The Battle of Agincourt was an English victory in the Hundred Years' War. It took place on 25 October 1415 (Saint Crispin's Day) near Azincourt, in northern France. The unexpected English victory against the numerically superior French army boosted English morale and prestige, crippled France and started a new period of English dominance in the war.
Part of Hundred Years War
Date
25 October 1415 (Saint Crispin's Day)
Location
Azincourt, County of Saint-Pol (now Pas-de-Calais)
Coordinates
50°27′49″N 2°8′30″E
Result
English victory
Belligerents
Kingdom of England
Kingdom of France
Combatants
English
King Henry V
Edward, Duke of York †
Sir Thomas Camoys
Sir Thomas Erpingham
French
Charles d'Albret †
Jean Le Maingre (POW)
Duke of Orléans (POW)
Duke of Alençon †
Duke of Bourbon (POW)
Strength
English
6,000–8,100 men
• About 5⁄6 archers
• 1⁄6 dismounted men-at-arms in heavy armour
French
14,000–15,000 men or up to 25,000 if counting armed servants
• 10,000 men-at-arms
• 4,000–5,000 archers and crossbowmen
• Up to 10,000 mounted and armed servants (gros valets) present
Casualties and losses
English
Up to 600 killed (112 identified)
French
• 6,000 killed (most of whom were of the French nobility)
• 700–2,200 captured
The background
Henry V was the son of Henry Bolingbroke (later Henry IV of England). Edward III was Henry V’s great-grandfather; his grandfather was Edward’s third son John of Gaunt (1st Duke of Lancaster). Henry V inherited the Hundred Years War from his great-grandfather after Edward III challenged Phillip VI’s right to the French crown.
When Charles IV, the French King, died in 1328 he left no male heir. His nearest male relative was his nephew Edward III; Charles IV’s sister Isabella was Edward’s mother. The French nobility did not want to be ruled by an English King, and there was already recognition that females could not succeed to the throne. Therefore they agreed that the heir would be Phillip of Valois, Charles IV’s first cousin. Despite this Edward III argued that although a woman was unable to inherit, it did not prevent inheritance through the female line – which formed the basis of his claim.
There were many other factors that contributed to outbreak of the Hundred Years War including England’s relationship with Scotland, France’s disruption of the English wool trade, and England’s complicated land ownership history of Gascony and Aquitaine (regions of South West France) – but it was his claim to the French throne that Edward III’s campaigns, and those of his descendants, would later justify.
The battle
Agincourt was one of three major land battles of the Hundred Years War (1337–1453), which in fact lasted 116 years. On 26 August 1346 Edward III defeated Philip VI at Crécy (See battle of Crécy). On 16 July 1356 Edward’s eldest son, Edward of Woodstock (the Black Prince) captured Philip VI’s successor John II at the battle of Poitiers. He was subsequently imprisoned in the Tower of London. Yet it is hard to imagine national celebrations of these battles or a major exhibition devoted to them.
Agincourt is a well-documented battle. 1415 was the first occasion since 1359 that an English king had invaded France in person. It was also the largest army taken to France since the 69 years previously. His preparations indicated that Henry V was planning to conquer the kingdom in what would be a long campaign. Despite this, Agincourt was a swift victory. One chronicler suggests it was over in half an hour, while others suggest that it lasted between two and three hours.
Henry V set sail for France on 11th August, landing near Le Havre on the 13th. He then laid siege to Harfleur from 17th August until the 22nd September when the town surrendered. Despite his intention to conqueror France, this would be Henry’s one and only capture of his campaign.
On the morning of Friday 25th October both English and French armies met in battle at Agincourt. In the early afternoon, fearing a renewed French attack, Henry famously ordered the French prisoners to be killed. This has generated controversy in more recent times, even to the extent of asking whether Henry V should be deemed a war criminal. Contemporaries, however, saw the battle as distinctive primarily for the high number of French casualties and prisoners, and for the exceptionally low number of English casualties.
There was no ‘standing army’ (a permanent, often professional, army composed of full-time soldiers that is not disbanded in times of peace) in either France or England in 1415. Troops were raised on a campaign-by-campaign basis. There were many similarities between the armies in terms of their recruitment, armour and equipment, but one crucial difference: the English brought relatively few men- at- arms on campaign (soldiers who wore full plate armour in battle) but a much greater proportion of archers. The significance of archers in the battle was noted at the time. Their ‘arrowstorm’ disrupted the French advance, thereby undermining their numerical superiority. Henry’s deployment of his archers has been a contested area in modern historical work, alongside the sometimes heated debate on the size of the armies.
This takes us to the nub of historical study of the battle. Despite pioneering work in the mid nineteenth century by Sir Joseph Hunter, one of the founders of the Public Record Office, and the extensive but antiquarian narrative of the campaign in James Wylie’s Reign of Henry the Fifth (1914), there was no full- scale study of the financial records of Henry’s army until Professor Anne Curry (trustee of the Royal Armouries) published. There are many documents to draw on, especially the muster lists which provide names and details of pay. Records for the French army also exist but are less extensive and await fuller analysis.
Narrative sources are numerous, as Curry’s study outlines. The most well-known English sources include the Gesta Henrici Quinti (‘Deeds of Henry V’) written by an English priest present on the campaign, plus battle narratives in two eulogistic Latin lives of Henry V written in the late 1430s, and insights into ‘popular’ views through English poems and chronicles – especially the vernacular chronicle known as the Brut. On the French side, the most influential account has been that of Enguerrand de Monstrelet, who sought to continue the earlier chronicling begun by in the late-14th century, but there are many others – testimony to the impact of the battle on the French. Many studies of the battle have drawn on the 16th-century English histories of Edward Hall and Raphael Holinshed, which informed Shakespeare, rather than on narratives written closer to the period.
Aftermath
Agincourt was not a decisive battle. The French suffered heavy losses in terms of dead and captured but politically these were not significant enough to force the French to the negotiating table. Henry’s victory made his later conquest of Normandy easier, as the French were reluctant to meet him in battle again. But his final triumph in May 1420 – acceptance as heir and regent of France by the treaty of Troyes – was the result of political divisions in France rather than simply military success.
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