The victory of the small, exhausted and hungry army of Henry V against a huge French host was the great triumph of the English longbow in the Hundred Years' War between England and France at the Battle of Agincourt. However, despite the hail of arrows, the battle turned to close combat, and it was not an easy victory for the English, as has often been reported.
Data from the battle of Agincourt
- Who: An English army of 6,000 men under the command of King Henry V (1388-1422) defeated a French army of 36,000 men under the command of Charles d'Albret, Constable of France (1369-1415).
- How: Agincourt watched as a small, well-disciplined and entrenched English army overthrew a much larger French army through massive use of the bow.
- Where: The Battle of Agincourt took place near the Château de Agincourt, roughly halfway between Calais and Abbeville in northern France.
- When: Friday, October 25, 1415.
- Why: Henry V wanted to revive the English right to the throne of France.
- Result: Agincourt (Azincourt) was the greatest English victory of the Hundred Years War against France.
In 1413 Henry V, only 27 years old, ascended the English throne with the ambition of gaining control of northern France. In early July 1415, Henry V had assembled, in the utmost secrecy, an army of 12,000 men around Winchester, while he sought the necessary tonnage to transport his troops to France. On August 11 his army sailed from the southern coast in 1,500 ships and reached the tip of the peninsula north of the Seine two days later. Early the next day, August 14, the British began to land. Fortunately for them, the French Constable Charles d'Albret had expected Henry V to land his army on the south side of the Seine, as a prelude to a march to Paris. However, Paris was not Henry V's objective. Instead, he had set his sights on the large fortified port city of Le Havre (Harfleur), located 1.6 km upstream of the Lézaide, a tributary of the Seine, protected by brackish intertidal marshes and by a lake. Le Havre was occupied by 400 knights under the command of Raoul de Gaucourt.
On August 19 the English had besieged Le Havre on all sides , as the Duke of Clarence, to the east, blocked the access and relief of Rouen, while Henry V was encamped on the west side of the port. Henry V ordered siege lines erected, while Clarence's Welsh miners dug tunnels to undermine the walls, and English artillery fired on the city day and night. A month later, both sides were suffering from the effects of dysentery, called the bloody flux , and an acute food shortage. Henry V met with Gaucourt on September 17; however, the French nobleman refused to accept the terms of surrender.
Gaucourt's only hope was that the Dauphin, Prince Louis de Guienne, would come to his aid. Guienne Fearing an English assault and subsequent massacre, the people begged Gaucourt to capitulate, which he did on September 22.
The march to Calais
Henry V's advisers, including Clarence, recommended that the king return to England in triumph and abandon France to its civil wars and conflicts. Henry V refused, so Clarence returned home angry, leaving the king to plan the next phase of his campaign. Le Havre was a small prize for such a great effort, and Henry V was not a man to rest on his laurels. He wanted to lure the French into a pitched battle and defeat them decisively; anything else would be a failure.
Trusting in God and in his men (5,000 archers and 900 armed horsemen), Henry V left Le Havre on October 6 , with the intention of covering the 250 km to Calais in eight days. It would take much longer and prove to be a trying experience for his army, cut in half in the grueling siege of Le Havre. The French, ably commanded by d'Albret, followed the English's movements along the Somme, and at the ford of Blanche Taque 6,000 French blocked their advance across the river, forcing Henry V to continue along the southern shore. On October 15, when they should have reached Calais according to Henry's wildly optimistic calculations, the English discreetly passed Amiens. Henry's soldiers and advisers alike began to wonder if they would ever cross the Somme.
Finally, four days later, having eluded the French army at Péronne by crossing across country and avoiding a bend in the Somme, the English reached Nesle, where they found two undefended fords. In a single day they crossed safely, and were able to advance north on October 21, albeit with the daily expectation of a French attack.
The French wisely took their time, and d'Albret argued, like the Duke of Berry, that the French should avoid a pitched battle. Henry would not see his efforts rewarded if he returned to Calais without having fought and won a battle. He had to take Le Havre again. However, the royal dukes (Orléans, Bourbon and Alençon) rejected d'Albret's objections. They wanted to crush the English in the field and gain some much-needed martial glory for themselves and France.
Agincourt
On October 24, the news that the English had feared arrived:the French army was concentrated on a plain between the towns of Azincourt, Tramecourt and Maisoncelle. Henry turned to his Welsh servant, Dafyd Gam, asking her to estimate the number of the vast French host, and Gam calmly replied, 'Sir. There are enough to kill, enough to capture, and enough for them to flee." In fact, the French outnumbered the English six to one, with a combined 36,000 troops, as they lined up in a strong defensive position along the Calais road, which crossed the plain of Agincourt. Its flanks were protected by forests; their rear, across open fields and only a small shallow valley separated them from the feeble English army.
During the night, Enrique forced his men to keep total silence, seeing these limited to communicate in whispers. This eerie silence puzzled the French, who hoped that he was an English ruse to escape his inevitable doom the following morning. They set up a picket line with bonfires at regular intervals along the highway to prevent an escape. Henry expected a night attack, so he kept his men in battle array for much of the night. He himself didn't sleep either, making preparations for the coming battle and sending out scouts, who returned with news that the terrain looked like mud soup.
Dispositionsforthebattleofagincourt
Henry decided to extend the English line between the woods surrounding the towns of Maisoncelle and Tramecourt. As the ground in front of the English line had become a quagmire, the French attack would be hampered and make the enemy a very easy target for their archers. Conditions were ideal, and Henry placed the dismounted armored horsemen in the center of his battle line and the archers on the flanks. The center would be under the command of Enrique, the right wing was commanded by the Duke of York and the left by Thomas, Lord Camoys.
Enrique knew that he was facing a desperate and dangerous bet. He had no reserves, no fallback positions, and nowhere nearby to escape to should he be defeated. Henry's only line could be outflanked if the French used a part of his army to go around the woods and attack him from behind. Even if the French launched a frontal assault, the English could be crushed.
The French had a battle plan drawn up. Boucicaut, Marshal of France, and Constable D'Albret would command the first division, composed of 8,000 dismounted armed horsemen. 4,000 archers and 1,500 crossbowmen. The main (central) division would be under the command of Prince Charles d'Artois and of Alençon, with a similar number of soldiers, and would be flanked by two wings of mounted horsemen, under the command of Richemont and Bourbon.
The plan fell apart even before it was put into effect, and instead of being preceded by a hail of arrows from their archers and crossbowmen, the French armored horsemen pushed them to the rear of the formation.
Saint Crispín's day
After a long, cold night of torrential rain, the fields were even muddier as the sun rose on St Crispin's Day, Friday 25 October 1415 . The English had spent the night in the open while the French had slept in tents and gorged themselves on wine and copious provisions. The French were sure of an easy victory.
Hours passed as each side waited for the other to make the first move. The French had good reason to wait. With each passing hour, his strength would increase and the English would grow weaker. Realizing this, the frustrated Henry V was pushed to make the first move. He ordered his men to uproot the stakes, advance in full view of the enemy, and erect a new line of stakes closer to the French, hoping to goad them into attacking. The front narrowed considerably, a change that favored the English and that dismantled the French plan. The French had thought to send their cavalry to attack the flanks of the English line, but now they were forced to make a frontal assault, exactly what they had hoped to avoid. The French realized that the ground sloped downward towards the English line and the field narrowed into a funnel shape the closer they approached the stakes. Furthermore, until this time, the French did not realize that the ground was dangerously muddy and soft.
However, they had made a plan and stuck to it. with disastrous results. The French decided to start the battle with a cavalry charge that was too weak:1,200 mounted knights, and only a third (420 men) managed to attack. His noble colleagues on foot soon found themselves in trouble as their heavy armor dragged them into the mud. As they struggled knee-deep in mud, Sir Thomas Erpingham (in command of the archers) gave the signal, then shouted the dreaded order 'Fire now!'
They engaged the nocks, pulled the ropes to their full extent, and sought the highest elevation before launching the first volley. Thousands of arrows whistled through the air like a cloud. Enough crossbow bolts, steel-tipped and capable of piercing armor, hit their mark to halt the French advance. Its effect on the less protected horses was terrifying, and many masterless horses, bleeding and neighing violently, galloped back to the French lines, trampling the dismounted knights into the mud.
An additional encumbrance of dead and dying horses and men had now been created over which the dismounted knights had to advance. Despite mass volleys, heavy casualties, and confusion, the dismounted knights pressed forward with determination and heroism. They could barely see, because the arrows made it dangerous to raise their heads, even with an armored helmet. The knights were trapped inside their armor and their mobility, vision, and breathing were dangerously limited. However, they continued to advance by the thousands.
Melee combat
The greatest honor of saving the English army from destruction at the hands of the dismounted French armored horsemen went to the small number of English armored horsemen who stopped and bloodied the French advance that came right up to their own lines. They were joined by squires, retainers, and a growing number of archers who had run out of arrows, using whatever weapons came to hand—axes, daggers, and the mallets they had used to drive their stakes—to hack, spike, skewer, and slash. to the vacillating French. The sheer number of men had overwhelmed the French line, preventing their knights from using their weapons effectively. The French were now so close that the archers could fire at them at close range with devastating effect.
In this confusing and raw hand-to-hand combat there was no quarter. As commoners, the English archers knew
that they would be massacred without further ado by the French. Consequently, the English were literally fighting for their lives, and they fought even more fiercely than usual against the French knights, who might be held for ransom later. This simple difference in psychology could explain the outcome of the battle.
For three ghastly hours the slaughter continued, as the French dead piled up in heaps before the English lines. The English were growing weary of their deadly task. There was a last-minute stir among the French when, in the afternoon, the Duke of Brabant arrived. He came to nothing when Brabant was cut down with his men. Alarmed by this, and fearing that the dozens of French prisoners might take up arms again if there was another attack, Henry took no chances and violated all the rules of chivalry, putting his prisoners to the sword.
Aftermath
There was no French regroupment or second attack, as feared, but what was left of the French army fled the battlefield, leaving tens of thousands of dead, wounded and captives at the mercy of the English. They had lost just 112 men and had won the most miraculous of victories against all odds. A month later, Henry was back in England, his men were handsomely rewarded, and the country was celebrating that amazing St. Crispin's Day.