victory over the French in late 1415. Enjoy. How can you not?
- [05:09]
Monday Sidekick AI Advertiser
T -10 atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima.
- [05:12]
Dan Snow
God save the King. No black white unity till there is first some black unity. Never to go to war with one another again.
- [05:20]
Blue Apron Advertiser
And lift off and the shuttle has cleared the tower.
- [05:30]
Dan Snow
The story of Agincourt, it really stretches back nearly 350 years before the battle itself, right to that moment when the Dukes of Normandy, particularly William Duke of Normandy, became King of England after that Norman conquest after 1066. Well that triggered a bit of a problem in the internal politics of France because you now have a subject of the King of France who is also King of England, so he's the subordinate to the King of France as the Duke of Normandy, but he's also sort of his equal as King of England, depending on which hat he's wearing. So it's all very, very tricky. And given that the internal politics of the space that we now call France was pretty complicated already, this was just adding fuel to a very combustible situation. The Dukes of Normandy were constantly campaigning. They're constantly fighting against their neighbouring counts and dukes in Brittany and Maine and Anjou and Flanders, and those conflicts are being intensified. Now. The Dukes of Normandy had the resources of England behind them. They also pose a much greater threat to France than the kings of France would have liked. And quite quickly, it becomes a central aim of French strategy to drive the English out of Normandy to dispossess the King of England of his Norman and his other territories in France, incorporate all those into France proper and, you know, slightly rationalize their relationship. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. King John of England, Duke of Normandy. An incompetent, cowardly, weakling King John was driven out of Normandy by the French and then was on the verge of being toppled by his own magnates, helped by a French invasion of England, before, thankfully, he died of dysentery, dysentery which saved his dynasty. His son, Henry iii restored Plantagenet fortunes within England with the help of the legendary William the Marshal. More on that in another podcast. But King Henry ruled over just a tiny little rump of his family's patrimony in France. He ruled over the area of Gascony in southwest France. And from Henry onwards, there was a desire among his English successors, his descendants, to seize back their lands from France, particularly the Dukedom of Normandy, which was so important to that ruling family. That's where they'd come from. Henry's son, Edward I, was pretty warlike. Now, Edward's grandson, Edward III, was also a very effective warrior. And Edward III's situation was transformed by an unlikely and untimely series of deaths. In 1314, the French king Philip died, and then three of his sons and one of his grandsons all died one after the other over the next 14 years. It was one of those spectacular and catastrophic inheritance crises in Western European history. The Capetian line, the French royal line, which had been so successful in producing reasonably healthy, tolerably competent boys, was now out of juice. And the nearest surviving male relative was the last king's nephew, who was, unfortunately, Edward III of England. His mother, Isabella, had been a daughter of Philip I. Of France, she's known rather unfairly, but in a fantastically cool nickname, the she Wolf of France. But it's like one of those insults that actually becomes a badge of honour. But like Margaret Thatcher being called the Iron lady, the she Wolf of France's son was now coming for the French crown. And that, folks, well, that's really the start of the Hundred Years War. And that explains why Henry V, who was Edward III's descendant, that explains why he was campaigning in France in the early 15th century. The English royal line hadn't had an entirely smooth time. During the course of the Hundred Years War, Richard II was deposed. He was murdered by his cousin, Henry iv. Henry IV then got embroiled in a lengthy civil war, a huge uprising in Wales, the revolt of the mighty Percy family in the north, problems with Scotland. It all kicked off in a battle. During that civil war. His young son, Prince Henry, fought at his side the Battle of Shrewsbury. He fought very bravely. He was terribly disfigured by an arrow in the face. And he commanded his own forces in Wales. Rarely has a royal heir, the Prince of Wales served such a brutal and effective apprenticeship as Henry V on his way to the throne. The man was a warrior through and through, and he had a vision. He wanted to unite England, he wanted to breathe life into the ambitions of his predecessor, Edward iii, to. He wants to resurrect that claim to the French throne and unite England with a common enemy. It's the old trick, folks, a big foreign military invasion trying to unite everyone at home as well as all that. Henry V was really the first king that started to embrace the English language. Obviously, since William the Conqueror, the official language of the English ruling elite had been Norman French, but English is now used. Henry writes sort of proclamations on how his campaigns are going and he writes them in English and he has officials read them out in all the shires. Henry has this vision of an England united of his people coming together to fight to restore his lawful rights as King of France. On foreign fields, gathering as much booty along the way as they can. He uses that vision to inspire parliament. The MPs vote him the taxation required to launch an invasion. And so Henry V, in 1415, age 29, launches his invasion of Normandy. And it's very important. He did land in Normandy, he didn't land in Calais, which at that stage was an English possession. It was a heavily fortified garrison town. He landed in Normandy because that was the place to re establish his rights as Duke of Normandy, secure the Duchy of Normandy and Then perhaps even use that as a springboard to take the crown of France. So he lands with about 12,000 men, we think. There's a very brilliant Professor, Anne Curry, she's calculated that it was about 12,000 men. It was a bigger army than any assembled in the 14th century. So this was a national enterprise. 25% of those men we might loosely call knights. They wore heavy armor, they had a horse, they had all the equipment required. They were men at arms. They were paid a shilling a day if they were ordinary men at arms, two shillings a day. Though if they were of higher status, people like Jukes got a lot more money. You were paid not on your military prowess, but where you fitted into the social hierarchy of England at the time. Now, the other 75% of the army are the famous archers. They're paid just six pence a day, so you can take a lot more archers than you can take men at arms. It's more cost effective and it helps that they're a gigantic force multiplier. They're armed with what's been described as the medieval machine gun. They're armed with the longbow, a viciously potent weapon that Henry would have learned all about on his campaigns in Wales in the early 15th century and on the fields of Shrewsbury. That almost cost young Henry his life. He'd have been left in no doubt as to the effectiveness of the longbow. They could shoot arrows rapidly over long ranges with great accuracy, with huge stopping power. It was such an effective weapon. But the campaign didn't start that well. For six weeks, Henry's force was bogged down, besieging the town of Harfleur. Harfleur now is a little town most people would have heard of. It's been superseded by the giant artificial harbour at Le Havre, just across the Seine estuary. But it fulfills the same strategic purpose. It's the port at the mouth of the Seine, that giant river that runs into the heart of France towards Paris, and thus it's a hugely important position for trade and defence. Harfleur eventually surrendered, but it was a nightmare of a siege. Henry himself directed the whole thing. He was in the trenches, for example, edging his artillery ever closer forward. Cannon, that artillery, that's reasonably new in this period. Henry had used them to batter some of the castles held by Welsh rebels 10 years before, so he knew about sieges and he knew about the potency of cannon. Apparently. He sighted them himself, he inched them closer. He eventually opened up a breach in the wall, actually battered down a stretch of Wal. Now, the citizens of Harfleur did not fancy the prospect of English troops storming their city, the place being left to the mercy of rampaging Englishmen intent on theft, rape and the other horrors of war. So they surrendered. Instead of all that, there was an orderly transfer of power. Henry V was back in at least this one corner of Normandy. But it was much later than he'd hoped. It was now September. The campaigning season was coming to an end. He'd lost troops in the siege. He'd lost troops through dysentery and disease, which is always the inevitable consequence of large gatherings of soldiers in poor sanitary conditions, all staying together without a basic knowledge of drinking water and removal of human waste. And so Henry had a problem. He was running out of time. He was running out of troops. But even so, he decided to march back through Normandy to Calais and return from Calais to England. Now, why did he do this? I don't think we can be sure. It may have been that he was wishing to demonstrate that as a man who claimed to be Duke of Normandy, he was moving through his duchy with impunity. It may have been that he was looking for a fight. He wanted to take on the French. He was daring them to come out and fight him as he carelessly marched across French terrain. It may have been that he wanted to emulate the terrifying raids launched by Eber III and his son, the Black Prince, in the early phases of the Hundred Years War. We know that you wanted to get up in the faces of the French because he challenged the Dauphin, the Prince, the other candidate for the French throne, the heir to the House of Valois, he challenged this Dauphin to single combat. Now, the Prince, the Dauphin never showed up. For fairly obvious reasons. Henry V was a lean, mean killing machine. He'd won his spurs on countless battlefields and in countless skirmishes in the hills of Snowdonia or facing down the rebels at Shrewsbury. The Dauphin, by comparison, was a fat, lazy muppet. He got up at 4 in the afternoon. He banqueted all day. In fact, to be honest, he sounds like potentially a more attractive character. However, he was not suited, let's say, to one on one combat at the height of the Middle Ages against one of Europe's premier warrior kings. He once collapsed when he was crossing from one side of Paris to another. It was so exhausting. So let me say he's not going to pick up a sword and fight Henry V. It's just not going to happen. So Henry launched himself across Normandy, heading for Calais and Currie again. That historian thinks he put around 1200 men into the garrison at Harfleur, and he'd lost around 2,000 men. Either they went home to England or they died or became casualties during the siege. So we think he's got perhaps 8,000 men. We know there's dysentery in the ranks. We know they've got to march 260 miles in the space of about two and a half weeks. The French initially played it quite tactically. Like Edward III before him, Henry needed to cross the great water barrier of northern France, the River Somme. Now the French army quite cleverly blocked off the various crossings of the Somme from the north side, and Henry V was forced to go ever further inland to find a crossing that he could use. He was being pushed further and further away from Calais. His supplies were being eaten up. His troops were getting more exhausted. This would not be the last time the Somme played an important part in British military history. You listen to Dan Snow's history. More Agincourt coming up. AI had the time of my life. Hey, I never felt this way before.
- [17:32]
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- [17:44]
Dan Snow
And I owe it all to you.
- [17:48]
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- [17:50]
Knox
Use on Monday.com hi, this is Knox from the podcast with Knox and Jamie. And maybe like us at the podcast, you also know people who have been smokers or vapers and Zen is the one product it seems like everyone is talking about because there are many good reasons to make a change to Zyn nicotine pouches reasons. Like Zyn Nicotine pouches are still America's number one choice for smoke free hands free nicotine satisfaction and you can choose between 10 varieties, each variety available in either 3 or 6 milligrams. Check out zen.com find to find Zen at a store near you. Warning. This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.
- [18:29]
Echoes of History Podcast Host
Land a Viking longship on island shores, Scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into Feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week.
- [19:22]
Dan Snow
The English did finally cross the Somme at a place called Bethencour and reorientated themselves towards Calais. The French then shadowed Henry's army. They were wary of this English king. But by the 24th of October, the two armies were facing each other. We don't know precisely where. It may be a narrow strip of land around 45 miles south of Calais, and it seems like the French were just simply blocking the road. The English would later claim that around 60,000 French troops were present at what they would call the Battle of Agincourt. This is almost definitely nonsense. Anne Currie thinks the number are perhaps around 15,000 French troops, and if it's good enough for her, it's good enough for me. The French did outnumber the English perhaps almost 2 to 1, and they had with them the Auriflamme, the sacred banner kept in extreme reverence at the Abbey of St. Denis. It was only brought out for the most dire emergencies for France, beseeching God to bestow his divine favor on his French children, a favor without which everyone in the Middle Ages knew it was impossible to succeed. The fact they brought the Oriflamme with them, I think is interesting. It's a gesture of defiance, a gesture of resolution, and the French would need it because they did not have effective leadership. There was the King of France, Charles vi. He was suffering, and he had been for a while, from terrible mental illness. He actually thought he was made of glass. The Dauphin, like I said, the next man in line, his son, senior member of the House of Valois. He was completely useless. And as a result, there was just a series of jockeying nobles at the head of the French army. And this would be a problem. And more and more of these nobles were joining the French, all the time bickering, trying to guarantee they'd have a place in the front rank, arguing about the strategy. Some of them said they should continue to shadow Henry, watching over his weakened force that limped towards Calais. They should attack when the time was right. Others said that for the honour of France, they should strike right here, right now, at Agincourt. In the end, it seems likely that Henry took the decision away from them, because it's Henry that initiates the battle. First of all. What's the terrain like? Terrain is everything in medieval warfare. Probably a shallow valley about 800 meters wide, woods on either side. We know the woods were very thick. The valley itself, it had been recently ploughed, and at that time of year, the autumn Rains had come and we've got properly thick northern French mud. Now, as anyone who's walked across ploughed fields in northern France, as I have on far too many occasions will tell you, you will know that within about three seconds of starting, you get giant muddy platelets attached to either foot. It is grim. And Henry would be relying on this. He put his bowmen on either flank in a kind of U shape, so they'd be able to rain down arrows on anyone approaching. Right up the center of the valley, he put his men at arms. In the middle, a metal wall of shields and spears, battle axes and swords. Famously, he ordered his archers to cut wooden stakes, so logs with sharpened ends driven into the ground so the archers would be protected from the French heavy cavalry, a kind of porcupine like defence. We know from reports that during the Crusades, the Muslim forces of the east used stakes like this to take on the heavily armed mounted Crusader knights. Henry's army was divided into three groups. Henry V commanded the centre. His cousin, the Duke of York, commanded the right flank and an old experienced soldier, Baron Thomas Camois, commanded the left. Henry moved through the troops, talking to them before the battle. There's an urban myth. Sadly, it's just a story that the French were boasting they would chop two fingers off the right hand of every archer so they could never draw a longbow again if they were captured. And that's where we get the V sign from, the famous V sign. You know that as an insult. Does that date from the period of Agincourt where archers would flick two fingers up at the French to taunt them, saying, look, I've still got my fingers and these fingers are going to rain down pain on your men. We don't know. But I like that story. It's a good story. It might even be true. So Henry's moving through his men, he's talking to his archers, he's talking to his men at arms and he makes this morale boosting speech that must have included the obvious point that it was a case of win this battle or die. The enemy lay between them and safety. The only chance was to fight their way through and beyond the French army. Now, the French had a plan to deal with the archers. They knew about the potency of English and Welsh archers. This wasn't a surprise to them. So their plan was that the cavalry would bear down on either flank and destroy the archers first. Heavily armoured horses and men should have been able to scatter the lightly armed and lightly armoured archers. But they were unable to put this plan into effect because Henry sees the initiative, he precipitated the battle, remarkably, by advancing, he ordered the archers to up sticks, to take their stakes out of the ground and move the whole battle line forward. Then they moved and they put their stakes back into the ground. That was the new front line. Now this is what we could call today a bite and hold tactic. You move forward so you re establish your front line and then you unleash fire from that point. So the English closed with the French. They brought the French army into range, the two armies having been outside range of any of their weapons the evening before. The English precipitated this battle by advancing into range. And then the longbowmen opened up, they started shooting. So the French suddenly found themselves under lethal bombardment and they have no choice. They've got to attack, but they're not ready to do so. This is an army lacking a clear chain of command. It's shocked, it's scared, it's now under attack, it's in battle. And elements of it took matters into their own hands. We hear that actually fights broke out within the French army as their noblemen and their followers struggled for prominence in the front line. A place where they think they'll win the most glory. In fact, it's a place where they're more likely to end up screaming. Mud pouring through a helmet visor, their bodies trampled ever further and deeper into the soil by friends and foe alike. It was that fate that awaited many of the Frenchmen that day. While the French nobles were jockeying for position, French attacks started going in. The cavalry got underway. Now longbowmen are capable of shooting about 12, perhaps even 20 arrows every minute. There are thousands of longbowmen on the field of Agincourt, so that is tens of thousands of arrows smashing into the assembled French ranks and cavalry as they set off many of those arrows of majority, they won't find chinks, they're not capable of smashing through the new, improved, strengthened breastplates and helmets the French knights. But some would find their marks. Some would go through visors or hit in the grooves in armour where plates didn't quite overlap. Some arrows too would hit the flanks and the neck and the head of the horses. And even if they didn't penetrate skin and muscle, it must have been maddening, it must have been intolerable to under shower of arrows, these metal tipped missiles battering at you constantly. So within seconds we hear from a contemporary account, written by a monk, in fact, that the wounded and the panicking horses were just galloping off sideways and backwards, different directions, screaming, rearing up with pain and rage, these terrified, wounded horses and riders crashed into their own infantry. Just as that was starting to advance, they scattered their own men. They broke up the coherence of the cavalry charge. It wouldn't now arrive upon the English archers as a great wave, a great solid wall of Mechlin horses. But as blinded individuals, screaming in pain and confusion, these knights were swept off the battlefield, crashing into the undergrowth, hitting branches. Riders were thrown off and into the hands of the tender mercies of English light troops that lurked on the flanks. A contemporary chronicler called it a terrifying hail of arrow shot. Even if the cavalry did reach the English archers, the bristling wall of wooden stakes further eroded the energy of the assault and the knights in ones and twos tried to hack their way through. They were just setting targets for archers now, shooting at point blank range. When a knight was knocked off his horse before he'd get to his feet, archers pounced on him. With their long, thin knives, their mallet, they drove him through the narrow eye slits of the French knights. The last thing that the flower of French nobility saw was a piece of steel heading straight for the brain. As the cavalry charge had utterly failed to sweep away the English archers, they were then free to turn their attention to the slow moving mass of French men at arms, knights on foot that were moving towards the centre of the English line. These men wiped their knees in mud. They were breathless, they were panting, they were exhausted, they were being pushed from behind, they were falling over, tripping, being lifted up by their mates, but sometimes being left behind. Pressed beneath the crush of men, they were eager to come forward and do battle with the English. In the centre of the English line, there stood Henry V. He was taunting the French. He was wearing a great golden crown on his helmet with the fleur de lis, the symbol of royal France on it, trolling the French, gaslighting them in the most unimaginable way possible. His presence on French soil, wearing the crown of France, an outrage. You listen to Agincourt on the pod, folks. More coming up.
- [29:08]
Monday Sidekick AI Advertiser
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- [29:15]
Dan Snow
Seriously.
- [29:16]
Monday Sidekick AI Advertiser
Monday sidekick, AI you'll love to use. Start a free trial today on Monday.com.
- [29:23]
Knox
Hi, this is Knox from the podcast with Knox and Jamie and maybe like us at the podcast you also know people who have been smokers or vapers and Zen is the one product it seems like everyone is talking about because there are many Good reasons to make a change to Zen nicotine pouches. Reasons like Zen nicotine pouches are still America's number one choice for smoke free hands. Free nicotine satisfaction and you can choose between 10 varieties, each variety available in either 3 or 6 milligrams. Check out zyn.com find to find Zyn at a store near you. Warning this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.
- [30:07]
Dan Snow
So there was no shortage of enthusiasm. In fact, it might have made things worse. The French line became ragged as people desperately lunged forward to try and get to grips with these English invaders. Invaders. Other of their comrades lagged behind. They got stuck in the mud. They were exhausted from their exertions. So eventually that ragged French line reached the English troops. Fresh English men at arms, shoulder to shoulder, bound up in a wall of steel, the French gasping to fill their lungs. Well, they went into hand to hand combat. Now which, for those of you who've done boxing or something similar, you'll know is the most exhausting thing imaginable, fit young men within 45 seconds, perhaps a minute, wearing heavy armour, having staggered across that field, well, they'd have been barely able to lift up their weapons and wield them with any strength. Their blows would be parried, their lunges lacking the power to get through chain mail, and they grew weaker with every second that passed. The English were fresher, almost certainly. They had a more regular, concentrated order to their ranks and they were able to see off this French attack. They beat men to the ground, stepped forward, they let the rear ranks dispatch the French, wounded and dying. And yet into this meat grinder the French poured more and more men. The English account talks about the French. It says that for those men killed when the battle was first joined, they fell right there at the front. And so great was the undisciplined violence and pressure of the mass of men that behind them the living fell on top of the dead. And others kept falling on top of the living, who were then killed as well. It's clear that within seconds of this brutal infantry fight being joined, there was just a writhing mass of men bogged down in the mud, bodies falling under the press, unable to stand up, drowning in thick mud, stamped into the ground, helpless men trapped beneath bodies, finished off with sharp blows from fresh Englishmen in the ranks behind. The utter impossibility of coordinating the battle, of telling the men behind to back off. Just that inexorable pressure driving you towards the sharp blades of English swords. Henry V, in the heart of it, he's in his Happy place. He's in the thick of it. His brother Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, wounded in the groin. Henry stands over his wounded brother, daring the French to come after not one but two princes of the blood, part of Henry's crown hacked off by a French blade. The French Dukes of Alencon and Bar slaughtered a noble rank. No use in that melee. We know little else about the fighting, except perhaps that it lasted three hours or so. We can imagine the exhaustion of men barely able to stand up, like punch drunk boxers staggering into yet another round. Perhaps the English army was well organised enough that there was a rotation scheme in force. It's possible that after a period in the front line, you'd be pulled, given a chance to gather your breath, rest, recuperate, as the people behind the second rank did the fighting. And that rotation, like penguins in a huddle, trying to stay warm, that could go on and allow the men to fight for some hours. It seems hard to believe from the sources that the French were able to do that. And it's tempting to think that the English simply move forward in a way almost like a tunneling machine, just slowly and unstoppably breaking down the face of the rocks that opposes it. The French troops, well, they can't retreat and they cannot advance. They found themselves in the face of a well organized English advance in a situation where individual bravery and strength could do little to counter the methodical progress of a shield wall manned by veteran killers. Perhaps the only French success the day that we know about was an attack on the lightly armed baggage train in the rear of the English army. We know that a member of the local gentry led a small number of men at arms, perhaps 600 lightly armed militiamen, local peasants, to seize some of Henry's personal possessions. It was sort of hit and run attack on the rear of the English army. Now we don't know if there was deliberate strategy by the French or whether it was just a spur of the moment, opportunist bit of banditry. But it did happen and we think it may have led to the so called killing of the prisoners. At some stage during the battle, King Henry ordered the killing, the execution of many high status prisoners who'd been taken. Perhaps he feared a fifth column, maybe he feared he'd taken so many prisoners they'd be able to rise up and attack the English from behind. Or perhaps it was connected with this attack on the English camp. Obviously in battle messages become rumours very quickly and very quickly indeed. So we don't know that Henry ordered some, not all the Higher status prisoners to be killed. So many of these higher status prisoners were killed. But many French aristocrats never even became prisoners at Agincourt. As the French were advancing, so many of them were killed. Some of them would be recognised, they'd scream, they'd plead for their life, they'd tell the English how much money they'd be worth if they were captured alive and they might be hauled out of French ranks and passed the rear where they'd be placed under guard. The plan was that these men would then be ransomed back. Their families would pay huge amounts of money to have them returned home. So these prisoners were valuable. Some attempt was made to ensure that they were captured and kept alive, the high status prisoners. But in the savage, confusing melee of battle, that was not always popular. And in the case of this battle, even when they were taken prisoner, some of those prisoners were then killed in cold blood. It's something that a lot of historians, a lot of commentators subsequently have talked about, but it's not something that seemed to have been regarded as a particularly savage war crime at the time. By the end of that terrible day, by the end of the battle, a huge number of Frenchmen had been killed in that field, perhaps as many as 10,000, perhaps a majority of their army. I think it gives us a real sense of how hard it is to retreat. The nature of the battle, the bloody press of men, the soil conditions, all of that meant that that huge mass of French infantry must have been largely trapped and died where they stood. They were assaulted on the flanks and the rear by English archers. They were chewed up from the front by the English men at arms. Over a hundred great lords lay dead. France lost its constable, it lost its admiral, it lost its master of crossbowmen with his three sons, it lost its master of the royal household. Henry, though, had taken some prisoners. He hadn't killed them all. He was able to stop the executions when he realised the situation had stabilized. Among them were the Dukes of Orleans and Bourbon, two of the most prominent dukes of France. It was almost a decapitation of the French state, particularly the French nobility from the northwest of France. On the English side, extraordinarily, perhaps only 100, 200 were killed. Among them was Henry's cousin, the Duke of York, whose heirs would go on to challenge Henry's son for the throne during the wars of the Roses. I don't think it was linked to his death at the Battle of Agincourt. I don't think they blamed the House of Lancaster for their forebears death on the field. But I may be wrong. Either way, he was the most prominent of a very, very short casualty list for the English. It was an astonishingly one sided battle. Afterwards, Henry, ever the propagandist, sent a list of dead and captured nobles around the shires once again in English. He wanted people to listen and understand. He made sure the reports of the battle were read out across his kingdom. He went home. He waited in Kent for Londoners to organize a huge pageant in celebration of him. Effigies of giants greeted him at the gates of London. Agincourt was already being cast a David and Goliath like victory. He entered London in a simple sort of smock, like Jesus entering Jerusalem. The people of London went bonkers. Parliament voted him a gigantic new tax when he returned so he could continue his campaigns against the French. And those campaigns would now strike at a weakened France. Many of France's most prominent nobles and warriors had been killed. The House of Valois had been discredited. The Dauphin had been discredited. Henry did go back to France. He did invade again, not 1416, the following year, but actually in 1417. And he would then build on the success of Agincourt. And that was when he actually, he did conquer most of the Duchy of Normandy. Agincourt was not the decisive battle in that campaign to recapture Normandy or his subsequent battles campaigns to try and conquer France. Agincourt was a moral victory. It was a victory that seemed to justify Henry's rule. It did unite England. Henry was established by that battle as a divinely favored monarch and one of the great warrior kings of English history. A country so recently divided by rebellion was now relatively united. There was a political consensus. Henry's position on the throne was untouchable. Agincourt, well, it seemed to be God's verdict on the House of Lancaster. And Henry, he knew he had the united people of England backing him. That was the launchpad for his future campaigns of conquest. And that's why I think Agincourt is evoked so often subsequently. Of course, Shakespeare evokes it in the late 16th century. Interesting. Just in time for the Earl of Essex to take an army across to Normandy and campaign on behalf of Elizabeth I in France. Centuries later, Churchill encouraged Laurence Olivier to shoot the Henry V film featuring the battle of Agincourt and that successful amphibious campaign in Normandy. He filmed that during the Second World War, in the build up to D Day. The timing was deliberate. There would be many other battles in the Hundred Years War. English heroism and determination would not be enough to avoid crushing defeats. But Agincourt is the one that we remember. Agincourt is the one that endures in the English mind. I hope you've enjoyed this explainer about the Battle of Agincourt. See you next time.
- [40:15]
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- [40:43]
Knox
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